The Guitarist Tunes Up

What I love most about “The Guitarist Tunes Up” by Frances Cornford is its denotation and connotation meanings. Denotatively, this poem suggests that in order for guitarist to produce right note, he has to tune up his guitar before play it. In the other hand, the poet also gives connotative meaning; in order for the man to make love to a woman he has to seducing her with love, politeness and care so that she will surrender herself to him. Even woman says only stupid, senseless things that the man might not understand or doesn’t want to pay attention to, but he will absolutely hear it out and pretend to sympathy so that he will be allowed to have sex with her. An obvious figure of speech which uses in this poem is simile.

First one is at the third line, “Not as a lordly conqueror,” while another one is at the fifth line, “But as a man with a love woman.” These mean that the man doesn’t tune the guitar with the same passion as the conqueror who has command upon something but rather the same passion as a man do to his lover. I also love how the poet use the word ‘play’ at the end of the poem to show that both guitar and woman are ‘play’ by man. I love those meaning. Also, to me, the poet describes the poem in soft tone. There is a use of synecdoche; we can see in the fourth line: “wire and wood” is used instead of guitar. There are 4 rhyme schemes: bent-ment, could-wood, might-light and say-play. I think these also make the poem sound lovely.