Original poem reprinted online here: "Early Elegy: Headmistress" by Claudia Emerson Originally read: April 4, 2013 More information about the Poet: Claudia Emerson The use of punctuation in this poem parallel each other, but I'm unsure how the parallels work. The use of the colon could set off a list, and/or define something. But yet look how the title works, "Early Elegy: Headmistress." The colon feels like it's setting off a list, and this poem is in a sequence of poems titled "Early Elegy." Furthermore the syntactical structure of the title follows into the first line of the poem, "The word itself: prim retired, its artifact". Indeed the colon does set off a list, however there's that usage of the ambiguous pronoun "itself" which can refer to an "Early Elegy" and/or the "Head Mistress." And the qualities each take "prim, retired," does flow well conceptually. But the poem does confirm th...
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