Jason's+Analysis

A Fixed Idea by Amy Lowell

What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant; and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, Become a habit, and we struggle, caught. You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest Heavy on my life. I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest. In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.


 * Analysis:**

While reading Amy Lowells’ poem //A Fixed Idea// the reader gets a sense of a deep pain within her words. The title //A Fixed Idea// shows that she is unable to keep her mind off of something. It is interpreted that the thing she is thinking of is a person. //A Fixed Idea// is heavily dependent on the use of imagery to help Lowell express her feelings. //A Fixed Idea// is written in a Petrarchan sonnet format. Petrarchan format is a sonnet that is fourteen lines long, in iambic pentameter, and has a rhyming scheme, ABBAABBACDCDCD, in this case. A poem like this also has a turning point, which is about the last two lines of the poem. The turning point in this poem is when Lowell says that she still loves the person.

Lowell basically sets the tone in her first line “What torture lurks within a single thought,” giving the reader an idea right off the bat that this will be a sad and depressing poem. Lowell talks about how remembering her joys bring her pain when she utters,

Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, (lines 4-7)

Lowell uses the imagery of a bird in a cage to illustrate her being stuck remembering and not being able to escape her memories. She depicts these ideas when she illustrates,

Become a habit, and we struggle, caught You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest (lines 8-11)

Line 11 urges that it is someone or something that has died while the imagery of a nest in line 9 leads the reader to think of a bird. Also, in line 14, Lowell also writes,

In mercy lift your drooping wings and go. (line 14)

Another reference to a bird, but in this line Lowell seems to want these painful memories to leave so that she may be happy again.

But, towards the end Lowell writes that she is ready to accept what had happened and wants to move on with her life so that she can be happy again. She mentions to this idea when she writes,

I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest. In mercy lift your drooping wings and go. (lines 11-14)

Although she says she still loves the person, she also motions that her love for the person is holding her back from being truly happy.

Overall, this poem has a very sad tone and uses really strong words like tortured and crushed to help illustrate how much pain these memories and ideas are causing Lowell.