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Abstract

In the series of poems titled The Enchanted Adder an attempt has been made to imitate a musical form in that the series consists of a suite containing several movements composed upon a unifying theme. Each movement is in itself a set of variations. The theme is that of love. The first and last poems lie outside the suite and deal with the craft of - poetry; they thus form an Introduction and a Coda. At the same time they contain suggestions of the central theme. Movement 1, poems 2-5: attempt to express the joy and innocence found in love but at the same time foreshadows the adder in the garden. Movement 2, poems 6-12: the tonality grows darker as uncertainty, fear of loss, and questioning enter. Movement 3. poems 13-19: loss, dread and a symbolic death pick up from the second movement. Movement 4, poems 20-26: expresses a variety of conflicting emotions: the need to accept loss, again symbolic death, the censorship of society, the desert after love, hatred towards both the self and towards the beloved. Movement 5. poems 27-30: again the mood shifts; this time to one of cynicism and confusion. Movement 6. poem 31: a prayer that the poet's daughter may not have to live through her own experience. Movement 7, poems 32-33: the ascent out of loss. Movement 8, poems 34-38: a section dealing with madness and nightmares on the part of both the man and the woman. Movement 9. poem 39: deals with the physical death of the man; this may be actual or it may take place in the mind of the woman who has not been able to erase what has occurred from her sub-conscious, The suite is intended to end ambiguously. An attempt has been made to give flexibility to the whole through the use of various verse forms and through a certain amount of contrapuntal movement in time.