Deconstructive Reading of Poems

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Let's begin to analysis some poems.

Poem 1 :

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
(Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare)

Deconstructive Analysis of Sonnet 18 (In Point Form with Sub-points)

Questioning the Comparison Right From the Start

The poem begins with a question: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
This creates instability from the very first line — the speaker seems unsure.
Deconstruction shows: language pretends to be firm, but starts with doubt and hesitation.

The Comparison Is Immediately Rejected

The speaker says: “Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”
So the comparison to summer is offered and denied at the same time.
This creates contradiction: why ask the question if you're just going to dismiss the comparison?
Deconstruction points out how language undermines itself, even while appearing logical.

The Idea of Beauty is Unstable

Summer is supposed to be beautiful, but the poet points out its flaws:
- “Rough winds”
- “Short lease”
- “Too hot” or “too dim” sun
If summer is so imperfect, why use it as a standard at all?
This exposes a hidden instability: beauty is not fixed, and even the ideal image breaks down under examination.

Immortality Through Poetry is a Language Illusion

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade…
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

The poet claims that the beloved’s beauty will never fade because it lives in the poem.
But deconstruction asks: Can language really preserve life?
The poem says “this gives life”, but it's just ink on a page — representation, not reality.
The idea of immortality is based on the illusion that poetry captures truth permanently.

The Poem Relies on Absence

The beloved’s real body and voice are absent.
We only have a verbal image, not a person.
Deconstruction reveals this absence — poetry always speaks of presence, but gives only traces, echoes, or substitutes.
The "thee" becomes a signifier, disconnected from a real identity.

Binary Oppositions Are Unstable

Binary Opposition	How It Breaks Down
Summer vs. Beloved	Beloved is “better”, but compared to it anyway
Eternal vs. Temporary	Poem claims to grant eternity, but is still subject to time, aging, forgetting
Life vs. Death	Poem claims to give “life” through language, but language is not life
Beauty vs. Decay	Beauty is described through images of fading — the contrast collapses

Deconstruction teaches us that these binary opposites are illusions, because they depend on each other and bleed into each other.

Language Pretends to Preserve, But Always Fails

The poet says: “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
But language is unstable: meanings change, words fade, contexts disappear.
The poem may survive, but its meaning may be misread, mistranslated, or forgotten.
Deconstruction says: language cannot guarantee permanence — it always carries the trace of loss.

Reader Creates the Meaning

The poet tries to fix the meaning — that the beloved will live forever in verse.
But deconstruction reminds us: meaning is made by the reader, not the author.
You, the reader, decide what survives — the beauty, the doubt, or the illusion of immortality.
This creates open meaning, not closed truth.

Final Destructive Thought:

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 pretends to offer stability — a fixed comparison, a preserved beauty, a poetic eternity.
But under deconstruction, we see that it is built on doubt, absence, contradiction, and the illusion of permanence.
The poem does not hold beauty forever — it shows how fragile and shifting beauty and language truly are.

Poem 2

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Deconstructive Analysis of the Poem 'In a Station of the Metro': By Ezra Pound

Meaning is not fixed

The poem looks short and simple, but its meaning is not clear or stable. At first, it seems to describe people in a metro station, but the use of the word "apparition" makes those faces feel like ghosts or fading memories. This shows that the poem is not giving us a solid truth, but a shifting image. The comparison to petals creates beauty, but also removes the realness of the scene. Deconstruction tells us that meaning always slips, and this poem is a good example of that.

Faces are not fully present

Ezra Pound uses the word “apparition”, which usually means something ghost-like or unreal. This immediately tells us that the faces are not completely present. We don’t see actual people—we see faint impressions or feelings of people. The poem creates a sense of absence, not full presence. The people are there, but not really “there.” Deconstruction focuses on this loss of full presence, and shows how language can never truly capture reality.

Petals suggest both beauty and sadness

At first, petals might seem like a beautiful image. But petals are also fragile, they fall, and they don’t last long. This means they carry the idea of decay or loss. So the comparison of human faces to petals makes the faces seem not only beautiful, but also delicate and fading. This double meaning creates a contradiction, which is exactly what deconstruction looks for. The poem says one thing, but suggests another feeling underneath.

City and nature are mixed together

The poem shows people in a modern metro station, but compares them to petals on a tree branch, which belongs to nature. These two ideas—urban life and natural beauty—are opposites. But the poem merges them, confusing our understanding. Are we looking at people or flowers? Is this about city life or nature? The poem blurs the boundary between these two things, showing how opposites in language can collapse into each other.

Metaphor hides reality

The poem uses a metaphor: it compares faces to petals. But faces are not really petals. The metaphor seems to explain the moment, but it actually hides the real scene—the crowded, noisy, possibly dirty metro. Instead of describing the real faces, the poem gives us a soft image to replace them. Deconstruction shows us that metaphors don't give truth—they shift meaning and often create distance from reality.

Structure creates silence and absence

The poem is only two lines long and does not contain a complete sentence. There’s no verb, no explanation. The white space between the lines creates a pause—a moment of silence. Instead of giving full meaning, the poem gives us a gap. This is important in deconstruction: the poem doesn't explain, it leaves things unsaid, and the reader has to fill in the blanks.

Binary oppositions are broken

The poem sets up several binary oppositions (two opposite ideas), such as:

Reality vs Illusion: Faces are real, but the word “apparition” makes them ghost-like.
City vs Nature: Metro is modern, but petals are natural.
Presence vs Absence: Faces seem there, but also feel like fading memories.
Life vs Death: Petals show beauty, but also fading and falling (suggesting death).

Deconstruction shows how these opposites do not stay separate. They melt into each other, making meaning unstable.

Poetry hides as much as it reveals

The poem looks like it reveals a beautiful moment. But it also hides the full reality of the metro station. It gives us a soft image of petals instead of a real picture of people. This is important because deconstruction says that language often hides, erases, or replaces the real thing with an image or illusion.

The reader must make meaning

The poem doesn’t tell you what to think or feel. It just shows an image and leaves it to you. That’s why every reader might get a different meaning. This is a key idea in deconstruction: meaning is not fixed by the writer, it is created by the reader, and it can change every time you read it.

Final Deconstruction Point

This poem is not just about people or petals. It is about how we see, what we remember, and how language can never fully capture reality. Deconstruction shows us that meaning is never final—it always contains opposites, contradictions, and silences. This tiny poem, just two lines long, gives us a perfect example of how language both shows and hides, reveals and confuses.

Poem 3

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Deconstructive Analysis of “The Red Wheelbarrow”

Unstable Meaning of “So Much Depends”

The poem opens with a big claim: “so much depends / upon”.
But the poet never tells us what depends on the wheelbarrow or why.
Meaning is withheld—the line creates expectation without explanation.
Deconstruction shows: Language fails to deliver full meaning. We are left in a space of uncertainty.

The Illusion of Objectivity

The poem seems to just describe objects: wheelbarrow, rainwater, chickens.
But that description is a construction—there’s no context, no action, no purpose.
What kind of farm has no mud, no work, no mess?
Deconstruction says: This is not reality, but a language-made image—an idealized or even imaginary scene.

Color as Empty Signifier

“Red” and “white” are pure, bold colors.
But they carry no symbolic meaning here—no emotion, no explanation.
They feel more like labels than meanings.
Deconstructively, this shows how words (signifiers) are cut off from fixed meaning (signified).

The Wheelbarrow Itself Becomes a Symbol of Uncertainty

A wheelbarrow usually symbolizes labor, usefulness, weight.
Here, it just sits—shiny, glazed with rain.
It is formally centered, yet functionally empty.
Deconstruction points out this gap between form and meaning—the object is present, but its purpose is missing.

The Structure Highlights Fragmentation

The poem is broken into 8 short lines, each with 2–3 syllables.
The word “wheelbarrow” is split across two lines → “a red wheel / barrow”.
This disrupts the unity of the object—it no longer feels whole.
Deconstruction sees this as an example of how language fractures meaning, even while pretending to show unity.

Presence and Absence Work Together

Objects are “present” in the poem—but their background, function, or reason is completely absent.
Why are the chickens there? What is the wheelbarrow for? We don’t know.
This is what Derrida calls the “trace”: meaning appears only as something missing or left out.

No Action, No Human Presence

There are no people, no verbs of doing—just being.
The scene feels still, static, and frozen.
It’s like a painting, not real life.
Deconstruction shows that this absence of human context removes stable meaning and opens the poem to multiple readings.

Meaning Depends on the Reader

The poet gives you no direction, no interpretation.
You are forced to make sense of the image yourself.
As deconstruction teaches: Meaning is not inside the poem, but created between the reader and the text.

Final Deconstruction Point:

Though the poem looks clear, it actually reveals the limits of language.
It shows objects, but gives no explanation.
It begins with a strong statement, but never fulfills it.
It promises meaning, but leaves it open, fragile, and uncertain.

Poem 4

Never until the mankind making

Bird beast and flower

Fathering and all humbling darkness

Tells with silence the last light breaking

And the still hour

Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

pleease analyze it in simple way of destruction theory

And I must enter again the round

Zion of the water bead

And the synagogue of the ear of corn

Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound

Or sow my salt seed

In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.

I shall not murder

The mankind of her going with a grave truth

Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath

With any further

Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,

Robed in the long friends,

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,

Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.

After the first death, there is no other.

Deconstructive Analysis of Dylan Thomas’s “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London”

1. The Title Already Rejects Meaning

The title “A Refusal to Mourn…” sounds firm, but what does refusal mean here?
The poet writes a mourning poem while claiming to refuse mourning.
Deconstruction shows this contradiction: Language says one thing and undoes it at the same time.

2. Language Breaks Its Own Logic

The poem is filled with rich images (Zion, corn, sea, darkness), but they don’t form a clear, fixed message.
Instead of explaining the child’s death, the poet surrounds it with symbolic, spiritual, and natural metaphors.
The result is ambiguity: meaning feels near, but keeps slipping.
This is classic deconstruction: language can't hold a single truth.

3. Presence Is Always Mixed with Absence

The child who died is never described, not named, not pictured.
Instead, we get images like “London’s daughter,” “dark veins,” and “unmourning water.”
The absence of the child becomes the center of the poem.
According to Derrida, presence is always shaped by what is missing.

4. Opposites Collapse into Each Other

The poem sets up many opposites, but breaks them down:

Binary Opposition	How It Fails
Mourning / Refusal	The poet mourns by refusing to mourn.
Death / Life	The child dies, yet is said to enter nature, timelessness.
Silence / Speech	The poet praises silence, but writes a poem.
Innocence / Eternity	The child’s innocence is tied to vast, ancient images—confusing time.

➡ Deconstruction shows: opposites don’t stay opposite — they depend on each other, and their borders blur.

5. The Final Line Pretends to End, But Doesn’t

“After the first death, there is no other.”

Sounds like a grand conclusion. But what does it mean?
Is it religious? Philosophical? Is it comforting or denying mourning?
Deconstruction reveals: even a strong-sounding sentence can be deeply unstable and open to many meanings.
There’s no final answer — only an illusion of closure.

6. The Poem Distrusts Traditional Language of Mourning

Thomas avoids words like “grief,” “tears,” “loss.”
Instead, he chooses symbolic, myth-like imagery: corn, water, Thames, Zion.
This is a rejection of conventional poetic mourning, which deconstruction sees as a challenge to fixed cultural meaning.
Grief becomes unspoken, coded, refracted — not expressed directly.

7. Poetry Reveals Its Own Limits

Thoug: the poem is deeply lyrical and emotional, it often refuses clarity.
We expect poetry to explain or express — but here it mostly evokes and hides.
Deconstruction says: Poetry doesn’t show truth—it shows the gaps in truth.
The poem becomes a space where language breaks, not where it heals.

Final Deconstructive Idea:

Dylan Thomas’s poem pretends to reject mourning, but actually performs a complex, poetic mourning that avoids closure.
Its rich language, contradictions, and silence show that even grief can’t be clearly expressed.
The child’s death becomes a mystery, and the poem becomes a site of meaning that always slips away.
References :

Belsey, Catherine. Post-Structuralism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Barry, Peter J. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press, 2007.

Barad, Dilip. (PDF) Deconstructive Analysis of Ezra Pound’s “in a Station of the Metro” and William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” www.researchgate.net/publication/381943844_Deconstructive_Analysis_of_Ezra_Pound’s_’In_a_Station_of_the_Metro’_and_William_Carlos_Williams’s_’The_Red_Wheelbarrow’. Accessed 4 July 2025.

MKBU, DoE. “Deconstructive Reading of Sonnet 18 .” YouTube, youtu.be/ohY-w4cMhRM?si=MkTnRUVb2-mmx4tK. Accessed 4 July 2025.

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