Stanza Structure in The Fish and The Force

From: wanglophile.com

Marianne Moore’s “The Fish” and Dylan Thomas’ “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” are complex and ambiguous poems that explore the paradoxical forces in a monistic universe where everything is intertwined. Time, nature and humanity are all connected and shown to have contradictory, twin faces: one of creation and one of destruction.  Focus will be given to Moore and Thomas’ use of stanza structure to emphasize and reflect their ideas. The stanza structure of “The Fish” and “The Force” are largely different with subtle similarities, but effectively convey the same message, themes and ideas.
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The stanza structure in “The Fish” and “The Force” serves to strengthen their ideas through their respective stanza template. Each stanza can be seen to have a shared basic organization with other stanzas in the poem. Individual verses adhere to a structural blueprint, promoting similarities and reiterating themes. Discrepancies are thus accentuated, so that the evolution and development of ideas can be seen. The way the collective poem is built from individual stanzas, from the template to joining the stanzas to individual incongruities will hence reveal much about the intentions of the poet.
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Briefly, some understanding of the general message of the poems is necessary to fully appreciate the efforts of the stanza structure. At their core, “The Fish” and “The Force” are about the creative and destructive duality found in the various machinations of a monist universe. Thomas refers to this concept as “The Force”, with explicit and implicit readings suggesting the force explored to be primarily nature, time and humanity. The title and opening lines of Thomas’ poem immediately supports this, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees / Is my destroyer.” The use of a diazeugma to open the poem with the repeated verb of “drive” emphasizes the similarities and close relationship between the narrator’s age and the flower, indicating a correlation between humanity, time and nature. The repeated pre-modifier “green” has connotations of growth and vitality, especially when coupled with “flower”, a synecdoche here for nature. However, fricative alliteration emphasizes that the force acts like a “fuse”: it is explosive and powerful. The extended metaphor results in a destructive detonation, “that blasts the roots of trees.” Interestingly, the two sentences on growth and destruction are separated by a semi-colon rather than a period, indicating the intimacy of the two aspects. The force drives the persona, but will also destroy him. Despite the force being the impetus, it is also inescapably the ultimate bane of what it creates.
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