Tanner’s poem uses the Anglo-Saxon poetic line, meaning at least three of the words in each line start with the same sound. The poem seems to be about a woman who because of her alcoholic ways, has been put away in an insane asylum or assisted living institute. Tanner uses lots of imagery to describe the woman and her current situation. Because it is written with the Anglo-Saxon poetic line, alliteration plays a major role in its form. Tanner uses sounds that stand out from the rest of the words when you read the sentences out loud. For instance, in line 2, he uses “drumming”, “drunk” and “drone”. The force coming from the “dr” sound makes the woman seem like she is being hammered down to this place she is being forced to stay in. I also like the comparison he uses for the woman being like a ship in lines 3 and 4, “The sadness she tried to sail away has anchored / Down in this room of ruins, which has no rules.” You really get sense that she is locked in this place, whether it be a physical room or this drunken state of mind, and she has absolutely no chance of ever escaping her ultimate fate.
The last sentence, (Lines 4-6) seems a bit jumbled up to me. It starts off nicely when he says “She is / Banned from going back”, (good alliteration) but the last part of the sentence doesn’t make sense to me, “her eyes frozen on everything / Bad colored black.” I guess if i think about it, I see a woman sitting in a corner looking blankly into space, wide-eyed and terrified rocking back and forth. It is a creepy image but i feel like it was thrown in there just to keep up the alliterative form of Anglo-Saxon poetry. All in all, I thought this was a very well written poem. It filled the requirements for the Anglo-Saxon poetic line and was descriptive enough to paint an image in my head.