It's Surreal! Ism?
Surrealism was a French artistic and poetic movement of the early 1920's and continued on until after WWII. Focusing on hallucination, automatic writing, and psychedelic drug use, this movement promoted opening up the reader's world view and consciousness. Many poets wanted to convey the message of freedom from mental 'prisons' and repression. The first form of recognized surrealism was automatic writing, or when the writer claims their subconcious wrote a work, enabling them to reach deeper into their minds.
Analysis + Literary Devices
This poem is surrealist because it talks about longing for someone with so much fervor that the speaker cannot distinguish whether they are dreaming or experiencing reality. This, the blurring of lines between reality and the dream world was a key factor in surrealist poetry. The speaker has been dreaming of their love for so long they might miss the chance to make the dream a reality and they have become strangers to the person they love. The speaker talks of becoming a phantom so that they can reunite in the dream world and finally be together. This poem uses Onomatopoeia, or the naming of a word in the sound that it makes. In example "Oh" is used to indicate the sound of someone expressing surprise. This poem also uses Assonance or the repetition of sounds/ vowels in non-rhyming words. "I sleep on my feet, body" all of these words use the same vowel stress.