Randy Pang

“In the Valley “ Pg 22
Diction, Tone, and Voice
In the poem “In the Valley, the writer’s diction is pretty simple. He or she doesn’t really use complex words. The syntax of the poem is proper. All of the words in the lines were written as if everyday speakers would say them. As the reader, I felt that most of what he says in the poem was metaphors.
The poem has a bit of depressing and frustrating tone. You could definitely feel the depression in some of the lines that he writes. A few examples are “all the heart has gone out of me,” or “I re-wove the rotten fish- basket, fixed it up for use again in the foothills. But sick at heart, I have cut it to pieces.” As the reader, I feel as if the writer is going through a major life crisis where he is caught in between two decisions, and it’s just tearing him apart to choose. I hear this tone throughout the whole poem. In the poem, he repeats the line “’all the heart has gone out of me,” twice, once in the beginning and once in the end. Throughout the poem he continues with depressing metaphors. I believe the part I heard the tone most was in line “I re-wove the rotten fish- basket, fixed it up for use again in the foothills. But sick at heart, I have cut it to pieces.”
The voice of the poem is a person or may be the poet himself. It really only has a single voice and is spoken in a somewhat private and personal way. He uses metaphors to paint an image on how he truly feels. His style of voice could be described as dramatic. For example, “ While I was weaving another, a bat flew right at me. I will not do what it orders, the small moth-spirit that flew at me here in the valley.” He seemed to be vey dramatic when speaking about the bat, describing it as a “moth-spirit.”