Analyzing Dario's Poem I Seek A Form

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Dario is a brilliant poet that can make any reader see different perspectives from same words. In “I Seek a Form”, he explains on the surface how the perfect words to describe a beautiful world escape him, but read it from another perspective and it can be about a lover. The swan is the perfect metaphor for the world, a lover, or even just a swan that can be seen, but not touched because of the harm that could come. He has trouble even explaining in poetic form about the “swan” because the words escape him just like words escape our head while having conversations or writing. Unlike poems about beauty that you would think that end in happiness, there is no closure in this poem as Dario leaves off with the swan that questioned him and intrigued …show more content…
This idea can be seen in the line that says, “It is heralded by a kiss that is placed on my lips” (Dario 3). The speaker is seeking a love that he cannot keep and every time he begins to get close to her she escapes him as she is either playing hard to get or doesn’t reciprocate those feelings of love. Every time he is presented with the opportunity to articulate his emotions to her he is at a loss for words, losing his loved one over and over again. In addition, he refers to the embrace from the goddess Venus in the first stanza when he says, “in the impossible embrace of the Venus de Milo” (Dario 4). The statue of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, was built with arms. Alike his never-ending quest for his lover, the embrace of this love goddess is not possible since the statue has no arms. I feel this represents his longing to embrace his lover, a desire that will never become reality. The speaker is searching for a form, or solution, to this struggle that in his final line of the poem, “the neck of the great white swan” (Dario 14), he may have pieced together the perfect words to speak to his lover, but his lover may have already given up on his approach that took way too long. It is here where he is finally able to connect beauty with the appearance of a