Question

Read the poem "Heat" by H.D. in Explorations in Literature.

How do the phrases "cut apart the heat" and "rend it to tatters" in the first stanza affect the tone of the poem?


They express the irritation the speaker feels about the heat.


They express the speaker's depressed attitude from the heat.


They convey the anxiousness the speaker feels about the heat.


They convey the speaker's exhaustion from the heat.

Answer 1

They express the irritation the speaker feels about the heat.

Not completely sure, but that's the answer that seems most fitting to me

Answer 2

• They express the irritation the speaker feels about the heat.

Step-by-step explanation:

The speaker sounds entirely frantic to escape this heat.

Words like "rend" and "cut" are solid and even brutal. She needs the breeze to diminish the warmth to "wears out"— essentially, to shreds, to fragments of nothing.

The speaker's diction sounds brutal. There's a great deal of consonance including extreme sounding letters—Rs and Ts are everywhere in this short stanza ("rend," "heat," "cut," "apart," "tatters").