How Meaning Emerges from Poetic Technique in Amy Lowell's 'A Fixed Idea' Amelie Maurice-Jones 12th Grade

In ‘A Fixed Idea’, Amy Lowell presents a speaker tormented by reoccurring thoughts which cease to become pleasurable when are repeated in a monotonous cycle. As the stanza continues, the thought is revealed to be a memory of a loved one: whilst the speaker seems conflicted as to whether she finds joys or sorrows in such a thought, the overall message is one of listlessness as if the thought has lingered for too long a time and any pleasured sought from it has now soured.

Through sonnet form, the poet focuses on the potential of thoughts to become tedious and unsavoury once they have been stored in the mind for too long. Indeed, the interlocking ABBAABBA rhyme scheme acts as a structural metaphor for the speaker’s entrapment within her own mind, and such is furthered by the title ‘A fixed idea’ used to convey the speaker’s thought as all consuming as she is unable to conceive of anything else. Highlighting this is the personification of the thought throughout the poem, through a series of dynamic verbs from ‘grown’ to ‘aches’ to ‘taught’ in order to convey the utter powerlessness of the speaker to a domineering thought which remains constant. This is summarised in the opening line ‘What torture lurks’, with the personification...