The Form and Meaning in “The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator” Seda Dalgec College

“The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator” is a confessional poem by Anne Sexton, in which she explores her intimate feelings about masturbation during a post-break-up era in her life. The poem is noteworthy because of its ability to bring forth the taboo subject of female sexuality with an organized structure resembling that of a traditional ballad, and while doing so, evoking vivid images that furthers our understanding of her painful situation.

The poem consists of seven stanzas of six lines. The rhyme scheme is strict, as it follows the pattern of ABABCC, DEDECC, and so on. The structure seems rigid in terms of lines and stanzas, but the number of syllables in each line varies without a pattern. In addition, we cannot talk about a certain meter, either, for the lines have different variables of stressed and unstressed words. For example, the first line “The end of the affair is always death” is written in iambic pentameter, five feet of unstressed and stressed syllables, but we see trochees in the fourth and fifth lines, and also spondees in the phrases like “the knock-kneed broom”. Moreover, enjambment is the foregrounded prosodic element in the poem, due to which, the sentences begin and end in the middle of the lines, and...