A guitarist tunes up

“A Guitarist Tunes Up”, by Frances Cornford compassionately compares a simple untuned guitar to a beloved young lady. It is a clear, suggestive, and effective poem. It also expresses the difference between creative instinct and possessive instinct. Cornford suggested that the guitarist is an artist who is well aware of the behaviour of the guitar “an instrument made of wire and wood” (4). He knows where and how should he strike the strings of the guitar to bring about certain musical sounds. He is not like a “lordly conqueror” who possesses all wire and wood of the lands, but cannot bring about any musical tone out of them (3). This poem makes denotation/connotations and imagery, are essential to emphasizing the ways in which a “lordly conqueror” shares power with and cares for his lady, like he would for his own instrument (3).
Society was and continues to be based off patriarchal principles, it was likely for the man to take power and hold restraints for a women in a relationship. The way the guitarist comes before his “instrument” with “attentive courtesy connotes that a man is asking to control his women, rather than demanding. The significance of “bent over his instrument” still implies that he is looking her condescending, as opposed to equally. However, the reader knows he is simply treating her with kindness, and that the guitarist is not against controlling her as a “conqueror”. The poet compares the guitarist (an artist) with a man who is in love with a loved woman. The lover knows how and what should he do to bring about desired reactions of his beloved, they play the sport of love. So, the guitarist is like the man who is in love with a woman and is not like the ‘lordly conqueror’.