Storm Warnings

Stormy Weather In the world of poetry, writers use many literary and poetic devices to achieve their end goal, whether the goal is a type of emotional or perhaps some other type of response. In her poem “Storm Warnings,” Adrienne Rich uses unique structural style including many poetic devices, such as structure, imagery, and descriptive language to reveal literal, as well as metaphorical meanings in her poem. This structure lets the poem progress in an organized and chronological manner, in order to explain an external as well as an internal conflict that is being held by the speaker. The emotions of the speaker run parallel to the storm happening on the outside; Rich uses this as the story’s metaphor. The main message of “Storm Warnings”
In the third stanza, the poem refers to the “mastery of elements” (Line 2), speaking of a change in the weather, which also relates to the fact that humans are unable to change or avoid similar changes. The poet describes the fact that she can only watch the storm in the first stanza. This relates to when she talks about how humans are helpless on the inside and only able to “close the shutters” (21). The whistle of the wind, or “whine” (23) as Rich uses, cannot be stopped. The “zone of gray unrest” (4) in the first stanza is made black by the fourth stanza and readers realize that the storm’s threat is not only a physical one, but it threatens her mood. She remains calm even as the storm reaches its climax. The poet comes to realize that in certain, extreme circumstances, a storm may break glass, externally, but internally, she comes to find that storms in the mind have the ability to break as well. Though she is physically safe inside her house and protected from the storm outside, despite the dark atmosphere inside, the howling wind outside still disturbs her. This suggests that individuals do not have much power over the storms that occur and the moods they fall into, except for the ability to endure them, despite the possibly disturbing atmosphere they