Point of View

“Mad Girl’s Love Song” is told from the first-person perspective, allowing a deep, visceral, and intimate look into the speaker’s inner consciousness. Moreover, the speaker directly addresses the subject of the poem, “you.” Rather than recounting a narrative or idea, the poem’s perspective focuses solely on immediate sensations that the speaker is experiencing through the confusing landscape of their loss. However, the perspective does vary between present tense and past tense, suggesting a link between the speaker’s shifting perception of reality and the passage of time.

Language and Meaning

The language of the poem is largely clear, concise, and straightforward, but with notable exceptions. In the first stanza, which consists of three lines, only one word is more than one syllable: “inside” (Line 3). Every other word is a single beat which carries along the poem’s rhythm. As the poem progresses...