Auden, Eliot, Yeats—they liked the modernists— / and Sylvia Plath, Adrianne Rich
-- Speaker (Lines 6-7)

Importance: These names refer to a string of celebrated modernist poets: W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, and W. B. Yeats (notably all names with the same structure), followed by two contemporary confessional poets. It’s worth noting that the three surnamed poets are all men, while the two given full names are both women; the women’s names also follow the same metre of three syllables followed by a single syllable, for a metric pattern of two trochees. This communicates the expanse of the snakes’ interests and knowledge.

Did she like them / more than she liked him? They were implying / things about him, weren’t they?
-- Perseus (Lines 13-15)

Importance: These lines are structured as two successive questions, each with a line break in the middle of the question. This gives the moment a slightly claustrophobic quality in which Perseus’s demands...