Personification

In “One Is One,” the speaker talks to her heart. The technique that Ponsot uses is called personification. She gives human qualities to an object. In “One Is One,” the personified object is the heart, which, in this poem, is also symbolic of the speaker's emotions.

The speaker talks to her heart as if it were an acquaintance, a lover perhaps. She yells at it, curses it, and blames it for trying to defeat her. She even grapples with her heart and threatens to lock it away. If it were not for the first word of the poem (which is “heart”), readers would conclude that the speaker is talking to another person. In other words, the speaker talks to her heart as if it were separate from her, something outside her. She even accuses her heart of trying to leave her, wanting to go “solo.” But the speaker...