Music is truly a beautiful thing and to incorporate any relation of music into a poem is wonderful. 'The Guitarist Tunes Up" by Frances Cornford does that exact thing. The poem describes the guitarist as he prepares to play the guitar, but not as conqueror but as a lover. The guitarest can play the instrument simply because he has love from the woman he plans to play with. He isn't only going to play a guitar but going to be in love; he won't participate in love as a "lordly conqueror" but as a man in love. The whole poem is one sentence with an aa, bb, cc, dd rhyme scheme; the rhythm brings out the musical sense. Playing the guitar is a metaphore for the man's love and in the end the man and the woman play love together. A different way of looking at it is that the guitar is his lover because the last two lines say, "What slight essential things she had to say before they started, he and she, to play." The "she" is the guitar and the reason he doesn't play the guitar like a "lordly conqueror" is because he loves her (the guitar) for the music she makes. Wow it's funny how deep I thought about the poem at first and half way through my response I realized it's as easy as that, the guitarist loves the guitar and that is why he plays her.
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