Acquainted with the Night Symbolism, Imagery & Wordplay

It may seem obvious that a poem called "Acquainted with the Night" has a lot to do with darkness, but it's also about light, even if it's about the lack of light. There's more to the dark and light...

This is a bleak and lonely poem. Everything seems distant, and the speaker is acquainted, but not friends with, the night. The poem is set in a city, but the only other human we see is an ominous w...

From the city lights, to the cry, to the moon, a lot of the imagery in this poem is far away and distant. This physical distance creates a metaphor for the speaker's psychological distance. So, in...

For most of the poem, the narrator is walking, which becomes a metaphor for persistence, as grudging as it may be. This walk is not a brisk, happy walk through the countryside, but a lonely walk th...