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About

Genius Annotation

“The Silken Tent” is a Shakespearean-style sonnet, published in 1942, in which Robert Frost uses an imaginative if somewhat bizarre extended metaphor or conceit. A woman who has close relationships to others is compared to a silk tent in summer breeze. Through this comparison the poet shows that the woman is paradoxically strongest and most free when bound by ropes and poles which are her personal commitments.

Today we might find Frost’s idea patronising and sexist, but it belongs to its time. The composition is beautifully crafted.

Structure
A Shakespearean or English sonnet follows a fourteen line template of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. Usually, each quatrain forms a separate image. However, Frost deviates from this by using one sentence for the entire poem and by developing the one, inventive idea.

The rhyme scheme, however, follows the traditional pattern ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The metrical rhythm is the expected iambic pentameter, that is, five iambs or metrical feet per line, where a iamb is made up of one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable.

Language and Imagery
The voice is that of a third person narrator, we can assume the poet, referring to a woman also in the third person as “she”. There is no indication who “she” is, except that the admiration of the speaker is expressed through the outlandish extended metaphor.

Frost develops his idea cleverly. The tent needs ropes and poles to support it, just as the woman’s strength and resilience are derived from “silken ties of love and thought”. Other aspects of the metaphor are also appropriate; silk is soft, erotic to the touch, suitable for a loving woman.

Frost uses soft alliterative “s"s throughout to mimic the sound of the breeze blowing through silk.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

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