Stylistic Analysis Of The Poem Magician

The poem “Magician” is as clever and deft as the tricks it describes. Through the use of concealed metaphor, combined with terse and logical language, Miranda expresses the human desire to hide from the harsh realities of life and conveys to the reader that people cannot turn to ‘magic’ for answer—we must discover them for ourselves.

The title of the poem is frank and self-explanatory—the single word ‘Magician’. There is certainly no magic here—no colorful metaphor or exposition. The title takes on clearer significance, however, once the central messages of the poem become apparent. By the last line, the reader will see the Magician as a powerful, maybe even supernatural figure: this idea is developed through the poem.

The opening line is swaggering, confident—“What matters more than practice/ is the fact that you, my audience…want me to pull it off”. The alliteration of ‘matters more’ and subtle half rhymes of ‘fact’, ‘that’ and ‘practice’, ‘audience’ convey a certain smugness, and the idea that the magician’s act is perfect; the magician’s deceptions are effortless, because the audience want to believe him. Half his work is done.

Lines four and five contain some very adroit phrases—‘next sleight’ is smooth and collected, and the word ‘sleight’ in itself is a clever reference to how the magician’s

“[He] counts on your mistake of caring,” and in his right hand, the Magician holds “your undoing”. This harsh consonance of ‘count’ and ‘mistake’ sharpens this idea that falling for cheap tricks and magic is wrong. The ‘mistake of caring’ is an ambiguous phrase, but could relate to the under picture: it is caring that causes us pain in life, that drives us to seek another world where we can escape reality It is human to err, to make ‘mistakes’, but without them, the Magician would lose his supernatural power because his form of escapism wouldn’t be