Style

"Rusted Legacy" is a perplexing poem, one that uses difficult language and concepts, unusual images, and disjointed sequences of actions. It seems to move from present to past and back again but without any clear indication that this is what is happening. It is told from the point of view of a speaker/poet who addresses the reader, who provides intimate details about her own experiences, and who sometimes implies that the experiences she describes as her own are the reader's. Such basic aspects of the poem as time and point of view are not clearly delineated, and much is required of the reader to try to decipher who the poet might be, what her history is, what events she is describing, and in general what she might be trying to communicate. The overall effect of the disjointed style is one of disorder and complexity. This effect underscores...