When composing this poem, my primary intent was to communicate the Romanticists’
response to The Enlightenment and succeeding shift from reason to emotion. The title, “Atop a Sinking Sun,” illustrates this idea, where the sun embodies the strive for knowledge and truth consequently fading away. Stylistically, I wanted the structure of the poem to reflect this hallmark of the Romantic movement. To accomplish this, the first two stanzas feature caesura and an absence of enjambment on nearly every line, conveying the prominent logic and order the movement reacted against, which is further bolstered by the emphasis on purposeful alliteration throughout these stanzas. Between lines 10-11, this rational style is juxtaposed with the spontaneity encouraged by Romanticism. A question is directly followed by an exclamation, and the prevalence of enjambed lines in the fourth and fifth stanzas suggests a more flexible structure, although the poem remains in a consistent iambic tetrameter.