Please discuss the poem "Anger Lay by Me" by Elizabeth Daryush.

Elizabeth Daryush's poem "Anger Lay By
Me" depicts the speaker's relationship with her anger. In the poem, the speaker's anger is
described as person (anger is personified). Anger is repeatedly referred to as "He,"
which may lead some readers to think Anger is actually a person, a male figure who is angry with
the speaker. I think, though, that the personal pronouns are meant figuratively and that what we
see in the poem is the speaker's internal conflict.

In the first stanza, the
speaker introduces Anger and his relationship to her:

Anger lay by me all night long,
His breath was hot upon my brow,
He
told me of my burning wrong,
All night he talked and would not go.

Not only does Anger stay by her side all night, he/it is actively
breathing on her "brow." The speaker's anger is very close to her at all times and has
a physical effect upon her. She then describes Anger as speaking to her about her "burning
wrong." This might indicate two things: either the speaker feels wronged by something (and
that has caused her anger), or she is angry with herself for some wrong she has committed. The
stanza ends with the persistence of Anger, as he/it stays "All night . . . and would not
go."

In the next stanza, the speaker describes Anger's effect on her in
the day:

He stood by me all through the
day,
Struck from my hand the book, the pen;
He said: €˜Hear first what Ive to
say,
And sing, if youve the heart to, then.

As
the speaker's internal anger continues to accompany her throughout her day, she finds it
distracting. Anger "Struck from [her] hand the, the pen," which implies that Anger
keeps her from working, from writing. Anger insists that she "'Hear first what I've to say,
/ And sing, if you've the heart to, then.'" Anger is rather confident that once the speaker
dwells on her feelings, she won't want to or won't be able to write.

Finally,
the speaker ends this figurative meditation on anger in the following stanza:

And can I cast him from my couch?
And can I lock
him from my room?
Ah no, his honest words are such
That hes my true-lord, and
my doom.

The speaker gives in to Anger's power over her
at the end of the poem. The first two lines of this stanza are written in parallel structure,
both questions the speaker asks that indicate her feeling that she has no control over Anger.
She ends the poem giving in to her nemesis, admitting Anger is "honest" and "That
he's my true-lord." Anger has complete power over the speaker. She also recognizes, though,
that Anger will be her downfall, her "doom."

Daryush approaches her
speaker's inner conflict in an interesting way, using a simplistic rhyme scheme and extensiveto
dramatize the way anger can control a person's whole life.