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Yoke change

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A shift in a poem where previously connected elements (ideas, images, or voices) are deliberately separated or reconfigured

Detailed Definition
Yoke change is a structural and thematic device in which a poem deliberately severs, reconfigures, or interrogates a previously established linkage—between images, voices, metaphors, or syntactic elements—to create dissonance, revelation, or ideological critique; for example, a poem may initially yoke “love” and “sacrifice” but later decouple them to expose coercion; it appears in Adrienne Rich’s shifting feminist metaphors and Claudia Rankine’s racial reckonings, functioning as a tool for evolving consciousness and poetic deconstruction.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck,” the yoke between “I” and “we” changes mid-poem, shifting from individual to collective voice; Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen” severs the yoke between “you” and “I,” exposing racial fracture; Ocean Vuong’s “Telemachus” decouples father-son myth from personal grief: “like a body carrying a body”; W.S. Merwin’s “For the Anniversary of My Death” breaks the yoke between life and memory: “Every year without knowing it I have passed the day”; Louise Glück’s “The Wild Iris” changes the yoke between speaker and flower from metaphor to identity; Tracy K. Smith’s “The United States Welcomes You” disrupts the yoke between hospitality and surveillance
Additional Notes
Yoke change occurs when a poem deliberately severs or reconfigures a previously established linkage—between images, voices, metaphors, or syntactic elements—creating dissonance or revelation; for example, a poem yoking “love” and “war” in early stanzas may later decouple them to expose false equivalence; distinct from zeugma, which exploits dual meaning, yoke change is structural and thematic; students can trace this in Adrienne Rich’s shifting political metaphors or in postmodern fragmentation; useful for analyzing ideological critique or evolving consciousness in long poems.
Also Known As
Link severance metaphorical unyoking structural decoupling associative rupture Zeugmatic shift
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