"Its Raining" a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire is written in the form of rain falling. This is an interesting poem because it creates the complex feeling of a rainy day. Apollinaire does this through shape and metaphor. The poem's unusual shape lets us know what the poem is about even before we start to read it. Instead of describing the look of rain, the poet focuses on the senses. For example, he talks about the sound of rain, "listen to the fetters falling." He says the rain sounds like chains falling. In the first line of the poem, he also compares rain to the sound of women's voices, "It's raining women's voices as if they were dead even in memory." This line, like most lines in the poem, uses metaphor to describe sound. These are sad images, making us feel it is a sorrowful rainy day for him.
This poem also uses metaphor to draw a picture. For example, "and those clouds rear and begin to whinny." I picture that the clouds are like horses that neigh like thunder and rear like lightning. This metaphor adds action and maybe a little fear to the sad rain. It is not just water falling down.
Apollinaire uses personification to describe the rain. The tone of the poem is different when he talks right to it, "It's raining you too marvelous encounters of my life." Here he is speaking directly about the good events he has experienced, and noticing that the rain makes him think of them. He seems to be talking to the happy parts of his life, as if they live within the rain and he can understand them.
The feeling of this poem is mixed. Apollinaire starts off with a slow, mournful beginning, but by the second line, he is thinking of his good encounters. Then his sadness shows up again. At the very end, when he says that the rain sounds like chains, "that bind you high and low" he sums up the whole idea of this poem. When rain falls, it makes him feel sad and constricted. And yet somehow, there is a strange pleasure in seeing and hearing it come down.
