Mad Girl's Love Song Literary Elements

The first-person speaker is a woman or girl suffering from heartbreak and a destabilized mental state.

Villanelle in iambic pentameter

"all the world drops dead" is a metaphor for the temporary suppression of sensation.
"bewitched me into bed," like much language in the poem, has both literal and metaphorical resonance—metaphorically, it means that the speaker's lover seduced her with magic-like skill and control.
"God topples from the sky" is a metaphor for the crumbling of order and predictability.

The "D" sound in "all the world drops dead" is alliterative. So are the "S" sounds in "seraphim and Satan's men," and the "K" and "Q" sounds in "kissed me quite insane."

Meanwhile, the "I" sounds in "lift my lids," the "U" sounds in "sung me moon-struck," and the "O" sounds in "God topples" create assonance.

Ironically, the speaker attributes her madness to her lover's rejection even while insisting that she has, as a result of her madness, invented the lover.
Moreover, the speaker's attempts to close her eyes and seek peace ironically only make the return of chaos feel more intense—and the moments of quiet she is able to find only leave her feeling sad and depleted in their own way.

The poem's title is also ironic: though the poem is a love song in a sense, touching on themes of love and romance, the experience depicted is ultimately one of heartbreak rather than love.

Confessional poetry, lyric poetry

The poem's setting is ambiguous, but it shifts through metaphorical or imagined settings rapidly—for instance, containing a few lines set in a biblically-inspired apocalypse.

Panicked, regretful, distressed

The protagonist of this poem is the speaker, who is writing to her lover. Her disloyal lover might be considered an antagonist. So might her own troubled mind.

The poem's major conflict is the speaker's attempt to make sense of her reality in the wake of heartbreak. Unsure which memories and present experiences can be trusted, she fights to gain control over her own mind.

The poem's climax comes in a moment of relative quiet, tonally—when the speaker announces that she no longer remembers her lover's name. The statement reveals the depths of the speaker's uncertainty and disconnect from the outside world.

The understated language of the phrase "I fancied you'd return the way you said" belies the speaker's longing and heartbreak at her lover's rejection.

The phrase "seraphim and Satan's men" alludes to the Bible and Christian mythology, while the thunderbird is an allusion to Native American mythology.

"Bed" is a metonymic representation of sex.

The stars are described as "waltzing," and darkness described as "galloping"—both verbs lending inanimate objects or concepts human-like qualities.

If we assume that the speaker did not actually invent her lover, and that she is simply suffering from rejection, then the title's designation of her as "mad" is a hyperbolic one—she is not mad, but instead mentally destabilized from an upsetting experience.

The word "roar," used to portray the thunderbird's noisiness, is onomatopoetic.