Nick and the Candlestick Literary Elements

The speaker is a new mother who compares her situation to that of a miner.

The poem is made up of three-line stanzas (tercets) with no consistent meter

The poem as a whole is a complex extended metaphor, with the mine representing both early motherhood and, possibly, early childhood. Within this larger extended metaphor, the speaker uses metaphor to compare the mine (itself a metaphorical representation) to a womb, to compare pale animals to panes of ice, and to compare her child to a candle. She uses simile to compare "Black bat airs" to plums.

Among the poem's uses of alliteration are: "Old cave of calcium/Icicles, old echoer," "The blood blooms clean," "Solid the spaces lean on, envious," and "the baby in the barn." Uses of assonance are even more common here. They include repeated short "I" sounds in "I am a miner. The light burns blue" and "A vice of knives," as well as short "A" sounds in "Waxy stalactites" and "Wrap me, raggy shawls," the latter of which includes both alliteration and assonance.

The mother's reference to Victoriana is ironic, unexpectedly contextualizing the trappings of domestic comfort within a frightening space in order to highlight the fragility of domestic safety altogether.

Confessional poetry, lyric poetry

The poem is set in a cold, dark mine. Although the speaker is only imagining this setting, her actual location remains unstated.

The tone of the poem is fearful, awestruck, uncertain, and ultimately hopeful.

The protagonist is the speaker, and the antagonists are the perceived threats in the mine and in motherhood.

The major conflict of the poem is the speaker's adjustment to motherhood, and her struggle to keep her child safe and sheltered in what she perceives to be a harsh world.

The climax of the poem is when the speaker, acknowledging the comfort and hope her child brings her, calls him "the baby in the barn."

The speaker introduces the mining allegory before disclosing her identity as a mother, such that the early descriptions of the mine's dangers foreshadow her feelings of danger and fear in motherhood.

The poem, stylistically hyperbolic as a whole, does not contain notable understatement.

The speaker alludes to Jesus when she calls her son "the baby in the barn," and elsewhere alludes to Christianity with references to first communion and even with the exclamation "Christ!" She also alludes to Victorian design and social history.

The speaker addresses her child as "embryo." He bears a relationship to his previous, embryonic state, but he is no longer an embryo, making this a strange and striking use of metonymy.

The speaker personifies empty spaces, describing them as being envious of her child.

The speaker's description of her child is hyperbolic, pinpointing him as the center and even the savior of a vulnerable world.

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