The Miracle of Morning

Gorman often uses puns in her poetry, and “The Miracle of Morning” is no different. The opening stanza plays on the words “mourning” and “morning,” contrasting the difference between the darkness of mourning and the light of morning. In stanza four, Gorman again puns morning and mourning, but this time she shortens the words to mourn and morn, giving the pun more variety even though the meaning of the pun remains the same. In the final stanza, Gorman also puns humankind and “humans kind” (Line 31).

The punning here allows the poem an easy rhyme and rhythm, but it also has a rhetorical strength. Her three puns are in three strategic places. The first pun opens the poem, the second pun is in the shortest stanza that features the poem’s strongest metaphor, and the final pun comes at the end of the poem. The placing of these puns in these places further emphasizes the themes Gorman expresses throughout the poem.