The tone of “i carry your heart with me” is profoundly devotional. It’s a love poem, after all. Throughout the poem, the speaker addresses their beloved directly, espousing their love and devotion. This devotion appears most clearly in the sentiment that gives the poem its title, and which repeats at both the beginning and the end: “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in / my heart)” (lines 1–2). At no point in the poem does the speaker let up on their expression of affection. That said, some readers may detect a sense of irony in the poem, particularly given the speaker’s use of such conventional and even clichéd love tropes throughout. Such readers might ask: Is it even possible for an avant-garde poet of the twentieth century to write about romantic love using generic tropes, and do it completely without irony? In the case of “i carry your heart with me,” the answer is, arguably, yes. Though the tropes may be conventional, the syntax and spacing are not. What’s experimental about the poem is thus not the tone or the imagery, but the urgent cadence of the language, which in turn expresses the speaker’s earnest, loving devotion.