First Stanza: “Crowned with a feathered helmet”

In the first stanza of Komunyakaa’s “Pride,” the speaker describes a character who looks as if he gave birth to himself by “swallowing” his own “tail.” The character wears a helmet of feathers, but not for any legitimate or natural use such as “disguise” or “courtship,” which would imply, because of the title of the poem, that the character is wearing the helmet in order to boast and regale himself.

Second Stanza: “Woven from a selfish design”

The second stanza actually continues describing the character’s tail, which looks as if it were “Woven from a selfish design / & guesswork.” A “selfish design,” no doubt, refers to the notion of pride again; selfishness and pride are usually linked in their odiousness.

But the speaker adds a little jab that the design also looks like “guesswork,” making it appear less deserving of respect than the character would believe himself worthy.

The character also sports a “see-through caul / From breast to hipbone,” whose description bleeds into the next stanza.

Third Stanza: “His cold breath silvers”

Again, description runs from the preceding stanza, and now in the third stanza, the reader learns that it is the character’s breath that is seemingly masked by the caul, and the breath is so cold that it “silvers / Panes of his hilltop house / Into a double reflection.”

The character makes mirrors of his windows in the house on the hilltop merely by breathing on them, and the mirrors offer “a double reflection.” Such mirrors would, of course, be useless, but at the same time understandable because of the nature of pride.

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