Figures of Speech in Poetry

Anyone studying English Language and Literature has to be able to analyse poetry, and recognising figures of speech and being able to quote them and comment on them will make any essay more impressive. There again, actually using them yourself in creative writing or descriptive writing brings your work alive and gives it an extra dimension. Various figures of speech are explained here; the examples quoted are from the AQA Anthology for GCSE English Language and Literature (Specification A) for 2005 onwards. (The book is published by Oxford University Press but is only distributed in secondary schools; copies can sometimes be found on Ebay.)

ALLITERATION

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Alliteration is the repetition of consonants, usually at the beginnings of words in close succession.

Nissim Ezekiel uses this device in his poem 'Night of the Scorpion' in which the phrases 'stung by a scorpion' 'parting with his poison' describe his memory of the evening his mother was the victim of a scorpion's sting but thanked God it had chosen her and not her children. The 'drizzle of one despondent dawn' sets a dismal tone at the beginning of Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe's 'Vultures'.

Moniza Alvi uses alliteration in her poem 'Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan' which expresses her confusion at being of mixed nationality and not fully belonging anywhere. After moving to England, she hears of the conflict in Pakistan, which she describes as 'a fractured land/throbbing through newsprint'.

In her poem 'Anne Hathaway', Carol Ann Duffy imagines how Shakespeare's wife would have thought of him as 'My living laughing love'. Simon Armitage picks a more up-to-date character in 'Kid', where the narrator, Batman's sidekick Robin, has finally grown up and says Batman has 'let me loose to wander/leeward, freely'.

A very different atmosphere is created by alliteration in Walt Whitman's poem 'Patrolling Barnegat' describing a storm at sea: 'On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting'. Still threatening, but in a very different way, is Robert Browning's female narrator in 'The Laboratory', describing in minute detail the process as she mixes a poisonous potion to inflict upon her lover's new-found mistress: 'moisten and mash up thy paste,/Pound at thy powder'. A more majestic picture is created by Alfred Tennyson in his brief poem 'The Eagle': 'He clasps the crag with crooked hands;/Close to the sun in lonely lands'.

ASSONANCE

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This is the repetition of vowel sounds in words.

Seamus Heaney shows himself to be a grand master of assonance in his poem 'Death of a Naturalist' where he describes how 'gross-bellied frogs were cocked on sods'. The more poignant 'Mid-Term Break' tells how he was brought home from boarding school following the death of his four-year-old brother in a road accident. Waiting for neighbours to collect him from school, he hears 'bells knelling'; on the morning of the funeral he sees the body 'stanched and bandaged' and notices the bruise on the left temple.

In a similar vein, Gillian Clarke's 'Cold Knap Lake' recounts how a drowning child is pulled from the lake. She describes the murky depths of the water 'after the treading, heavy webs of swans' that she feels may hide other disturbing memories.

On a lighter note, John Clare's 'Sonnet' describes the delights of nature in summer 'Where reed clumps rustle like a wind shook wood': notice that here he is also using alliteration and a simile, so be on the lookout for descriptions that combine more than one figure of speech.

CONTRAST

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Contrast is the juxtaposition of opposites to create a striking effect.

Tatamkhulu Afrika's poem 'Nothing's Changed' deals with the idea that South Africa remained as it was even after black people were accorded the same rights as white people. He shows this by describing an 'up-market, haute cuisine' 'whites only inn' where he presses his nose up against the window to see 'crushed ice white glass,/linen falls,/the single rose' inside. In contrast, the black Africans have to go to a cheap 'working man's cafe' that 'sells/bunny chows..... eat/it at a plastic table's top'. He describes how the workers here instinctively wipe their fingers on their jeans, then 'spit a little on the floor'.

But is the USA very different? Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 'Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes' is set in San Francisco. Stuck in a traffic jam at a red light, he focuses on the juxtaposition of a garbage truck and its two occupants and a Mercedes in which are seated an architect and a 'young blond woman': 'two garbagemen in red plastic blazers..... looking down into/an elegant open Mercedes/with an elegant couple in it'. In the closing stanza Ferlinghetti imagines that anything could have happened in that short space of time that brought these people so close together: 'and the very red light for an instant/holding all four close together/as if anything at all were possible/between them'.

METAPHOR

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A metaphor compares something to something else by saying it IS something else or DOES something else, as in the line from the song 'I've got you under my skin': you cannot literally be under someone else's skin. The English cricketer Fred Truman once famously said 'I don't use metaphors. I don't like to beat about the bush,' which of course is itself a metaphor.

Simon Armitage's poem that begins 'Mother, any distance greater than a single span' recounts how his mother came to help him measure up a house he was moving into, but the entire poem appears to be a metaphor for his changing relationship with his mother as he grows up and becomes independent. She stays downstairs, firmly grasping the 'zero-end' of the spool of tape, while he climbs the stairs with the tape, 'unreeling years between us', seeing his mother as an 'anchor' and himself as a 'kite', gaining his freedom but not breaking the bond.

The poem 'Search for my Tongue' by Sujata Bhatt also uses an extended metaphor (over the course of several lines of the poem) to express the idea that her mother tongue insists on making its presence felt, and seems to grow like a plant: 'the bud opens, ..... it blossoms out of my mouth.'

'Catrin' by Gillian Clarke expresses the desire of both mother and child to establish their separate identities. At the time of birth, the umbilical cord is described by the metaphor 'the tight/red rope of love' that mother and baby are fighting over.

In 'Anne Hathaway' Carol Ann Duffy imagines that Shakespeare's wife felt that the nights she spent with her husband took her to a world of fantasy: 'My lover's words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses to these lips' skilfully combines both metaphor and simile in one image.

In a far less magical vein, Charles Tichbourne wrote 'Tichbourne's Elegy' in the Tower of London in 1586 before his execution. He was still young at the time, and the poem contains a number of metaphors expressing his regret that he will not be able to live out the course of his life:

'My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green;

...My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun.'

ONOMATOPOEIA

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Although a long word and a difficult one to spell, it can often be something as short as: pop! Onomatopoeia means using a word that actually sounds like the sound it is describing.

Several of Seamus Heaney's poems portray his admiration for his father and grandfather, who both farmed the land. Remembering his grandfather cutting turf in the poem 'Digging', Heaney decribes the sound as 'the squelch and slap of soggy peat'.

Gillian Clarke's 'Baby-sitting' is an honest expression of the lack of a bond between herself and the baby she is looking after. She describes the sounds of the sleeping infant as 'a snuffly/roseate, bubbling sleep;' and we can just imagine the little sounds she is hearing.

In 'We Remember Your Childhood Well', Carol Ann Duffy constructs' a scene where adults are answering what are apparently the accusations of their child, now grown up. 'Call back the sound of their voices. Boom. Boom. Boom.'

OXYMORON

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Not as common as some other figures or speech, an oxymoron puts two complete opposites together in the same phrase.

Carol Ann Duffy's poem 'Havisham' centres on the elderly Miss Havisham of Charles Dickens's novel 'Great Expectations'. Jilted on her wedding day, she was never able to forgive or forget the gentleman in question. The opening line of Duffy's poem refers to him as her 'Beloved sweetheart bastard'. Towards the end of the poem the oxymoron 'Love's/hate behind a white veil' shows the close link between the two extreme emotions.

PERSONIFICATION

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Personification involves giving things the characteristics of people.

Seamus Heaney's 'Death of a Naturalist' is one of the most descriptive poems in the anthology; he sets the scene at a dam where 'Bubbles gargled delicately' and the flax rotted under 'the punishing sun'.

John Agard's poem 'Half-Caste' written in non-standard English, uses vivid imagery to express his frustration at the attitude people have towards him because of his mixed nationality. He uses personification to describe the persistance of heavy clouds in Britain: 'some o dem cloud..... so spiteful dem dont want de sun pass ah rass'. (Some of those clouds are so spiteful they don't want the sun to pass over us.)

In a celebration of freedom from the routine of daily life, kitchen utensils as well as vegetables are personified in 'This Room' by Imtiaz Dharker: 'Pots and pans... clang/past the crowd of garlic, onions, spices,/fly by the ceiling fan.'

Simon Armitage's poem 'Hitcher' describes the violent reaction of an anti-social driver who picks up a hitch-hiker that seems to have the freedom he fiercely covets. After attacking him and throwing him out of his car, the narrator remembers how the hitcher 'said he liked the breeze/to run its fingers/through his hair.'

SIMILE

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A simile is a way of comparing one thing to another using either 'like' or 'as'.

'The flung spray..... spits like a tame cat/Turned savage' describes the ferocity of the wind lashing at the sea in Seamus Heaney's 'Storm on the Island'. The same poet deals with childhood memories in 'Blackberry Picking' where he remembers the taste of the season's first blackberyy: 'its flesh was sweet like thickened wine'.

A more majestic picture of nature is given in Alfred Tennyson's 'The Eagle'; the bird of prey stands on a mountain top and then suddenly 'like a thunderbolt he falls', swooping down on the prey he has been watching. John Clare shows his admiration of nature in summer in his 'Sonnet': 'reed clumps rustle like wind shook wood', where he combines alliteration and assonance with his simile.

'The skin cracks like a pod' describes the effect of drought in an Indian village in the poem 'Blessing' by Imtiaz Dharker, whereupon a pipe bursts and adults and children alike come running to collect the precious water.

'A salwar kameez..... glistening like an orange split open' describes the brilliant colour of the traditional Pakistani clothes sent to her in England in Moniza Alvi's 'Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan'.

'Labourers swarm..... like crows attacking crow-black fields' focuses on the crowds of field-workers in Seamus Heaney's 'At a Potato Digging'. In contrast 'but God, ever nigh,/Appeared like his father in white' to rescue a child whose father had left him behind whilst walking home in the dark in 'The Little boy Found' by William Blake.

In 'Sonnet 130' William Shakespeare uses a simile in the opposite way when he says 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;' and yet he values her love above everything.

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The work of these poets is of course published in other collections besides the GCSE Anthology mentioned in my introduction. Faber & Faber Ltd publish the work of Seamus Heaney and that of Simon Armitage, whilst Carol Ann Duffy's poetry is published by Macmillan. Gillian Clarke is published by Carcanet Press Ltd.

Analysing poetry obviously involves more than just discussing figures of speech; style, structure, rhythm, and rhyme are all important. Being able to recognise figures of speech will, however, help in understanding the imagery and meaning of a poem and encourage students perhaps to use figurative language in their own writing.

Half-Caste

Born in Guyana, South America, in 1949 to parents of mixed nationality, John Agard came to live in Britain in 1977. His poem 'Half-Caste' demonstrates the attitude of narrow-minded people that he must have encountered, who consider people of mixed parentage to be inferior to themselves. The poem is written in non-standard English, in other words in exactly the way that the poet, a non-native speaker, might speak and with the words spelled exactly as they would sound. Whilst contributing to the humour of the poem, it might be confusing for some readers.

The poem opens with a short, sharp three-line stanza in which Agard explains that he is standing on one leg because he is half-caste; it's as though he is saying 'What do you expect, if you consider me to be only half a person, then I would only have one leg.' The poet addresses the reader in a very direct way when he says, 'Explain yuself / wha yu mean / when yu say half-caste', taking the stance that the reader is one of the people who looks down on those of mixed nationality. His argumentative tone continues throughout the poem and emphasizes the fact that those he is addressing have no foundation for their attitude.

Besides the non-standard language itself, the imagery that the poet uses is very humorous and provides an interesting juxtaposition to the criticisms being levelled at certain people. In the second stanza, Agard takes very famous people, namely Picasso and Tchaikovsky (but doesn't give their names capital letters) and says, for example,

'when yu say half-caste

yu mean when picasso

mix red and green

is a half-caste canvas/'

The point he is making here is that Picasso used complementary opposite colours, red and green, but of course nobody questioned that because he was a genius. He was respected. Similarly,

'when yu say half-caste

yu mean tchaikovsky

sit down at dah piano

an mix a black key

wid a white key

is a half-caste symphony/'

This example is perhaps even more potent, since the black and white keys would seem a direct parallel to black and white people. It is obvious that a composer would use both black and white keys of a piano: nobody would question such a thing, so Agard's point is that people of mixed nationality, having one black parent and one white parent, should be accepted in the same way as Tchaikovsky's music is.

Agard further comments that the English weather 'nearly always half-caste' and extends the comparison with a humorous pun: 'in fact some o dem cloud / half-caste till dem overcast'. Giving us such obvious examples of mixtures and half-and-half combinations from culture and climate serves to show how ridiculous it is to look down upon people of mixed nationality.

In the third stanza the poet continues to use examples, this time relating to his own body, to show the absurdity of the concept of being 'half-caste'. He says he is looking at the reader with the 'keen half' of his ear and his eye, as though his ears and eyes would be split in half because he is of mixed parentage. He continues in humorous vein, going on to say that he would only offer 'half-a-hand' when being introduced to the person he is addressing, and that he just closes 'half-a-eye' and dreams 'half-a-dream' when asleep. Another witty play on words follows with the phrase 'I half-caste human being / cast half a shadow'.

The word 'but' in line 47 heralds the final section of the poem, in which Agard asks the reader to return the following day with the 'whole' of their eye, ear and mind; in other words, he is asking the people he is addressing to open up their minds to a new way of thinking. He is in effect accusing them of being the ones to have only half their minds functioning and half their ears listening to him: in other words, if anyone is half-caste, it is those who look upon him as being inferior. The poem ends in a similar way to that in which it began, with a brief, three-line stanza that simply says that Agard will tell people the other half, or other side, of his story if they will come back and listen to him with an open mind. An open mind will allow them to see him as the person he really is, rather than some inferior being.

The poem flows along through its four stanzas of varying length and lines also of varying length, unrestricted by punctuation; there are two forward slashes in the second stanza indicating a break or pause, but not one full-stop. Capital letters are also very few and far between, not being used, as I have mentioned for Picasso or Tchaikovsky. The lack of restrictions of regularity in terms of line length and stanza length, as well as sentence structure, indicate a desire for openness and freedom which suit the theme of the poem.

Agard likes to perform his poems, and it is easy to imagine how powerful a message could come across in this way. Even from reading it, we sense the forcefulness in the manner in which the poet is addressing those he is speaking to, and he would I am sure convey this even more directly in a performance. For those of us who do not have the chance to experience this, we can still sense how outraged he is by the idea that a person of mixed nationality is any less than anyone else, yet he captures our imagination with his imagery and entertains us with his humour to convince us to listen to his way of thinking.

Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 'Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes' recalls a moment in time when a garbage truck and a Mercedes were juxtaposed whilst waiting at a red traffic light, and is built upon the contrast between the two sets of people in these vehicles.

This 'event' took place at nine in the morning in San Francisco city centre. The first stanza looks at the garbage truck and its occupants; the colours are very vivid: the truck itself bright yellow, and the men's plastic blazers red, echoing the colour of the traffic light that has forced them to stop. The two garbagemen are hanging on to the back of the truck, one on each side, looking down at the 'elegant couple' in the Mercedes.

Stanza two focuses on the driver and passenger in the Mercedes. Descriptions such as 'hip three-piece linen suit' (for the driver) and 'casually coifed' (for the female passenger) reinforce their elegance. Both are blond. The man, we are told, is an architect and the couple are one their way to his office.

The third stanza looks again at the garbagemen, who have just finished their work having been up since four in the morning. 'Grungy' leaves us in no doubt as to the state they are in. One is considerably older than the other, and Ferlinghetti uses the simile 'looking down like some / gargoyle Quasimodo' to describe the way in which he is hunched and peering down on the couple in the Mercedes. The description is not an appealing one. The younger garbageman, however, is about the same age as the architect and, like him, has 'sunglasses & long hair': they are similar in these ways yet worlds apart.

In the fourth stanza we are again reminded that the garbagemen, or 'scavengers', are 'gazing down' at the 'cool couple' in the Mercedes. Ferlinghetti imagines that it is as though they are watching an advert on television, an 'odorless TV ad', unreal, untouchable. But in TV commercials anything can happen, and perhaps they are waiting for something to happen.

The final stanza reminds us that they are at a traffic light, a 'very red light', caught for just a short space of time. The light is 'holding all four close together' although it is unlikely that such different types of people would come so physically close in any other way than this chance occurrence. As in the previous stanza, Ferlinghetti sees that it is 'as if anything at all were possible / between them': anything could happen because they are in such close proximity. The distance he describes with the metaphor 'small gulf', and then immediately employs another metaphor, 'high seas of democracy' to create an image of the bizarre juxtapositions that can randomly occur in what is supposedly a highly civilized society.

The lines of poetry here flow back and forth with large indentations, as though we are ourselves are looking back and forth between the garbagemen and the couple in the Mercedes. The spaces that are formed in this way make it quite difficult to distinguish between one stanza and another. The lack of punctuation adds to the sense of a continuous flow, a gaze shifting constantly from truck to car and back again in the short period of time that they were caught at the red light together.

Ferlinghetti has frozen a brief moment in time when we see the extremes of this society, the two garbagement, dirty and exhausted, and the architect and his female companion, beautifully dressed and fresh at the start of their day. The driver and the younger garbagemen are almost the same age, both have long hair and wear sunglasses, and yet they are worlds apart. This is a democracy, but as Ferlinghetti shows us, the gap between rich and poor is still a vast one. When we see the two together in this way, the contrast is striking.

Not My Business

Hailing from Nigeria, Niyi Osundare finds an outlet in his poem 'Not my Business' to express his views of the actions taken by repressive regimes such as the one that exists in his own country.

The first three stanzas of this four-stanza poem are identical in structure. The first four lines of each describe how acquaintances of the narrator disappeared in either brutal or mysterious circumstances. In the first stanza, Akanni is beaten and pushed inside a jeep; Osundare uses personification to create this image, describing how the victim was 'stuffed ... down the belly' of the jeep. The final three lines of this stanza, which are completely identical to those of the following two stanzas, convey the reaction of the narrator to this sudden, shocking event. Using the metaphor 'So long they don't take the yam / From my savouring mouth?' he considers that it is none of his business. As long as it doesn't affect him directly, why should he care?

The second stanza recounts how 'they' took Danladi away 'to a lengthy absence'. He was taken during the night: not just taken, but dragged out in an episode that woke everyone in the house. Osundare uses the word 'booted' to convey the aggression here. Stanza three is somewhat less violent but equally chilling, showing that women were not spared from similar treatment. Chinwe was sacked from her job without any explanation or warning. The second and third stanzas are concluded in the same way as the first: the narrator is still adamant that he doesn't have to bother about such events, as long as 'they' leave him alone.

The fourth and final stanza, however, is in stark contrast to the first three. The narrator is sitting down to eat his yam when a knock comes on the door. He describes his reaction in no uncertain terms: 'A knock on the door froze my hungry hand.' The jeep is waiting for him this time, and he again uses personification to project his feelings onto his lawn, describing it as 'bewildered'. The ominous tone of the final line describing the jeep 'Waiting, waiting in its usual silence' is perhaps even more chilling than the contrasting account of the brutality of the events of the first two stanzas.

The fact the Osundare uses first names to recount what happened to Akanni, Danladi and Chinwe shows that these were either members of his family, housemates or close friends. It is striking that the events took place at different times of day: morning in the first stanza, night in the second, no specified time but presumably morning in the third, and evening in the fourth. This makes us feel that these people would always have to be on the alert and could be arrested or lose their job at any moment. Yet, seeing what happened to those close to him and knowing that it could happen at any time, the narrator did not initially seem to think that he was in any danger. The irony of course is in the title, 'Not my Business', since the jeep eventually came for the narrator himself.

Osundare here conveys the idea that people can disappear or lose their jobs for no apparent reason in places such as Nigeria. He expresses his concern that people may not care that this is happening, as long as they can carry on with their own lives as normal. Yet it can happen to anyone. Observers of such a situation need to care about such injustice and take action to prevent oppression.

Blessing

Set in a village in Pakistan, Imtiaz Dharker's poem 'Blessing' opens with the simile 'The skin cracks like a pod' that immediately gives an impression of drought, of dire shortage of water. This is confirmed by the second line of the brief introductory stanza, formed of two sentences of one line each.

As we enter the four-line second stanza, we are in no doubt as to the fact that the villagers here are desperate for water. Dharker involves the reader by asking us to 'Imagine the drip of it' – telling us how small the quantity is – and focuses on the sound of that drop of water resounding in a tin mug. The fourth line of this stanza introduces the first religious reference: even this small splash is personified as 'the voice of a kindly god'. God is seen as the provider of water, and every drop received is seen as a kind gesture.

The third stanza is the longest one, extending for eleven lines and describing a momentous event in the village. The bursting of a municipal pipe is a fortuitous occasion: it is described by the metaphor 'the sudden rush/of fortune'. Fortune of course has connotations of large sums of money as well as good luck, so the water that spills has tremendous value. This idea is echoed in another metaphor for the water in line nine: 'silver crashes to the ground'. The sound is a powerful one. Line ten flows into line eleven, and the water is described as a 'flow' that gives rise to a sudden burst of noise from the villagers, 'a roar of tongues'. The people rushing out from their huts to collect the water are refered to as a 'congregation', which is another religious link. Men, women and children from the surrounding area are eager for their share of the spilled water and come with any container they can lay their hands on, listed in the brief lines fourteen, fifteen and sixteen. The stanza concludes with the phrase 'frantic hands', which once again emphasises the desperation that leads the villagers to scoop even handfuls of water.

Dharker uses enjambment to link the third stanza to the fourth and final one. This focuses on the village children, on sound and bright light. The children, naked, are delighting in the chance to bathe in the water, 'screaming in the liquid sun'. This metaphor aligning the water to the sun emphasises the pleasure and warmth of the experience. The 'highlights' in line twenty are echoed by 'flashing light' in the following line, giving a further impression of joy. Alliteration is used by Dharker in the phrases 'polished to perfection', and 'the blessing sings' combines alliteration and assonance, creating vivid imagery to portray the thrill of the occasion. The word 'blessing' continues the religious thread running through the poem. The final line again flows from the previous one: '... sings/over their small bones'. It is a gentle ending, focusing on the children of the village who are in such need of this water provided by accident.

The sentence that begins in line eight, the second line of the third stanza, continues right through to the end of the poem, flowing through from one line to the next like the water that is its theme. This is in stark contrast to the two sentences of the first stanza. Dharker has not set her poem within the confines of stanzas of regular length, suiting each stanza to its individual focus. The lines themselves also vary considerably in length. Lines nine, ten and thirteen have the rhyme ground, found and around, but this appears almost as an unintentional occurrence.

'Blessing' is a wonderfully descriptive poem, using imagery to depict sight and sounds and create an atmosphere of frantic joy for an everyday resource that is usually so elusive in this particular setting.

This Room

The first stanza of Imtiaz Dharker's poem 'This Room' creates an impression of seeking freedom, where her room is 'breaking out' of its confines and seeking 'space, light, empty air'. Change is afoot, a broadening of the horizon; an out-of-the-ordinary event seems to be taking place.

Dharker personifies the bed at the beginning of the second stanza as 'lifting out of its nightmares'. All negativity is being left behind, as chairs move out of their usual 'dark corners'. Heights are aimed for: alliteration and metaphor are used to create an image as the chairs 'crash through clouds'.

A positive tone is set at the beginning of the third stanza with the lines “This is the time and place / to be alive'. Line twelve uses the metaphor 'the daily furniture of our daily lives / stirs' to express the idea of breaking out of one's routine 'when the improbable arrives'. A special event takes place but is not identified in the poem. Lines fourteen to fifteen introduce a description of the sounds and movements of kitchen utensils that 'bang together / in celebration, clang' and eventually 'fly' past the fan. They seem to be following the chairs skyward. The garlic, onions and spices are personified as a 'crowd' in this kitchen where all the components seem to be joining in some sort of celebration. 'No one is looking for the door' in line eighteen, the end of the third stanza, could be confusing: the poem appears to be about reaching beyond the confines of our ordinary everyday lives. But of course 'No one is looking for the door' need not be taken literally, as it can mean that no one wants to leave this place because there is something to celebrate here.

The first person is not used until the fourth stanza: 'I'm wondering where / I've left my feet'. The atmosphere is one of 'excitement', expressed by the fact that the narrator is apparently confused as to where her body physically is. Dharker uses enjambment to connect the fourth stanza to the fifth, which consists of one solitary line that describes how the narrator's hands are 'outside, clapping', emphasising once more the idea of celebration.

This is no straightforward poem, but rather an extended metaphor to describe an occasion when daily routine can be broken away from, left behind. The structure is irregular, with the third stanza being considerably longer than the other four, and the final one being just one line that attracts attention to the idea of being 'outside, clapping' – celebrating escape from the mundane, perhaps. There is an original use of imagery here that makes the poem a fascinating expression of an idea.

Night of the Scorpion

Nissim Ezekiel's 'Night of the Scorpion' is the poet's personal account of his memory of his mother being stung by a scorpion when he was a child. He begins by explaining that the scorpion had come in because of heavy rain and had hidden under a sack of rice. Ezekiel uses alliteration to describe the moment of the sting: 'Parting with his poison'. He alludes to evil in the phrase 'diabolic tail', comparing the scorpion to the devil.

The scorpion departed and, on hearing the news of the deadly sting, villagers came to the house. Ezekiel uses the simile 'like swarms of flies' to describe their number and behaviour. He states that they 'buzzed the name of God' repeatedly, the onomatopoeia enabling us to 'hear' the constant noise they made. The scorpion is again seen as the devil in line ten: 'the Evil One'. We can imagine the fear of the child observing the scene, as the peasants' lanterns created 'giant scorpion shadows' on the walls of his home. Onomatopoeia is used again as the poet says that these people 'clicked their tongues' whilst searching for the scorpion. They believed that whenever the scorpion moved, its poison 'moved in Mother's blood'.

Line eighteen is the first in a fourteen-line section which recounts the words of wisdom voiced by the peasants in the hope that the woman would survive. Five of the lines begin 'May ...' and are clear examples of the religious beliefs held by these villagers. They refer to past and future lives, absolution of sins, the lessening of evil and the hope that the poison will 'purify' the woman's flesh and spirit. Ezekiel describes how they surrounded his mother; he saw 'the peace of understanding' in their facial expressions.

Lines thirty-two and thirty-three form a repetitive pattern in which Ezekiel remembers the arrival of 'More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours, / more insects' as the rain continued to fall. In line thirty-four he makes the first direct reference to his mother's suffering, telling us that she 'twisted through and through' and was groaning in pain. He then turns to the reaction of his father, not a religious man but 'sceptic, rationalist'. On this occasion, however, the man resorted to 'every curse and blessing' accompanied by various herbal concoctions, such was his desperation. Ezekiel describes in detail that his father actually set alight to the toe that had been bitten. It must have had a profound effect on the poet as a child; he describes how 'I watched the flame feeding on my mother', personifying the fire. Ezekiel then watched and listened to a 'holy man' carrying out certain rites to 'tame' the poison. The poison lost its sting the following night.

The first forty-five lines form one continuous stanza relating the event from start to finish. The poem concludes with a short three-line stanza in which Ezekiel recalls his mother's reaction to her frightening and painful experience. She spoke of it only briefly, thanking God and saying how glad she was that the scorpion had chosen to sting her rather than her children. This was the boundless, selfless love of a mother, and these were words which Ezekiel never forgot.

One of the interesting points about the poem is that Ezekiel narrates it from the point of view of a child who was purely an observer, not involved as the adults were in taking any action. This allows him to relate the actions and words of the peasants and his father whilst being detached from them. It is an insight into the behaviour of a small community in India where everyone becomes involved in one family or one mother's suffering, and all gather to witness the event and contribute a prayer. To the child it must have seemed as though there was a huge number of people, and the night must have been interminable. His comparison of the peasants to flies suggests that he would rather they had left the family in peace.

The structure of the poem is very free, with lines of varying lengths and no rhyme scheme. The second stanza that ends the poem attracts attention for its brevity and emphasises the words of the mother and their effect on the son.

Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan

Moniza Alvi was born of mixed parentage, her father being Pakistani and her mother English. She was born in Pakistan but moved to England at a young age. The poem 'Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan' expresses her confusion in her search for her identity. The traditional clothes that her aunts sent her from Pakistan are a symbol of a part of her, but only a part of her, and one that she does not feel entirely comfortable with.

The first stanza describes the clothes that were sent: two 'salwar kameez' outfits, which consist of a tunic dress and trousers. The beautiful vivid colours are described, the second one with the simile 'glistening like an orange split open'. Alvi tells us that the style of the salwar trousers changed, just as fashions in England change: they were 'broad and stiff, / then narrow.' The aunts also sent oriental pointed slippers, described as 'embossed', 'gold and black', as though they were very decorative. There were also bangles that were 'Candy-striped', but Alvi relates how these broke and 'drew blood'; this seems to be symbolic perhaps of the fact that her life in Pakistan was cut short. The first stanza ends with a description of a green, silver-bordered sari that the writer received as a teenager.

The second stanza relates how Alvi tried on these clothes – 'each silken-satin top' - but felt 'alien' in her sitting-room. There is a definite sense here that the two cultures conflicted. Alvi seems to have felt a degree of inferiority when she says 'I could never be as lovely / as those clothes'. She wanted the 'denim and corduroy' that were typical of England. She describes how the Pakistani clothes 'clung' to her and uses the metaphor 'I was aflame', but, unlike the phoenix, she could not rise from the fire, and thus could not take on the Pakistani identity. She contrasts herself with one of her aunts, emphasising that she herself was 'half English, / unlike Aunt Jamila'.

The shorter third stanza focuses on a camel-skin lamp owned by her parents. Here again, there is a conflict of ideas: Alvi wanted the lamp, but looking at it in her room she simultaneously thought of the cruelty involved in making the lamp and admired its colours which she describes with the simile 'like stained glass'.

Stanza four switches to a comment on Alvi's English mother who 'cherished her jewellery'. The jewellery was Indian, and it was stolen from the family car; this perhaps symbolises the fact that the mother did not belong to the Asian culture. Alvi then alludes once more to the Pakistani clothes that were 'radiant' in her wardrobe. This stanza ends with the irony that the aunts who sent the traditional clothes themselves wanted 'cardigans / from Marks and Spencers'.

Alvi then relates how a visiting schoolfriend of hers did not appreciate the salwar kameez or sari when shown them. This leads into Alvi's expression of her admiration of the mirror-work in the Pakistani clothes. She tells us 'I / ... tried to glimpse myself / in the miniature / glass circles', but the fact that they were so small leads to our realization that Alvi would not have been able to see her whole reflection, just a fragment of herself, which underlines the idea of a split identity. She then tries to remember the journey she made from Pakistan to England at a very young age. 'Prickly heat had me screaming on the way' emphasises the idea of pain and the difficulty of being torn between two cultures. She recalls being in a cot in her English grandmother's home, and stresses being alone with a tin boat to play with after the long voyage.

Stanza six focuses on memories of Pakistan. Alvi looks at photographs taken in the 1950s to help her remember the country of her birth. Later, she read about the 'conflict' in Pakistan in newspapers, seeing it as 'a fractured land', which again reflects her own feeling of having a fractured identity. She can still picture her aunts in Lahore as they wrapped presents. They would have been hidden from 'male visitors' by a carved wooden screen – this idea again adds to the sense of not being able to see clearly, of fragmentation.

The final stanza opens with memories linked with poverty: 'beggars, sweeper-girls'. As though it were a dream, Alvi pictures herself as part of the scene, saying 'I was there - / of no fixed nationality'. This phrase tells us exactly how feels, in that she does not belong wholly to any one country. Like her aunts, she is behind a screen, or 'fretwork', looking out at the Shalimar Gardens. This echoes the image of her trying to see herself in the mirror-work of the Pakistani clothes, as in both instances a complete picture would have been hard to see.

The language of the poem is quite informal, appearing to flow from the writer's mind as many of the lines are indented in an irregular pattern. The visual aspect of the poem adds to the sense of uncertainty. The lines seem to move backwards and forwards on the page, echoing the idea of going to and fro between two cultures. This is a creative way of underlining the theme of the poem, the feeling of not really belonging to any one particular place, of being unsure of one's identity.

Island Man

Grace Nichols, born in Guyana but a resident of Britain since 1977, wrote the poem 'Island Man' 'for a Caribbean island man in London who still wakes up to the sound of the sea' (her own words). It is a poem of contrasts based on the two places that the man has known as home and is set as he is waking up in London.

The first stanza of five lines tells us that it is morning and that the man hears the sounds of the island 'in his head' as he wakes up. These are the sounds of nature, of the sea: 'blue surf' and waves 'breaking and wombing'. Wombing is an unusual verb used by Shakespeare to mean 'enclosing'; it is the final word of the first stanza but leads through enjambment to the 'wild seabirds' in the first line of the second stanza, as if the sea is about to give birth to the birds. In stanza two, which is six lines long, Nichols continues the theme of dreaming about the island as the fisherman set out to sea and the sun rises 'defiantly' (in contrast to London weather, of course). The images are again based in nature, and the colours in these initial stanzas are rich and beautiful: 'blue surf' and 'his small emerald island'.

Stanza two ends, however, with the phrase that tells us how the man has to emerge from his dream 'groggily groggily'; these words set to one side to emphasise that the dream has ended and a different setting is being introduced. The repetition of 'groggily' also serves to portray the idea that this is a reluctant, slow awakening. The third stanza consists of four lines, repeating the phrase 'comes back' from the end of the preceding stanza. Nichols tells us here that he comes back to 'sands', but as we continue to the next line we realise that these are metaphorical sands 'of a grey metallic soar'. The natural images change to man-made ones, and the beauty of the island's colours has switched to grey. The sounds of the sea have now turned into those of London traffic, with a 'surge of wheels' and a 'roar' on the North Circular road; the use of the adjective 'dull' to describe the road echoes the greyness two lines earlier. The 'surge of wheels' in line fourteen is pushed to one side as was the phrase 'groggily groggily', almost as though the man is trying to push the sounds of London out of his head.

Enjambment is again used to connect to the fourth stanza which opens with the phrase 'muffling muffling', this time echoing the repetition of 'groggily groggily' and suggesting once again that there is a struggle to shut out one set of sounds in favour of another. Nichols uses the metaphor 'crumpled pillow waves' to link the ideas here back to the sounds and images of the sea at the beginning of the poem. The fact that the man 'heaves' himself out of bed gives the impression that he is unwilling to leave his dream of the Caribbean Island and face the reality of 'Another London day', the final line of the poem which is set apart from the previous stanza.

The lack of punctuation in the poem allows the lines and stanzas to flow freely, underlining the image of the sea. The irregular lengths of both lines and stanzas form a visual pattern reminiscent of the ebb and flow of the tide on the shore. Rhyme is also irregular here, with just one or two rhyming words dotted here and there such as 'soar' and roar', perhaps to give a natural feel. Alliteration with soft 's' sounds features in the images of the island: 'sound of blue surf', 'sun surfacing'. We can find assonance in the final stanza, in the phrases 'muffling/his crumpled pillow...' and the final 'Another London day'.

'Island Man' is just nineteen lines in length, but Grace Nichols succeeds in presenting us with a concise poem that conjures up vividly the idea of a man who has left his native island in the hope of a better life in one of the world's great capital cities but finds himself longing for the simplicity and beautiful surroundings of the island of his birth.