just another number
Tic-Toc Goes the Circadian Clock
An unknown person gazes over a mended wall, digging deep into their soul, they wonder if yonder, the trees really are greener.
Between two trunks is a nightingale lodged in her nest. She sings seductively, but who’s here to hear, feel and follow?
A sun dial sits alone in a well manicured garden, unobtrusively it tells of the shortening of time: ‘Summer will soon be Fall.’
Just another number…
The Unknown Citizen
(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
W. H. Auden
Literary Terminology:
Flashback is a literary device wherein the author depicts the occurrence of specific events to the reader, which have taken place before the present time the narration is following, or events that have happened before the events that are currently unfolding in the story.
Flashback devices that are commonly used are past narratives by characters, depictions and references of dreams and memories and a sub device known as authorial sovereignty wherein the author directly chooses to refer to a past occurrence by bringing it up in a straightforward manner.
Flashback is used to create a background to the present situation, place or person.
Literary Terminology:
Synonyms:
∎ augur, presage, portend, foretell, indicate, suggest, signal, herald, forewarn, anticipate.
Foreshadowing is an advance sign or warning of what is to come in the future. The author of a mystery novel might use foreshadowing in an early chapter of her book to give readers an inkling of an impending murder.
WForeshadowing is used as a literary device to tease readers about plot turns that will occur later in the story. hen you want to let people know about an event that is yet to occur, you can use foreshadowing.
A fortune teller might use foreshadowing, warning that a short life line is a sign of some impending disaster.
Literary Terminology:
In literature, one of the strongest devices is imagery wherein the author uses words and phrases to create “mental images” for the reader. Imagery helps the reader to visualize more realistically the author’s writings.
The usage of metaphors, allusions, descriptive words and similes amongst other literary forms in order to “tickle” and awaken the readers’ sensory perceptions is referred to as imagery.
If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely…
“I don’t want comfort. […] I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
for a deeper meaning
Step-by-step; there are ten [10] steps here:
A poem’s title does not always have great significance. The title might not make much sense until you start to understand the poem. The title “The Sick Rose” (by William Blake) gives us a reasonable hint about what the poem means. T. S. Eliot’s title “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” seems to give some direction, but after the reading the poem, the title might be considered misleading or ironic. Wallace Stevens’ title “The Snow Man” gives very little help.
Pay very close attention to what individual words mean—and especially to what you think might be keywords, since this is where meaning can be concentrated.
Which words stand out, and why?
Consider how words may carry more than one meaning. A dictionary is obviously useful, especially one based on historical principles, since it will point to how the meanings of words may have changed over time. “Silly” once meant “helpless.”
Do you notice lots of material or immaterial things (nouns) or lots of action (verbs)?
Think in terms of oppositions, tensions, conflicts, and binaries.
Consider word choice, or diction:
Address the tone of the speaker or narrator, which is the attitude taken by the poem’s voice toward the subject or subjects in the poem:
Is the tone serious, ironic, amorous, argumentative, distant, intimate, somber, abrupt, playful, cheerful, despondent, conversational, yearning, etc.—or is it mixed, changing, ambiguous, or unclear?
[Key terms: style, diction, register, tone, irony.]
Focus on how the words are ordered. Look for patterns; in drawing attention to themselves, they require your attention:
Punctuation organises and creates relationship between words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. In poetry, where lines are often seen as units of meaning, the importance of punctuation is sometimes magnified, though often overlooked.
Punctuation can create or reinforce rhythm. It can also control meaning or make meaning uncertain by its placement and usage, especially if it is used minimally, or in some cases, not at all.
[Key terms: syntax, enjambment, end-stopped line, stress, rhyme.]
Related to word meaning is figurative language, which often plays a crucial role in both condensing language yet expanding meaning. Most generally, figurative language refers to language that is not literal. The phrase “fierce tears” (the personification of tears) is not literal, but it is both precise and suggestive in carrying meaning.
Much of what we read is literal: The evening sky was dark; he looked up; he felt sick. Figurative language refers to language not used literally—it is used abstractly, indirectly, and often evocatively. The evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table. Here we have an evening (a thing), spreading (an action), a patient (thing), etherizing (an action), and a table (thing). But an evening cannot be a drugged patient spread out upon a table, perhaps ready to be operated upon; this description cannot be literally true (there is no patient, no etherizing, no table, and evenings don’t literally spread out against skies); this language is used figuratively.
When figurative language (like metaphor or simile) provides a picture that evokes any of the senses, we call this imagery. “She is the sun” (a simile) contains imagery of light and warmth (the senses of sight and touch).
Poetry sometimes contains brief references to things outside itself—a person, place, or thing—that will expand, clarify, or complicate its meaning. Sometimes they are obvious and direct, and sometimes they are subtle, indirect, and debatable. Allusions are frequently references made to other texts (for example, to the Bible, or to another poem).
[Key terms: figures of speech, connotation, denotation, metaphor, simile, irony, imagery, personification, allegory, symbol, allusion.]
You probably first read a poem to yourself, silently, but most poems also create sense though sounds, unlike concrete poetry, which operates visually. Try reading the poem aloud. Sound brings attention to both individual words that are drawn together through their sound as well as to the overall “feeling” or experience. For example, repetition of sounds like “s,” “m,” “l,” and “f” might encourage a soft or sensuous feeling: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness . . .”
A poem’s rhythm can be regular or irregular. When it has regular rhythmical sound patterns, we say the poem has a certain meter. The type of meteris based on the number of syllables per line and how many unstressed (x) or stressed (/) syllables there are.
The various meters—tetrameter, pentameter, etc.—are based on the number of feet per line.
The meter in the example below has four regular feet, and is therefore tetrameter; because each foot has an unstressed syllable [x] followed by a stressed one [/], this is called an iamb. We would then say that the line is in iambic tetrameter; if it had an extra foot—that is, five feet—we would call it iambic pentameter.
(“I WAN-dered LONE-ly AS a CLOUD“; x / x / x / x / ). A small, distinct group of accented words is called a foot (“a CLOUD”; x /).
Melody refers to sound effects, such as rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and consonance, with each producing a unique melodic effect. Rhyme is a type of melody, and rhymes can be perfect with identical vowel sounds (“guy” and “high”) or slant, when the sound of the final consonants is identical, but not the vowels (“shell” and “pill,” “cement” and “ant”).
[Key terms: concrete poetry, rhyme, rhyme scheme, rhythm, meter, stress, alliteration, consonance, assonance, scansion, prosody, concrete poetry, foot / feet, iambic, iambic pentameter, melody, perfect rhyme, slant rhyme, couplet, blank verse.]
All poems have a voice, which can be called a speaker (or in some case speakers, if there is more than one person “speaking” the poem).
Poems capture thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions, experiences, and incidents, but sometimes poems also tell a story. Ask yourself:
[Key terms: speaker, addressee, tone, persona, point of view, ideal reader/listener, narrative, narrator, voice, conflict, dramatic monologue, lyric poem, irony, theme.]
Setting answers the questions “Where?” and “When?” in the poem, though often poems are not set in a specific location or time.
For some poems, a difficult but key question may be this:
Symbols represent or stand for something other than the image itself. A symbol, then, is often something concrete—a word, a thing, a place, a person (real of fictitious), an action, an event, a creation, etc.—that represents something larger, abstract, or complex—an idea, a value, a belief, an emotion.
Ask:
Does the poem have any clear or central symbols? What meaning do they bring to the poem?
Poetic form usually refers to the structure that “holds” or gives “shape” to the poem—in a way, what it looks like to you on the page. This will include groupings or sets of lines, called stanzas.
Another, more interesting way to consider form is to say that it necessarily determines the content of the poem, especially in the case of a particular genre, like a ballad, epic, or sonnet; these specific forms (sometimes called “closed forms”) often have structures and stylistic conventions that are both structural and that convey units of meaning or conventions of rhyme, meter, or expression.
If the poem you are reading has a particular form or structure determined by genre, learn something about the conventions of that genre, since this can direct your attention to certain expectations of content.
Poems that do not follow determined, formal conventions have an “open form.”
[Key terms: style, stanza, genre, open form, closed form, ballad, epic poem, sonnet.]
“Purity” is a subject, not a theme; “purity is vulnerability” is a theme. “Theme” refers to a larger, more general, or universal message—a big idea—as well as to something that you could take away from the work and perhaps apply to life. One way to determine a theme is to
You might conclude that, for example, “love,” “trust,” or “loss” are subjects. Now, try to figure out what the attitude in the poem is toward that one-word subject and you have theme—for example, “love is dangerous,” “you cannot trust people close to you,” “loss makes you stronger.”
It is important to remember that many poems resist reduction to simple themes or even subjects, and such resistance—sometimes in the form of ambiguity, paradox, abstraction, or complexity—strengthens our interest in and engagement with the poem. Poems are not necessarily answers, but they may be problems or questions.
[Key words: ambiguity, paradox.]
Fully and wholly indebted to: G. Kim Blank & Magdalena Kay, English Department, University of Victoria
