Now, though there are numerous poetic devices ? and I surely cannot claim to know
them all, let alone pretend to discuss them ? I have chosen a few that are, largely,
already evident in our works (within this workgroup) and could be exploited to
enhance them.
They are; Parallelism; Metaphor; Dialogue ; Alliteration; Simile; Caesura; Punctuation;
Repetition; Echo and Spatial Effects .
For each, I have chosen poems to illustrate them. I hope you'll like and KEEP them
PARALLELISM
Parallelism deals with the relationships between succeeding phrases.
Oswald Mtshali's Nightfall in Soweto uses what is known as Grammatic Parallelism (italics);
"Nightfall comes like
a dreadful disease
seeping through the pores
of a healthy body
and ravaging it beyond repair...
...Man has ceased to be man
Man has become beast
Man has become prey;
I am the quarry to be run down
by the marauding beast
let loose by cruel nightfall
from his cage of death..."
it is the use of the same grammatical structures in succeeding lines also seen in Walt Whitman's
To a Locomotive in Winter;
"Thee for my recitative
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter dry
declining,
Thee in they panoply, thy measured dual throbbing and thy beat
convulsive..."
Other forms are Antithetical Parallelism, in which the succeeding phrase contradicts the first e.g.
"I sleep, but my heart waketh" or as seen in William Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 88;
"When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies..."
Synthetic Parallelism, in which the succeeding phrase is a consequence of the first e.g.
"I want to bear children and hear
them call me mother." from Jenny MacDonald's Woman
and as seen in Okot p'Bitek's Ocol is no longer in love with the old type
...Her mouth is like raw yaws
It looks like an open ulcer,
Like the mouth of a fiend!
Tina dusts powder on her face
and it looks so pale;
She resembles the wizard
Getting ready for the midnight dance...
Climactic Parallelism which relies on a catalogue of similar trends building up to a climax
e.g. touch me, kiss me, f*** me, drive me wild... or the finishing section of Debjani Chatterjee's
Poem in the Post;
...No, I will not send to you
postcards for acquaintances
to be treated to envied
suntanned holiday instances
Love,
I shall send you a vision
of our future together,
I shall post you a poem:
crystallised perfume of rare
love.
and Synonymous Parallelism where the succeeding phrase paraphrases the situation described in the
first e.g. as in Praise of a child ? Yoruba Traditional;
A child is like a rare bird.
A child is precious like corral.
A child is precious like brass.
You cannot buy a child on the market
Not for all the money in the world...
or Nii Parkes' Autumn is come;
...the sun is replaced by storm
the skies once blue at four
now are orange and dour.
There are several other kinds, but I'll leave it up to you to investigate.
METAPHOR
Poems written by black folk is especially rich in metaphor. Two impressive examples are Maya
Angelou's Insomniac and Eugene B. Redmond's The Eye in the Ceiling
Insomniac (Maya Angelou)
There are some nights when
sleep plays coy,
aloof and disdainful.
And all the wiles
that I employ to win
its service to my side
are useless as wounded pride,
and much more painful.
The Eye in the Ceiling (Eugene B. Redmond)
You sit snug in my ceiling
Staring at the room
While insects worship you.
But I can hide you in the night
And your body like a corpse
Loses its heat in seconds.
This time however
Resurrection is simple,
Far simpler than the painful
Mathematics of your birth:
Though in your final death
I'll go through the clumsy
Ritual of winding you,
Knowing I could not
Have touched you
in your citadel an hour ago.
Metaphors include personifications and apostrophe (addressing an inanimate object). A few more
examples of metaphorical use are shown below;
...Oil tins bang
as evening comes on
and clouds of
steaming breath drift
in the street...
(John Haines - Winter News)
My life had stood - a loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
the owner passed - identified -
and carried me away...
(Emily Dickenson - My life had stood - a loaded gun)
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour...
(William Blake - To see a world in a grain of sand)
...All the world is a stage,
And all the men and women merely players...
(William Shakespeare - As You Like it)
ALLITERATION
Alliteration is the repetition of sounds within a line; it can be at the beginnings of words
(initial alliteration) or within them (internal alliteration). Edward Kamau Brathwaite's Miss Own
contains a mixture of both;
...cries calls clanks butchers' halls' bulls' knives stretch?
ing up: pulling down...
altering its tip and instep..
John Lyons' Jab Jab demonstrates initial alliteration;
...jingle jingle, jab jab
jingle jingle, jab jab...
whilst Ian McDonald's The Place they have to go uses internal alliteration;
...Children play with rolling balls of silverballi...
SIMILE
This is one of the first devices anyone uses in speech or writing, so I'll simply show some
examples of its application. Alabaster is a beautiful poem by Sarojini Naidu made up of two
exquisite similes;
Like this alabaster box whose art
Is frail as a cassia?flower, is my heart,
Carven with delicate dreams and wrought
With many a subtle and exquisite thought.
Therein I treasure the spice and scent
Of rich and passionate memories blent
Like odours of cinnamon, sandal and clove,
Of song and sorrow and life and love.
Other modes of application can be seen in Okot p'Bitek's Ocol is no longer in love with the old type
(under Synthetic Parallelism) and Praise of a child - Yoruba Traditional (under synonymous
parallelism). Another famous simile is found in Robert Browning's The Last Duchess;
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive...
More innovative applications can be created by the poet e.g. in Sean O'Brien's The Genre;
...Is the poet
Here tending his irony, making a phrase
With the same off?handed stylishness
seen when he's chalking his cue
or admiring the sheen of his waistcoat
In the smoke filled mirror...
CAESURA
Caesura is the indentation of a line to create a "space" in the poem. Classically it was used to
start a new thread when the previous one did not end with the meter as in W.B. Yeat's Leda and
the Swan;
...A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
but in modern use it is mainly to emphasise a pause, or complete a rhyme.
REPETITION
This again is one of the devices evident in work by black writers. It is thought to originate from
the call and response tradition of Africa also witnessed in Jazz. Some of the best known examples of
works using repetition are by Maya Angelou e.g. Still I Rise and Equality. Below is a work by a less
popular Caribbean writer Grace Nichols to portray the power of repetition;
Tropical Death (Grace Nichols)
The fat black woman want
a brilliant tropical death
not a cold sojourn
in some North Europe far/forlorn
The fat black woman want
some heat/hibiscus at her feet
blue sea dress
to wrap her neat
The fat black woman want
some bawl
no quiet jerk tear wiping
a polite hearse withdrawal
The fat black woman want
all her dead rights
first night
third night
nine night
all the sleepless droning
red?eyed wake nights
In the heart
of her mother's sweetbreast
In the shade
of the sun leaf's cool bless
In the bloom
of her people's bloodrest
the fat black woman want
a brilliant tropical death yes
ECHO
Echo is the use of tow similar sounds at the end of a line. It originates from Greek poetry,
but is not frequently used nowadays. However it can be a very effective device for performance
poetry. I found one example;
Shall the water not remember Ember
my hands slow gesture, tracing above of
its mirror my half?imaginary airy
portrait...
(Fred Chappell - Narcissus and Echo)
ŠNii Parkes, May 1998
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