Poetry Notes on 'This Is The Dark Time, My Love'

THIS IS THE DARK TIME, MY LOVE - Literary Analysis

The theme of this poem is about a people whose dreams for a better life have been

threatened by the destructive power of the ‘strange invader’.

The atmosphere of the poem is one of tension, fear, anxiety.

“Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.” This is because of the presence

of soldiers: “all around the land brown beetles crawl about.”

Even nature is sympathetic to the cause of the people as expressed in the line” red flowers

bend their heads in awful sorrow.”

The poet’s mood is one of lamentation for the misery of his people, the instability and

sorrow brought about by the strange invader.

Imagery: The images appeal to the sense of sight and sound. They present visual

pictures and are striking.

The picture of the soldiers, “all around the land the brown beetles craw about”, in their

thick armoury, the hand covering on their backs is like beetles.

Here you hear the tramping of soldier “whose boots of steel tramp down the slender

grass”. You can also see the slender grass trampled upon and looking withered.

Figurative Language

Metaphor: All around the land brown beetles crawl about.”

 The soldiers are compared to brown beetles.

Personification: “Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow.”

The poet gives the flowers qualities of a human being – the emotion of sorrow.

Irony: “It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.”

The words festival and carnival are indicative of joyous celebrations but what the country

is really experiencing is sorrow not joy

This Is the Dark Time My Love

by Martin Carter

This is the dark time, my love,

All round the land brown beetles crawl about.

The shining sun is hidden in the sky

Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow.

This is the dark time, my love,

It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.

It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.

Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.

Who comes walking in the dark night time?

Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass?

It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader

Watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.

Poetry Notes on 'Colonial Girls School'

Literary Analysis of Colonial Girls School

Themes: Children, Education, Identity, Colonialism/Racism, Gender & Inequality

Literary Devices: Repetition, Imagery, Metaphor, Allusion

In Colonial Girls School, the poet protests against a colonial system that has tried to

emasculate and stifle natural speech, humour, physical appearance, dress, manners. She

rebels against a system that imposed educational offerings, irrelevant and meaningless.

The poet rails at cultural emasculation as she saw an attempt to transform personality, and

character, to deny self-awareness and self-hood. Stanza one lists details,

While some readers may agree with the poet’s rant against the

significance of Latin to the Caribbean mind, others will approve or

be in agreement with an exposure to Shakespeare as significant

in our lives.

 Muffled our laughter

 Lowered our voices

 Let out our hems

 Dekinked our hair

(Lines 3 - 6)

These all point to the impositions the system enforced or perpetuated.

The poet recalls an attempt to debase or devalue natural human behaviour “how our

loudness, our laughter/debased us."

The repetition as conveyed in the choric ‘chant’ throughout the poem lays emphasis on a

system that has denied self-hood, self-esteem and an indigenous cultural tradition. The

expressions, “nothing about us/nothing of our landscape/feeling nothing/finding nothing

about us” are all part of a denial of self, both mental and emotional.

The system of education-offerings of History, Geography and cultural tradition of an alien

or foreign landscape, the political and civil affairs of distant lands have been meaningless.

She asserts that these offerings are ‘mumbo-jumbo’, and irrelevant. The denial of

indigenous offerings leaves her discontented.

But the poem ends on softer note with some measure of consolation that the colonial

impostors during her schools years are now fading or disappearing for “northern eyes/in

the brighter world before us now/pale."

Colonial Girls School

by Olive Senior (1985)

Borrowed images

willed our skins pale

muffled our laughter

lowered our voices

let out our hems

dekinked our hair

denied our sex in gym tunics and bloomers

harnessed our voices to madrigals

and genteel airs

yoked our minds to declensions in Latin

and the language of Shakespeare

Told us nothing about ourselves

There was nothing about us at all

How those pale northern eyes and

aristocratic whispers once erased us

How our loudness, our laughter

debased us

There was nothing left of ourselves

Nothing about us at all

Studying: History Ancient and Modern

Kings and Queens of England

Steppes of Russia

Wheatfields of Canada

There was nothing of our landscape there

Nothing about us at all

Marcus Garvey turned twice in his grave

‘Thirty-eight was a beacon. A flame.

They were talking of desegregation

in Little Rock, Arkansas. Lumumba

and the Congo. To us: mumbo-jumbo.

We had read Vachel Lindsay’s

vision of the jungle

Feeling nothing about ourselves

There was nothing about us at all

Months, years, a childhood memorising

Latin declensions

(For our language

-‘bad talking’-

detentions)

Finding nothing about us there

Nothing about us at all

So friend of my childhood years

One day we’ll talk about

How the mirror broke

Who kissed us awake

Who let Anansi from his bag

For isn’t it strange how

northern eyes

in the brighter world before us now

Pale?

Notes on the Poem 'God's Grandeur': The Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet

 

This is a sonnet and specifically an Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet. This type of sonnet has:

•an Octave (eight lines) and Sestet (six lines)

•Presents some contrast of setting/theme (For example darkness vs. light) 

•Transition occurs in the 9th line

God’s Grandeur

By Gerard Manley Hopkins (U.K. 1844-89)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings.

Poetry Analysis: God’s Grandeur

Themes: Nature and Religion.

The poet asserts that the grandeur (splendor or greatness) of God is shown in the dependability of nature, in spite of mankind’s insensitivity towards and disconnect from nature. But the poem also indicates two aspects of that grandeur: power, with its authority, and love, with its compassion.

This poem follows the rhyming pattern of the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet, with an octave rhymed abbaabba and a sestet rhymed cdcdcd. He effectively uses this type of poetry to make a statement or draw a contrast between man’s neglect of nature (octave) and nature’s ability to replenish herself (sestet). The poet also makes effective use of alliteration, internal rhyme, and unusual imagery.

Although the language is somewhat complicated, the tone of the poem is didactic (intended to instruct). In the octave, we are being addressed by someone who begins with an assertion about God. He explains himself with similes (lines 2-3), and poses a question about man’s disobedience in line 4) supported by evidence in lines 5-8). In the sestet, he reassures his audience that his first statement remains valid, with exclamations such as ‘Oh’ and ‘ah!” adding to the realism of the lesson.

The poem is expressive of God’s presence in the natural world even through man’s exploits

have served to destroy nature and its freshness and purity. To the poet God’s grandeur is

ever pervasive, revealing itself like ‘flame from shook foil’. The word ‘flame’ is significant

as it conveys the brilliance of God as the shining light that foil gives off.

The poet employs the image of an electric charge, which develops into a flame or a light

suggesting the power of his greatness.

God’s light assumes a richness like the ‘ooze of oil crushed’ or pressed to its finest quality.

As the oil gathers strength to richness so does God’s greatness. The images are all interwoven and expanded to express the grandeur of God. In stanza 2, though man is aware of God’s greatness he still exploits through commence and industrialization, blemishing the earth and destroying the freshness of nature.

The repetition,  “generations have trod, have trod, have trod” conveys man’s persistence in his ruthless exploitation. The persistent repetition of words ‘have trod’ leading to ‘smeared and bleared, tells of the poet’s resentment or disgust at man’s actions. ‘Man’s smudge’ and ‘smell’ are expressive of a polluted and squalid environment, all due to man’s uncaring attitude. Unthinking man cares not about the destruction he leaves; he seems not aware of what he has done to nature as is expressed in the words ‘nor can food feel,’ being shod.’

The language of stanza one, lines 5-8, reveals not only disgust but a protest against man’s

ruthlessness. The poet reacts to man’s inhumanity and indignity with reasoned calmness,

a protest without rage or anger for he is consoled by nature’s presence as described in

stanza two (2).

In stanza two (2), the poet tells that God’s presence or power through nature is renewable

or invigorating inspite of man’s destruction. Nature is described as indestructible or

inexhaustible:

For all this, nature is never spent

There lives a dearest freshness deep down things.

The poem ends on a positive note, an assurance that springs from the poet’s faith as he

is convinced of the Holy Ghost’s presence with vitality and life and all that is luminous,”

“warm breaths and bright wings” .

Notes on the Poem 'Le Loupgarou': Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet

 
 

This is a sonnet and specifically an Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet. This type of sonnet has:

•an Octave (eight lines) and Sestet (six lines)

•Presents some contrast of setting/theme (For example sunset vs. night)

         •Transition occurs in the 9th line

Themes: Supernatural and Gender

 

 Le Loupgarou

A curious tale that threaded through the town

Through greying women sewing under eaves,

Was how his greed had brought ole Le Brun down,

Greeted by slowly shutting jalousies

When he approached them in white-linen suit,

Pink glasses, cork hat, and tap-tapping cane,

A dying man licensed to sell sick fruit,

Ruined by fiends with whom he’d made a bargain.

It seems one night, these Christian witches said,

He changed himself to an Alsatian hound,

A slavering lycanthrope hot on a scent,

But his own watchman dealt the thing a wound

Which howled and lugged its entrails, trailing wet

With blood back to its doorstep, almost dead.

Poetry Notes: West Indies USA by Stewart Brown

This poem is written in Free Verse and speaks to the presence of the United States in the West Indies as seen in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The poem is written from a first-person point of view and tells of the travelers`experience of different countries in the West Indies through their airports (stanza two). Nature is a major theme in the poem. Other themes include poverty and imperialism. Literary devices include similes (line 2), metaphors (line 9) and allusion (line 18).

Line 2: `baize`is the soft velvet like green material used on pool and card tables
Line 3: `pot` short for jackpot, reefrs to the most outstanding amount to be won in a casion game
Line 4-6: `Dallas...maverick`s gold ring` refers to the basketball team in the USA which would have been and possibly still is one of the most valuable and high earning basketball teams. Championship rings received by the winning team are made of the highest quality gold and worth thousands of dollars.
Line 8: `Calling card` literally identifies the bearer and istraditionally presented for introduction when making a social visit.
Line 10: `Piarco`is Trinidad`s national airport
Line 14: `Drawl`the lengthening and slowing down of speech
Line 17: `Uncle Sam` is a national personification affectionately used to refer to the United States
Line 18: `Re-enslave...island of the free`is an allusion to the Spanish conquest and colonization of the island.
Line 20-21:`America`s backyard...give me your poor`. America`s backyard is a direct reference to countries like Puerto Rico, Guam and the Phillipines who were under US rule in some way. `Give me your tired and poor` is an allusion to Emma Lazarus`famous poem about the Statue of Liberty. It also symbolizes a time in the decades after US occupation (1898) where Puerto Ricans were allowed to seek refuge in New York City after being hit by a series of natural disasters and the Great Depression.
Line 22: Introduces a series of contrasts visible in Puerto Rico as a result of the US presence. It is symbolic of the partial nature of the benefits from Puerto Rico`s affiliation with the US.
Line 29: `fools glitter`...Expresses the author`s cynical tone towards the relationship between the US and Puerto Rico. It is an allusion to the saying `All that glitters is not gold.`

Notes on the Poem 'The Lynching': Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet

Themes: Race & Gender, Death, Hatred

The poet indicates that a man has been cruelly hanged and burnt at night, then describes the unpitying crowds that come in the morning to look at the spectacle.

This is a sonnet and specifically an Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet. This type of sonnet has:

•an Octave (eight lines) and Sestet (six lines)

•Presents some contrast of setting/theme (For example night vs. day)

•Transition occurs in the 9th line

The poem 'The Lynching' has 14 lines, 10 syllables per line) with the rhyme scheme abba cddc (octave) effe gg (sestet). Contrast may be found between the octave (for e.g pity, night) and the sestet (for e,g no pity, day). 

Religious references (Allusions) may be found to things like the Nativity scene in the Bible, the Crucifixion and the curse of Ham (and his well-known link to African people). Other aspects of style to be noted include contrast, descriptive detail and symbolism.

Themes such as racism, violence, cruelty, for example for children, pity, injustice and sacrifice underline the outrage felt by the poet at the racist cruelty being perpetuated in parts of the USA in the early 20^th century.

                         The Lynching
His spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven.
His father, by the cruelest way of pain,
Had bidden him to his bosom once again;
The awful sin remained still unforgiven.
All night a bright and solitary star
(Perchance the one that ever guided him,
Yet gave him up at last to Fate’s wild whim)
Hung pitifully o’er the swinging char.
Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view
The ghastly body swaying in the sun:
The women thronged to look, but never a one
Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue;
And little lads, lynchers that were to be,
Danced around the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.
                  

                    

Introduction to CXC English B

 Welcome to the CXC English B dedicated to helping students, educators and parents preparing students to sit the CXC English Literature also known as the English B Literature exams. The blog will consist of summary notes for various CXC texts as well as the basics of literary analysis, literary devices and other additional resources. Feel free to interact and comment!

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