Dear girls, off we go with this project. We will learn a lot from each other and we will get to appreciate poems from writers from all over the world. I tried to choose poetic productions that somehow can promote the free expression of your ideas, feelings, insight, etc. and this is what poetry is meant for, isn’t it? It breathes inside our mind and body, it moves the "chords of our emotions" , it inspires us and makes us see things through different lenses. It promotes a whole new experience of a particular event. Thanks in advance for all the things you are going to teach me. We will have fun together (hopefully) because we will be able to express our opinions without feeling judged. This is a blog, do remember. Nobody is judging anybody. We are only expressing ideas which become good food for thought for all the others.
The poem you are going to read does not present either the title or the name of the author. Is the writer a man or a woman in your opinion? What do you think the title of the poem could be? Where does the writer come from? Mind you, try to substantiate your answers, try to explain why you are claiming certain things. Don’t throw things there just for the sake of writing something.
(for a Caribbean island man in London who still wakes up to the sound of the sea)
Morning
and island man wakes up
to the sound of blue surf
in his head
the steady breaking and wombing
wild seabirds
and fishermen pushing out to sea
the sun surfacing defiantly
from the east
of his small emerald island
he always comes back groggily groggily
Comes back to sands
of a grey metallic soar
to surge of wheels
to dull North Circular roar
muffling muffling
his crumpled pillow waves
island man heaves himself
Another London day
Though not all of you have replied to the questions I posed last week, here I am going on with the analysis of this beautiful poem. Are you all ears? Or better, should I write, are you all eyes? Well, the title of the poem is "Island Man" (1984) and it was written by Grace Nichols (she is John Agard’s wife, last year we read his famous poem "Half-caste. Do you remember it?). So some of you were right in their assumptions. I congratulate with you. Now, let’s hone our skills and let’s try to read this poem "more deeply". You all got the gist, that is the difficulty for a Caribbean immigrant to live in an urban environment and his need to find a way how to accept the different reality surrounding him.
What do you notice regarding punctuation? What marks possible divisions in the poem? We know that punctuation and the lay out of a poem play an important role, since they add meaning to it.
The nostalgic tone of the poem is built through the contrast between the "emerald island" and London. The colours of the island contrast with those of London. What are these colours? What sounds did the man hear on his island? What sounds does he hear in London? Do remember the relevance of the langauge used by the poet. The use of language that appeals to the senses adds value to the poem.
In "sands of grey metallic soar" a word belonging to the semantic field of Nature, "sands", is used in conncetion with "metallic soar", an expression which evokes an industrialized urban setting. The two semantic fields are connected through "grey", which could refer both to the sands of an island and to the overall colour of London. Find two more examples of words used metaphorically in this second part of the poem.
The island man wakes up from his dream of the emeral island to find a different reality. Which words in lines 11-19 express the effort and unpleasantness of waking up to "another London day"?
The author might be the wife of the Caribbean man whom the poem is about: she(?) tells about the waves on the pillow when he wakes up, then she describes the moment he goes working and his foreign origin. so this misterious author must be someone who knows very well the man of the poem and his feelings. I think that this woman is from England, because she doesn’t share her man’s feelings.
Mav
Mav, you might be right, but what can you tell me about the language used by the writer. Are there any aspects of the language that make you think the writer is a woman?
Because of the inscription written before the poem a think that the writer is a woman that wrote it for her husband or somebody that she loves and from here a perceive an affective way to write. I think that the writer is English because from the description of London’s streets and traffic I can infer that she knows very well this city. The title I would give to this poem is “Island man in London”, because the protagonist of this poem is a Caribbean man who lives in London.
*Ale*
Dear Ale, you did a good job, but let’s try to refine your thoughts. You find the language “feminine” in the sense that it reveals sensitive feelings towards a man who is obliged to live in a context he does not consider “home”. Are there any other aspects in the use of the langauge that can support your theory? Try to make the title shorter. Poems are generally characterised by short, sometimes even cryptic titles. Reread the poem and let the words transport you. What else can you write about them? What is their effect on them? How do they speak to a “female reader”? Do you think there is a “female”/”male” way of writing poetry? This is food for thought. Bye for now.
I think that the writer is a woman, because she describes a man who goes and returns from the work and also because of the dedication at the beginning of the poem. In my opinion the writer comes from an island of the Pacific ocean but now lives in London and feels nostalgia for his/her home. I would give to the poem the title “Dream” because the protagonist dreams his native land every time he awakes.
Paola
The poet is probably a person who has a close relationship with the “island man”. I think he/she lives in that island, or at least he/she has lived for a long time there; long enough to be able to describe the sounds you can hear weaking up. The “island man” maybe wrote a letter to the poet describing his different life in London, talking also about the North Circular (that is maybe why the poet knows it). The title could be “waking up still dreaming”, because the “island man” wakes up every morning thinking about the sounds of his native land, so not hearing the sounds that sorround him in reality, but just imagining them. The poet, in my opinion, is a man, a friend of the “island man”. A woman, maybe, would have used different images, more romantic ones and wouldn’t have said “grey metallic soar”: I think it is a more masculine language.
Jess
I know that the “speaking I” and the author of the poem not necessary are the same person but I think that only who comes from this Caribbean island or who had a long experience there, could describe feelings, sounds and imagines of this place. So, I think that the author could be the “island man”; a man and not a woman beacuse when I read this poem and especially the onomatopoeic words I imagine this man at the North Circular which catches this sounds and he transforms them into words. I would give this title to the poem: “home, sweet and far, home”; the man now lives in London but every day, when he wakes up, he thinks and imagines his native island and he is homesick, he feels nostalgia for the sound of blue surf, for the wild seabirds, for the fishermen and for the sun.
[Marghe]
I think that the way the writer describes how the protagonist of the poem wakes up, the waves on the pillow, his dreams is so detailled that she has to know him very well. The title could be “Man in London”.
I think that onomatopeics makes the reader think to be the protagonost and so to see the same thingns he sees, to dream the same things he dreams and to hear the same things he hears. The writer makes me, as girl, thinking of love and how she loves somebody that has a different background from her own background and how she tries to understand his feeling. I think that when a woman writes about somebody she loves, she feels like a mother so she tries to enter in his or her psychology and she writes using a tender language but when a man writes about somebody he loves, first he describes what he loves about he or she, and does it in an impulsive way.
*Ale*
Dear Paola,
Thanks for your considerations. Yes, I do like your observation about the inscription at the very beginning of the poem.
Dar Jess,
I loved reading your considerations, they reveal insight. Well, I am a bit skeptical as to your idea of what is “feminine” and “masculine” writing. But this is just a personal consideration of mine. Do you realize that by not giving you any reference to the author or by not providing you the title of the poem, you tend to ask yourself questions about the poem that you wouldn’t otherwise? I think this project will do all of us good. We will learn tons by this experience. See you and keep writing. I love reading your thoughts.
Dear Marghe,
I like the title of the poem. It is very effective. As to your comments on the poem, I think you understood what it is about. So keep on reading, so that you’ll see whether your anticipations are right or wrong!
i think the author is a woman. not only for the way of saying things, but also because of the pint of view from which she sees fishermen going out to sea; traditionally women stay on the seashore looking at their men while leaving to sail.
i don’t know where the author could be coming from, i just think she lives a situation that makes her feel not well..it could also be a disease, this could just be a way of saying that she’s not ok, as if she was a carabbean man, used to live in a wonderfull world, and now forced to live in a way he doesn’t like, and didn’t want, to.
for the title of the poem…i don’t know, i am really not good in giving titles! i thought it could be “another london day”, as the last verse of the poem, but it is quite a hopeless title, that is why i don’t want to think this is the real one… i find the poem is not hopeless, because, even if it is only in his dreams, but the carabbean man every night goes in his carabbean island and feels well, even if life is not as beautiful as he was used to…
to me it is a wonderfull poem.
ps: sorry for my late.
l’el
Sorry for not writing before I just got the chance to do it.
I think the writer of this poem has an incredible ability to draw the scenery of the poem by using very effective words.
I swear, every time I read this poem, I can see everything in my mind! And most important I can see it through the island man’s eyes, because that is the purpose of the poem, to make us understand the hard displacement from a heavenly island to a grey city. And what better way to do it then showing us the protagonist’s point of view??
I wasn’t sure if the writer of the poem was a man or a women but I knew it was someone who was really close to the island man! The reason why I wasn’t sure about the writer’s gender is because I think when human beings express their inner feelings they all do it in the same way!
Obviously there are some people that express their feelings in a better way than others but I don’t think it depends on the gender.
I noticed that there is no punctuation and this is pretty strange because we all know that a good writer should use punctuation correctly, but I think
Grace Nichols didn’t use it on purpose. Maybe because she wanted to show us how the island man feels every time he wakes up in London. She is revealing us the man’s feeling of lost for living in a country that does not belong to him!
And the missing of the punctuation emphasizes this…because without punctuation we are lost too; we don’t know were we have to stop, were a sentence ends or if there is a question or a statement!
So I guess she wants us to identify with the protagonist.
Regarding to the unusual layout I think it was created like that on purpose; it seems like the writer wants to lead us from the emerald island to London. The passage though, is not sudden or abrupt instead harmonious and slow. The reason why I think that, it’s because “groggily groggily” and “to surge of wheels” is written more distant than the other sentences. And if you take a pen and follow the poem’s layout till the end you will see that you drawn a wave and I think, that wave is the same wave from the pillow and the man’s Island.
This poem appeals to the five senses but most of all to the sight!
As I said at the beginning this seems more like picture than a poem because the language is very accurate. The main colours of the poem are without doubt the blue, emerald and grey. As a matter of fact those are the two colours that best express the opposition between the Caribbean Island and London.
But then there are other colours that came to my mind, most when the writer writes about the island, for example when I read “seabirds” I think of the white, when I read “sea” the light blue, when I read “sun” the yellow and so on.
On his Island, the man hears the sound of the blue surf, the steady breaking and wombing wild seabirds and fishermen pushing out to sea.
Instead in London he hears the noise of a surge of wheels.
In lines 11-19 the words that express the unpleasantness of waking up to another London day are: groggily groggily, grey metallic soar, dull, muffling muffling, Another.
The last line of the poem is presented as the harsh reality; the fact that she wrote “Another” with a capital letter means that the man perceives London as a big mountain that separates him from his dear sea.
izzy
Dear l’el, (what sort of nickname is this? Quite puzzling, because I don’t know who you are!)
I like the final considerations you wrote. Yes, you are right, it is not a poem about hopelessness. I agree with you there. What I do not quite agree with is “claiming something about a poem without backing your assumptions up with something really mentioned in the poems”. It is important that at this stage we pay careful attention to the text, and then we can make all the assumptions we want, but still, you need to substantiate them with “quotes” from the text.
You do not have to worry about deadlines. I do understand you do not all have internet access at home, so take your time. What I am happy to read is that you really enjoyed the poem. This blog is just a nice, cosy, private corner of our literature classes I love sharing with you. You are the protagonists, I am just a sort of facilitator. I don’t know who is writing, but you know when I am writing to you and you know that the one who poses the questions it’s me! See you in class.
Dear Izzy,
I am really very happy with what you wrote. It is amazing the things you can see in a poem, isn’t it? It is just something realizing that every single element (pucntuation, capital letters, etc.) have meaning in a poem. That’s why a poem is line an iceberg. The tip of it, what you can see on the surface is just part of the “whole” meaning. Underneath there are so many layers of meaning that the more you read the poem the more interpretations you can give to it. I certainly appreciate all your comments. I loved reading your comments and some are very insightful. So I am pleased your classmates can read you. Isn’t this blog just AWESOME (American for great, brilliant, fantastic, terrific)
Keep reading this blog and keep writing. More interesting poems will come (hopefully you’ll like and appreciate them). 🙂
hi I’m so sorry but I can’t go on net every day but I promise I’ll write as soon as possible. I really like this poem so I have many things to write. Sorry 🙂
I’m sorry for late but I can go on net only ones a week..
however..for me the autor is a woman, who is a little bit melanchony. The sound of words is sweet and so remember me the female sensibility. But I have no idea about the title of the poem, maybe could be “Another London Day” but..I don’t Know. The writer comes from a Caribbean island and she wants to dedicate the poem to a friend, a relative or someone else, who doesn’t llive no longer to the island.
Sorry again
Jolly
Dear Jolly,
You seemed very tentative in your answers, but as you can see from the extra information I added to the poem, you answered the questions correctly. It is interesting that the sweet words, which are certainly connected with the nice dream, REMIND you of female sensitivity. You do not need to apologize if you cannot reply to my questions promptly. I do understand that some of you do not have Internet access. Love reading your observations. Keep writing, you are on the right track!
In this poem the author doesn’t use punctuation and the layout is unusual too. In my opinion the reason is that in the first 11 lines the man dreams, and when a man dreams (and he feels happy and free) his feelings and thoughts run fast in his mind: the first part of the poem focuses on this mental condition; language is simple, positive and easy, the layout is regular.
But then, the man wakes up and he begins “climbing”, “struggling”, “trailing along” and the poem follows his steps;it goes to the right and to the left (for example on the line 14); he must also bear the burden of his race and he must stop because he is tired (and also the poem stops for a moment); and at the end we notice that his difficult life is comparated to a mountain (“Another “is curiously written with the capital letter).
The contrast between London and the island is made also by colours: the island is blue, like the ocean (blue surf) and like the sky (seabirds fly), white, like the foam of the waves, yellow, like the sun and at the end, green like man’s hope. Aso the sounds are positive: there are the sound of the sea, the call of the birds, the voices of the fishermen: this is the soft sound of Nature.
London, instead, is ruled by grey and black like the asphalt cement and the wheels but it is also the colour of the man’s sad feelings. London is “muffling”: there are too many cars, too many people, too many innatural sound bacause London people has left behind the nature.
The great metaphor in the second part of the poem is “pillow waves”: the pillow is wrinkled because the man has slept over but the use of word “waves” reminds the island’s landscape, so the pillow is full of dreams like a painter’s canvas.
The words that express the mans uneasyness are “groggily” (the man feel ill and tired), “circular” (it represents a life without an aim), “muffling” and “dull” (the man can’t get used to london lifestyle).
Tizzy
In this poem the author doesn’t use punctuation and the layout is unusual too. In my opinion the reason is that in the first 11 lines the man dreams, and when a man dreams (and he feels happy and free) his feelings and thoughts run fast in his mind: the first part of the poem focuses on this mental condition; language is simple, positive and easy, the layout is regular.
But then, the man wakes up and he begins “climbing”, “struggling”, “trailing along” and the poem follows his steps;it goes to the right and to the left (for example on the line 14); he must also bear the burden of his race and he must stop because he is tired (and also the poem stops for a moment); and at the end we notice that his difficult life is comparated to a mountain (“Another “is curiously written with the capital letter).
The contrast between London and the island is made also by colours: the island is blue, like the ocean (blue surf) and like the sky (seabirds fly), white, like the foam of the waves, yellow, like the sun and at the end, green like man’s hope. Aso the sounds are positive: there are the sound of the sea, the call of the birds, the voices of the fishermen: this is the soft sound of Nature.
London, instead, is ruled by grey and black like the asphalt cement and the wheels but it is also the colour of the man’s sad feelings. London is “muffling”: there are too many cars, too many people, too many innatural sound bacause London people has left behind the nature.
The great metaphor in the second part of the poem is “pillow waves”: the pillow is wrinkled because the man has slept over but the use of word “waves” reminds the island’s landscape, so the pillow is full of dreams like a painter’s canvas.
The words that express the mans uneasyness are “groggily” (the man feel ill and tired), “circular” (it represents a life without an aim), “muffling” and “dull” (the man can’t get used to london lifestyle).
Tizzy
In this poem there isn’t punctuation, which could create confusion. I think I prefer the poem without it. There are divisions in the poem marked by the spaces between the strophes and also by some words, which are displaced on the right of the poem: for example “groggily groggily” (line 11) and “surge of wheels” (line 14). The absence of punctuation creates a sense of uncertainty and makes me think of the Caribbean man who doesn’t feel at home and has no points of reference in the new country.
The “emerald island” and London are in contrast, this is emphasized by the language which appeals to the senses. For example the sight reveals different colours. The colours of the island are: the blue of the waves (line 3) and the emerald green of the island (line 10). The colour of London is the grey of the streets (line 13). Than the sense of hearing reveals different sounds. In the island the man hears the steady sound of slow breaking waves. In London he hears the steady noise and the sudden increase of wheels. The only sounds he can hear are dull and muffled sounds.
In the second part of the poem there is a word used metaphorically: “waves” (line 17). It can be interpreted in different ways, maybe the Caribbean man dreams the sound of the waves of his island. Maybe the waves are the folds of the crumpled pillow.
In lines 11-19 there are some words which express the effort and unpleasantness of waking up to “another London day”, for example: groggily groggily (line 11), muffling (lines 16), crumpled pillow (line 17), another (line 19).
Sorry! I forget to write the name! I sent the message at 19.28, a few minutes ago, and I am Paola.
Sorry for the delay of my answer, but I had some problems with my limited organization’s ability!
So, I’ve really liked the poem! It emits a feeling of sadness and regretfulness that completely involves the reader.
When I read the poem I can draw every single picture in my mind and I can cherish the illusion of my real being on the beautiful “small emerald island”: I think that only a good writer can have the power to make the reader feel the protagonist of his/her own work and that’s why I think that the author, through the masterly choice of words, wants us to identify with the “island man”, to whom the poem is dedicated.
When I first red the poem, I thought the writer was a woman..now I can see that I was right!
I like to think that the poem is a sort of love message dedicated to “a Caribbean Island man in London” by a woman, who probably is in love with him and who had to bear the suffering of a sudden separation from him.
So, in my opinion, the poem is the author’s way to keep in her mind a clear memory of her beloved, who lives a new, repetitive and “grey” life in London; a man who she’ll never embrace again.
I think that, through the poem, the writer gives voice to her heart’s words.
I also noticed that the poem can be divided in two sections: the first ( from line 1 to 10) is a recollection of the man’s past; the writer appeals to the sense of sight through the use of incisive (breaking, wombing, defiantly…) and “sweet” ( blue surf, small, emerald..) words; the “small emerald island” is like a little part of Heaven, in which the man used to live and to be happy: the writer describes it as if she is a mother who watches over her child.
In the second section (from line 19 to the end) we can see the man living his new life in London: the idea of repetitiveness is given by the use of onomatopoeic (groggily groggily; muffling muffling…) and “grey” (metallic soar, wheels, roar..) words.
It seems that the man lives without emotion: he has lost his hopes, he’s like a robot, who lives without any expectation.
Since there is no punctuation, the passage from the past (symbolized by “the small emerald island” ) and the present (symbolized by London) is a little bit sudden because, as the man wakes up from his dream, the reader is suddenly transported from the beautiful and celestial island’s landscape to the greyness of London’s streets.
At the same time I think that the lack of punctuation is a writer’s precise strategy: since she considers the reader as the protagonist of her own work, she wants him/her to find his/her own way through the poem; but she gives him/her a little hint: if we follow the poem’s lines with a pen we draw a “snake” and I think that it symbolizes the sinuosity of the poem itself: the passage from past to present is sudden but the poem in its complex has a sweet and winding course, like an old lullaby.
The contrast between the “emerald island” and London is built in a very perfect way: as I said, the language appeals to the senses, especially to the one of sight, that’s why the colours in the poem are very important: they give consistency to the man’s feelings.
The main colours are blue and grey: both witness the opposition between past and present.
So, for example, when I think about the “small emerald island”, I imagine a beautiful, celestial beach lighted by the sun; a crystalline sea and many “wild seabirds” that circle in the sky; but when I think about London (in this contest) I can only see a tangle of streets, myriad of cars, haste, frenzy, repetitiveness…a very sad picture!
The main feeling throughout the poem consists in the effort and unpleasantness of waking up to “another London day”: the writer gives evidence to this kind of mood in line 11 to 19 in which she uses words that highlight the feeling of “not-belonging” that bounds the man to a city in which he is forced to live.
The man considers London as an impassable mountain which separates him from his dear island and which doesn’t give him the possibility to be happy again.
At the end he will realizes that his “small emerald island” will remain only a dream and that he has to bear “Another London day”.
Smarty
Dear Tizzy,
Your analysis of the poem is just awesome. I love your subtle observations and your in depth analysis. The reference to the unnatural sounds the speaking eye is subjected to, the sense of an aimless morning approaching, the state of uneasiness we, as readers, may feel towards the burden this man has to carry every day: these observations of yours are really to the point. I find your consideration about “Londoners having no sense of nature”. Be careful, you are reading beyond the lines here. The poem does not state that people in London have neglected nature. If you claim so, then, you need to substantiate your view with lines/words from the poem.
I loved reading your analysis, that for sure!