The Skunk

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The Skunk

Themes:

Love - celebration of married love. love that can grow and remain intense after years of marriage. 11 years. passionate misses her deeply. also celebration of sexual exotic love

The Marvellous - mesmerised by mysterious and glamorous skunk

Nature - celebrated exotic cali environment. celebrates skunk, an ordinary animal in cali as "glamorous" "mysterious". orange tree.

Memory- the power of memory - everything reminds him intensely of his wife: the taste of wine, aromas of trees, the skunks nightly visits.

skunk embodiment of Heaney's wives sexuality - confident, mysterious, glamorous

Heaney is in Cali his wife is at home he is missing her - marriage poem - her absence is v present in the poem

"Love- letters again, broaching the word "wife" " -> wife in inverted commas separated from the rest of the poem as he is form her.

"inhaling you off a cold pillow" - her absence

"the beautiful useless tang of eucalyptus" - useless as she is not there to share is with him

1st stanza - skunk

3rd/4th back to wife, 5th skunk 6th wife - comparing wife to skunk - comical - wife disturbing Heaney's sleep as the skunk did - "stirred by the sootfall of your things at bedtime, your head-down tail-up hunt in a bottom drawer for the black plunge-light nightdress" intimated bedroom scene.

he is missing his wife and has begun to send love letters to her something he has not done since the beginning of their relationship - "after eleven years i was composing/ love letters again"

romantic atmosphere created - desk light "softened" taste of wine, hum of refrigerator - musical affect

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