490658
Description
Flashcards by katiehumphrey, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by katiehumphrey
over 10 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| subject | The conflict in Northern Ireland began in the 1960s when the minority Catholic population began campaigning against discrimination by the Protestant majority. By the 1970s, some Irish nationalist groups had started using violence to force the UK government to make the region independent of Britain. British troops became an everyday presence on the streets of Belfast, the Northern Irish capital. At first they had come to protect the Catholics from Protestant violence. Before long they became, to nationalists, symbols of an unwanted army of occupation. Violent clashes between protesters and the 'security forces' (the police and army) were common. |
| form | The poem's form is immediately striking. Instead of neat, compact stanzas, the lines are over-long and the stanzas stretched. On closer inspection, you can see there are two stanzas, the first with five lines, the second with four. Each line, however, spills over so there are additional lines of one or two words. By presenting the poem like this, Carson is expressing the confusion caused by the riot and bomb. For example, with the phrase "And/the explosion/Itself" (lines 3-5), we even end up reading backwards as our eyes have to move from right to left across and down the page. |
| structure | However, through the confusion of the form and the language, we can see a narrative structure (an organised story). A demonstration has got out of hand and riot police have moved in to control it. The rioters start throwing things and there's an explosion (it is possible the nuts and bolts come from the explosion itself – time may also be confused in the poet's head). The poet runs for safety, trying to make sense of what is happening, but cannot escape. The place he knows so well becomes a trap and he runs into a check-point where he is held up and questioned by the police. |
| language | The poem is about how the confusion of the riot causes psychological confusion in the mind of the poet. How can he respond to this chaos? These feelings are expressed in the language and imagery, as well as the form. The title, for example, creates a striking poetic image – the soft alliteration of 'f' appropriate to the idea of a wedding celebration. In fact it is the sound of a bomb about to go off. The kind of confetti Carson is referring to is the debris falling after an explosion. The poetic language is also pushed out by harsh, unpoetic words. These are presented in simple lists to express their lack of emotional associations (e.g. line 3). Carson also lists the street names in lines 11-13. These work both on a literal level (they describe where he lives and how well he knows these streets) but also the metaphoric level. The streets are named after generals and battles and places from the Crimea War, a war the British fought in Victorian times against the Russians. He therefore likens the riot to a battle in a bigger war. Force is used when spoken communication has broken down. So Carson cannot complete a sentence. All he can think of is punctuation marks with no words to punctuate. |
| sound | The feeling of the poem is too unstable for the poet to carefully craft rhymes. But there are two key sounds that we can hear – the 'f' of the title, then the 'k' of the cracking social order, of the bomb and of the riot-policemen's truncheons. All but four lines contain one or more examples of the sound. |
| themes and ideas | The poem seems to be upside down or back-to-front. Instead of starting with a question then answering it, it moves from exclamation marks (in line 1) to question marks (in line 18). Both statements and questions, however, are delivered with equal force (the questions are described as being a "fusillade" which is a round of bullets fired by several guns at once). The point Carson seems to be saying is that under these conditions language is impossible. He notes the unequal sides in this 'argument'. The riot police have Saracen tanks, wire, "Makrolon face-shields" while the rioters have nuts and bolts and nails and car-keys. As a poet, all he has are words. The weakness of these distresses him. Where Carson finally succeeds, though, is in expressing this confusion. |
| comparison to 'The Right Word' | The Right Word – this poem is also about language and the poet's struggle to describe conflict. Dharker and Carson also show they are concerned with what role a poet can actually play in times where violence, not dialogue, is seen as a solution. Both poems are full of doubt. The words that are their tools seem to fail them. |
| comparison to 'next to of course god america i' | next to of course god america i – this poem by E. E. Cummings seems at first sight difficult and nonsensical. In this way it is similar to Carson's work. Both poets are considering events they cannot explain. Words are tools for ordering thought – stories are vehicles for explaining things. Some events are so shocking that language cannot manage to give them meaning. Carson and Cummings dramatise this struggle in poems of eloquent strangeness. |
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