For
my analysis I will be referencing Mark Eisner's translation, for which I have provided the
reference link.
The tone of this poem is one that I would characterize as
visceral, gritty, and fierce. There is darkness here but also hope; remembrances of people and
occupations long gone, all in the name of bringing their stories forward into the future. The
speaker passionately addresses his deceased ancestors, seeking to give them voice, but he does
so in part by individually naming their decaying body parts and, later, his own living ones.
This gruesome and immediate bodily language exists within a larger uplifting and empowering
message. Thus, the gritty undertones underlay the fierce hope of the poem.
In
order to examine , we can turn to some examples of this visceral language. The speaker
acknowledges early on when appealing to the dead: "They will not return, your drilled-out
eyes" (line 7). There is no sparing us the image of decaying bodies; rather, the reader
must imagine along with the speaker how the remains of those buried must look. He goes on to
implore the dead to show him the "lashing whips / stuck for centuries to [their]
wounds" (lines 25€“26). Whether we want to or not, we the readers are now picturing angry
red scarstheir weapons still embedded within their flesh. We are therefore forced to confront
the cruel fates suffered by these people; there is no overlooking their hardship. Such imagery
functions to shed light on harsh realities so that we cannot ignore them or look away.
is present here largely via its subcategory of , using comparisons with
"like" or "as," with standard metaphors woven in as well. Near the end of
the poem, the speaker begins telling the dead to speak to him "as if [they] were anchored
together / Tell [him] everything, chain by chain" (lines 32€“33). These two lines are a
simile followed by a metaphor, with the metaphor being the chain links as a stand-in for lengthy
speech. Perhaps each word, sentence, or story is here represented by one link in the chain.
There is also this passage:
Sharpen the knives you
kept,
place them in my chest and in my hand,
Like a river of yellow
lightning,
like a river of buried jaguars (lines 34€“37)
There is a lot to unpack here. The knives of the dead, if placed inside the chest and
hand of the living speaker, are comparable to rivers of lightning or jaguars. These similes are
also images and symbols. The sight of a man with a river of yellow lightning running through his
chest and hand conjures up connotations of strength from within.
The river of
buried jaguars, perhaps the most convoluted phrase in the whole poem, seems to be a symbol for
the line of noble and fierce ancestry that the man carries within himself. The deceased are the
jaguars, their lineage the river, the river a flow of heritage and pride through the speaker's
veinsall imbued in him by the knives of the ancestors themselves, which contain the symbolic
potential to bestow all of the above.
This poem is rich in literary devices;
here I have begun to scratch the surface of where and how those devices are employed, though you
will find additional examples throughout the text.
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