Shooting Stars
Carol Ann Duffy, Standing Female Nude (2004)
Shooting Stars
After I no longer speak they break our fingers
to salvage my wedding ring. Rebecca Rachel Ruth
Aaron Emmanuel David, stars on all our brows
Beneath the gaze of men with guns. Mourn for our daughters,
upright as statues, brave. You would not look at me.
You waited for the bullet. Fell. I say, Remember.
Remember those appalling days which make the world
forever bad. One saw I was alive. Loosened
his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.
Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.
The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate
this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.
How would you prepare to die, on a perfect April evening
with young men gossiping and smoking by the graves?
My bare feet felt the earth and urine trickled
down my legs. I heard the click. Not yet. A trick.
After immense suffering someone takes tea on the lawn.
After the terrible moans a boy washes his uniform.
After the history lesson children run to their toys the world
turns in its sleep the spades shovel soil Sara Ezra…
Sister, if seas part us, do you not consider me?
Tell them I sang the ancient psalms at dusk
inside the wire and strong men wept. Turn thee
unto me with mercy, for I am desolate and lost.
Shooting Stars
After I no longer speak they break our fingers
to salvage my wedding ring. Rebecca Rachel Ruth
Aaron Emmanuel David, stars on all our brows
Beneath the gaze of men with guns. Mourn for our daughters,
upright as statues, brave. You would not look at me.
You waited for the bullet. Fell. I say, Remember.
Remember those appalling days which make the world
forever bad. One saw I was alive. Loosened
his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.
Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.
The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate
this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.
Markup key:
prosodic devices
enjambment
euphemism
diction
personification
symbolism
enumeration
metaphor / simile
imagery
juxtaposition
irony/pun
allusion
rhetorical
questions
How would you prepare to die, on a perfect April evening
with young men gossiping and smoking by the graves?
My bare feet felt the earth and urine trickled
down my legs. I heard the click. Not yet. A trick.
After immense suffering someone takes tea on the lawn.
After the terrible moans a boy washes his uniform.
After the history lesson children run to their toys the world
turns in its sleep the spades shovel soil Sara Ezra…
Sister, if seas part us, do you not consider me?
Tell them I sang the ancient psalms at dusk
inside the wire and strong men wept. Turn thee
unto me with mercy, for I am desolate and lost.
Markup key:
prosodic devices
enjambment
euphemism
diction
personification
symbolism
enumeration
metaphor / simile
imagery
juxtaposition
irony/pun
allusion
rhetorical
questions
Form, tone, perspective:
• Dramatic monologue in which Duffy gives a voice to someone
from whom it has been unjustly taken, as she does in many of
her poems.
–6 stanzas, each with 4 lines
–irregular meter, but most lines have 12 – 13 syllables
–no end rhyme (free verse)
• The speaker is a dead woman who was killed in the scene she
describes, addressing her surviving Jewish brethren.
• Tone: this is an angry, bitter poem, with a tone of harsh
condemnation from author as well as speaker. The mood is
dark and serious.
Literal meaning:
A female Jewish concentration camp victim during the Holocaust describes
scenes of horrible sadism and abuse amid contrasting displays of oblivious
normalcy. Specifically, she has her fingers broken and wedding ring taken,
anticipates being raped by a soldier, watches a child shot in the head, and waits
to be (and presumably is) shot; meanwhile, she depicts soldiers laughing,
gossiping, smoking, and drinking tea, as well as children playing. Before she
dies she appeals to an unidentified female survivor to be remembered.
Figurative meaning:
Juxtaposition operates to render the atrocities of genocide more vivid, as the
speaker describes the heart-wrenching deaths of innocent women and children
at the hands of Nazi soldiers who seem amused by their own casual sadism. The
salient theme is that these acts must be recognized and remembered in order to
prevent their repetition by future generations, and also out of respect for the
memory of all of those whose identities were effaced by such senseless crimes.
Discussion questions:
• Are the countless novels, poems, movies and paintings
about the Holocaust that have become a part of popular
culture an effective way to prevent similar atrocities in the
future?
• The Jewish people have been persecuted for most of their
history on Earth. Has progress been made in the past two
thousand years with regard to how minorities are treated?
In the past sixty years?
Websites consulted
• http://bigbackground.com/stars/shooting-stars-wallpaper.html
• http://fr.123rf.com/photo_20384289_smiley-triste-avec-effet-retro-eclairage-sur-le-fondnoir.html
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2046091/HEROINES-ON-THE-TRAIN-RIDETO-HELL-A-TRAIN-IN-WINTER-BY-CAROLINE-MOOREHEAD.html