Hyenas are nocturnal
carnivores, found in Africa and
Eurasia, and are generally
perceived to be scavengers.
The hyena in this poem is a spotted
hyena, the largest species, which lives
in sub-Saharan Africa. Spotted hyenas,
unlike other species, hunt their own
prey rather than relying on scavenging
alone.
African Veldt - Setting
PURPOSE
Hyena recounts the actions and thoughts of
a hyena; an untamed, vicious and sinister
animal.
The poem is written as a dramatic
monologue, giving the reader an extended
insight into the character through the first
person narrative and emphasising the
murderous intent of the wild creature.
Speaker = the hyena
Present tense =
immediacy
I am waiting for you.
devious yet patient
Second person is used throughout
the poem to draw the reader in. This
direct threat right at the beginning is
designed to be startling to the reader.
It is immediately menacing.
I have been travelling all morning through the bush
And not eaten.
I am lying at the edge of the bush
On a dusty path that leads from the burnt-out kraal.
Vivid descriptions of the landscape = desolate and sparse.
Link: the harshness and unforgiving nature of the landscape ↔ the
similar personality of the hyena. Life is tough ↔ so is the hyena.
Alliteration. Emphasises the dangerous
nature of this animal. Its need to feed and
survive takes precedence over everything
else.
I am panting, it is midday, I found no water-hole.
I am very fierce without food and although my eyes
Are screwed to slits against the sun
You must believe I am prepared to spring.
Alliteration. Sibiliant ‘sss’ sounds make the
hyena sound menacing. Even in the
unbearable heat, he is alert and ready to
strike.
Characterisation
– the hyena is
portrayed as a
devious, crafty
opportunistic
predator
Direct rhetorical question to the reader.
TONE – playful, provocative – the hyena wants us to focus on his
physique.
What do you think of me?
I have a rough coat like Africa.
I am crafty with dark spots
Like the bush-tufted plains of Africa.
Another clear link between the hyena and the
surrounding landscape. The hyena has evolved to fit
his harsh surroundings. Figurative language
emphasises the harsh environment from which the
hyena must try and eke out a living.
Figurative
language
(similes) are
used to
compare the
hyena to the
continent of
Africa and its
environment
Figurative language - the hyena is sitting
poised and ready, waiting for its moment,
so in tune with the land it resembles.
I sprawl as a shaggy bundle of gathered energy
Like Africa sprawling in its waters.
I trot, I lope, I slaver, I am a ranger.
I hunch my shoulders. I eat the dead.
Word choice – verbs help to describe the
movement of the creature, while others are
deliberately used to provoke disgust
Short, blunt
statement
reveals its most
negative feature
– the fact it is a
scavenger
designed to
gorge itself on
the dead.
Another rhetorical question – the hyena is playing
with the reader and encouraging them to consider the
his character
Do you like my song?
When the moon pours hard and cold on the veldt
I sing, and I am the slave of darkness.
Over the stone walls and the mud walls and the ruined places
And the owls, the moonlight falls.
Metaphor - the hyena compares itself to a
servant of night. Associations of darkness
and shadows with subterfuge and shady
business. Nocturnal. Lurking in the
darkness.
I sniff a broken drum. I bristle. My pelt is silver.
I howl my song to the moon - up it goes.
Would you meet me there in the waste places?
Another question. Another challenge. Or maybe a sinister invitation?
The hyena is trying to intimidate the reader. Emphasising that it is a
devious and patient creature.
It is said I am a good match
Its skill as a
scavenger is
evident - feasting
on the deadliest
predator in Africa.
For a dead lion. I put my muzzle
At his golden flanks, and tear. He
Is my golden supper, but my tastes are easy.
Repetition of ‘golden’
contrasts the beauty of the lion
with the ugliness of the hyena.
He is a
scavenger –
he isn’t fussy
and will eat
anything he
can.
I have a crowd of fangs, and I use them.
Oh and my tongue - do you like me
When it comes lolling out over my jaw
Metaphor emphasises the
number of
strong teeth in
the creature’s
powerful jaw.
Savagery.
Very long, and I am laughing?
I am not laughing.
But I am not snarling either, only
Panting in the sun, showing you
What I grip
Carrion with.
The hyena’s howl is
often described as
laughing. He dispels
this. Short sentence
for emphasis. Very
abrupt.
I am waiting
Repetition of the word ‘waiting’
from the first stanza –
emphasises the hyena’s patient
nature.
For the foot to slide,
For the heart to seize,
For the leaping sinews to go slack,
For the fight to the death to be fought to the death,
For a glazing eye and a rumour of blood.
Repetition – continues the idea that the hyena is a
creature of opportunities. It, at times, relies on accidents
and weakness – it preys on the vulnerable.
I am crouching in my dry shadows
Till you are ready for me.
My place is to pick you clean
Word choice - reveals
the instinctual savage
and barbaric nature of
the hyena. It lives this
way not through choice
but through necessity.
And leave your bones to the wind.
Words directed at the reader
emphaise the cold, menacing,
calculating nature of the hyena and its
savage potential.
THEMES
On a simplistic level, the poem deals with themes that all
humans can empathise with. The themes of life; death;
survival; endurance; sense of self; desperation are all
common throughout the poem.
Moreover, Morgan goes to great lengths to illustrate the
animal’s own sense of self-worth. The reader is continually
informed of the Hyena’s prowess and how fierce an animal
the latter is, yet towards the end of the poem we learn that
the Hyena is only a match for a lion(a fierce animal in itself)
once it is dead. Although essentially a scavenger which
opts to pick the flesh of an animal once it is dead, the
Hyena here is rather self-assured in its own capabilities as
a fierce beast who, evidently, its enemies should fear.
STRUCTURE
Hyena has very short and concise sentences,
written in a minimalistic style.
The effect often creates a threatening tone, with the
short sentences often drawing emphasis and
creating tension i.e. ‘I eat the dead’.
Also, the use of rhetorical questions in stanza 1
and 3 are used to lure the reader into a false sense
of security about the protagonist. The short
sentences contrast with the use of commas to
create lists and build momentum. For example, I
trot, I lope, I slaver, I am a ranger.
Winter
Like ‘Trio’ this poem deals with the topic of
winter . However, it has a very different mood.
In your pairs decide what the mood of this
poem is.
What lines/words/ideas helped you decide the
mood of the poem?
PURPOSE
In Winter, Edwin Morgan writes about death and
the relentless passing of time. Winter borrows
words and ideas from Tennyson’s poem Tithonus.
In Tithonus, the title character, a Trojan, is granted
immortality but does not ask for eternal youth. As a
consequence, he is doomed to age and wither, but
never die. Tithonus laments that Aurora, Goddess
of the Dawn, keeps him in her home in the east
(from which she rises every morning).
In this poem, Morgan depicts a frozen pond, near
his home in the West End of Glasgow, that
becomes a symbol of death.
Repetition of ‘goes’ and
‘gone’ – reinforces idea
of the passing of time.
Negative verbs. Note:
present tense!
Deterioration and death are two prominent ideas in the
opening line of the poem. ’Decay’ and ‘dies’ contribute to
an idea of ageing and, eventually, passing away
More
negative
verbs.
The year goes, the woods decay, and after,
many a summer dies. The swan
on Bingham’s pond, a ghost , comes and goes.
It goes, and ice appears, it holds,
bears gulls that stand around surprised,
blinking in the heavy light, bears boys
when skates take over swan-tracks gone.
Oxymoron - a figure of speech when two words that
contradict each other are used together. It’s a good
description of the quality of daylight you can see in winter,
when the sky seems low and brooding – feels unsettling.
Metaphor links with this
idea of life
ebbing away.
Usually a swan
is a beautiful
creature, but
here it is
haunting = dark
imagery.
There seems to be a contradiction in the way the ice is pictured here.
In line 8 it is said to be ‘swan-white’ but in line 9 it ‘glints only crystal
beyond white’. The colour has gone. It is as if Morgan creates that
first, positive colour, then pulls back from it again.
After many summer dyes, the swan-white ice
glints only crystal beyond white. Even
dearest blue’s not there, though poets would find it.
I find one stark scene
cut by evening cries, by warring air.
First
mention
of the 1st
person
narrator
Word choice –
negative connotations
of violence and
conflict
He is a poet, however, and even he
can’t find it. It’s as if the winter is so
bleak that it has depressed him and
drained the poetry out of him.
This is the point where humanity leaves
the poem. First the ‘voices fade’ in line
15 as the boys seem to skate further
away….
More repetition of
negative verbs associated
with death and the
passing of time
The muffled hiss of blades escapes into breath,
hangs with it a moment, fades off.
Fades off, goes, the scene, the voices fade,
the line of trees, the woods that fall, decay
and break, the dark comes down, the shouts
run off into it and disappear.
…then disappear.
This poem has had a swan, some gulls,
and a group of skating boys, but they
are all gone now. Only the woods are left
but even they are decaying.
Even artificial, human attempts at creating
light have been defeated
At last the lamps go too, when fog
Light, which is always a
metaphor for something
positive, has gone. In its place
we have another metaphor ‘monstrous’ fog.
drives monstrous down the dual carriageway
out to the west, and even in my room
and on this paper I do not know
about the grey dead pane
The poem is now
leaving the world of
nature.
of ice that sees nothing and that nothing sees.
This is an odd thing for him to say. He
does know about the ice, because he
described it for us earlier in the poem. He
just does not seem to feel that he has got
to grips with it, or engaged with it.
The ending is very nihilistic. This
means that it is bleak, that it is
interested in nothingness (we see
the word ‘nothing’ repeated within
the final line.)
FORM AND STRUCTURE
In this poem, the speaker uses the past tense to reflect on
time and mortality. Although there is only one stanza, a
natural break occurs between lines ten and eleven. In the
first ten lines, the speaker establishes the setting and
melancholic mood of the poem. He considers the passing
of the seasons on the pond and, through his word choice
and imagery, reveals death as the central concern of the
poem.
In the latter section of the poem, he focuses on one
particularly vivid memory to reflect on the paradox that
although death is a certainty, it remains an enigma which
even poets’ imaginations cannot decipher. The word choice
and imagery are powerful and create a bleak sombre
mood, while repetition and enjambment emphasise the
inexorable and cyclical nature of the passing of time.
THEMES
The main themes of the poem are the passage of time and
death. Through the description of the progress of a day,
Morgan’s speaker shows how vitality fades and, as a conclusion,
disappears completely. Though the language he employs is
engaging, the dark nature of this message sticks in the reader’s
mind. Tennyson’s poem was a tale of suffering and lamentation
and with such close links to his work, Morgan’s poem possesses
a similarly despairing, bleak and nihilistic quality. As time passes,
a person becomes more aware of his or her distance from
youthful promise and possibility.
What we also understand is the speaker’s recognition of the
inevitability of death. The metaphor of the pond as life is
particularly effective as we see that, with the passing seasons,
all things change and are part of a natural process. If spring
represents fertility and vitality, winter comes as the natural
conclusion to the cycle. Though Morgan’s language provides an
eloquent examination of a dark idea, his skill also leaves a
haunting image in the reader’s mind.
PURPOSE
Slate is a poem from a collection called Sonnets from Scotland
which Morgan published in 1984. This series of poems was
written after an important time in Scotland’s history– the Scottish
Referendum of 1979. The outcome of this referendum was that
although a majority of people had voted for devolution, this
majority was not deemed large enough to enact the legislation,
and politically the country was at a low ebb. The sonnets were
written as a response to this disappointing blow for Scotland and
in them Morgan considers the enormous changes that have
already affected Scotland through the millennia as well as
imagining those which have yet to come.
Slate is the first poem in this collection and the opening lines
introduce the idea of change. In it, the speaker depicts this land
we know as Scotland in its formative years, millions of years
before the arrival of humans and describes how this prehistoric
landscape developed and was shaped.
STRUCTURE
Task 1
Count how many syllables there are in each line of the
poem.
Task 2
Annotate the poem to show the rhyme scheme. Label the
first rhyming sound as A, and use the same letter at the
end of any line where that sound recurs. Label the second
rhyming sound as B and use the same letter at the end of
any line where that sound recurs. Keep going like this.
HINT you shouldn’t go beyond the letter G!
STRUCTURE
‘Slate’ as a sonnet:
• It keeps some of the usual sonnet rules, but not
all of them:
• Every line has exactly 10 syllables
• There is a rhyme scheme: ABBA CDDC EFG
EFG
• The poem doesn’t have a volta (or ‘turn’): line 8
doesn’t even finish with the end of a thought or
sentence but carries right on into line 9 as the
narrator describes how Scotland’s weather and
geology interacted.
These words are in present tense while
everything else is in past tense. Morgan is
trying to make Scotland seem eternal.
The speaking voice
is outside history,
looking in.
There is no beginning. We saw Lewis
laid down, where there was not much but thunder
and volcanic fires; watched long seas plunder
faults; laughed as Staffa cooled………..
Personfication
Morgan personifies Scotland itself, giving it human actions. He
also embodies Scotland, giving it a living body, so that it is not just
a chunk of geology.
……………………………………Drumlins blue as
bruises were grated off like nutmegs; bens,
and a great glen, gave rough back we like
to the think the ages must streak, surely strike,
seldom stroke, but raised and shaken, with tens
of thousands of rains, blizzards, sea-poundings
shouldered off into night and memory
Morgan personifies Scotland itself, giving it human actions. He
also embodies Scotland, giving it a living body, so that it is not just
a chunk of geology.
Memory of men! That was to come. Great
in their empty hunger these surroundings
threw walls to the sky, the sorry glory
of a rainbow. Their heels kicked flint, chalk, slate.
All this use of embodiment and personification supports
Morgan’s overall theme. He is saying that even without
people, Scotland is alive and vibrant, full of energy and
purpose.
SOUND EFFECTS – Alliteration, Assonance and Rhyme
There is no beginning. We saw Lewis
laid down, where there was not much but thunder
and volcanic fires; watched long seas plunder
faults; laughed as Staffa cooled………..
SOUND EFFECTS – Alliteration, Assonance and Rhyme
……………………………………Drumlins blue as
bruises were grated off like nutmegs; bens,
and a great glen, gave rough back we like
to the think the ages must streak, surely strike,
seldom stroke, but raised and shaken, with tens
of thousands of rains, blizzards, sea-poundings
shouldered off into night and memory
SOUND EFFECTS – Alliteration, Assonance and Rhyme
All these sound effects draw our attention, and also
give us a sensory experience: we don’t just read the
poem with our eyes but also almost hear it. This has
the effect of making us feel more involved in the
poem.
The sound effects support Morgan’s overall message
about the vital importance of Scotland by making it
feel lively, vibrant and noisy, and by making Scotland
feel like something we just have to pay attention to.