Sunday, 8 May 2011

All The Right Moves


Threatening dark shadows
Glistening through the trees
Searching for the unknown
Stopping and listening
Waiting for the unknown

Plotting a net of action
Defensively lurking
To catch the unknown
Beating and screaming
To kill the unknown.

4 comments:

  1. If I had to write a poetry commentary on this poem, I would focus on:
    Diction: Your use verbs. The majority of words in your poem are verbs. This shows how actively the chimps were moving through the forest. It creates a lot of movement: "searching", "stopping", "listening", "plotting". It also creates imagery-- you paint a picture of a group of people or a team preparing for attack, which is exactly what the chimps were doing.
    Repetition: Your repetition of the word "unknown" and its significance. The repetition emphasizes how the group of chimps didn't even know who it was they were attacking. The "unknown" is just the enemy to them and nothing else. This is a bit ironic because both these chimps and the enemies are the same. They are one people (or should I say one monkey?) yet they do not know each other.
    Syntax: You use punctuation once: "To kill the unknown."
    Shows how death is the end. End of life, but also the end of the attack or the war. After the "unknown" or the enemy is killed, its all over.
    Your phrases are choppy and short, which create a sense of tension that the chimps are feeling. The pauses between phrases also somehow symbolize the time the chimps wait and prepare for their unknown enemies.
    Good job!

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  2. Thank you for your comment, I didn't even put any thought into my punctuation but I really like how you analyzed it.

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  3. HI JORE
    If I had not watched the video, then I would never guess what the unknown was. Why did you decide to label the chimpanzee as the "unknown"? Was it simply to create tension to the reader?

    Also in your first line and second line, you state that "shadows...Glistening through the trees". Is glistening the right word? I means shadows don't glisten I think? They lurk/creep/float?

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  4. Hey Monique,

    Thanks so much for your feedback! I chose to name the others as the "unknown" because I wanted to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the monkey does not even know who the attackers are. They are looking around and are being very quiet yet still feel the tension that is approaching. It is interesting that you ask about the word "glisten" because at first I wasn't sure either if it was the right word but then I thought it fit because the shadows are supposed to be conveyed as a kind of liquid motion. The shadows are so gentle and silent that it seemed to me as though they had something magical to them. :)

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