‘An Examination of
her body after death’
The poem ‘An Examination of her body after death’ is a poem by Glen Colquhoun. The poem is about the author’s dead friend in a morgue. The main ideas of the poem are denial and remembering. The author uses a lot of language features like repition, negatives and metaphors to show these main ideas.
One of the important ideas in the poem is denial and the author uses repition to show this. An example of this is ‘you are not her face’ which is referring to the dead body not being his close friend and the ‘you are not’ is used at start of every stanza. This quote that the author says shows that the writer is showing anger at frustration at the death of a loved one. This repition helps me understand this poem a lot because of the use of negatives in the poem such as “not” which is referring to that the writer can not accepted the death of someone he loves. All this helps me to understand one of the main ideas of denial in the poem.
Another one of the important ideas in the poem is remembering and the author uses metaphors to show this. The metaphors that Colquhoun uses in this poem are all the memories of his dead friend such as “The sound of birds has gone away”. This quote is referring to his dead friend’s voice being like a birds singing which means his friends voice was really happy, cheerful and nice like a birds. Colquhoun also uses metaphors describing the ugly body in front of him not being his friend. An example of this is "Who has corrected the drawings of children with expensive artists?" This quote is describing that his friends body has changed, become ugly and the author disbelieves that that is his dead friend lying in front of him. This technique that Colquhoun has used helped me a lot in this poem because it showed how he felt about the death of his friend and how much the friend meant to the author. All this helped me understand one of the main ideas, remembering.
In conclusion I think that the author’s purpose in using all the language features, repition, negatives and metaphors and main ideas, denial and remembering is to show how he felt about the death of his friend and he is expressing himself by remembering and denial.
The poem ‘An Examination of her body after death’ is a poem by Glen Colquhoun. The poem is about the author’s dead friend in a morgue. The main ideas of the poem are denial and remembering. The author uses a lot of language features like repition, negatives and metaphors to show these main ideas.
One of the important ideas in the poem is denial and the author uses repition to show this. An example of this is ‘you are not her face’ which is referring to the dead body not being his close friend and the ‘you are not’ is used at start of every stanza. This quote that the author says shows that the writer is showing anger at frustration at the death of a loved one. This repition helps me understand this poem a lot because of the use of negatives in the poem such as “not” which is referring to that the writer can not accepted the death of someone he loves. All this helps me to understand one of the main ideas of denial in the poem.
Another one of the important ideas in the poem is remembering and the author uses metaphors to show this. The metaphors that Colquhoun uses in this poem are all the memories of his dead friend such as “The sound of birds has gone away”. This quote is referring to his dead friend’s voice being like a birds singing which means his friends voice was really happy, cheerful and nice like a birds. Colquhoun also uses metaphors describing the ugly body in front of him not being his friend. An example of this is "Who has corrected the drawings of children with expensive artists?" This quote is describing that his friends body has changed, become ugly and the author disbelieves that that is his dead friend lying in front of him. This technique that Colquhoun has used helped me a lot in this poem because it showed how he felt about the death of his friend and how much the friend meant to the author. All this helped me understand one of the main ideas, remembering.
In conclusion I think that the author’s purpose in using all the language features, repition, negatives and metaphors and main ideas, denial and remembering is to show how he felt about the death of his friend and he is expressing himself by remembering and denial.