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Meeting at night
Task E - Our comments
The rhyme scheme of the poem has an unusual mirror-image structure,
ABCCBA. This tends to emphasise the couplet rhyme in the middle of each
stanza. The lines involved are heavily involved in sound symbolism,
each representing a significant moment in the poem. The description
in stanza 1 of the waves 'leaping' around the boat represents them as
if they are waking in a fiery fashion from sleep. This prefigures the
danger in stanza 2 of the lovers waking whoever is against their romantic
involvement. The part of stanza 2 that alludes to this fear is the equivalent
two lines, involving the CC rhyme again. The couplet rhyme connection
between the two stanzas thus helps us to see the content of the two
pairs of lines as parallel in meaning (via the 'parallelism rule').
There do not appear to be any significant assonantal patterns in addition
to those covered by the sound symbolism analysis in Task C. There are,
however, some clear alliterative patterns not included in that analysis.
The static description in the first two lines of stanza 1 is marked
by /l/ alliteration and the following,
more active and contrasting, two lines are marked by an alternation
between /t/ and /l/.
There is also foregrounding via /p/ and
/s/ alliteration in the last two lines
of the stanza on 'pushing prow' and 'speed . . . slushy sand'. This
could highlight the possibility of an allusion to the sexual act ('pushing
prow' = phallus, 'cove' = vagina, 'slushy sand' = interior of vagina
and 'quench its speed' = moment of ejaculation), prefiguring what can
be inferred to happen in stanza 2 after the lovers meet (an interpretation
strengthened by the companion poem, 'Parting at Morning').
The /s/ alliteration in 'sea-scented'
does not appear to have a clear interpretative connection. The representation
of the tap at the window and the lighting of the match has a high density
of stop consonants in words other than those involved in the sound symbolism
already examined. This helps to foreground further the onomatopoeic
quality of those lines.
Overall, then, a poem which uses sound symbolism is unusually densely
also uses rhyme and alliteration to augment the structurally symbolic
enactment found in the poem.
Additional Information
Interestingly, after we had written the material for 'Meeting at Night',
we found two commentaries on it (including its onomatopoeic effects),
one by the critic, F. R. Leavis, and the other by the critics and stylisticians,
Walter Nash and Ronald Carter. If you compare these accounts, you can
see some of the similarities and differences between traditional practical
criticism and stylistic analysis. All three accounts are similar with
respect to their understanding of the poem (though some minor details
are a bit different, and Leavis makes more explicit evaluative statements
than the other two). Leavis's account refers briefly to the language
of the poem but does not analyse it at all. Both our account and the
account by Nash and Carter go into much more analytical detail. Ours
is more detailed and explicit than Nash and Carter's, but we each point
out some relevant details which Leavis's account omits. Consequently,
there is a clear contrast between (a) our approach, and (b) the account
by Nash and Carter on the one hand, and Leavis's on the other. This
contrast becomes even more clear if one takes their readership into
account: Leavis's more perfunctory account is an article from an important
academic journal, whereas the stylistics-oriented accounts are both
written to help undergraduates gain a better grasp of the poem.
References
Leavis, F. R. (1975) 'Imagery and Movement'. In Martin, Graham and
P. N. Furbank (eds.) Twentieth Century poetry: Critical Essays and
Documents, The Open University, 33-49.
Nash, W. and Carter, R. (1990) Seeing through Language, Blackwell
Publishers, 119-129.
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