Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The speaker in "Cat-Rap" is the domestic cat who is narrating from his own point of view.
"Forest" and "Like A Beacon" are both narrated by the poet, with "Forest" being written from the perspective of the forest, and "Beacon" being more of an autobiographical poem.
Form and Meter
Cat-Rap has an A-B-C-B meter It is a variant of the quatrain and is iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter.
Metaphors and Similes
The title of "Like A Beacon" is a simile, comparing the plantain that she has bought and carrying in her coat pocket to a beacon that is both warming her, and also lighting her way home to her roots.
Alliteration and Assonance
From "Forest":
"Forest in tune every dayto watrsound and birdsound
Forest letting her hair down
Irony
The cat lets his humans think of him as a domestic calm little cat when he knows he is an urban renegade.
Genre
Modern Poetry
Setting
London and Guyana
Tone
The tone is generally optimistic; it is also wistful at times.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The cat in "Cat-Rap" is the protagonist, and the humans who see him as "just" a domestic cat are the antagonists.
Major Conflict
The conflict in "Beacon" is within Nichols herself; she is living in London but is conflicted about this because she is homesick and needs constantly to feel that she is carrying a part of Guyana with her.
Climax
Nichols manages to find plantains; this is the climax of the poem because it enables her to feel both that she is carrying a secret close to her that nobody else knows about and she is also able to ease her homesickness a little.
Foreshadowing
The cat's observation that he has nine lives foreshadows his admittance that he has already used five of them with his edgy behavior.
Understatement
No specific examples
Allusions
The poet alludes to the T.S. Eliot cat character "Macavity" in "Cat-Rap" and also alludes to the musical "Cats" in that the musical developed the character much further than Eliot did.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The forest is used to encompass all of the wildlife and plant life in the forest itself.
Personification
The cat is personified in that he claims to be a rapper, and an urban man about town.
Hyperbole
No specific examples
Onomatopoeia
No specific examples
