The Sound Collector
This poem is framed by two bookending stanzas starting with 'A stranger called this morning.' This repetition reveals the narrative of the poem, whilst the stanzas sandwiched in between are filled with sensory language, revealing what is lost when the man left 'only silence.'
The sensory language works on many levels, for example the ballad rhyme scheme gives a tonal, sing-song nature to the poem , a 'sound,' that presumably is also stolen. The verbal nouns, such as 'ticking,' and 'whistling,' are onomatopoeia, whilst the alliteration in 'The bubbling of the bathtub,' creates the sound of the bubbles itself. The sounds themselves are not all pleasant sounds, such as 'The crying of the baby,' however each presents something of the mundane, everyday workings of life and the disruption caused when this normality is changed: 'Life will never be the same.'
Mrs Moon
This poem reads like nursery rhyme or children's narrative on the surface, with it's jaunty rhythm and alternating rhymes. Its imagery is comforting both visually and inherently with the personification 'little old lady,' emphasized by alliteration, creating a sense of care and gentleness around the moon, which is confirmed with the lullaby cliche 'rock-a-bye.' It plays on well-known metaphor of the man on the moon but instead gives a maternal and purposeful character to the moon, respectively entitling it 'Mrs Moon.' The idea that she is 'knitting the night,' and this 'with a ball of fading light,' two phrases connected by monosyllabic rhyme, touches on the process of day 'fading,' into night and back into day again.
Soil
This poem is addressed to the soil, as if a long lost friend. The speaker reveals, 'But gradually I grew away from you/ Of course you were still there,' which shows the fixed nature of the earthen soil and relays that the speaker wast he one who left, not the soil in this relationship. The speaker also reveals his habits that have changed over time, making him almost incompatible with the soil, for example, 'I'm strictly an indoor man,' and, 'I'm strictly a city man.' The repetition of the structure 'I'm strictly,' shows the depth of the speaker's separation from the earth and the nature of rural life, as he identifies more with the indoor space but also has moved locations, becoming further away from the soil. The phrase 'a handful of you drummed/ On my father's waxworked coffin,' reveals the poets loss and his deep connection with the soil. The ground's connection with death and finality here contrasts with the its association with childhood play in, 'I made pies out of you,' and 'we roughandtumbled together.'
