The Liar (poem) Essay Questions

How does Baraka use formal features (i.e. meter, visual elements) to create meaning in "The Liar"?

One of the ways that Baraka creates meaning in "The Liar" is through meter and rhythm. For instance, he uses unconventional punctuation and stanza breaks in order to create a musical and even beat in "The Liar." The reader's voice pauses when it encounters any kind of grammatical punctuation, meaning that it slows down and speeds up as it reads a sentence. An example of this is in Stanza I: "(Of the tree's shadow / winding around the chair, a distant music / of frozen birds rattling / in the cold" (lines 3-6). Most readers will speed up through the open-parenthesis and slow down for a slight pause right after "chair." Your voice will also pause unconsciously after "music," even though there is no punctuation there, because of the natural line break. This results in the reader's voice speeding up and slowing down as they scan Baraka's poem, imitating registers that sound almost musical. Another example of a musical meter in "The Liar" occurs in Stanza III: "Though I am a man / who is loud / on the birth / of his ways" (lines 12-5). Read the above passage a few times aloud to yourself. Most readers will pause unconsciously after each line break, splitting the sentence fragment into four evenly spaced parts. There is a bumping, musical quality to these lines even though there is no punctuation.

Look at the final stanza of the poem. Create a conjecture on who "they" might be and what kind of relationship they might have with the speaker. Support your reasoning with evidence.

In "The Liar," the speaker goes through a metamorphosis of self that "erased familiarity / from [his] face." Thus, the change in his soul affected his exterior to the extent that those who knew him before could not recognize him anymore. Therefore, the group of people who say "It is Roi / who is dead" might be people from the speaker's life pre-metamorphosis, who cannot recognize this new version of the speaker's self.