Funeral Blues.
In this poem, the writer uses regular verse and traditional pattern of rhythm and rhyme to give impact to his unexpected imagery of the end of a relationship when he cuts himself off from the rest of the his life because his grief is too much. To describe the incredible pain and isolation of when someone you love leaves you and the way time seems insignificant, the writer starts the poem by reiterating the title, creating emphasis by his use of assonance of the monosyllables: Stop all the clocks. Unlike Valentine, this poem incorporates a series of metaphors to describe the writers feelings instead of using one extended metaphor; he then continues to describe the suffering he feels and the way everything that used to have a purpose stops by using the atypical metaphor of a dog and a bone. To exemplify the way he feels his life has ended, he then uses metaphors associated with a funeral:
Silence the pianos and with a muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
To show the end of happiness and the start of mourning, the writer includes the silencing of the pianos and then low thudding drums used at funeral to describe the phenomenal sadness he feels now the relationship is over. He includes the metaphor coffin to either represent his own emotional death he feels now he has lost something so valuable to him or to represent the death of the relationship.
The second stanza further illustrates the engulfing pain this poem is describing. To symbolise the feeling that everything in his life is also submerged in pain, the writer uses the word moaning to describe an aeroplane, followed by:
Scribbling on the sky the message He is dead
This line typifies the lackadaisicality he feels now nothing matters by using the word scribbling, which is given emphasis by the sibilance of sky. The fact that the message has been written on the sky shows the scale of the writers grief now the relationship has ended. To show the God-like significance his partner was in his life,
Silence the pianos and with a muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
To show the end of happiness and the start of mourning, the writer includes the silencing of the pianos and then low thudding drums used at funeral to describe the phenomenal sadness he feels now the relationship is over. He includes the metaphor coffin to either represent his own emotional death he feels now he has lost something so valuable to him or to represent the death of the relationship.
The second stanza further illustrates the engulfing pain this poem is describing. To symbolise the feeling that everything in his life is also submerged in pain, the writer uses the word moaning to describe an aeroplane, followed by:
Scribbling on the sky the message He is dead
This line typifies the lackadaisicality he feels now nothing matters by using the word scribbling, which is given emphasis by the sibilance of sky. The fact that the message has been written on the sky shows the scale of the writers grief now the relationship has ended. To show the God-like significance his partner was in his life,