Hyenas are nocturnal carnivores, found in Africa and Eurasia, and are generally perceived to be scavengers.

The hyena in this poem is a spotted hyena, the largest species, which lives in sub-Saharan Africa. Spotted hyenas, unlike other species, hunt their own prey rather than relying on scavenging alone.

African Veldt - Setting

PURPOSE

Hyena recounts the actions and thoughts of a hyena; an untamed, vicious and sinister animal.

The poem is written as a dramatic monologue, giving the reader an extended insight into the character through the first person narrative and emphasising the murderous intent of the wild creature.

I am waiting for you.

I have been travelling all morning through the bush

And not eaten.

I am lying at the edge of the bush

On a dusty path that leads from the burnt-out kraal.

Speaker = the hyena Second person is used throughout the poem to draw the reader in. This direct threat right at the beginning is designed to be startling to the reader. It is immediately menacing.

Present tense = immediacy

devious yet patient

Vivid descriptions of the landscape = desolate and sparse.

Link: the harshness and unforgiving nature of the landscape ↔ the

similar personality of the hyena. Life is tough ↔ so is the hyena.

I am panting, it is midday, I found no water-hole.

I am very fierce without food and although my eyes Are screwed to slits against the sun

You must believe I am prepared to spring.

Alliteration. Emphasises the dangerous nature of this animal. Its need to feed and survive takes precedence over everything else.

Alliteration. Sibiliant ‘sss’ sounds make the hyena sound menacing. Even in the unbearable heat, he is alert and ready to strike.

Characterisation – the hyena is portrayed as a devious, crafty opportunistic predator

What do you think of me?

I have a rough coat like Africa.

I am crafty with dark spots

Like the bush-tufted plains of Africa.

Direct rhetorical question to the reader.

TONE – playful, provocative – the hyena wants us to focus on his physique.

Figurative language (similes) are used to compare the hyena to the continent of Africa and its environment

Another clear link between the hyena and the surrounding landscape. The hyena has evolved to fit his harsh surroundings. Figurative language emphasises the harsh environment from which the hyena must try and eke out a living.

I sprawl as a shaggy bundle of gathered energy

Like Africa sprawling in its waters.

I trot, I lope, I slaver, I am a ranger.

I hunch my shoulders. I eat the dead.

Figurative language - the hyena is sitting poised and ready, waiting for its moment, so in tune with the land it resembles.

Word choice – verbs help to describe the movement of the creature, while others are deliberately used to provoke disgust

Short, blunt statement reveals its most negative feature – the fact it is a scavenger designed to gorge itself on the dead.

Do you like my song?

When the moon pours hard and cold on the veldt

I sing, and I am the slave of darkness.

Over the stone walls and the mud walls and the ruined places

And the owls, the moonlight falls.

Another rhetorical question – the hyena is playing with the reader and encouraging them to consider the his character

Metaphor - the hyena compares itself to a servant of night. Associations of darkness and shadows with subterfuge and shady business. Nocturnal. Lurking in the darkness.

I sniff a broken drum. I bristle. My pelt is silver.

I howl my song to the moon - up it goes.

Would you meet me there in the waste places?

Another question. Another challenge. Or maybe a sinister invitation?

The hyena is trying to intimidate the reader. Emphasising that it is a devious and patient creature.

It is said I am a good match

For a dead lion. I put my muzzle

At his golden flanks, and tear. He

Is my golden supper, but my tastes are easy.

Its skill as a scavenger is evident - feasting on the deadliest predator in Africa.

Repetition of ‘golden’ contrasts the beauty of the lion with the ugliness of the hyena.

He is a scavenger – he isn’t fussy and will eat anything he can.

I have a crowd of fangs, and I use them.

Oh and my tongue - do you like me

When it comes lolling out over my jaw

Very long, and I am laughing?

I am not laughing.

But I am not snarling either, only

Panting in the sun, showing you

What I grip

Carrion with.

Metaphor - emphasises the number of strong teeth in the creature’s powerful jaw. Savagery.

The hyena’s howl is often described as laughing. He dispels this. Short sentence for emphasis. Very abrupt.

I am waiting

For the foot to slide,

For the heart to seize,

For the leaping sinews to go slack,

For the fight to the death to be fought to the death,

For a glazing eye and a rumour of blood.

Repetition of the word ‘waiting’ from the first stanza – emphasises the hyena’s patient nature.

Repetition – continues the idea that the hyena is a creature of opportunities. It, at times, relies on accidents and weakness – it preys on the vulnerable.

I am crouching in my dry shadows

Till you are ready for me.

My place is to pick you clean

And leave your bones to the wind.

Word choice - reveals the instinctual savage and barbaric nature of the hyena. It lives this way not through choice but through necessity.

Words directed at the reader emphaise the cold, menacing, calculating nature of the hyena and its savage potential.

THEMES

On a simplistic level, the poem deals with themes that all humans can empathise with. The themes of life; death; survival; endurance; sense of self; desperation are all common throughout the poem.

Moreover, Morgan goes to great lengths to illustrate the animal’s own sense of self-worth. The reader is continually informed of the Hyena’s prowess and how fierce an animal the latter is, yet towards the end of the poem we learn that the Hyena is only a match for a lion(a fierce animal in itself) once it is dead. Although essentially a scavenger which opts to pick the flesh of an animal once it is dead, the Hyena here is rather self-assured in its own capabilities as a fierce beast who, evidently, its enemies should fear.

STRUCTUREHyena has very short and concise sentences, written in a minimalistic style.

The effect often creates a threatening tone, with the short sentences often drawing emphasis and creating tension i.e. ‘I eat the dead’.

Also, the use of rhetorical questions in stanza 1 and 3 are used to lure the reader into a false sense of security about the protagonist. The short sentences contrast with the use of commas to create lists and build momentum. For example, I trot, I lope, I slaver, I am a ranger.

Winter

Like ‘Trio’ this poem deals with the topic of winter . However, it has a very different mood.

In your pairs decide what the mood of this poem is.

What lines/words/ideas helped you decide the mood of the poem?

PURPOSE

In Winter, Edwin Morgan writes about death and the relentless passing of time. Winter borrows words and ideas from Tennyson’s poem Tithonus. In Tithonus, the title character, a Trojan, is granted immortality but does not ask for eternal youth. As a consequence, he is doomed to age and wither, but never die. Tithonus laments that Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn, keeps him in her home in the east (from which she rises every morning).

In this poem, Morgan depicts a frozen pond, near his home in the West End of Glasgow, that becomes a symbol of death.

The year goes, the woods decay, and after,

many a summer dies. The swan

on Bingham’s pond, a ghost , comes and goes.

It goes, and ice appears, it holds,

bears gulls that stand around surprised,

blinking in the heavy light, bears boys

when skates take over swan-tracks gone.

Deterioration and death are two prominent ideas in the opening line of the poem. ’Decay’ and ‘dies’ contribute to an idea of ageing and, eventually, passing away

Repetition of ‘goes’ and ‘gone’ – reinforces idea of the passing of time. Negative verbs. Note: present tense!

Metaphor - links with this idea of life ebbing away. Usually a swan is a beautiful creature, but here it is haunting = dark imagery.

Oxymoron - a figure of speech when two words that contradict each other are used together. It’s a good description of the quality of daylight you can see in winter, when the sky seems low and brooding – feels unsettling.

More negative verbs.

After many summer dyes, the swan-white ice

glints only crystal beyond white. Even

dearest blue’s not there, though poets would find it.

I find one stark scene

cut by evening cries, by warring air.

He is a poet, however, and even he can’t find it. It’s as if the winter is so bleak that it has depressed him and drained the poetry out of him.

There seems to be a contradiction in the way the ice is pictured here. In line 8 it is said to be ‘swan-white’ but in line 9 it ‘glints only crystal beyond white’. The colour has gone. It is as if Morgan creates that first, positive colour, then pulls back from it again.

First mention of the 1st person narrator

Word choice – negative connotations of violence and conflict

The muffled hiss of blades escapes into breath,

hangs with it a moment, fades off.

Fades off, goes, the scene, the voices fade,

the line of trees, the woods that fall, decay

and break, the dark comes down, the shouts

run off into it and disappear.

More repetition of negative verbs associated

with death and the passing of time

This is the point where humanity leaves the poem. First the ‘voices fade’ in line 15 as the boys seem to skate further away….

…then disappear.

This poem has had a swan, some gulls, and a group of skating boys, but they are all gone now. Only the woods are left but even they are decaying.

At last the lamps go too, when fog

drives monstrous down the dual carriageway

out to the west, and even in my room

and on this paper I do not know

about the grey dead pane

of ice that sees nothing and that nothing sees.

Even artificial, human attempts at creating light have been defeated

Light, which is always a metaphor for something positive, has gone. In its place we have another metaphor -‘monstrous’ fog.

The poem is now leaving the world of nature.

This is an odd thing for him to say. He does know about the ice, because he described it for us earlier in the poem. He just does not seem to feel that he has got to grips with it, or engaged with it.

The ending is very nihilistic. This means that it is bleak, that it is interested in nothingness (we see the word ‘nothing’ repeated within the final line.)

FORM AND STRUCTURE

In this poem, the speaker uses the past tense to reflect on time and mortality. Although there is only one stanza, a natural break occurs between lines ten and eleven. In the first ten lines, the speaker establishes the setting and melancholic mood of the poem. He considers the passing of the seasons on the pond and, through his word choice and imagery, reveals death as the central concern of the poem.

In the latter section of the poem, he focuses on one particularly vivid memory to reflect on the paradox that although death is a certainty, it remains an enigma which even poets’ imaginations cannot decipher. The word choice and imagery are powerful and create a bleak sombre mood, while repetition and enjambment emphasise the inexorable and cyclical nature of the passing of time.

THEMESThe main themes of the poem are the passage of time and death. Through the description of the progress of a day, Morgan’s speaker shows how vitality fades and, as a conclusion, disappears completely. Though the language he employs is engaging, the dark nature of this message sticks in the reader’s mind. Tennyson’s poem was a tale of suffering and lamentation and with such close links to his work, Morgan’s poem possesses a similarly despairing, bleak and nihilistic quality. As time passes, a person becomes more aware of his or her distance from youthful promise and possibility.

What we also understand is the speaker’s recognition of the inevitability of death. The metaphor of the pond as life is particularly effective as we see that, with the passing seasons, all things change and are part of a natural process. If spring represents fertility and vitality, winter comes as the natural conclusion to the cycle. Though Morgan’s language provides an eloquent examination of a dark idea, his skill also leaves a haunting image in the reader’s mind.

PURPOSE

Slate is a poem from a collection called Sonnets from Scotland which Morgan published in 1984. This series of poems was written after an important time in Scotland’s history– the Scottish Referendum of 1979. The outcome of this referendum was that although a majority of people had voted for devolution, this majority was not deemed large enough to enact the legislation, and politically the country was at a low ebb. The sonnets were written as a response to this disappointing blow for Scotland and in them Morgan considers the enormous changes that have already affected Scotland through the millennia as well as imagining those which have yet to come.

Slate is the first poem in this collection and the opening lines introduce the idea of change. In it, the speaker depicts this land we know as Scotland in its formative years, millions of years before the arrival of humans and describes how this prehistoric landscape developed and was shaped.

STRUCTURE

Task 1 Count how many syllables there are in each line of the poem.

Task 2Annotate the poem to show the rhyme scheme. Label the first rhyming sound as A, and use the same letter at the end of any line where that sound recurs. Label the second rhyming sound as B and use the same letter at the end of any line where that sound recurs. Keep going like this.

HINT you shouldn’t go beyond the letter G!

STRUCTURE

‘Slate’ as a sonnet:• It keeps some of the usual sonnet rules, but not

all of them:• Every line has exactly 10 syllables• There is a rhyme scheme: ABBA CDDC EFG

EFG• The poem doesn’t have a volta (or ‘turn’): line 8

doesn’t even finish with the end of a thought or sentence but carries right on into line 9 as the narrator describes how Scotland’s weather and geology interacted.

There is no beginning. We saw Lewis

laid down, where there was not much but thunder

and volcanic fires; watched long seas plunder

faults; laughed as Staffa cooled………..

These words are in present tense while everything else is in past tense. Morgan is trying to make Scotland seem eternal.

The speaking voice is outside history, looking in.

Personfication

……………………………………Drumlins blue as

bruises were grated off like nutmegs; bens,

and a great glen, gave rough back we like

to the think the ages must streak, surely strike,

seldom stroke, but raised and shaken, with tens

of thousands of rains, blizzards, sea-poundings

shouldered off into night and memory

Morgan personifies Scotland itself, giving it human actions. He also embodies Scotland, giving it a living body, so that it is not just a chunk of geology.

Memory of men! That was to come. Great

in their empty hunger these surroundings

threw walls to the sky, the sorry glory

of a rainbow. Their heels kicked flint, chalk, slate.

Morgan personifies Scotland itself, giving it human actions. He also embodies Scotland, giving it a living body, so that it is not just a chunk of geology.

All this use of embodiment and personification supports Morgan’s overall theme. He is saying that even without people, Scotland is alive and vibrant, full of energy and purpose.

There is no beginning. We saw Lewis

laid down, where there was not much but thunder

and volcanic fires; watched long seas plunder

faults; laughed as Staffa cooled………..

SOUND EFFECTS – Alliteration, Assonance and Rhyme

……………………………………Drumlins blue as

bruises were grated off like nutmegs; bens,

and a great glen, gave rough back we like

to the think the ages must streak, surely strike,

seldom stroke, but raised and shaken, with tens

of thousands of rains, blizzards, sea-poundings

shouldered off into night and memory

SOUND EFFECTS – Alliteration, Assonance and Rhyme

All these sound effects draw our attention, and also give us a sensory experience: we don’t just read the poem with our eyes but also almost hear it. This has the effect of making us feel more involved in the poem.

The sound effects support Morgan’s overall message about the vital importance of Scotland by making it feel lively, vibrant and noisy, and by making Scotland feel like something we just have to pay attention to.

SOUND EFFECTS – Alliteration, Assonance and Rhyme