What Do You Like About Ambush By Gbemisola Adeoti

There are so much to be liked about the poem; starting from The title of the poem, The fusion of repetition and metaphor to create perfect imageries, The rural depiction within the poem, The use of nature to draw the poem closer to reality, etc.

Let's broaden them one after the other. The title of the poem speaks openly the intention of the poem. It reveals that danger is embedded in the poem and there will be hunters (giant hawk, giant whale) and preys (the people, the sinker) in the poem.

Another thing to be liked about Ambush by Gbemisola Adeoti is how the poet manage to join repetition and personification in creating perfect imageries. "The land" was repeated many times in the poem while serving as metaphors. Example is "The land is a giant whale", "The land is a saber toothed tiger", "The land is a giant hawk", etc.

It became evident in the poem that the poem held a rural setting with the usage of "saber toothed tiger that cries deep in the glade/ while infants shudder home" and "lies patiently ahead/awaiting in ambush"; is worthy of creating likeness in a reader.

The poet drew the poem close reality with the use of nature and natural things. Things like animals (whale, tiger, hawk, etc) and natural things (dusk, space, dreams, etc) made the poem take the look of reality and could be easily related to what readers must have seen or may possibly see.

Ambush is an awesome poem and it a very intelligent poet as Gbemisola Adeoti to have written such.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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Analysis Of Life In Our Village By Markwei Martie

In our little village
When elders are around,
Boys must not look at girls
And girls must not look at boys
Because the elders say
That is not good.

Even wn night comes
Boys must play separately,
Girls must play separately.
But humanity is weak
So boys and girls meet.

The boys play hide and seek
And the girls play hide and seek.
The boys know where the girls hide
And the girls know where the boys hide_
So in their hide and seek,
Boys seek girls,
And each to each sing
Songs of love.
©Markwei Martie

The author of the poem, Life In Our Village, is a Ghanaian poet and writer, he later took to religious path and career.

Looking at the poem which has 3 stanzas of unequal lines, the first stanza talks about the reason why boys and girls must not play together, the second stanza stated the reason why boys and girls didn't heed the advice and played together, the final stanza was about the outcome of the boys and girls play together.

The spoke of reality in an entertaining way. It held a classic rural setting (like in the days when moon
light play was rampant) and the diction was very simple and easily understood by all.

The theme of the poem are:
(1) The theme of irresistibility
(2) The theme of delinquency
(3) The theme of disillusionment

The irresistibility part of the poem was that "humanity is weak"(line 10), the boys and the girls could not help it but play together in spite of elders warnings and reasons.

The delinquency part of the poem showed that youths will always be youths and there are prone to misconduct due to their stubbornness and lack of broad experience of life.

The disillusionment part of the poem was that play was given a different picture different from what the youth knew it to be but they broke such illusion of play by playing together.

In the poem, one would see repetition, parallelism, euphemism, etc.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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What Are The Theme In The Anvil And The Hammer By Kofi Awoonor

This post tends to point at few themes in the Kofi Awoonor's "The Anvil And The Hammer"; in order to get larger discussion about the poem [check complete analysis of the anvil and the hammer by kofi awoonor]

"Caught between the anvil and the hammer
In the forging house of a new life,
Transforming the pangs that delivered me
Into the joy of new songs
The trapping of the past, tender and tenuous
Woven with fibre of sisal and
Washed in the blood of the goat in the fetish hut
Are laced with the flimsy glories of paved streets
The jargon of a new dialectic comes with the
Charisma of the perpetual search on the outlaw’s ..." is a two stanza poem with a political setting.

Simple languages and imageries of the poem help the symbolisms embedded within. The candid tone of the poem speaker proved a feeling of triumph.

Let's take this moment to enjoy the Theme of Cultural Contrast (which can also be called Clash of
Culture or Cultural Disparity or Conflict of Culture or any other name used to refer to the mixture of two different lifestyles). Like the poem "Piano And Drums" by Gabriel Okara, the persona in the poem "The Anvil and The Hammer" by Kofi Awoonor experienced two different ways of life (the African and the Western) which he puts thus in line 1-2:
"Caught between the anvil and the hammer
In the forging house of a new life"

The impact or implication of the contrast led to the poem's title "The Anvil And The Hammer" because they are instrument for creation. With the use of symbolism, where the words "anvil" and "hammer" are made to symbolize both African believe system and Non-African believe system, the voice in the poem shows that the contrasting cultures have reshaped or remolded him; it is not a surprise that the line 3 begins with the word "transforming".

The poem also has the Theme of Cultural Colonization. The act of colonization in Africa went beyond commercial exploitation; if silently examined, such act has an everlasting effect on Africa and Africans in general. Even long after colonization the culture of the colonial masters remains indelible in Africa and can never be wiped since it has been sown a "new garment" called civilization. The poem speaker referred metaphorically to the embraced new culture in line 2 as "a new life" and in line 9 "The jargon of a new dialectic". Because the poem speaker could not find a wayout of his cultural colonization, he resigned to the adoption of the past in present.

The theme of Adoption of Past In Present (rediscovery). In the poem "The Anvil And The Hammer" by Kofi Awoonor who died in the year 2013 at the age seventy eight, one can clearly see that the theme of the adoption of past in present revealed how undeniable the past was in the new life of the poem speaker to the extent he urged his ancestors in the opening line of stanza 2: "Sew the old days for us, our fathers/ That we can wear them under our new garment/ After we have washed ourselves in/ The whirlpools of many rivers' estuary".
The theme of Past in Present shows that Kofi Awoonor in this poem followed the opinion of Dennis Osadebay who in his poem titled "Young Africa's Plea" believed the merger of both cultures would make him a better man:
"Let me play with the white man's ways
Let me work with the black man's brains
Let my affairs themselves sort out
Then in sweet rebirth
I'll rise a better man"
(extracted from the poem "Young Africa's Plea" by Dennis Osadebay)

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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Describe The Feelings Of The Poet In Dry Your Tears Africa By BernardDadie

Like every long travel (the case where someone has been away for a very long time) part of the feelings such a person will develop are naka ot so different from the ones the poet developed before writing or composing this poem.

Bernard Binlin Dadie, an ivorian poet, wrote this masterpiece to prove to Africa,his motherland, that he had compared home and abroad and realised that home is better; he even mentioned how waste of time, travelling has been in line 3 and 10; "Out of the storm and squalls of fruitless journeys"

The feelings of the poet in "Dry Your Tears, Africa" brought about the following themes: the theme of assurance, nost
algia, futility and the themes did cloth the poem with reality.

Before taking a deep examination into the themes poem, let's briefly look at the form the poem took. The poet made use of very simple dictions which are everyday words. The five stanza poem carried uneven lines per stanza but no end rhyme occurred.
Beautiful poetic devices like repetitions, symbolisms, etc were the recipes in the poem.

The theme of Assurance radiated throughout the poem, stanza 1, 2, 3 and 5 have it. This assurance can be divided into two, namely the assurance of returning home and the assurance of hope for better tomorrow."Dry your tears, Africa!/Your children come back to you" was repeated in stanza 1 and 5 to maintain the fact that there was no going back on the issue of returning home; then stanza 2 revealed how the poet and his fellow African sojourners planned to sail or fly home "Through the crest of the wave and the babbling of the breeze"
The assurance of hope for better tomorrow was evident at the final part of the poem:
"Dry your tears, Africa!
Your children come back to you
their hands full of play things
and their hearts full of love.
They return to cloth you
in their dreams and their hopes."

The theme of Nostalgia is always cropping up in any discussion of home and abroad. Whenever a traveller remembers how home used to be, he/she wishes to be home. After the poet compared in stanza 3, "We have drunk/From all the springs/of ill fortune/and of glory"; he remembered how home was and confessed in stanza 4:
"And our senses are now opened
to the splendour of your beauty
to the smell of your forests
to the charm of your waters
to the clearness of your skies
to the caress of your sun
And to the charm of your foliage pearled by the dens".

The Theme of Futility in chasing glorified greener pastures only to find out that life is not a bed full of roses. The poet brought the thought to the mind of the readers make the readers understand that there are two sides to every coin of travelling: ill fortune and glory. He concluded that his travels were "fruitless journeys".

At this juncture, the feelings of the poet must have been understood to be resentful based on the above descriptions.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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What Is Freedom In Letter To Martha 17 By Dennis Brutus

Letter To Martha 17 written by Dennis Brutus is a great poem that revealed that one never misses a good thing till it departs. The poem speaker found importance in things that never amounted to anything.

The major theme of the poem is freedom. Because of imprisonment, the poem speaker realized the importance of being able to move freely from one distance to another without barricades, the importance of being able to see whatever one wishes to see without blockades, and the importance of being independent.

Cloud, sky, stars, birds, became the agents of freedom. In line 1 and 2, it was said that "In prison/ the clouds assume importance", then the hope of seeing the stars came to the mind of the poem speaker in line 11 followed by the thought about the complex aeronautics of the birds, their absolute freedom from care and the graceful unimpeded motion of the clouds which was likened to music, poetry and dance in stanza 4, 5, and 6.

It was shown in the poem that the hope for freedom and the admiration of those or things that are free would definitely lead the confined person into the realm of rhetorical questions. That is why four lines of rhetorical questions ended the poem:
"_where are they going
where will they dissolve
will they be seen by those at home
and whom will they delight?

The themes of the poem are (1) the importance of freedom (2) the effects of imprisonment (3) the unnoticed freedom of nature. The poem holds a tone of bewilderment and the language was simple with enjambments. Similes and personifications accompanied the great use of imagery to polish the poem.

Dennis Brutus was born in 1924 in Rhodesia, lived in South Africa, taught in South African High school, arrested for protest against Apartheid in 1963, etc.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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How Can You Explain Nostalgia In Birches By Robert Frost

Nostalgic feeling partially surfaced in the poem Birches by Robert Frost in line 23 to 24, "I should prefer to have some boy bend them/ As he went out and in to fetch the cows_"
partially making reference to the nature of his own background as a rural boy who played alone swinging the birch trees remembering how the pleasure used to be "riding them down over and over again/ Until he took the stiffness out
of them/ And not one but hung limp, not one was left/ For him to conquer."( line 29-32)

The full nostalgia began from line 41-44: "So was I once myself a swinger of birches/ And so I dream of going back to be/ It's when I'm weary of considerations/ And life is too much like a pathless wood" because of the burdens and boredom and monotony in adulthood and aging excluding the act of love he enjoyed.

The poem speaker further explained how swinging birches will balance his leaving the earth and returning compared to his leaving the earth after he must have died and wont be opportuned to return.

The poem maintained the theme of balancing, the theme of natural effect versus artificial effect, the theme of irreversibility, etc.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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The Serving Girl By Gladys Casely-Hayford

The tone of the poem is sweet and that of praise. The tone glorified the beauty of "The Serving Girl" since ladies eyes are part of the factors that determine their beauty. The tone of the poem also praised the deligence and carefulness of the serving girl.

The setting of the poem is rural. What do I mean by setting? A setting of a poem is the time, place, circustances surrounding the scenario(s) of a poem. Looking at the poem, it is vivid that where the serving girl performed her service was local because the palm wine she served was from a "sleeping palm tree"(line 6) and she served the "food" of her customers or guests
with a calabash "polished and smooth as sandalwood"(line 2) which was contrary to the fact that civilized gathers serve meals in plates or glasswares.

You do not need to stress your brain on the poetic devices.
The poem is simple a 8lines with a simple dictions. It poet strove to attain rhythm and rhyming scheme for the poem.
Simile existed in line 2&3 "smooth as sandalwood", "white as the foam of the sea". There are images of sight in line 2 "polished and smooth", in line 4 "Peppered and golden-fried", in line 5 "carelessly slips". The poem personified palm tree giving it a "honeyed lips". "The countless things she served with her eyes"(line 8) is an irony; an irony is a situation which is desirable but circumstances around it, made it valueless.

The theme of merriment. Every word in the poem showed that the poem speaker was having fun, maybe at a ceremonial gathering or at a local food and palm wine restaurant. The theme of seduction. This could be indirect or direct; the poem speaker made the readers to understand that while "The Serving Girl" was serving her customers or guests, her attractive, alluring, smiling eyes were serving other sweet motives to the hearts of the customers or guests.

The author, Acquah Laluah, whose real name was Gladys Casely-Hayford was a Sierra Leonean, a dancer, teacher, poet, etc. before she died in Ghana in the year 1960.

_________The Serving Girl_______
The calabash wherein she served my food
Was polished and smooth as sandalwood.
Fish, white as the foam of the sea,
Peppered and golden-fried for me.
She brought palm wine that carelessly slips
From the sleeping palm tree's honeyed lips.
But who can guess, or even surmise
The countless things she served with her eyes?

Copyright ©Acquah Laluah.


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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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Breaths By Birago Diop

Listen more often to things rather than beings.
Hear the fire's voice,
Hear the voice of the water.
In the wind hear the sobbing of the trees,
It is our forefathers breathing.

The dead are not gone for ever.
They are in the paling shadows,
And in the darkening shadows.
The dead are not beneath the ground,
They are in the rustling tree,
In the murmuring wood,
In the flowing water,
In the still water,
In the lonely place, in the crowd;
The dead are not dead

Listen more often to things rather than beings.
Hear the fire's voice.
Hear the voice of the water.
In the wind hear the sobbing of the trees.
It is the breathing of our forefathers
Who are not gone, not beneath the ground,
Not dead.

The dead are not gone forever.
They are in a woman's breast,
A child's crying, a glowing ember.
The dead are not beneath the earth,
They are in the flickering fire,
In the weeping plant, the groaning rock,
The wooded place, the home.
The dead are not dead.

copyright © Birago Diop (1906-1989)

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Analysis Of Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day

As we cherish and praise William Shakespeare for his sonnet 18, let's not forget Giacomo da Lentini, also known as Jacopo (il) Notaro, an Italian poet of the 13th century, who invented sonnet.

Like most of the 154 Shakespearian sonnets, sonnet 18 was also speaking of love. That is why the theme of love, the theme of immunity and the theme of immortality can be found in the poem.

Some new generation pupils might find it hard to understand the language of the poem because it's archaic. We refer to it as the Elizabethan English; except for those familiar with the old king James Version of the Holy Bible.

The language of this sonnet is said to be the simplest in comparison with other Shakespearean sonnets. The tone is calm with an optimistic mood of assurance.

Let's look at the themes:
The Theme Of Love:
Shakespeare revealed his love through the image of beauty, simplicity and certainty. He compared his lover to "...a summer's day?/ thou art more lovely and more
temperate" (line 1 and 2) because those qualities of hers, he cherished.

The Theme Of Immunity:
What is Immunity? The state of being insusceptible to something of having strong resistance. Few of the things human being cannot resist are death, aging, etc. Shakespeare made readers to realise in Sonnet 18 that his lover was immune to aging and death. From line 3-8, he wrote how summer, sun, flower, etc. come and later die or disappear; starting from line 9, he told the readers that his own lover will neither grow old, lose beauty nor die.
"But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,"(line 9-11)

The Theme Of Immortality:
"When in eternal lines of time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."(line 12-14)
The poet made us to know that his lover will live forever as far as men live and eyes continue to see things written because he has immortalized her with this Sonnet 18; that's the power of poetry.

William Shakespeare (April 26, 1564-April 23, 1616) was 52 years old before death. An English poet and writer, he married Anne Hathaway with three children.

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Analysis Of The Poem Passion Flower By Christopher Okigbo

According the article of St. John D. Parsons, "Christopher Okigbo originally wrote Passion Flower as a continuation of his poem "Sacrifice" in the series called Heavengate.

[View The Poem Passion Flower by Christopher Okigbo]

The passion flower is so named because its parts are said to resemble ceetain aspect of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, e.g. the corona represents the crown of thorns, the pistil and stamens the nails of the cross, and the sepals and petals the apostles. The passion refers to the sufferings of Christ between the night of the Last Supper and his death.

In line 3, Lacrimae Christi is a Latin meaning "the tears of Christ". "dumb bell" in line 6 referred to the practice in the Roman Catholic Church where bell are not rung between Maundy Thursday and the first Mass on Easter Sunday. Messiah in line 8 pointed at the expected King and Savior (Jesus Christ). "after the argument in heaven" which appeared in line 9 of the poem was looking at the shaking of the powers of heaven referred to in The Gospel According to St. Luke, Chapter 21, verse 26, prior to the coming of the Son of Man, described in verse 27.

Lumen mundi is also a latin, meaning the Light of the World ( Jesus Christ). "Penitence"(line 11) meant sorrow for faults or sins. "palm grove"(line 14) meant the place of sacrifice. In line 15, "vegetable offering" the fruits of the earth that are being sacrificed, that is, palm oil, kola nuts, alligator pepper and eggs of white hens. "five fingers of chalk" in line 16-17 referred to the sacrificial chalk which is sold in "fingers". The prodigal uses five of these for his sacrifice because his own personal symbol is the pentagon (see the poem Sacrifice):

'on palm beam imprinted
my pentagon_'"

Christopher Okigbo before killed in 1967 in Biafra war, was a Secretary, a Latin teacher, a librarian, a West African representative of Cambridge University Press. He was a graduate of University of Ibadan and was born in 1932 in Anambra state.

READ MORE CLASSIC POEM [Post Mortem by Wole Soyinka]

Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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Themes of Piano and Drums by Gabriel Okara

Gabriel Okara, the writer of "Piano and Drum" was born in Bayelsa state, Nigeria in 1921. A novelist and a poet; he was once a civil servant. His poem "Piano and Drums" was well beautified with imagery and symbolism.

The themes of the poem can be divided into three: (1) Childhood reminiscence and its effect (2) Complexity of the present and future (3) Dilemma.

Childhood reminiscence and its effect

Since the poem is about the poet's experience with two different cultures or lifestyles, the poet used the experience of his village background to depict African culture which he grew up with, while comparing it to his present civilized way of living.
The poem speaker was reminded of his/her "primal youth and the beginning" through the quietness of the early to morning river and the echoing forest. While at the riverside, the poem speaker could "hear jungle drums telegraphing/the mystic rhythm..." (Line 2 & 3) and other things like panther, leopard, hunters crouching
with poised spears, etc added to his/her memory.

The poem speaker revealed in stanza 2, the effect such reminiscence brought to his/her memory of sitting "in my mother's lap a suckling", "walking simple paths with no innovations", and groping in green leaves with wild flowers in naked hurrying feet.

Complexity of the present and future

How complex, unstable and confusing the present and the upcoming future look were portrayed in the stanza 3 of the poem "Piano and Drums". As said before, Okara preferred his past life to the present that was why he symbolized his rural life with drum, a musical instrument which very easy to learn and operate while he symbolized his civilized modern lifestyle with piano and describe it as complex.

The poem speaker heard "a wailing piano" which symbolised a painful sound which "solo speaking of complex ways" (the confusing present and the unknown future) and such painful sound brought a silent cry which the poem referred to as "in tear-furrowed concerto". In spite of the pain, the poem speaker got "lost in the labyrinth of it complexities" which symbolised the confusing complexity of the future through rough(coaxing) mild(diminuendo) opposite-change(counterpoint) and tough(crescendo).

Conflit of Culture
This is a very vital theme in Piano and Drums by Gabriel Okara; it shows the speaker in the poem standing between past and present (or preferably between African and Western culture); this theme can also be called a clash of culture or cultural disparity. As mentioned earlier, the voice of the poem described his past rural African background as simple as drums beats while his present and upcoming urbanized Western lifestyle as difficult as the wailing tones of a piano. Since ways lead to ways, this theme leads to another theme known as the theme of dilemma.

Dilemma

The poem speaker concluded that he found himself/herself in dilemma "wandering in the mystic rhythm/of jungle drums and the concerto."(line 28 & 29) because he didn't know which culture to totally embrace. He preferred the simple rural life but it was also impossible to let go of the civilisation he had got unto despite it was complex and confusing.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
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Homecoming By Lenrie Peters

The present reigned supreme
Like the shallow floods over the gutters
Over the raw paths where we had been,
The house with the shutters.

Too strange the sudden change
Of the times we buried when we left
The times before we had properly arranged
The memories that we kept.

Our sapless roots have fed
The wind-swept seedlings of another age.
Luxuriant weeds
have grown where we led
The Virgins to the water's edge.

There at the edge of the town
Just by the burial ground
Stands the house without a shadow
Lived in by new skeletons.

That is all that is left
To greet us on the homecoming
After we have paced the world
And longed for returning.

© Lenrie Peters (1932-2009)

NOTE: A Gambian born poet, Lenrie Peters, was a great writer and even his poetry has always remained a masterpiece. One among the many is "Homecoming", a poem written with gentle tone of self-regret to reveal the theme of certainty of change. The poet was so composed while composing the poet to make sure that each of the five stanzas has four lines accompanied with sweet imageries.

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>>>Homecoming by Lenrie Peters

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The Tether Will Suffer The Wear And The Tear

NOTE: "The tether will suffer the wear and the tear" is a handsome funny poem written by Akoli Penoukou; a Togolese teacher, poet and businessman born 1953. Akoli has been a motivator and mentor to many adults and youths (both home and abroad) with writings and way of life_ not excluding his alluring smile. It wouldn't be a hyperbole to say Akoli Penoukou is currently the Wole Soyinka of Togo because he's an icon.

POEM:
Tether which inhibited us in barter
Tether which revoked our God-image
Tether which banished our patriotic rights
Tether which hindered our exodus
Tether of delusion

 
Tether of genocide
tightening noose of a tether
suffocating noose of a tether
neck-breaking noose of a tether
life-quenching noose of a tether
like a hangman’s
tether-noose which took away our voice
tether tightened by mammoth hands
mammoth hands powered by hearts of stone
hearts of stone activated by robot minds
but each time comes the wear and the tear
the wear
and
the tear

 
the tether-noose which limits and suffocates us
will again suffer the wear and the tear
the knots will slacken like a landslide
the noose will become a toothless tiger
the noose of the enemy will inevitably wear out
and we can continue our march towards light.

Rewritten March 10, 2001

The poem is from poetropical poetry website

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Poetic Devices In Salute To The Elephant By Solomon Adeboye Babalola

The poem Salute To The Elephant was a Yoruba oral poem translated to English by Professor Solomon Adeboye Babalola (17/12/1926 - 15/12/2008). He was a professor at the University Of Lagos and among other things, he was for his love for ìjálá (hunters' song).

Since this post aims at revealing the poetic devices in the poem: Salute To The Elephant; below are the poetic devices within the poem:

1.SIMILEY is the use of like or as to create comparison. In the poem, there's "huge as a hill" in line 2, "like a garment" in line 7, " like a person suffering from a sprained neck" in line 19, "as wide as palm-oil pits" in line 28, "like shafts" in line 29.

2. METAPHOR is a indirect comparison that does not use as or like, the way simile does. "elephant's head is his burden" in line 20 is an example of a metaphor because such statement can still be reframed as the elephant balances his head like a burden. "the elephant who is a veritable ferry-man" in line 23. "whose eyes are veritable water-jar" in line 26, "one tooth of his is a porter's load" in line 30.

3. REPETITION is a poetic device where certain words, phrases, lines, or verses are repeated twice or more to create a sing-song rhythm or emphasis in a poem. It is also called refrain. "O elephant" is repeated in virtually most if the lines of the poem. "Demon" is repeated in line 3,4,12 other repetitions are "Ajanaku" "praisenamed Laaye" "veritable" etc. "The hunter's boast at home is not repeated" is repeated in line 17 and 18.

4. IMAGERY is the use of words or expressions to created mental picture in a poem so the readers can see, smell, feel the event clearer. The beauty of the poem is make possible through the immense usage of imagery. Few of them are "Ajanaku who walks with heavy tread" in line 11, "Mountainous Animal, Huge Beast" in line 7, "the spiky pistil-cells" in line 12, "massive animal, blackish-grey in complexion" in line 13.

5. VERNACULAR is now considered one of the sweet poetic devices poetry can rely it beauty on. Vernacular can be dialect, slang, jargon, argot, etc. "Ajanaku" "Laaye" "Otiko" are few examples of vernaculars found in the poem salute To The Elephant.

6. SYMBOLISM is the use of word or expression to represent a status, event, or idea. Elephant in the poem is used as a symbol of god or deity. Demon is a symbol for unquestionable authority according to the poem. The statement "O death, please stop following me" symbolises the anger of the elephant.

7. ALLITERATION is the successive use of consonant sounds within a line or two in a poem. Such poetic device is not missing in the poem Salute To The Elephant. "Flapping fans of war" "part and parcel" "palm-oil pit" "sometimes see face to face" "huge as a hill" "fled to my father for refuge" "hang him up" "who walks with" "stands sturdy"

8. PERSONIFICATION is the giving of a human attributes to a non-human. "O Death, please stop following me" is a personification because death is made to have legs in the poem. "Primeval leper" gives the elephant a quality of a human suffering leprosy. "O elephant, possessor of a savings-basket full of money" is another instance of personification in the poem because human are only known to possess and use money as medium of transaction.

9. HYPERBOLE is the intentional usage of exaggeration in reference to an object, event, person, occurrence, etc. "huge as a hill" in line 2, "swallows palm fruit bunches whole, even with the spiky pistil-cells" in line 12, "veritable water-jars" in line 26.

Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the fying Leo with wings for real)

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