here's an episode of how to analyze poetry from the learning cauldron today we'll be looking at Norman McCay experience arc analyzing poetry evolves identifying and dissecting the literary techniques that the poet uses effectively to explore the theme or themes of a poem in his poem basking shark McCaig explores evolution man's relationship with place in and attitude towards nature and isolation the title of the poem basking shark is the only time that the creature involved in this poem is actually mentioned by name and therefore is useful in establishing the setting and the subject of the poem it starts with an infinitive verb to stub immediately creating action because this is the most basic form of any verb and there's another two in the next line so the idea of action is they are straight from the beginning of the poem and then the word or reinforces the setting out at sea that basking shark has already hinted at and we have our first image now the interesting thing is that this is a short poem as you can see and yet it is packed with excellent imagery so well worth remembering that when you have to write about imagery the rock is reminding us that just as a rock is hard and solid and immovable so to when his oar hits it is this giant sea creature and if we notice here B is the sound at the end of this first line and then we have the same sound at the end of the next to which tells us that this is a rhyming of triplet and in fact this poem unusually from a cake cut is composed of five rhyming triplets a lot of his poetry is free verse and this is quite different moving on we have an interesting word choice here with the word slow some would say that's a neologism although i've actually found it in a dictionary but it's this idea of a slow leisurely movement as it emerges from the deep and you can imagine this would be quite a scary experience basking sharks are up to ten meters long so picture that they are huge and if you met that on your own out at sea it would make you stop and think as in it did McCaig and then there's a slight humor a light heartedness here with the use of the parenthesis too often it's a thing he says that happened once too often to me and then he changes his mind as we go into the second stanza and we can see that because of the words but which signals a change in direction he has said it's once was too often and now he's saying but not too often and then he pauses again as the dash shows us though enough he says I'm glad it happened but only once I wouldn't want it to happen again and then he emphasizes why he is glad it did happen that once through the word choice of gain this implies something positive that has been a benefit in his life and what has been a benefit that once he met almost implying it's like a person on a sea tint act with rain this is a fabulous metaphor if you imagine throwing drawing pins onto the surface of a puddle for example or a pond and you can imagine the little round dimples they would make on the surface and he's describing the falling of raindrops on the surface of the sea in those terms it's a wonderful comparison and then he speaks about the basking shark and he uses a metaphor to describe it as well room-sized monster with a matchbox brain and we've got this lovely alliteration or in fact consonants of em's which st. seems to emphasize the hugeness of this creature but then the contrast room-sized monster with its tiny he says brain matchbox eyes if you think that these creatures are ten meters long a matchbox is not even ten centimeters long so there's a big contrast there he is implying in a slightly derogatory fashion that this creature is not particularly intelligent and will be interesting to compare that with what he says about it later moving on to the third stanza yet another fantastic metaphor he displaced more than water now if you think of the laws of physics I'm no scientist but I know that if you put a large rock in a bucket of water the surface of the water will rise according to the mass that's been placed in it and this is what he's saying here when this large creature moved and the surface of the sea it wasn't just the water that moved something in the poet's mind moved he had called an epiphany very useful word here for describing this moment of enlightenment that he suddenly has when he's out in the middle of the sea on his own facing this huge creature and then if you remember we talked about Sloane Jarrell Iran as being an interesting word and here we have shoveled another beautiful word which suggests that he was shaken in a significant way and it moved him back in history way back centuries and then there's another pause here which shows his reflective tone here and then he refers to himself in a very negative way this decadent Tony suggesting that Tony's people from the cities have lost their connection with nature because they pursue a life of pleasure a hedonistic lifestyle and a word choice of wrong here suggests that he is beginning to realize that actually humankind are the ones in the wrong we are related way way back to this giant sea creature but we're the ones who were actually the black sheep of the family if you want moving on to the fourth stanza we've we've got a lovely onomatopoetic word here swish you can almost hear the water account you and if you ever remember as a child taking a stick and swishing up the mud at the bottom of a stream you can imagine the dirt all swirling around but gradually it settles down again and when it does the water is beautifully clear and he's suggesting that this chuckling of his mind once everything is settled down again lets him suddenly see very clearly human humanity's place in this world and there's a nice short sound here the repeated I the acident I the idea of the stick jostling back and forward as you swish up the dirt short and staccato and then moving on we have the idea that we all came from slime originally if we go way way back the slime that became the basking shark stayed in the sea and the slime that became humans depending on your view of evolution slithered out onto the beaches and became humankind and it makes him think about the paths that we've taken in our evolution since the basking shark all it does is eat plankton doesn't harm anyone humans well he asks the question in the next stanza Oh who's the monster and this contrasts strongly with him referring to the basking shark as a monster in stanza 2 he doesn't answer the question but from what he said we can probably assume that he's implying humanity humans are the monster and this has a profound effect on him we've got a long Ella gated list of owls here the thought made me grow pale slows us right down and the word choice of pale here at the end of this line emphasizes that it's actually had a physical effect on him this profound realization of what he and his fellow man because he is representing mankind here have done to nature and suddenly his perspective of the basking shark has changed because as it goes away from him he compares it using this lovely metaphor sale after sale again elongated vowels and he's comparing it to a beautiful elegant sailing ship very different from the room size monster with a matchbox brain and this contrast serves to accentuate the Epiphany that has occurred in his mind and I love the fact that at the end as the basking shark departs were left with the final words in this point being the tail as it disappears it's the end of a very precious experience the shark has gone and the fact that it is a very intense experience is perhaps why McKay chose to have this as a different form of poem from many of his others that very succinct with being short and with the rhyming triplets that's one thing that you might be able to say about the structure of this poem it's a beautiful little poem quite lyrical and very profound and although many of my students don't actually enjoy it it has a lot to say about it even from the imagery alone so don't overlook it when you're deciding which poems to write about I hope that's been helpful see you next time [Music]