Analyzing Poem using SPECS and SLIMS

Blessing by Imtiaz Dharker

The skin cracks like a pod.

There never is enough water.

Imagine the drip of it,

the small splash, echo

in a tin mug,

the voice of a kindly god.

Sometimes, the sudden rush

of fortune. The municipal pipe bursts,

silver crashes to the ground

and the flow has found

a roar of tongues. From the huts,

a congregation : every man woman

child for streets around

butts in, with pots,

brass, copper, aluminium,

plastic buckets,

frantic hands,

and naked children

screaming in the liquid sun,

their highlights polished to perfection,

flashing light,

as the blessing sings

over their small bones.

Poem Analysis

Subject-matter.

As what I understand after reading this poem thoroughly, I can see that the poet herself wants to tell readers that the importance of water differs to different social classes of people. In this poem, she always compare water to precious things as silver , and create other senses so readers can see that the poet herself putting stress on the subject of water in sub-urban areas where the source and amount of water is limited and keeps making people fighting for it. Seems to be under the hot sunlight and vast area where the poet herself describes the situation and surroundings in this poem.

Purpose.

There are several themes in this poem that could be identified, but the most appealing theme in this poem is the value of water itself to people. The area and part of the world that are going through this state of problem would be at the sub-urban areas where there are no or less the piping system, wells and water source such as Africa, Mexico and other places where poverty occurs. Can be seen in this poem that the poet cherish and put herself in the situation as if she is living in the same surroundings as these people which are having crisis in water. The preciousness and value of water is high to people that don’t have the access of water like in the city area.

Emotion of poet.

The emotion of the poem at the beginning of the poem can be described as being sad and empathy. She felt sad by seeing people with not enough water in their body walking around and do works like normal people regardless to the fact that they need sufficient amount of water in their bodies to stay alive. In the first two lines, we can see the poet being sympathy to those people and even compared those people’s state of skin to dry seedpod that has cracks around them. As it goes down, the emotion of poet seems to be relieved that when she stated that those people have gotten their water supply and at the last stanza in this poem, happiness can be identified in poet’s emotion because she stated that those children happily playing with water and take bath with it.

Craftsmanship.

This poem does not have regular numbers of lines in it. Because we can see that lines in each stanza are different.2-4-11-6, the type of this poem is narrative and the poet herself tells the story as if she is in the same situation or being empathy to those people. Next would be the use of language by the poet. The language used is somehow predictable because she herself had stated clearly the description of a person that is in the condition of water insufficient like dry skin. Words like “drip” and “splash” shows the characteristic of liquid or specifically, water. In this case, she stressed on the sense of hearing. Normally, people will ignore the sounds of water flowing from a higher place and falls to the ground, but she had wrote so that readers could imagine the sound of water, how it is appreciated by those people. Other than that, we can see the usage of simile in the first sentence when the poet compared the skin to a pod, which at the moment were having the same condition, which is dry. The word “like” shows the equality to both dry skin and dry seed pod. “The sudden rush of fortune” shows the usage of personification. Human do rush to somewhere or doing works in limited amount of time. But for water (fortune), it only flows from a place to another. The usage of ‘rush” shows that the poet wants to emphasize the coming of good things and changes in those poor people. Apart of that, “a roar of tongues shows that those people in poverty shouting and yelling as soon as the water supply arrived.” Also, the usage of symbolism could be found used many times in this poem. “Fortune”, “silver”, “blessing”, “small bones” symbolize water and human body (“small bones”).

Summary.

Based on the poem that has been analyzed, can be seen clearly that the poet was trying to emphasize on the importance of water to people in another part of the world which have very limited access to water. She did stress on the hardship of those people to obtain water supply and their reaction as soon as they got water supply. Happiness of those people and how water is appreciated much by them in order for them to survive in this world to do basic living like taking bath, water for drinking and cooking.

THIS IS WE ACTUALLY ANALYSE POEMS USING SPECS AND SLIM METHOD.IT IS MORE STRUCTURED AND MORE COMPREHENSIBLE.