The church’s harmonium has been left in the church porch, ready to ‘be bundled off to the skip’. The narrator asks his elderly father to help him carry out the harmonium out of the church. As the two men carry the harmonium the father makes a joke where that the next time the son carries a heavy weight out of the church in a box it will be his coffin. The persona of the poem tries to respond but he is unable to, perhaps due to the emotion he feels at the thought of his father’s death.
Structure/Shape of the poem/Form:
The poet has chosen to use the repetition of structure in a number of places throughout the poem. For example, in the last stanza on the fifth line, the narrator, when referring to his father, quotes ‘And he, being him, can’t help but say/ that the next box I’ll shoulder through this nave/ will bear the freight of his own dead weight’ then the persona of the poem responds by saying ‘And I, being me, then mouth in reply/ some shallow or sorry phrase or word/ too starved of breath to make itself hear’. Armitage could have structured this part of the poem intentionally to show the powerful bond between father and son, despite the fact that one may classify them self as the exact opposite of the other. In addition, Armitage could have also done this to contradict what he said previously when he was showing admiration towards his father when he said ‘My dad has always been confident and quick witted … He says it there and then, right off, while I have to go away and think about it and then put it down on paper’. In further support of this idea, in the first stanza, the narrator uses a pun when he says the Harmonium would be his ‘for a song’ – the term meaning that he would get it for cheap, as well as relating to the main use of the instrument. Through the use of this pun, Armitage has taken – an emotion which could be interpreted as his sadness – and combined it with a humorous delivery, thus, re-emphasizing the power of the bond between father and son.
Poetic Devices/Memorable Imagery/Language:
In the poem ‘Harmonium’ Armitage uses the linguistic technique of personification when he describes the harmonium: ‘yellowed the fingernails of its keys’. Armitage uses language which conveys the appearance of the harmonium in vivid detail. The keys are described as fingernails as if the Harmonium was a living but aged thing.
Throughout various parts in the poem, it is evident that the son possesses a great deal of admiration towards his father. For instance, when the poet makes the sentiment about his father where he states ‘My dad has always been confident and quick witted… He says it there and then, right off, while I have to go away and think about it and then put it down on paper’.