In the poems ‘Limbo’ and ‘What were they like?’, the poets create powerful symbols which can convey a range of key ideas. Levertov focuses on how the people of this particular culture live before and after the war.
Both Levertov and Brathwaite focus on personifying his surroundings, possibly to make the anger he feels more real. Levertov focuses on these techniques to compare everyday life before the life splitting war, in a womb of silence and the soothing scenery complete with rolling green hills and loved families and then after in the crated landscapes and ‘Charred’ families together lying together. Brathwaite however uses the ‘Limbo Stick’ Lowering to show signs of submission and getting higher to show the path they have to fight for, the path to freedom.
Brathwaite too uses this technique too imply on the pain and suffering in everyday life the West Africans went through in the poem ‘Limbo’ before and after they were exploited, as did the Vietimese people of Levertov’s ‘What were they like?’
Sound techniques are useful to emphasise important ideas within a poem. Both poets’ poems use alliteration and onomatopoeia to help express the anger and bitterness in the words ‘burned mouth’ taken from Levertov’s ‘what were they like?’ Using alliteration of the sharp, almost pain sound of ‘b’ emphasising the excruciating pain sounds of screaming of the people of the vietimese culture as they burned to death. Then again in Brathwaite’s ‘Limbo’, ‘Dumb gods are raising me’ ‘Dumb’ meaning that the white mans gods will not answer a black mans prayers as proven in the death toll on the ship on the journey back to Europe.
Both poets’ poems look deceptively organised, creating eight line stanzas and then breaking the pattern. If you look at the structure of Brathwaite’s ‘Limbo’ it is long and thin possibly representing the stick that the slaves were beaten with by the
Europeans. Then again in Levertov’s ‘what were they like the structure of the poem is wavy possibly representing the flames of the Americans chemical weapons.
In both poems, poetic techniques are important to convey the feelings of the persona. Both Levertov’s ‘What were they like?’ and Brathwaite’s ‘Limbo’ use these techniques to convey the amount of pain and suffering the persona’s had to go through as they were exploited.
