'rat tat tat' (line 14)
Look for other examples. How does this remind us of a carpenter's shop?
How should the poem be read aloud? Which ideas do you think should come across most strongly?
- Fondly - the poet greatly admires his uncle and his work?
- Angrily - the poet feels the same anger as his uncle did when he remembers the suffering his people have endured?
- Hopefully - the process of carving is a positive way to cope with the past?
Remind yourself who Ogun is - see the footnote above. Do you think that the title of the poem refers to the carver, or the carved?
Language and imagery
The poem seems to be divided into three sections:
- A detailed description of the workshop and the carpenter's daily life (lines 1-20)
-
A statement - But he was poor and most days he was hungry - and an explanation of why this is so: modern people don't want to buy the furniture he makes (lines 21-26)
- A description of how the carpenter carves the figure of the god and what it means to him (lines 27-47)
How can you tell where one section ends and the next begins?
What are the contrasts between them?
What is the poet's attitude towards what he is describing in each section?
Look at the number of verbs in the first part of the poem:
-
smoothing (line 2), shaping (line 13), whittled(line 16)
What kind of verbs are they? What do they tell us about the carpenter? Now look at the verbs in the last part of the poem:
-
With...care he worked away(line 28), explored(line 29)
Do these verbs suggest he is treating the wood differently? The wood itself swelled and shivered (line 31), as if it was alive.
The poet uses images to describe his uncle and his work.
-
It shone like his short-sighted glasses (line 4) - a simile
-
The knuckles of his hands were sil-/vered knobs of nails (lines 5-6) - a metaphor
How do these images show us the admiration the poet feels about his uncle and his work?
Now look at the descriptions of the furniture that is preferred:
'hollow / steel-like bird bones' (line 24)
How do these images show the poet's dislike of modern taste? In the last section of the poem (from line 27), the imagery changes. It's as if the carver is transported into a different world:
'And as he cut, he heard the creak of forests' (line 34)
Look for the other images of Africa that crowd into the poem here. Where does the carpenter seem to be now? Where has this wood come from? Why is this of significance to the poet?
The emerging woodwork image which the man carves seems to be that of an ancient head. It could be a self-portrait, but it seems to 'emerge' from somewhere far away.
dry shuttered
eyes, slack anciently everted lips, flat
ruined face, eaten by pox, ravaged by rat
and woodworm, dry cistern mouth, cracked
gullet crying for the desert, the heavy black
enduring jaw; lost pain, lost iron;
emerging woodwork image of his anger.
Highlight all the words which suggest hunger, suffering and pain.
What story is this image telling?
Why is the carpenter angry?
'It's about a skilled carpenter who carries within himself the memory of Africa. He has to go into his shuttered Sunday shop, to retreat into himself, in order to pursue this knowledge of Africa. So the poem is not only the celebration of a relative, a craftsperson, but the exploration of the notion of continuity, the link between Africa and the Caribbean, and a rare individual, eccentric, whatever you want to call him, who did more than just dream of it, but who tried in his quiet way to realise it, within his own art and craft.'
The last word is especially important. The carpenter is angry because even though he works hard and is a good craftsman he is still poor, because imported furniture is doing him out of business. Until then, though, there was nothing about him complaining about his situation, it was as if he just got on with his work. But when he does the carving, it's like he discovers what he really feels, so the 'woodwork image' speaks for him. That's why earlier in the poem it says about 'exploring' the wood and listening to noises 'he had never heard'. He's getting in touch with his anger. It makes me think the god inside the wood is also angry at what has been done to his people when they were taken away from Africa
In this poem Brathwaite depicts his uncle, a skilled woodworker who could make anything, but who was poor because "the world preferred" mass-produced furniture. Brathwaite shows how on Sunday, when he would not do paid work, his uncle worked out his anger and explored his West African roots, in carving an image of a tribal god. The title of the poem is not explained or repeated elsewhere - so we suppose that this is a clue to the identity of the figure that the uncle carved.
The form of the poem is very clear - it is set out as couplets on the page. If you read it aloud, many of the lines will run on. Sometimes a line ends halfway through a word ("sil-/vered") or a hyphenated compound ("flat-/footed") - but you would not pause long, if at all, in reading this out. Another striking feature is the rich variety of nouns in the poem. Many of these are lists of objects like the uncle's tools or the furniture he makes - some of the terms being quite specialized. A more exotic vocabulary describes the "forests" which the uncle seems to imagine or remember as he works. Brathwaite chooses many words for their sound quality, especially the vigorous verbs ("hit, hurt", "slapped", "tapped", "cut" and so on). Many of these words are onomatopoeic - their sound matches their meaning. Look at "clip-clop sandals", "tapped rat tat tat", "creak" and "stomping". The effect of these is often reinforced by alliteration (repeating the same initial consonant), as in "bird bones...beds, stretched not on boards but blue high-tensioned cables").