English Commentary – Ispahan Carpet
In the poem “Ispahan Carpet” written by Elizabeth Burge, readers are exposed to the unending poverty cycle a family of Persian carpet factory workers experience. With each knot the workers tie, their physical health deteriorates, as they lose their identities and innocence, along with any hope whatsoever of escaping their monotonous and painful line of work. Yet despite these growing odds, they manage to produce beautiful and luxurious carpets, which are bought by the wealthy - the wealthy, who unfortunately are oblivious to the working conditions these makers experience, thereby indirectly allowing such shocking circumstances to prevail. Throughout the poem, Burge uses several linguistic and literary techniques such as parallelism, juxtaposition, personification, interjectory, and structure to effectively portray the injustice that occurs in the factories, as she subtly contrasts the extreme wealth of the buyers with the extreme poverty of the carpet makers.
The amount of suffering the family experiences from endlessly tying knots can already be observed in the first stanza, where the carpet factory is described with the metaphor of the “gallows.” Immediately, the reference to the gallows sets a dark and cold atmosphere, as readers start to anticipate a death. This dark atmosphere is heightened by Burge’s use of tripling to describe the Persian family as being, “silent, sallow, dark-eyed,” which places emphasis on each oppressive adjective, and stresses how truly lifeless each member has become. The adjective “sallow” has consonance with “hallow” which further emphasizes the pervading air of death in the factory, as sallow complexions have connotations with sickness, lack of nutrition, and emptiness. Likewise, the family appears to be completely vulnerable – as though all the life has been sucked out of them, and empty – as if they have lost their identities. The “dark eyes” reinforce this point, as they appear to be empty and stolid, as if taken over by another life force.
