Rattled with anklets’
to make the dance seem real and magical, at the same time. It had a real value for the speaker. However, this dance, in which he had put so much energy into when he was younger,
‘How I quaked the earth
How my skin trembled
How my neck peaked’
had not kept the same value. He talks about the way the new generation, his daughters’ generation, dances the dance now, and emphasised the lack of authenticity it has. He says they just wear ‘babble-idea-men-masks’, to make it look like a traditional rain dance to tourists, while it is not really. He compares the ‘mystic drums’ he used to dance to, with the ‘slack drums’ his daughters dance to now. Finally, he lets us understand he would like to show the new generation how the big dance is supposed to be danced, what its original value.
However, this helplessness is not the only emotion felt in this poem. At the beginning, the speaker reminisces on the old days, his glory days, both with happiness and excitement and with sadness and regret. As he describes the different characteristics of the dance and the way they danced it,
‘With spears in these hands
Then enticed them back
With flywhisk’s magic?’
we can feel a certain kind of excitement rising in his voice.
And at the same time, he only uses questions, and repeats the phrase ‘Haven’t I?’ at the end of the stanza, which shows that he is sad this time seems to be so far away and that it is not like that anymore. In the second stanza, the speaker keeps talking about the time he used to be a dancer. In this stanza, the speaker insists on how good he was, and we can feel some pride in his words.
‘How my neck peaked
Above all dancers
How my voice throbbed
Like the father-drum’
Even if I think this is a way to express his nostalgia, I also think he feels somewhat sad this old good time is over. As he sued to be a good dancer, he is looking for satisfaction. Again, he finishes the stanza by ‘Haven’t I?’. In the last stanza, he is very sad that the tradition had changed; he is disappointed the rain dance does not have the traditional value it once had. He is embarrassed his daughters now use ‘babble-idea-men-masks. Also, he feels guilty he cannot show them how to dance it the way it should be danced.
The emotions are also expressed through the rhythm and structure of the poem. First of all, the poem is made of eight questions only
‘Why does my speech choke
Like I have not danced
Before? Haven’t I
Danced the bigger dance?
Haven’t I?’
showing his uncertainty about the change of the dance and whether he has to keep dancing it the traditional way or not. Eight questions and forty lines, with only question marks and few comas. This lack of punctuation gives a quick and unstructured rhythm, just like the rhythm of the dance really is. This continuous flow of motion is also shown by examples of enjambements (run-on lines with no end-stops):
‘Skins wriggled with amulets
Rattled with anklets
Scattered nervous women
With snakes around my neck
With spears in these hands’
The last way used to express this motion is the choice of the verbs: ‘stampede’, ‘wriggled’, ‘enticed’, ‘moved’, ‘dancing’, ‘quaked’, ‘trembled’, ‘peaked’, throbbed’, ‘ululate’, stand up’ are all verbs of précised action, to represent the dance, quick and with a lot of movement.
The contrast between the past (1st and 2nd stanza) and the present (3rd stanza) clearly shows his nostalgia of the old times: the vocabulary used is much more positive at the beginning than at the end: ‘flywhisk’s magic’, ‘mystic drums’, ‘songs of praise, of glory’, in the first two stanzas and ‘cheating abstract’, ‘slack drums’, ‘babble-idea-men-masks’, ‘choke’ in the last stanza. This also expresses his disappointment.
His confusion is also shown by another type of contrast: the length o the line. The general pattern is that in each stanza, the lines get shorter and shorter:
‘Haven’t my wives at mortars sang
Me songs of praise, of glory,
How I quaked the earth
How my skin trembled
How my neck peaked
Above all dancers’
The speaker keeps trying to justify himself about all the things he did in the past, in order to get some satisfaction and comfort.
The look for comfort is essentially expressed at the end, where we have four questions in four lines, especially with the rhetorical question ‘Haven’t I?’. Indeed, his questions get shorter and shorter in the end, just as if he expected us to answer ‘Yes, you have’. He insists with this idea throughout the whole poem, with the ‘Haven’t I?’ question at the end of each stanza.
Another important repetition is the one of the word ‘dance’, written ten times in total. This simply shows his attachment to that rain dance, how important it is, or at least used to be, in his culture.
I think the speaker has clearly shown his regrets of the old times and frustration and disappointment now that he sees the modern representations of it. I also think it is very interesting to use only eight questions to write the poem to try to transcribe the rhythm of the dance into the poem itself. The numerous verbs of action make the poem very active and moving: when he describes the dance, it almost feels like we are there, watching them dancing.
