Beneath Speech

Beneath Speech

To start with, I have to say Purr, which mean to utter a low, continuous, murmuring sound expressive of contentment or pleasure, as a cat does, is an excellent name for a poem collection.

For the poem itself, I regard it as a funny poem exploring the nature of english, or language itself. As the first line of the poem has said, the undersides of words. The meaning of second stanza is quite easy to understand. For the third stanza, one side convex and one side concave could mean the shape of the night sky, when perceived as a part of the whole sphere earth.

‘This must be like winter for fish’ does not make a lot of sense to me at first, but it seems more understandable after reading ‘and all the nouns went seamless as ice and slightly opaque.’ To the writer, she feels that all nouns are cold and smooth like ice, which may explain why this must be like winter for fish, also the next sentence, ‘if she put out her tongue, she might stay there forever.’, I guess perhaps it is because the nouns are like ice and the tongue would be stuck by the ice, or another possibility that, there are so many nouns in this world, thus it is impossible to read them all, so that the tongue would be stretched outside the mouth for a long long time.

In the last stanza, the smell of snow connects with the previous mentioned winter and ice. I cannot get what ‘because or so to cover me’ until it is raised in the class. I think it is cool for the poet not to add quotation there though, hence it allows more space for interpretation. Because or so, this little words, cover me like snow, and makes me ‘beneath speech’. I do not regard this poem as that random as in discussed in the class. I think it is well written with complete and closely linked imageries.

* Chan Wing Hong*