Compare And Contrast The Emigree And Yellow Palm

The poems The Emigree and Yellow Palm both centre around a war-ridden country and how conflict plays a role. However, the presentation of personal identity is very different. The Emigree, written by Carol Rumens, shows how conflict has caused the narrator to be in denial towards the state of her country, and strongly portrays the place as an intrinsic part of the narrator's identity. On the contrary, the narrator for Yellow Palm, Robert Minhinnick, displays no personal attachment and seemingly no link to their identity. He speaks mostly as an observer, making objective statements about the place and the conflict in it.

The narrator in Yellow Palm talks about how "I saw a Cruise missile, a slow and silver caravan on its slow and silver mile."

The Emigree has no rhyme scheme or set structure because it is a free verse poem. In sharp contrast, Yellow Palm utilises features of a ballad to simulate extreme juxtaposition. There is a child-like, sing-song quality to the poem which diverges from the violent and tragic themes. Robert Minhinnick uses an iambic metre and ABCB rhyme scheme to produce a lyrical feel, with all stanzas beginning with "As I made my way down Palestine Street." Along with being lyrical, the repetition also portrays the poem as a story. In the first three stanzas, the last word is accompanied by an end stop. These words are "gas", "despair" and "Wars", which are very morbid. This creates a falling tone which is serious, and creates a thoroughly negative feeling. Subsequently, the last three stanzas uses the words "armistice" , "smile" and "arms" which have extremely welcoming and good connotations, accompanied by an end stop. This creates a falling tone to which rises a strange bittersweet emotion because of the subtle hopeful tone. On the other hand, free verse is used by Carol Rumens in The Emigree to draw focus towards the language. For instance, every stanza ends with "sunlight" followed by a full stop as end stop. There is repetition of the word to emphasise its connotations of happiness, warmth, positivity and confidence. The end stop is used to declare these emotions as the end of her thoughts: that no matter what she will always view her country fondly. Three stanzas are presented in the poem, the first two with eight lines and the last with nine lines. The extra line in the last stanza may indicate that the narrator clings to childhood memories thus adding an extra line to prevent its end. Also, there is a loose implication of four stresses in each line. Despite it not being fully established, its presence may reflect the mentality of the narrator, paradoxically uneasy and positive at the same