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Poem Analysis: Meehan's Quitting The Bars

843 Words4 Pages

'Quitting the Bars ' takes on the particularly difficult form of the villanelle. This consists of nineteen lines, composed of five tercets and ending with a quatrain, and usually infers a feeling of compulsion and obsession - both common traits in those suffering from alcohol addiction. Meehan 's refrains allow for more variation than one would generally encounter in traditional villanelles, preferring to engage with the more modern form wherein the repetition is not exact. This is evident with respect to the third line of the first tercet: 'not sure if the self is cell or warder, ' and the third line of the third tercet: 'you wonder if they are wards or warder. ' Such deviations serve to break from the rigid form of the more famed villanelles, …show more content…

One instance of such can be found in 'the tulpas sucking on your tit. ' Generally speaking, the concept of the tulpa is one rooted in mysticism. It is thought to manifest through spiritual or mental powers. By deliberating choosing this word, Meehan infers two things. One is that the consequences of alcohol addiction are as much psychological as they are physical. The second is that the struggle to remain sober is one of the mind, a mental struggle more than a physical resistance against the body 's conditioned craving for alcohol. In that same sentence, the alliteration of the 't ' creates a phrase of plosive consonants, eliciting a harsh sound and perhaps implying a sense of disgust for the life the subject of the poem used to live. This is reinforced with the internal rhyme found in 'quit ' and 'tit ', which hurries the line along and seems to carry connotations of …show more content…

This could be an attempt by the poet to make the theme seem as relatable as possible to its audience. Another example is the line 'You sometimes think you got away with murder. ' The hyperbolic expression is a common one, but also serves to highlight the devastating effects that alcoholism can have on a person. The next line speaks of 'shady souls ', the former word perhaps implying not questionable morals but shades themselves; those murdered by the alcohol they could not give up. The sound effect created with 'sh ' is one of an almost deathly silence, once again reinforcing the feeling of bereavement present in this

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