17 pages • 34-minute read
A Careful Passion
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
Walcott uses iambic pentameter and end rhyme to underscore the whirling sense of repetition and cyclical entrapment that the speaker feels. Iambic pentameter, which mimics the rhythms of regular speech, allows Walcott to create a conversational tone that accentuates the speaker’s blasé attitude. This tone creates intimacy with the reader, drawing them in easily, and lulling them with a comforting sense of repeated phrases, images, and rhythms. Adhering to the unstressed-stressed pattern of the iambic foot, Walcott also employs an end-rhyme schematic that alludes to a sense of order and pattern without fully embracing it. In constructing this form, Walcott echoes his speaker’s perception of the cyclical nature of his life and relationships. Most of Walcott’s lines are end-stopped, ending in either a period or a comma, and marking the completion of a phrase or thought; effectively, they slow the poem’s rhythm and allow the reader more time to contemplate Walcott’s phrasing and the rationale for his repeated images.
Use of Dialogue
Walcott sets three lines in dialogue in the poem. Rather than italicizing them, as another poet might, the use of quotes emphasizes spoken word and draws the reader’s attention to the lack of conversation happening at the table. While each line likely comes from the speaker’s lover, Walcott purposely leaves it ambiguous enough to suggest that some of the three lines, and particularly the third, could feasibly be in the speaker’s voice. This lack of clarity emphasizes the speaker’s sense of unease, confusion, and detachment from the world; the voice is disembodied and dispassionate, echoing the “carefulness” of the title. The speaker acknowledges, “that is all the truth, it could be worse” (Line 35), which demonstrates his deflated resignation and his disappointment that conversation has done little to assuage him of his feelings of inertia and distance. Verbal communication fails in the poem, leaving the speaker and his lover to their loneliness.
Repetition
Walcott employs repetition of phrases and images to great effect, creating an ambiance of unease and detachment and emphasizing his speaker’s frame of mind. Repeating simple images (the small table, the harbor’s edge, or the seagulls) creates a sense of stasis and rumination for the speaker. His phrases are measured and simple, and the repeated rhymes suggest that he is stuck, unable to move past his detachment and unhappiness. In a poem that obsesses over repeated cycles, as in the “[h]earts [that] learn to die well that have died before” (Line 23), returning to the same images creates a sense of claustrophobia that enhances the speaker’s restlessness and anxiety. The phrasal repetitions allow the reader to see into the speaker’s mind, better understanding his ruminations, hopelessness, and attempts to soothe his own emotions.
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