ENGB04H3 Lecture : lecture notes on poems
Document Summary
Burns is the most famous scottish poet and he wrote in scottish dialect, that is the way people talk and not the way they write. You need to listen to this being read: http://www. youtube. com/watch?v=ss5pijfndne&feature=related. This is a satire on modern bureaucratic speak. The speaker, who is from the state, assumes that all that is important to know about a person is revealed by statistics and official forms. There is something sinister in the fact that it matters to the state whether a person held the proper opinions for the time of year and was normal in measurable ways. In this poem young canadian men are working on a roof together and speaking in typical fashion about the usual topics. They show off for each other; they talk simply to fill the air and the time. But one of them leaves, figured here as jumping off the roof into the sky.