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Summary A Martian sends a postcard home - Craig Raine
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A Martian sends a postcard home - Craig Raine Analysing the poem and background information.
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1‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’
Craig Raine
1. Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
2. and some are treasured for their markings – Structure and Form
‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’ by Craig Raine is a thirty-four-line poem that is
3. they cause the eyes to melt
divided into sets of two lines, known as couplets. These lines are similar in length to one
4. or the body to shriek without pain.
another but are written in free verse. This means that the poem does not make use of a
5. I have never seen one fly, but specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. There are a few examples of rhyme
6. sometimes they perch on the hand. throughout the poem, though. This includes “wings” and “markings” in the first couplet.
7. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
Alliteration: the repetition of the same
8. and rests its soft machine on ground:
consonant sound at the beginning of multiple
9. then the world is dim and bookish words. For example, “mechanical” and
10. like engravings under tissue paper. “markings” in the first couplet” and “sky” and
“soft” in the fourth couplet.
11. Rain is when the earth is television.
12. It has the property of making colours darker.
The tone is analytical and at some
13. Model T is a room with the lock inside –
14. a key is turned to free the world points, confused. The Martian speaker
asserts the nature of things but is
15. for movement, so quick there is a film clearly trying to make sense of
16. to watch for anything missed. something they really don’t
understand.
17. But time is tied to the wrist
18. or kept in a box, ticking with impatience. The themes at work in this poem are
the nature of human life. This includes
19. In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, Caesura: a pause inserted into the emotions, life experiences, and
20. that snores when you pick it up. 20 middle of a line. This could be through companionship. The Martian sees the
the use of punctuation or a natural world through a different lens that
pause in the meter. For example, “or allows the reader to reanalyse their life
kept in a box, ticking with impatience.” and habits. https://poemanalysis.com/craig-raine/a-
martian-sends-a-postcard-home/
, 2
21. If the ghost cries, they carry it Stanza 13
22. to their lips and soothe it to sleep
IMAGERY
23. with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
The extended personification of the telephone as a living
24. deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
creature that can be awoken and ‘tickled’ demonstrates
25. Only the young are allowed to suffer how poorly the Martian understands the purpose and
26. openly. Adults go to a punishment room mechanics of a telephone. It is mildly astonished that
human beings would want to keep on speaking on the
27. with water but nothing to eat. phone when to him it has such sinister connotations. SACAI
28. They lock the door and suffer the noises JUN 2021
29. alone. No one is exempt
30. and everyone’s pain has a different smell.
Lines 31 - 34
31. At night, when all the colours die,
32. they hide in pairs In the final two couplets, the speaker notes that the human beings retreat to rooms in pairs. There,
they sleep together when the “colours die” and “read about themselves – / in colour, with their
33. and read about themselves – eyelids shut.” This is a beautiful concluding image, one that speaks to the nature of dreams and
34. in colour, with their eyelids shut. ends the poem on a positive note. Despite the absurdity of human life, from a Martian perspective,
this last image is a good one. https://poemanalysis.com/craig-raine/a-martian-sends-a-postcard-home/
Evaluate how effective the structure of this poem is in
terms of conveying its message. SACAI JUN 2021
The use of the very short two-lined stanzas reinforce the
sense of this being a postcard in which the Martian has
briefly expressed the most striking aspects of the humans
he has observed. The postcard theme also allows the
speaker to cover a range of different features of human
life so the randomness of his selection of material does
not seem inappropriate.
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