Sounds of the Day Flashcards
What is the poem about?
- The speaker in Sounds of the Day reflects upon a parting. Though the poem begins descriptively with the interpretation of sounds, it moves on to examine the impact of a separation.
- The poem opens with natural sounds, while the sound of a closing door signals the opening of the second stanza and turns the poem from the relatively pleasant picture of nature towards a darker, more reflective focus.
- The most striking imagery is reserved for the final stanza in which the speaker articulates the strength of feeling associated with the parting.
Form and structure
MacCaig was a lyric poet and a master of precise observation and dry wit. This poem is written in free verse made up of four irregular stanzas.
Poet Norman MacCaig
It is in chronological order and the division of stanzas helps to focus the reader on the specific idea contained in each.
Opening stanza
In the opening stanza, the speaker describes natural sounds - horses, a bird, waves and a waterfall.
On its own, this stanza paints a pleasant picture and indicates the speaker’s delight in nature - such apposite descriptions reveal affection for the natural world.
When we read what follows, this stanza acts as an important counterpoint to the darker, more emotionally raw descriptions of the speaker’s feelings.
Second stanza
The shut door, described in the second stanza, is the turning point of the poem. Here the ideas move from a delight found in a variety of natural sounds to a reflection upon one specific experience - a parting.
Third stanza
The personal nature of the poem is apparent in the third stanza as the speaker addresses the person who has left.
The impact of the poem
- The impact of this parting is conveyed through the hyperbole employed to describe the fire.
We get the impression of a figure, suddenly alone, faced with the consequences of a separation.
Having established the theme of the poem, the speaker moves on to offer an honest assessment of how deeply he has been affected by the experience.
The shock of freezing water, followed by the numbness, conveys the complexity of parting.
The relationship has meant a lot to the speaker and the separation, though painful enough during the moment itself, has left a lasting impression
“Sounds of the day”
A pleasant impression of nature is conveyed during the opening of the poem. At first the title seems unambiguous and straightforward as the opening lines seem only to list the sounds of the day.
In these lines MacCaig’s observational skills are evident in the precision with which the sounds are described.
“clatter came”, “snuffling puff”
“black drums”
The horses clatter, the air creaked, with the sound of the lapwing, the waves emit a snuffling puff over the rock and the waterfall is the sound of black drums.
MacCaig uses onomatopoeia and alliteration to imitate these specific sounds, some of which seem to startle the speaker while others are more pleasing.
What is most significant is the acuteness and descriptiveness of these distinct sounds in emphasising how alert the speaker is to them.
“lapwing”
Personification
of the lapwing is light-hearted and playful. The bird becomes territorial, a landlord or gamekeeper, ushering the speaker from its domain.
- The fact such delicate sounds can be heard suggests a still, practically silent environment.
Here silence is something enriching which allows the speaker to hear and appreciate the natural world.
- The word choice suggests a speaker at ease, enjoying the moment. The list in this stanza is inverted, with the sound coming before the subject or object that makes them.
- In this way, the speaker emphasises it is the sound, rather than the horses or bird, or ocean or waterfall that is most evocative and memorable about this day.
“black”
“drums”
However, the word choice of black, the adjective used to describe the drums in the closing lines of the opening stanza hints this poem may have more serious undertones.
On its own, this image is an appropriate way to interpret the deep, thundering tones of the waterfall.
When we read further, the drums have a deeper meaning and become an ominous, brooding sound-effect marking a turning point and foreshadowing the bleaker ideas contained within the remainder of the poem.
“door/scraped shut”
“it was the end/of all the sounds there are”
Sentence structure plays an important role in the poem to establish the contrast between the first stanza and the lines that follow.
The inversion of the relationship of the sound to the object from the previous stanza ends here in the line the door/scraped shut. This change places the door in the more prominent position while the sound of it closing coming at the end helps to reinforce the assertion in the remainder of that stanza it was the end/of all the sounds there are.
“scraped shut”
Metaphor
- From here on the absence of sound in the poem is hugely important. The silence that allowed him to hear so keenly the sounds of the natural world has returned, yet this silence is oppressive and suffocates the speaker’s aural sense.
The shutting door is a metaphor through which MacCaig compares the door closing to the end of a relationship.
- Just as a door closing creates a barrier between two places, so too the final moment of a relationship (the parting) represents the crossing point between togetherness and separation.
The speaker’s mood of despair is apparent - though we know a door can be reopened, here the speaker seems convinced that, once closed, this one will remain shut. There is no suggestion of the hope of a reunion.
“it was the end/of all the sounds there are”
- Hyperbole
underlines the significance of the moment.
While before the speaker was delighted in describing the sounds of nature, now he shows us this pleasure has vanished. We get a clear sense of the painful despair that accompanies parting - the feeling that nothing will ever be the same again.
” You left me”
- The monosyllabic directness and the use of the second person in the line You left me is plaintive and utterly lacking in ambiguity.
The speaker wants to be clear about the shattering consequences on him of this event.
Gone is the playful, poetic language of the opening stanza and so too is the speaker’s feelings of contentment, replaced by abject loneliness and isolation.
“the quietest fire in the world.”
- Hyperbole is again used to communicate the extreme emotional pain associated with parting, as he is left in a room with what he describes as the quietest fire in the world.
- An old man, at home, sitting in an armchair by the fire
This line highlights the suddenness of this new silence. This also creates an interesting paradox since the effect of being alone should only exaggerate the sound of the fire, when in fact it seems to mute it. - Effectively, the speaker implies the impact of this parting on him is that he is no longer able to hear and take any pleasure in sounds. His sense of loss is so profound it seems to have resulted in the loss of one of his most enriching senses.
