POET:

John Agard

STRUCTURE:

The poem begins with a rhetorical question, which is repeated throughout the first 4 verses, asking the reader what they can see. He follows this question up by answering it with he same reply ‘its just a piece of cloth’. This answers all the questions despite them differing in nouns ie. tent and field. In the sestet of he poem, which i think is only the last verse, the reader asks another rhetorical question but instead using a personal pronoun (I). He doesn’t answer with the usual response but uses instead the world ‘flag’ and enjambment is also used frequently in this poem.

POETIC FORM:

The rhythmic structure of the poem creates a happy and uplifting mood as it reminds the reader of nursery rhythms when they were happy as children. The rhythm scheme is: ABA CDC EFE GHI JKK.

LANGUAGE: 

The rhetorical questions create suspense; a cliffhanger; a sense of unknown which eaves the reader in anticipation. This anticipation is most when all initial feelings are diminished through the use of the following sentence.

The cloth and flag are both metaphors, the flag creates that sense of belonging, but the cloth degrades that. People often burn flags as a symbolic act to insult or prove points, here the metaphor of the cloth does the same, it belittles it…just without the fire!

The final sentence closes the poem features personification and connotes war and conflict. it infers that people do things for there flag/country that they wouldn’t usually dream of doing – war.

KEY QUOTATION:

‘It’s just a piece of cloth’

EXPLAINATION:

The repeated phase ‘It’s just a piece if cloth’ uses a modifier ‘just’ to degrade the metaphoric ‘cloth’s’ importance. It also draws further attention and significance as an adjective, where it is then contradicted by the following line. The importance is on the cloth as it is a metaphor for flag which links to the title of the poem. Being from Guyana, Agard possibly linked the poem with the invasion of the French to take over the country and make it what we now know today as the French Guyana.