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Glasgow Green

 

            To show how a poet achieves a sense of menace, using part of "Glasgow Green" by Edwin Morgan.
             Edwin Morgan's "Glasgow Green" is a poem that deals with male rape. Morgan confronts the reader with the violence of the rape and focuses on the outcasts of society. In doing this he eexplores the lonliness of the human condition.
             The poem starts with "clammy midnight moonlight mist", immediately setting the scene, showing both the time of day and the weather. This gives the poem an eerie, scary feel. The scene is "pawed by river fog": this personification heightens the feeling of menace and danger, as one imagines the fog to be a predator stalking its prey. "The shadows are alive" adds to the intense atmosphere. Morgan adds a a brief snatch of speech:"somewhere a shout's forced out - 'No!'". This is utterly unexpected, and makes one jump, as if the shout really did come form close by, and simply increases the tension of the poem.
             In the second stanza, Morgan uses Glaswegian dialect, laced with a threatening tone to make it feel as though one was near the scene where the rape was taking place, and overhearing the words. It somehow makes the barbarity of the rape more realistic. Morgan uses phrases sucha as "D'ye think I came here jist for that?", which emphasises the humiliation and degradation of the victim. He contiues the threatening tone with "I can get the boys t'ye, they're no that faur away.", suggesting an even more violent danger facing the victim. .
             Stanza three begins with "This is not the dlicate nightmare you carry to the point of fear and wake from". This oxymoron is used to suggest that this place, this situation is so dangerous and frightening that that it makes a nightmare look pleasant. It brings home the point that this rape is real, and that it is utterly bad. Morgan emphasises the reality of the situation by repitition of the word 'real' - "the sweat is real, the wrestling under a bush is real, the dirty starless river is the real Clyde.


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