Livre Or Die

I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire’s call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!

Claude McKay

Charlotte Mew’s ‘Rooms’ and  Philip Larkin’s ‘Home is so Sad’ both address the sense of loss that the idea of abandoned rooms bring. While Poem B explores this loss in the sense of a physical absence often associated with abandoned rooms, Poem A explores the unconventional idea of an emotional abandonment despite a physical presence: the rooms so devoid of life, vitality and emotion in Poem A are just as empty as the typical empty, abandoned room in Poem B. In both poems, the abandoned room seems to act as a metaphor for the estrangement of human relationships, be it between lovers (Poem A) or family members (Poem B).

Both poems initially seem detached from the idea of loss in an abandoned room. The persona in A begins with a seemingly indifferent tone and we are first clued into this by the title, ‘Rooms’, which has a lack of adjectival adornment and sets a very direct, matter-of-fact tone. The persona’s listing of ‘the room at..’ and ‘the.. room’ suggests a lack of interest in each of these rooms she has once inhabited, counting them in an almost dismissive or at least secondary way. The use of the article ‘the’ instead of determiners that would demonstrate her relationship with these nameless rooms (for instance, personal pronouns like ‘my room’) heightens the sense of detachment. This is further emphasised by line 6 – the fixed expression ‘for good or for ill’ and the following simple sentence ‘things died’ is similarly emotionless and direct in expression which betrays an ambivalent attitude on the part of the persona towards the lack of physical life in the abandoned rooms. This detachment is mirrored in Poem B’s first stanza, even though the persona in Poem B is not as blase. The persona portrays himself as an observer in the abandoned room, through the lack of first-person pronouns like in Poem A. Instead, autonomy and expression seems to be given to the abandoned room itself and dynamic verbs such as ‘win them back’ and ‘it withers so’ are used to describe deterioration of the empty house and its physical state. This metaphorical yearning personified room seems to express intensifies the loss of a physical or human presence. This is reinforced by the opposition between ‘it’ and ‘them’ – the physical structure of the room and its lack of inhabitants. Like in  Poem A, the physical emptiness of abandoned rooms is addressed in a somewhat detached way, albeit the lack of personal engagement, unlike in Poem A, serves to emphasise the absence of physical life as something to be bemoaned rather than an expected occurrence in life.

However, there is a shift in tone in both poems from detachment to a more personally involved one, through which the personae demonstrate a response to the aspect of abandoned rooms which affects them. Poem A sees a tonal shift in line 7, with the sudden conjunction ‘but’ and the introduction of a room which is directly related to the persona (‘Where we (two) lie dead’). The parenthetical inclusion of (two) is perhaps a pun relating to the ‘dead things’ as well as highlighting the intimate nature of the persona’s relationship with her partner and this idealised image of two lovers lying dead together is immediately undermined by the next lines, ‘we seem to wake and.. sleep again’, which suggests an emotional disconnect between them, since they ‘might just as well’ be ‘asleep’ to each other. With the persona reference in this part of the poem, the persona seems to progress to a more introspective mood. There is a sense of resignation in her attitude towards the absence of an emotional connection, which is heightened by the helpless comment, ‘just as well’. This sense of resignation turns into wistfulness as she wishes for an end to this emotional absence – a physical absence instead, as alluded in the metaphor of ‘sleep’. There is also a contrast between the ‘ceaseless, maddening.. tide’ of activity and the preferred ‘quieter, dustier bed’. The juxtaposition of active, dynamic life and the sober, peaceful death demonstrates the persona’s preference for physical abandonment rather than the ‘maddening’ emotionless tide of life she is forced to endure in the relationship.

Poem B also sees a change in tone to one of nostalgia in the second stanza, through the conjunction ‘And’. There is a shift in focus from the state of the personified house in the present to the stative image of the past. There is a juxtaposition like in Poem between the ideal and the real – ‘how things ought to be’ and how they are now. The stative images of ‘pictures’ and ‘cutlery’ are significant in their capacity to capture memories of life, as well as their function in social events and the introduction of such images creates nostalgia for the inhabitants who have since ‘abandoned’ the room. ‘The music in the piano stool’ waits to be played and the lost image of ‘That vase’ lingers powerfully as an image of the emptiness of the house – a mere container left unfilled. The persona uses the stative images in contrast to the dynamic first stanza in order to highlight a sense of nostalgia for physical presence, which is contrary to poem A’s use of a similar technique to lament a lack of emotional presence in contrast to the physical.

The rhyme scheme for both poems mirror their tone and their engagement with the room. Poem A has a unique rhyme scheme, with two rhyming couplets in lines 1-2 and 5-6 which deal with death and absence – the ‘slowing down of the heart’ which leads to ‘things (dying’). The rhyme here portrays death as natural and even ideal, not ‘maddening’ but ‘quieter’ and regular. The last four lines where the tonal shift occurs sees an ‘ABAB’ rhyme scheme instead, suggesting a reshuffling of sorts – a disconnect in this idea of death, which is met in its rhyming line. This suggests the poet’s emotional estrangement in conflict with her physical intimacy. In contrast, poem B uses a seemingly regular ‘ABABA’ rhyme scheme in both stanzas. However, in stanza 2 the persona involvement and nostalgia is brought out through the use of half and eye rhymes in place of full rhymes in ‘as’, ‘was’ and ‘vase’. This subtle variation in rhyme scheme indicates a break away from the even more impersonal tone of stanza 1 to the moer personal engagement with her partner, and this idealised image of two lovers lying dead together is immediately undermined by the next line with the abandoned room in stanza 2.

In conclusion, both poems explore the different types of abandonment of a room – the emotional and physical absence of its inhabitants – and responds to each respectively. Poem A contrast death or physical abandonment of the room as a preferable alternative to life without emotional fulfilment and poem B depicts th elack of movement in a room as a death of the room and the familial relationships it represents.

Celine Ong
2T11

Both Charlotte Mew’s ‘Rooms’ and Philip Larkin’s ‘Home is So Sad’ portray abandoned rooms in different ways through differences in mood and tone, which reflect the personae’s attitudes towards these rooms. Poem A’s tone is initially reminiscent but shifts towards being reflective towards the end. This is in contrast to Poem B’s initially reflective tone (in the first stanza) that gradually shifts, inversely, to a reminiscence of how the house used to be. The mood of both poems are nostalgic but to different extents: the nostalgia in A is overshadowed by the persona’s detachment from the various abandoned rooms while the nostalgia in B seems to be almost overwhelming, evident in the inconclusive ending.

What is interesting in both poems is the point of view from which abandoned rooms are portrayed in relation to the moo of both poems. Poem A is written from the first-person perspective, as seen through the use of the first-person pronoun ‘I’ in ‘I remember’ as well as the inclusive ‘we’. Hence, we expect Poem A to be more personal. However, the use of the plural noun ‘Rooms’ as the title is vague and more denotative than connotative, illustrating the lack of attachment to the abandoned rooms in the poem. This is in contrast to Poem B where the third-person perspective is used, yet is mor epersonal than A. Through the use of the noun ‘House’ in the title which is connotative and reminiscent of a place that is close to our hearts, hence showing a greater attachment to the abandoned rooms than in A. The degree of attachment to the ‘House’ in B is further emphasised through the personification of  the abandoned room through emotive words such as ‘sad’ and ‘withers’ which imbue it with a life-like quality. In contrast, the lack of attachment in A is drawn out further from the use if enumeration of ‘the room in.. the room at.. the.. room with’, where the rooms are remembered based on their locations such as ‘Paris’ and ‘Geneva’ which are vast spaces that highlight the abandoned nature of the rooms as nothing more than commonplace and unworthy of further rumination.

The two poems also portray abandoned rooms different with regard to the setting through imagery. Poem A focuses on the location of the rooms such as in ‘Paris’ and ‘Geneva’ as well as the ‘seaweed smell’ and ‘that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide’ which give a strong sense of location. In addition, the alliteration of the sibilant ‘s’ is used to enhance the quality of auditory and olfactory imagery, showing a greater reminiscence of where the room was and detachment from the abandoned, empty room itself. Poem B, on the other hand, focuses on the interrior setting of home, evident in ‘What it started as’ and ‘how it was’. The focus on the interior through the use of visual imagery is in contrast to Poem A as various household items are listed. The ‘pictures.. cutlery.. vase’ are seemingly insignificant but hold great memories in the persona’s mind as the poem ends somewhat abruptly. The references to ‘turn again to’, ‘see how it was’ and ‘Look at the’ reflect a desire to look back and return to the abandoned room in question, reflecting a sense of attachment missing in Poem A.

Both poems portray the abandonment of rooms as a result of death and ageing. This is done through human imagery in Poem A, which says that ‘rooms… had their part in the steady slowing down of the heart’, where the assonance of the ‘o’ vowel further slows down the pace of the line, mimicking the ‘slowing down’ of the room’s ‘heart’.  Accompanied by the use of natural imagery such as ‘the sun’ and ‘rain’, the abandonment of rooms are portrayed as natural as ageing, part of a larger cycle of nature itself. Furthermore, the persona in A speaks of the cyclical nature of waking and sleeping in ‘The room where we (two) lie dead’, which could be a metaphorical death referring to the transient presence of people and by extension, the inevitable abandonment and emptiness of rooms. Here, the figurative ‘deaths’ of intimacy and of the room itself are treated with a lack of attachment, as the many images are once again employed to paint the surroundings and people within these rooms, rather than the abandoned room itself. On the other hand, Poem B focuses on the very stasis within the abandoned room, in the use of the present tense in ‘House is so sad. It stays as it was left.’. The idea that ‘You can see how it was’ highlights the unchanged nature of the abandoned room through the modal verb ‘can’ indicating possibility, even though it has ‘long fallen wide’. The appeal to ‘You’ provides a further sense of closeness to the room itself, where the long-drawn vowels in the line present the abandonment of rooms not just as inevitable as in Poem A, but also a dreaded state not dissimilar to death and ageing.

The mood and tonal shifts in the portrayal of abandoned rooms are reflected in the form and changing rhyme scheme of both poems. Poem A is a single verse has its AAB rhyme scheme changed to that of ABAB from line 7, reflecting the shift in tone from reminiscent to reflective as the poem progresses. However, the single verse poem emphasises the general detachment from abandoned rooms despite the caesuras which underscore a slight reluctance to let go of memories before the tonal shift. In Poem B however, the shift in tone from reflective to reminiscent is seen in the line break between the first and second stanzas. With the rhyme scheme constant, reflecting the unchanging nature of home, the mood intensifies as the sentences in the second verse become shorter.

Rachelle Toh
2T11