Olive Senior Essay

Olive of age(p) is a Jamaican poet of high repute and is the author of Gardening in the Tropics. In this poetry record book Senior seeks to tackle history, moral issues, travel and environmental crises. Seniors verses are pervaded with irony, humour and sarcasm and her noise is conversational and alleviate. Seniors style of writing aids in creating a diacritic congresswoman which is evident in the poems Seeing the Light, Meditation on chicken and Stowaway.Senior in an interview with Kwame Dawes entitled Talk Yuh Talk admits that she has been stalk by the absence of the Tainos and was always unsatisfied with the image of the Tainos beingness a simplistic group of people that existed before Columbus arrival and consequently they suddenly became extinct. Her interest in the Tainos is evident in her poems Meditation on Yellow and Seeing the Light where she sows seeds of discourse to the colonial notions that the Europeans achieved anything positive in their advantage.The poem Seeing the Light speaks to the destruction of the Caribbean by the Europeans. Their conquest to the sensitive World/Caribbean was aimed at introducing civilization to the Taino society and Christianity through evangelism. Au contraire, their conquest terminated the lives of the Tainos and resulted in severe deforestation. Senior employs a bracketed aside to conduct counter discourse to the productivity of the European systems. (Though in their chronicles they may book recorded it by another name Conquista?Evangelismo? Civilizacion? ) Senior manipulates Spanish choice of words which is the tongue of the European colonizers to embellish her argument of counter discourse by mocking and criticizing them. The headway marks are utilized to interrogate the Europeans. Additionally, Senior skilfully exploits rhetorical questions to challenge and cast on doubt on the religion of the Europeans and supplement the counter discourse. The speaker proceeds to ask why did those who speak of Lig ht wear black, the colour mourning?Why was their accept so terrible? Why on a dead channelise did they nail the bringer of Light, One Cristo, torture and garbage down him and then ask us to come, bow down and righteousness him? These questions subtly enhance the cynical shadiness of the speaker. The third question is the most crucial as it is a rent counter discourse to the Europeans religion and beliefs. The speaker wants to know why the Europeans would kill Jesus Christ, who they wor enthral and then ask the Tainos to bow down and worship him.Furthermore, Meditation on Yellow centers around the theme of exploitation and this relates to the Tainos, Africans and coetaneous worker, for example in the tourism industry. Senior deploys a bracketed aside (for light engenders gold and fires the brain) this creates an extremely sarcastic and critical tone that interrogates the colonial narratives and seeks to question the motives of the Europeans and reveal their lust and desire for gold and their resultant insanity.Senior puts to use of goods and services appropriate lineation which separates the innocent and peaceful nature of the Tainos from the lustful and round the bend Europeans. The break makes the distinction between the two groups and adds performativity. In addition, at that place is recitation of pun and humour in the lines a bit continent despite your vast holdings the tone is sarcastic and it emphasizes that despite the Europeans immense possessions they cannot hold it in like waste.Moreover, the bracketed aside (though I was gratified to note that despite the going away in our skins our piss was exactly the same shade of yellow, is used to exemplify equality through urine and the diction piss is extremely crude. In the lines I wished for you a sudden enlightenment that is ironic because the Europeans thought that they had brought or were bringing enlightenment to the Tainos, however it was the Tainos this barbaric group of people who t reasured to remind them of their location.The verbalise is again critical and sarcastic as there is counter discourse to the notion that the Europeans were more enlightened and knowledgeable than the Tainos. In these two poems Olive Senior is the vox populi. She has given a articulate to the Tainos and Africans whose thoughts have been suppressed and potently offers a afro -centric perspective to the historical events involving the Europeans and natives. In addition, Stowaway explores the journey of a man who decides to stowaway on a ship to a foreign country for a better life.The diction in this poem mimics a monologue as the reader feels like they are being spoken to. A doubling entendre appears in the first line, theres this much space between me and discovery this pun makes the reader apprised that the traveller has no space around him and that he will before long be discovered. This pun brings to light the terrifying condition aboard the ship and the uncertainty of the tr avel time. The repetition of I creates a distinctive voice and adds an element of performativity to the poem. One day light will enter this grave is another double entendre conveying the idea that the man will before long be caught or he will soon discover this current land/territory. Grave is a metaphor for the ship and is a symbolic representation of darkness and hence there is a biblical allusion to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The tone created is one of isolation, fear and anxiety which accompanies the theme of travel especially in this case as an undeclared passenger a stowaway.When the speaker decides to bonny settle down and wait for the ship to dock his tone becomes calm and relaxed, the tempo is slowed down in contrast to the erratic and frenzied round of golf before. Olive Senior employs various poetic devices namely bracketed aside, metaphor, irony and double entendre to skilfully create distinctive voice in her poems with the aid of her effective and stylistic d iction and lineation to create counter discourse. She blends these devices and techniques to create tones which set in to her distinctive voice.