Belfast Confetti Literary Elements

The narrative is told through the first person perspective of an unidentified resident of Belfast. Notably, the speaker’s gender, age and ideological persuasions regarding “the Troubles” of Ireland are never identified.

Written in free verse lacking any regular metrical construction.

“A fusillade of question-marks” is a metaphor for the interrogation the speaker is subjected to by a soldier or police officer which is the poem’s closing image.

The poem opens with alliterative repetition of the “S” sound: “Suddenly as the riot squad moved in”

Although the speaker is familiar enough with the setting of the poem to recognize specific street names, the language he uses to describe it is ironically alienating and creates a menacing sense of unfamiliarity: “I know this labyrinth so well.”

War poetry

The section of Belfast in which can be found the streets listed by name in the poem: Odessa Street, Crimea Street, etc. The time is not directly indicated in the text, but the poet has indicated that it is a reference to 1969, the year he personally experienced a close call with a bullet as a result of political violence in the city.

Shock and awe. Confusion and terror. Bewilderment and demoralization.

Protagonist: speaker. Antagonist: the violence between opposing sides in the ongoing struggle over Irish independence from British rule.

The conflict is the entire poem: the frenzied aftermath of the detonation of a homemade bomb coinciding with the arrival of British military-level anti-riot enforcement.

A rare case where the climax is actually the very beginning: the detonation of a pipe bomb in response to arrival of the riot squad.

The opening line’s metaphor “raining exclamation marks” foreshadows the recurring reference to punctuation marks throughout the poem in connection with violent action.

“A fount of broken type” is an especially ironic understated description of the shrapnel flying through the air as a result of the bomb in light of the hyperbolic description which just preceded. [See Hyperbole below]

Referencing the section of Belfast with which is familiar as suddenly seeming sinister is accomplished through an allusion to the mythological story of a maze which holds a monstrous figure at its center known as the Minotaur:” I know this labyrinth so well”

“A Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields. Walkie-talkies” is an example of a microcosmic synecdoche in which a catalog of individual items taken collective become a metaphor for a military engagement rather a police action.

N/A

“raining exclamation marks” is hyperbolic metaphor overstating the actual contents blow into the sky by the explosion for the purpose of intensifying the speaker’s sense of terror in the immediacy of the moment.

“I was trying to complete a sentence in my head, but it kept stuttering” might possibly be example of this technique if one interprets “stuttering” to be a description of gunfire which interrupts his thought processes.