Anyone here had a go at themselves/ for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists/ with a blade in the bath?
The poem “I Say I Say I Say” sets off with two sequential rhetoric questions. The queries boost the immersion of the readers. Even though the readers may not rejoinder expressly to the queries, they nudge their recollections to the previous endeavors they have made to perpetrate suicide.
A passion then for watches, bangles, cuffs./A likely story: you were lashed by brambles/picking berries from the woods.
The “watches, bangles, cuffs” are façades to obscure the indicators of suicide. Attempts to camouflage the bloats means that the ‘attempters’ are still mortified of their histories; thus, would not wish for other people to distinguish them by way of the conspicuous signs on their arms.
I am very bothered when I think/of the bad things I have done in my life./Not least that time in the chemistry lab/when I held a pair of scissors by the blades/and played the handles/in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;/then called your name, and handed them over.
The speaker blatantly enunciates the foundation of his upset. The phrasing in the title is analogous to that in the initial line. The speaker does not evade the issue; he plainly delineates the particular occurrence that disconcerts him. The overt revelation validates that the speaker has taken blame for his childhood callousness.
And praised his wife for every meal she made./And once, for laughing, punched her in the face
The action of applauding his wife’s meals is complimentary. Comparatively, striking the wife is an antagonistic exploit that annuls the positivity stemming from the acclamation to the meals.
