Lagan Weir Poem Analysis

It is very clear that this poem was carefully constructed, it was meant to be read meticulously. The author of the poem has spent hours working with the
“precision of black and white and its close score and countercut that becomes what happens here, between these squat characters and a thinning fiction keen to aspire” (Groarke, 56, 22-26).
Yet even with this meticulous care, the only way to escape the confines of the poem is “by way of leave”, or by flight. This is also, therefore, the only way to leave the physical world and reach the metaphysical one. Alan Gillis has a contrasting perception of birds; birds are not a beautiful part of nature, but another disorderly part of it. No poem is more explicit in its view of birds than the poem ‘Lagan Weir’, which is one of …show more content…
Not only are there two commas forcing the reader to pause, but the enjambment in the lines creates a short unnatural pause between clauses. The consonants play a similar role, the transition from the r in never to the s in slowing is difficult, as is the case in the phrase ‘knowing [pause] the’. The pace of the lines has no correlation to the action that it claims. The tone of this poem is rather gloomy, the figure in the poem has no hope, claiming that people “might as well take a leap and try and follow” the birds, but ending the poem with an uncertain destination. Gillis’s speaker succumbs to the bird’s chaos, since they at least can make their way home; however, “there is almost invariably an edge to it as if the consoling communions of desire were always subject to the disruptive pessimism of envy, jealousy, malice, and uncertainty”. Gillis wants the freedom that birds possess, he wants the ability to leave the world behind and not be in a state of confusion, but his interpretation of the world dictates that the path of the birds is a last resort, and even then, there is no clear