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Eat Me - Patience Agbabi: RD TH

This poem explores the controlling relationship between a narrator and her male partner through its strict poetic structure of 10 tercets in an ABA rhyme scheme. Language techniques like alliteration, assonance, and repetition are used to enhance the sensuous yet selfish tone of the narrator. Imagery depicts the narrator as submissive, gaining her only pleasure from food and taking the shape desired by others, like a beached whale craving movement. While starting melancholy and repetitive, the poem ends with a more subtle cynical sense of revenge.

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Sohail Ali
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1K views1 page

Eat Me - Patience Agbabi: RD TH

This poem explores the controlling relationship between a narrator and her male partner through its strict poetic structure of 10 tercets in an ABA rhyme scheme. Language techniques like alliteration, assonance, and repetition are used to enhance the sensuous yet selfish tone of the narrator. Imagery depicts the narrator as submissive, gaining her only pleasure from food and taking the shape desired by others, like a beached whale craving movement. While starting melancholy and repetitive, the poem ends with a more subtle cynical sense of revenge.

Uploaded by

Sohail Ali
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Eat Me – Patience Agbabi

Structure;

 “Audacious dramatic monologue”


 Poem has strict structure to perhaps represent the controlling nature of the relationship – 10 tercets
 ABA half-rhyme scheme suggests suspicion, uncertainty (rhymes are not full, they do not coincide
naturally), OR claustrophobia/forced nature of relationship, OR sexual playfulness
 Increasing use of caesuras as poem progresses is deterioration of relationship OR the worsening health
condition
 Bilabial alliteration + onomatopoeia in 3rd tercet harshens sounds/enhances broadness of her belly –
Assonance of “Olive Oil” in 8th tercet suggests choking

Language Techniques;

 Narrative voice incorporates alliteration, assonance, repetition (7th tercet) to enhance sensuousness
 Personal pronoun use makes narrator centre of poem, which achieves a sense of selfishness/greed
 4th tercet in italics to represent the male’s dialogue, gives first-hand view of his dominant personality
 Objectification of women shown by metaphors/similes – “Like a juggernaut”, “His Jacuzzi”, “Like
forbidden fruit”, “His breadfruit” etc.
 Euphemistic language – “cuddly” is alternative for “fat”

Imagery;

 Narrator is submissive, her appreciation of food succeeds all else – “But he was my cook, my ONLY
pleasure”
 Water imagery suggests loneliness/isolation; Water is submissive, takes whatever shape – “Desert
island after shipwreck”, “Beached whale…Craving a wave” She desires energy/movement (literally)
 Ambiguity over “thirty” and “forty” – Allusion to her weight?

Tone;

 Melancholy, repetitive, submissive


 Poem changes, subtle cynical sense of revenge at end
 Desensitised relationship is forged on sexuality, taboo and grotesque objectification of women
 Title is euphemistic, has sexual connotations, an allusion to Alice in Wonderland

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