Strategy Response 1, Week 1

I read the piece “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home,” and thought that Craig Raine’s alien imagery implemented a nice spin on how the world is normally seen. This poem ws found on page 15 of our "Writing Poetry" text. Some of the words used are native to the English language, but the definitions are merely changed to fit the perspective of the alien.

In this work, the author uses languageto redefine language, rather than constructing new speech that does not exist. For example, lines 7-8 state, “Mist is when the sky is tired of flight/ and rests its soft machine on ground.” Instead of creating an alien word for the concept of “Mist,” Raine utilizes the imagery of how steam emits from a ship after it touches down for landing (for the steam itself is rather misty). This has often been seen in science fiction movies, so Raine draws upon the knowledge of his audience to help him enhance the imagery of his language. Another example of this is found in lines 20-24 where he uses a ghostly apparition to symbolize a human baby.

The lines 20-24 state: “In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps/ that snores when you pick it up./ If the ghost cries, they carry it/ to their lips and soothe it to sleep/ with sounds. And yet they wake it up/ deliberately by tickling with their finger.” Often, humans desire to not awaken other-worldly spirits or to let them rest. But from the alien’s perspective, the opposite is happening; fraternizing with ghosts appears common in his eyes.

Raine is able to detach himself from the world enough so that definitions of our society are recognized through other imagery with which we are familiar. By defamiliarizing himself from the restraint of common concepts, Raine is able to find substitute variables that help strengthen his imagery. The idea of soothing a ghost to sleep by pressing a kiss to its head is rather soft and gentle, especially since the original notion on Earth is that ghosts are intangible. For humans to be able to touch something spiritual as a “ghost” (or baby) is unique enough for the alien to include it in his postcard.

The technique of using defamiliarization in order to redefine language through imagery of substitution is a nice way to view a new perspective of the world around us, especially through the eyes of a being that is not human. This same technique could work for inanimate objects, animals, or even spiritual beings. Raine’s method is a technique that I would definitely like to tackle in one of my future works.