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Tony Harrison: Blocks

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

Blocks

From ‘The School of Eloquence’ and Other Poems, London: Rex Collings, 1978

176

Length / Form Sixteen-line sonnet.

Relationship to Classical text Recalls his Mother's funeral and the poet’s muteness - 'For all my years of Latin and Greek'. ‘VALE, MATER’s all that I can spell’ (the capitals perhaps suggest an inscription on a grave stone). The letter-blocks with which his mother taught him are now blocks of stone and bear the letters of a dead language.

Comment As in ‘Painkillers, II’, the poet’s classical education signals a rift in communication between him and his family.

Note Grouped under the ‘Two’ sequence of poems.