Glasgow 5th March

This is a critical essay for Glasgow, 5th March, 1971, by Edwin Morgan, which is a modern instimatic poem about a shocking evil committed upon a young man and his girl by two youths and witnessed by two annonymous expressionless drivers who pass by without even aknowledging the crime. Morgan manages to make us go through as if we are watching this incident happen and effectively conveys the incident in the form it takes, un perceptional, detached and formal. This feeling is fistly shown in the title, which is simply a take and date, the title implies it isnt a poem but some kind of record or headline.In this critical essay I am going to show how the poet Edwin Morgan uses unfounded and unnamed themes to create a lasting impression with the help of techniques like setting, imagery and articulate choice. In the first stanza Morgan makes excellent use of imagery and word choice, catching our attention with the sum upress With a ragged diamond, of shattered plate glass This phras e immediately makes the reader think of something sharp, sparkling and dangerously beautiful. When the words diamond and shop window are put together like this we imagine them as small sparkling diamonds.This impression is carried on later in the poem when the writer describes the setting as a sharp clear night Even though the writer has said nothing of what sort of shop it is we subconsciously imagine a jewellers shop. This is technique effectively puts the reader at the scene of the crime. In the second verse the poet uses another technique, a metaphor that emphasises the brutality of the flaming bristling with fragments of glass This metaphor the could be comparing bristles of hair to the bristles of glass lying on the mans face. It is an effective comparison because it helps the reader imagine all the tiny particles of glass.It shows that poet wants us to recreate the incident as we read, with as much detail as possible. Edwin Morgan withal uses clinical language to describe t he injurys to the couple. A key example of that is the phrase, spurts arterial blood His word choice makes the the scene more violent but also continues to detach the reader from the young victims This successfully describes the scene without showing any emotion from the writer or the victims while still going along with the violent theme. Edwin Morgan uses onomatopoeia when he says the phrases shattered plate glass, bristling with fragments of glass spurts.The continuation of the sh and s sounds throughout the poem help blusher a clearer picture of the crime in the readers head. This technique is successfull as phrases add sound effects to the silent image in the readers head. The writer does not add any emotions, but he does add facial expressions of the characters. About the young man and his girl he says that, Their faces show surprise, shock, And the beginnings of pain This quote is effectivly emphasises the speed of events this is diaphanous from the writer describing the ho w the characters are only just beginning to feel the pain when we are reading the third stanza.The couple are also kept anonymous creating one of the main themes of the poem. This use of word choice again doesnt show any emotion while still successfuly describing to the reader what is happening to the victims. Morgan also tells us about the two youths faces with the phrase Their faces show no expression. This is the main quote that tells us that the two youths have no remorse for what they have done it also leaves the two youths anonymous like the young couple they have just pushed This helps to carry on the anonymous theme through the poem.