Out of the bag

• Structure


  • Part one has 14 lines
  • Each stanza has 3 lines - called a tercet
  • No specific rhyme scheme
  • Slants - similar words that sound like rhymes
• "Those nosy, rosy, big, soft hands"


  • Childish adjective
  • Long list is like how children describe things
• "Of disinfectant, a Dutch interior gleam"


  • Seems like it is something out of a Dutch painting - the author is educated and only looking back on his life as a child
• "soft, sud-luscious, saved for him from the rain-butt"


  • Use of sibilance mimics the sound of water
• "he once turned his eyes upon me, Hyperborean, beyond-the-north-wind blue two peepholes to the locked room I saw into every time his name was mentioned"


  • Hyperborean is a Greek utopia
  • Allows him a look into the doctors soul and his skills - whenever the doctor's name is said he recalls that feeling
  • Educated and childish at the same time
• Asclepius and Hygeia


  • Greek god of healing
  • His daughter - Goddess of Hygiene
• "'incubation' was technical and ritual, meaning sleep, when epiphany occurred and you met the god..."

  • Incubation - a place where frail, immature living things were kept warm e.g. babies
  • Epiphany - reference to the ancient religious belief that a dream where Asclepius would come to you and tell you what you have to do to become healed
  • Ends with an ellipsis as the poet moves to a hallucinatory experience
• "And then as he dipped and laved in the generous suds again, miraculum, the baby bits all came together swimming"

  • Speaker's own hallucination when he fainted in Lourdes
  • The description mirrors the experience of being born, exploring the idea of birth and epiphany
  • Past and present blended through hallucinations and language - childish metaphors juxtapose with educated language
• "I wanted nothing more than to lie down under hogweed, under seeded grass"


  • Unclear why he wants to do this - could link to the idea of humbling himself in front of the gods
  • Blistering and painful
• "The haven of light she was, the undarkening door"

  • Hygeia 'undarkens' Dr Kerlins 'darkened door' - references the beginning of the poem
  • She is the 'haven of light' - links to idea that through hallucinations, the Greek Gods and memories of a Christian pilgrimage, the poet has achieved purification
• "whisper of triumph"


  • Climax of the poem - brings its events to a conclusion - despite all his knowledge of science, religious and medicine the triumph belongs to women as they can achieve everything he did with his life just through the act of childbirth
• Themes

  • Childhood
  • Education
  • Medicine + science
  • Religion