Chainsaw vs the Pampas Grass

• Themes


  • Human tech v nature
  • Violent force v quiet persistence
  • Femininity v masculinity
• "Knocked back a quarter-pint of engine oil"


  • Gasoline - someone is filling it up/enabling it
  • 'Knocked back' personifies it - makes it seem like someone drinking alcohol - relates to male violence
• "Grinding its teeth in a plastic sleeve"

  • Threatening - personification
  • Links to theme of violence
• "chainsaw with its perfect disregard, its mood to tangle with cloth or jewellery or hair"


  • Perfect disregard - oxymoron
  • Wants to engage in violence and battle
• "I let it flare"


  • Speaker enables male violence
  • Empowered - masculine weapon
• "The pampas grass with its ludicrous feathers and plumes"


  • Enjambment - forces reader into a quick pace - grass is opposite to the chainsaw
  • It has 'cushions' and seems vulnerable, but also has 'twelve-foot spears'
• "I ripped into pockets of dark, secret warmth"

  • Allusions to rape - relates the 'overkill' line earlier
  • War imagery - relates to the idea that soldiers throughout history would often go to far, killing and pillaging too much, with innocent people and that would often lead to rape
• "then cut and raked, cut and raked"

  • Battlefield imagery - 'cut' relates to rapid gunfire - cutting soldiers down and 'rake' relates the the way their bodies were tossed aside
  • The repetition links to the idea of how much death there is
• Structure


  • There is variation in the line length, going from one extreme of just three of four words on a line, to three times that at 9 or more words. causes confusion for a reader, particularly with the variation in stanza length. The mix of line lengths could represent the destructive nature of the chainsaw, and it’s reckless and unrestricted power destroying the structure of the poem, making it look more fragmented.
  • no enjambment between them, with each one contained within its own section with end-stopped lines. In some ways this could be seen as control of humanity over natural form