Analysis (Limbo)

This poem creates a sense of the movement of the limbo dance (an African traditional dance where the dancers move under a horizontal pole, attempting to move under it without their hands or knees touching the ground).

The opening stanza is brief, demonstrating the abbreviated grammar typical of African dialect. ‘And Limbo stick is the silence in front of me’ presenting a silent, threatening challenge to the dancer.

The italics are used for the word ‘limbo’ and for what appears to be a chorus, like a song, sung whilst the dance goes on.

There is a sense of darkness in the poem ‘long dark night is the silence in front of me’ on the ship, which the poem seems to be set on.

There is alliteration ‘stick hit sound’ with the ‘s’ sound emphasising the hitting effect, like a drumming. The ‘d’ sound in ‘long dark deck’ also creates a hard, unpleasant, oppressive atmosphere of the slave ship.

This is developed with ‘stick is the whip and the dark deck is slavery’ which is repeated to emphasise the importance and unpleasantness of this, in the poem.

The drumstick becomes a weapon to hit the slaves with, increasing the darkness over the slaves, like unconsciousness over them ‘drum stick knock and the darkness is over me’.

The idea of knees spread wide could relate to a kneeling, helpless position or even be representative of a rape being committed on the ship.

This also links to the limbo like movement of the dance.

The atmosphere becomes more positive after line 40 as the sun comes up and things get lighter, with ‘praising’ ‘raising’ and ‘saving’ as internal rhyme making the feeling more positive.

The words ‘up’ up, up’ (lines 44-45) are the opposite to ‘down down down’ from (lines 34-36) again expressing the movement of the dance from going down under the pole in the dance to upwards, successful on the other side, like the freedom after slavery.

The dance is therefore a metaphor for the freeing of slaves from their captivity.

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