Sister leaving before the dance by Helen Dunmore

Sister leaving before the dance by Helen Dunmore

                 Helen Dunmore was born in Yorkshire in 1952. She studied in English at York University and taught in Finland.

                       The sisters are leaving the party before the dance begun. The poet describes the scene of the party with art and craft fully. When the party starts the sisters were at party for the unknown reason. The scene of the party has visual image here. The party is full of pump and gaiety. The sisters bade farewell before leaving the party saying good night. The whole poem is subjective where the sisters are focused. The poet sarcastically says that others were not aware why the sisters were disturbed and leaving before the dance, real fun started. They were busy on their own without knowing or caring for the cause of sisters going. The pet here satirized on the modern man and their materialistic desire and plight for responsibility. The romantic mood dominated the content of the poem with something tragic.

                           On the one hand Helen deals with the enjoyment of the party while on the other hand she talks about the pathetic condition of the sisters. The poem is full with ambiguity. The surface meaning and the hidden meaning are different. The pretense of modern people, well-dressed people is shown. They look different and are really different from within having dual personality. The poem id divided in many stanzas with various pompous descriptions and sounding party language with the good mannered people. The metaphor is used widely. Many composed and sentences and phases with incomplete and long sentences make the poem unique. The poem can be considered to be the prosaic poem. The poetess has intermingled the poetic device in an interesting way. Here many sentences starts with verb and full stops are rarely seen.

                      In short, the poem is a beautiful piece of art with some unique elements – rarely  seen in the recent period.