English (Core) · Ch 2 — A Photograph
Poetic Devices
Poetic Devices
Shirley Toulson uses simple but powerful devices to carry the poem's feeling.
Metonymy
The photograph is never named directly; the poet calls it "The cardboard" — "The cardboard shows me how it was." The stiff card on which the picture is mounted stands in for the picture itself, quietly stressing how flimsy and ordinary the object is that has outlived the people in it.
Transferred epithet
In "Washed their terribly transient feet," the word "transient" really describes the short-lived, mortal girls, not their feet. The quality of one thing (their fleeting lives) is transferred to another (their feet), deepening the sense of human impermanence.
Oxymoron
"The laboured ease of loss" places two opposite ideas side by side — "laboured" (effortful) and "ease" (relaxed). It captures the forced, painful lightness with which both mother and poet try to smile over their grief.
Alliteration
The repeated 't' sounds in "terribly transient" and the soft repetition in the final line reinforce the mood, drawing the reader's ear to the poem's key ideas of impermanence and silence.
Repetition (polyptoton)
The closing line "Its silence silences" repeats the same root word as noun and then verb. The silence of loss is so absolute that it actively hushes the poet, giving the poem its stunned, wordless ending.