Friday, 8 October 2010

What is the central message of the poem "Peter Street" by Peter Sirr?

The main
message of this contemporary poem is that it is good to let go of grief over the death of a
loved oneand beyond that, it conveys that the imagination has the power to heal and replace
sadness with joy.

In the poem, the speaker passes the place where a hospital
once stood, the hospital in which his father died. The speaker looks at the site and thinks that
he "almost pray[s] some ache remain." In other words, he wishes, for a fleeting
moment, that he could feel some grief. The key word, however, is "almost." The speaker
doesn't really wish to grieve. As he says, "Forget all that." Instead, he decides to
imagine the place of his father's death is a "marvelous house" in which he would hear
music and "St. Valentine's stubborn heart"lovewould set his father free to be healthy
and whole.

The speaker's father will never be alive again, but the speaker
has the imaginative power to retell the story as he wishes and envision him in a positive
way.

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