Cut

Cut: analysis

Introduction

"Cut" is a short-lined poem about a kitchen accident. The speaker slices a thumb instead of an onion and then watches the wound. The poem never simply cries out in pain.

Instead it heaps image on image onto the injured thumb. The thumb becomes a pilgrim, a scalped settler, a saboteur, a kamikaze pilot and a "Dirty girl". The blood becomes a carpet and an army of "Redcoats".

The tone mixes shock, dark comedy and odd detachment. Under the jokes lie signs of illness and numbness, as in "I am ill". The poem is about pain, and about how a mind turns pain into spectacle.

Summary

The poem opens with a one-line dedication to Susan O'Neill Roe. It stands alone as the first stanza. The poem says nothing more about the person named.

The speaker exclaims "What a thrill" at cutting a thumb instead of an onion. The top of the thumb is almost gone. Only "a sort of hinge" still holds it on.

The hinge is made of skin. The loose flap sits on the thumb like a hat and is "Dead white." Then the red flesh beneath shows, described as "red plush."

The speaker now addresses the thumb as "Little pilgrim". The thumb has been scalped, as if by an axe. Its hanging skin is compared to a turkey's wattle. The blood begins to roll out like a carpet.

The carpet comes "Straight from the heart." The speaker steps on it while holding a bottle of pink fizz. The speaker calls the moment a celebration. From the gap in the thumb a million soldiers run. Every one of them is a Redcoat.

The speaker asks whose side these soldiers are on. The thumb is addressed as a homunculus. The speaker says "I am ill" and has taken a pill against a feeling.

That feeling is thin and papery. The speaker then calls the thumb "Saboteur" and "Kamikaze man". The stanza breaks off at a dash.

The thumb is now bandaged. The stain on the gauze darkens and tarnishes. The gauze is likened to a Ku Klux Klan hood and to a babushka. The long sentence moves toward the moment when the heart's pulp meets its "Mill of silence".

The last stanza completes that sentence with "How you jump". The thumb flinches at that moment. The speaker names it three more times. It is a "Trepanned veteran", a "Dirty girl" and finally a "Thumb stump".

Themes and meaning

Pain and detachment. The poem records a painful injury with almost no word of pain. The speaker looks at the thumb like an observer, noting the "hinge" of skin and the "Dead white" flap. Colour and texture replace feeling. This distance can be read as shock, as numbness, or as a refusal to feel.

Violence and history. The wound is described through scenes of conflict: a scalped pilgrim, "Redcoats", a "Saboteur", a "Kamikaze man" and a Klan hood. These images come from wars and terror far larger than a cut thumb. The question "Whose side are they on?" suggests the body is at war with itself. The blood that runs out is both the army and the casualty.

Celebration turned inside out. The speaker greets the cut with "What a thrill". The flowing blood is a carpet rolled out as for a guest. The speaker holds "pink fizz" and declares "A celebration, this is." These festive images are ironic. They can also be read as a real, troubling excitement at feeling anything at all.

Illness and numbness. The sixth stanza changes register with "I am ill". The speaker has taken a pill to kill a "Papery feeling". The poem does not say what the illness is. Read this way, the cut breaks through a flat, papery state, and the "Mill of silence" keeps something muffled at the centre.

Naming and identity. The thumb receives more than a dozen names. They shift between victim and aggressor, male and female. It is a "Little pilgrim" and a "Kamikaze man", then a "Dirty girl". The final name, "Thumb stump", is the plainest and bleakest.

Tone

The poem opens in a bright, exclamatory voice. "What a thrill" sounds flippant, even gleeful. Readers often hear sarcasm in it and in "A celebration, this is."

The middle stanzas are clinical and playful at once. Precise colour words sit beside cartoon images of pilgrims and soldiers. The inverted word order of line 17 adds a mock-formal note.

The tone darkens at line 23 with "I am ill". The address to the thumb turns from teasing to accusing, with "Saboteur" and "Kamikaze man". The Klan image brings menace into the bandage.

The ending is terse and fragmented. The final names are mock-affectionate and contemptuous together. "Dirty girl" scolds, and "Thumb stump" simply states the damage.

Form and structure

The poem has 40 lines in 9 stanzas. The first stanza is a single line, the dedication. Most of the others have 4 lines. Stanza five has 7 lines and stanza eight has 8.

The lines are very short, from 2 to 10 syllables. The longest is line 17, with its irony about celebration. There is no regular metre. This is free verse built from clipped phrases and fragments.

There is no fixed rhyme scheme, but sounds return. Thrill, ill and kill echo each other. Run and one close stanza five. Wattle and bottle, skin and thin, man and Klan, and jump and stump also chime. Enjambment is constant, and dashes break off line 2, line 28 and line 37.

Poetic devices

Irony line 2

What a thrill An injury is greeted as excitement. The gap between the words and the event sets the poem's unsettling tone.

Simile line 7

A flap like a hat The severed skin is made into an everyday object. The comparison is almost comic and keeps pain at a distance.

Imagery (colour) line 9

Then that red plush. After the dead-white flap, the red flesh appears as soft fabric. The contrast of colour and texture replaces any statement of pain.

Apostrophe line 10

Little pilgrim The speaker speaks directly to the thumb. This begins the chain of names that treats the thumb as a separate being.

Metaphor line 13

Carpet rolls The flowing blood becomes a carpet rolled out, as for a ceremony. It links the wound to the poem's festive images.

Inversion line 17

A celebration, this is. The reversed word order sounds stagey and mock-formal. It sharpens the irony of calling a wound a celebration.

Metaphor line 20

Redcoats, every one. Drops of blood become red-uniformed soldiers pouring out. The image turns the body into a battlefield.

Internal rhyme line 24

I have taken a pill to kill The chime of pill and kill, echoing the word ill in line 23, ties medicine to killing. The jingle is at odds with the grim statement.

Metaphor line 30

Gauze Ku Klux Klan The white bandage becomes a hood of racial terror. The comparison brings menace and shame into the act of dressing the wound.

Polysyndeton line 32

Darkens and tarnishes and when The repeated 'and' draws the sentence on as the stain spreads. The line ends in suspense, delaying the heart's arrival.

Enjambment line 36

Mill of silence The long sentence runs across the stanza break into the next line. The break enacts the pause before the thumb flinches.

Assonance line 40

Thumb stump. The repeated short 'u' makes a blunt, thudding close. It rhymes with jump and reduces the thumb to its damage.

Words worth knowing

wattle

The loose fold of red skin hanging from a turkey's throat. Here it is the dangling flap of the cut thumb.

Redcoats

British soldiers in colonial and revolutionary America, named for their red uniforms. Here they are the drops of blood.

Homunculus

A tiny, fully formed human being, a notion from old science and alchemy. The speaker treats the thumb as a little person.

Kamikaze

A Japanese pilot of the Second World War who crashed his plane on purpose. It casts the thumb as a self-destroying attacker.

Babushka

Russian for 'grandmother', and in English a headscarf tied under the chin. Here it is the bandage wrapped around the thumb.

Trepanned

Having had a hole cut in the skull, an old surgical practice. It fits the thumb's sliced-off top.

What readers have said

• NHS hears the poem as sarcastic, so that "What a thrill" and "A celebration, this is" become funny. NHS argues it is not one extended metaphor but many metaphors for the thumb. NHS, 2005
• Jennifer says the real subject is not the cut but the speaker's attitude. She reads a wide-eyed, exhausted indifference that savours the bleeding as a thrill. Jennifer, 2006
• Paige Gregory and Chelsea Garcia think the poem is about suicide, though their class read it as a cut thumb. They take "What a thrill" as the relief of self-harm and the hinge as one last thing held onto. Paige gregory and Chelsea Garcia, 2005
• Paige Gregory reads it as a common kitchen accident. She sees the bandaged thumb compared to a peasant woman's headdress and to a member of a secret society. Paige Gregory, 2005
• Hari R hears the sarcasm but values the precision. The soldiers image makes the speaker seem inside the wound, dissecting each stage of the bleeding. Hari R, 2005
• Jamie Mcginal praises the form and the mostly one-syllable words. The poem feels to this reader like a puzzle in which every word has one right place. jamie mcginal, 2005