Feelings of Anger and Injustice in Poetry of John Agard and Tom Leonard

Feelings of Anger and Injustice in Poetry of John Agard and Tom Leonard

Each of the authors uses different methods to display their anger or

annoyance at something. In "What were they like?" which is about the

Vietnam War involving the communist north and capitalist south. The

poem is written unlike most other poems as if she author was giving an

interview with one of the people affected by the war. Each of the

questions is about the Vietnamese people's traditions, culture and

their livelihood and each one is answered with a bitter answer.

The answer to the first question is about how the war turned the

Vietnamese people bitter or left them dead and that it left them with

no memory of their past. This is shown where it is written "Their

light hearts turned to stone" and "It is not remembered whether in

gardens stone lanterns illuminated pleasant ways" The second answer is

about the birth of children as it says "to delight in blossom" linking

the birth of a child to a sprout of a new plant. It then says "but

after the children were killed there were no more buds" where it is

referring the children as buds because they were still so young and

hadn't grown up yet just like the plants buds.

The third answer where it says "laughter is bitter to the burned

mouth" is referring to the napalm which was dropped that burned

through flesh causing extreme pain and is asking how someone could

laugh at that. In the fourth answer the person answering the questions

says "A dream ago, perhaps Ornament is for joy" where the person is

saying that the Vietnamese people have nothing to be joyous about

anymore because of what's happened in Vietnam.

Then it says "All the bones were charred" as to say that even the

memory of the people who died was burned. When asked in the fifth

question about an epic poem the person replies about how before the

people were peaceful and everything was fine, then the bombs came and