The City Planners by Margaret Atwood
Themes and Symbols
Structure of the poem
Linguistic/Poetic devices and their effect
Personification
The City Planners is a free verse written in 7 stanzas of uneven sets of lines ranging from 2-12 . The absence of uniformity in the structure represents Margarets belief in beauty in disorganisation, contrasting with the planners framwork respectively.
The poem doesnt follow a particular rhyme scheme.
Simile
Aliiteration
Irony/Sarcasm
Examples- "gradual as glaciers", "suprising as a bruise"
Tone: sarcastic, angry, disapproving
Urbanisation
Man vs. Nature
Originality and creativity
Examples- "straight swath", "wide windows"
Examples- "too fixed stare of the wide windows" "
Examples- "a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise"
The unformity in the houses, lacking innovation and imagination.
The poem hints of climate change.
The impact of urbanisation on nature.