15 pages • 30 minutes read
Tishani DoshiThe Immigrant's Song
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
Doshi’s “The Immigrant’s Song” is a free verse poem, meaning it has no set meter nor rhyme scheme. It is written in a single stanza with one fragmented, single-word line (Line 14) offsetting the form. While the poem does not have a set rhyme scheme, it does use end rhyme in places to establish a musical flow. A slant rhyme is a rhyme in which two words sound the same but do not perfectly rhyme. For example, Lines 8 and 10 have a slant end rhyme (“dreams” and “eaves”). Similarly, Lines 4 and 5 also end with a slant rhyme (“lines” and “sky”). However, because there is no set pattern for these rhymes, the poem does not have a defined rhyme scheme.
Doshi tends to use rhyme when the poem explores memories of the speaker’s homeland. These are positive, sensory-filled memories. By using rhyme in these moments of positive memory, Doshi establishes a sense of “rightness” with these moments. These memories (women washing clothes, mothers wearing headscarves, the smell of coffee beans) all represent a time before the war and abandonment—the time before the speaker was forced to flee their country. This rhyme is seen again towards the poem’s conclusion when the speaker lapses back into memory. Lines 33 and 34 conclude in slant rhyme (“beans” and “streets”). Lines 43 and 44, Doshi use a slant rhyme (“world” and “word”) to conclude the poem.
Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the words “like” or “as.” Doshi’s use of simile throughout “The Immigrant’s Song” allows the poem to leap into imagery and lyricism—the expression of emotion in an imaginative or beautiful way. In Line 24, Doshi’s simile of the speaker’s old friends “who are unravelling like fairy tales / in the forests of the dead” (Lines 24-25) describes their friends’ deaths as fiction, or something that happened a long time ago (a tale). Because their friends’ deaths are “unravelling” they are being forgotten or slowly fading into the past (represented by the metaphor “forests of the dead,” [Line 25]). This imaginative simile enriches the poem with imagery; it also carries feeling. The speaker is aware that their dead friends are slipping from their memory and lives—as the dead do. However, because their friends were likely killed during war or civil unrest, the speaker may carry some survivor guilt. They might question: Why are they still alive and their friends dead? Why are they living comfortably in another country while their friends’ bones decompose in the thick graves of the forests? These are questions that spin from this simile.
Another vibrant and extended simile is the image concluding the poem. The speaker states, “You might set your memory afloat / like a paper boat down a river” (Lines 35-36). Comparing the speaker’s (the immigrant’s) memory to a paper boat set on a river to flow downstream is to compare something small and fragile (the memory, a paper boat) carried by something vast and expansive (a river). However, the paper boat (the memory) whispers the immigrant’s story to the water, which in turn transfers the story to the tree, and so on. When the story cannot persist via the immigrant’s tongue, the story lives on in the voices of nature. This simile, concluding the poem, gives the immigrant’s story the voice of the world. With this simile, Doshi may be saying that are people all immigrants; humans have all experienced war and abandonment, and such stories live on in the roots, trees, and wind of the world.
Enjambment
An enjambed line is a line that “steps over” from one line to the next; the line ends part way through the sentence or clause which is then continued on a subsequent line or lines. Doshi’s use of enjambment throughout “The Immigrant’s Song” gives the poem a feeling of extension or suspension between lines. With no stanza breaks or set rhythm or rhyme scheme, enjambment propels the poem forward. For example, Lines 5-6 have a “step over” or a moment of suspension between them: “Let us not speak of the long arms of the sky / that used to cradle us at dusk” (Lines 5-6). By breaking the line on “sky” Doshi suspends the sky’s action, which is then picked up at the beginning of Line 6 with the action of cradling. Similarly, another example of enjambment occurs between Lines 21-22. Line 21 states, “let us not burden them with stories,” then Line 22 picks up where Line 21 left off: “of war or abandonment” (Line 22). Between the lines, there is a moment of pause when the reader does not know the subject of the stories. Line 22, however, clarifies that they are traumatizing stories not to be shared. Enjambed lines occur throughout “The Immigrant’s Song,” creating a sense of uneasiness which mirrors the immigrant’s own feelings as they navigate two vastly different worlds and cultures.
