Madeira Essay

530 Words3 Pages
The poem ‘Madeira’, by Ogden Nash, is about ‘Madeira the home of vineries’. In the poem, the poet talks about the ‘relation tender between vintner and embroidery vender’. The poet also talks about the misleading and negative effects alcohol can have on people, in a mocking tone. Nash describes how free samples of wine are used as a weapon to ‘inflate the tourists to a shape’ and extract huge sums of money from them. The intoxicated tourists, in a jolly mood, would not only buy wine but would also buy steeply priced ‘embroidered fineries’. The intended audiences are people who either visit vineries or drink or buy wine. Nash targets his audience in the form of a warning, by showing how the very senses that people rely on are betrayed by ‘sample sippings of the grape’, after which the intoxicated tourists would ‘pay for a dozen doilies the prices of an authentic First Folio’. The poem is in first person narrative ‘I seem to sense…’. The narrator seems to be a witness to the vinery and embroidery business. Sensible enough to understand the business tactics of the ‘vintner and embroidery vender’, the narrator mocks at the follies of the tourists, who are swayed easily by the trickery of the experienced vintner and embroidery vendor. Nash uses short flowing sentences, with a very evident rhyme scheme in the form of rhyming couplets- ‘vineries’ and ‘fineries’ which create a joyous mood. To further extend the sense of flow and continuity, the poet also uses enjambment, “Madeira … extremely expensive fineries”. The sense of flow creates an image of wine flowing freely and also the money flowing out of the pockets of the inebriated tourists. The use of alliteration, ‘seem to sense’. ‘vintner’, ’vender’, ‘sample sippings’, builds on the rhythm, to have a greater aural impact on the readers. The use of sibilance, ‘seem to sense’, ‘sample sippings’, has a calming aural
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