Poems from Other Cultures

Poems from Other Cultures

Both 'Search For My Tongue' and 'Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan'

deal with the idea of inner conflict or confusion. 'Search For My

Tongue' concerns coming to terms with living in a foreign country and

feeling disconnected from your cultural background. However, 'Presents

From My Aunts In Pakistan' shows how contact with the old environment

can make integration into the new one difficult.

'Search For My Tongue' suggests that the poet feels she has lost an

important part of herself that she feels she needs to recover to feel

her self again. The poet says,

'Lost the first one, the mother tongue, and could not really no the

other'.

The original language is associated with being nurturing, protecting,

loving. The second language is seen to be alien meaning she doesn't

feel she belongs to the English culture. The poet feels it is not

possible to fully understand or become completely part of another

culture.

There is a suggestion that some people would not be allowed to speak

their own language, that a foreign language has been imposed.

'If you lived in a place you had to speak a foreign tongue'.

The choice of words Sujata Bhatt uses makes the original language

sound like something disgusting like phlegm, 'You had to spit it out'.

This may suggest the foreigners saw the way the original language as

something inferior to their own language.

The two languages are imagined as being in a battle, 'It ties the

other tongue in knots'. Clearly this can be seen to refer to colonial

powers and independence with the invader being defeated. The first

language/ culture is shown to be lasting, 'Every time I think I've

forgotten it blossoms out of my mouth' and in the flower imagery is

thought of here as something natural, beautiful and eternal.

The language of the poem is approiapately ordinary and conversational,

'You ask me', 'I ask you'. Until after line 12 the main technique in

the poem is the use of the tongue as a metaphor for language, culture