Kettle Bottom Literary Elements

The collection of poems is told from the perspectives of twenty different narrators who recall the events from the perspective of a first-person subjective point of view.

The poem "Abe" was written in an iambic pentameter form.

In the poem "Explosion at Winco No. 9", the narrator compares the act of listening to a person helping another person to carry an extremely heavy sack of vegetables. The comparison in this context has the purpose of showing just how cathartic the act of speaking can be for a person and also how hearing about another person's troubles can make a person feel suffocated and burdened.

We have an alliteration in the lines "If it’s a boy, Abraham,/ for Daddy—but call him Abe" in the poem "Abe".

The subject of the poems revolves around mining and the men who work in mines. The poems are told from the perspectives of the family members of those miners who have to live with the fear they will one day see their loved ones killed while mining. Despite this, it is ironic to see how the family members send their males to work in the mines, despite the dangers.

The poem "Explosion at Winco No. 9" is a meditative poem.

The action in the poem “Pink Hollyhocks” takes place inside a bedroom during the duration of a day.

The tone used in the poems is a violent and depressing one.

The protagonists are the miners and their wives while the antagonists are the men who push the miners to risk their lives in order for profit.

The major conflict in the poems is between the constant threat of death and the need to work in order to earn money.

The poem "Abe" reaches its climax when the main character decides to keep her baby.

The first poem in the collection describes a mining accident which resulted in loss of life. The description in the poem is used to foreshadow the other deaths which will take place in the further poems.

We have an understatement in the poem "Abe" where the narrator claims she will name her child the name her husband wants but then changes her mind.

One of the allusions made in the poems is the idea that all the miners who are mentioned in the poems will one day die because of their work in the mines. This idea is alluded to through the way in which the wives are obsessive with recognizing certain marks which will help them recognize their husbands in case they die in a mining accident.

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We have a personification in the line "how the teeth set crooked or straight" in the poem "Explosion at Winco No. 9".

We find a hyperbole in the line "the little notched part(of his ear) where a hound had bit him".

We have an onomatopoeia in the line "the windows sang their woo" in “Pink Hollyhocks”.