Question

What is the poetic technique used by the poet to convey the plaintive theme of the poem?

Answer 1

Refugee Blues is a Blue Ballad. A form that defines his character. Ballads were popular in Ireland and Britain till the 18th century while Blues were popular in African-Americans that originated at the end of the 19th century. Auden, a British migrated to the USA, blends the two techniques to bring out this beauty that sings the sorrows and sufferings of Jewish Refugees. The metre used in the poem is the same he used in his poem 'Calypso', written around the same time, the 1930s. While Ballads were popular medieval forms of narrative verse while Blue is an African-American music genre that has a rigid pattern concerning the use of repetitions and a simple rhyme scheme. In the poem, the first two lines of every stanza rhyme with each other, a tercet, while the third line draws a repetitive pattern, with the phrase “my dear” being repeated in every third line giving a unique uniformity to the poem. It is interesting to note that the first word of every stanza is a verb. The poem is a first-person narrative, in a colloquial and informal language.