Cohesion | #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 |

Search the corpus:

[Cohesion #8]

Task: Read the following text extract (a poem) and discuss the noncohesive nature of it.

[Text extract]:

The hand that burns resinous in the sky
Which is a lake of roses, perfumes, idylls
Breathed from the wastes of the Tartarean heart
The skull gathers darkness like an inept mountain
That on its aeons of self-injury...

(From "Egyptian Register" by Ern Malley, quoted in The Cambridge Guide to English Usage by Pam Peters



Suggested answer:
It does not take long to establish that this poem lacks cohesion. If we look for signals in each line, pointing either forward or backward to other items in the poem, we get some unexpected results. The relative pronoun which in the second line, for instance, would normally be a good indicator of cohesion, but not in this text. Which cannot, for semantic and contextual reasons, be seen to point back to sky, although this is what is implied by the syntax. The poem not only lacks pronominal cohesion, but neither is there any lexical cohesion; we can simply not make sense of the poem, even if we could argue that roses, perfumes and idylls could breathe, it is quite clear that the lines have been put together at random to create a puzzling rather, than meaningful, effect.


Read about cohesion here and cohesive ties here.
Terminology: cohesion, cohesive tie


Last updated 4 October 2023, SOE
© 2004, 2005, 2006-2022 ILOS, University of Oslo