ABSTRACT
Craig Raine’s poem ‘A martian sends a postcard home’ deftly exploits the role played by culture in our knowledge of the world. His ‘martian’, or cultural outsider, explores the world stripped of its (obfuscatory) familiarity, ‘defamiliarised’ as the formalists say, returned to us clothed in wonder, as the romantic would put it: Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings and some are treasured for their markings they cause the eyes to melt or the body to shriek without pain. Only the young are allowed to suffer openly. Adults go to a punishment room with water and nothing to eat. they lock the door and suffer the noises alone. No one is exempt and everyone’s pain has a different smell 1
