‘Please Hold’
The literal meaning of ‘Please Hold’ is about a man who is
losing his patience when he is on the phone as he finds himself continuously
talking to a voice mail machine. He gets angrier by the minute yet his wife is
explaining to him this is the way things are nowadays. I think that the in
depth meaning of the poem is about the future and how it is expensive as
everything revolves around technology and this male speaker happens to be old
fashioned with his ways and has not accepted robots, machines and other sources
of technology; therefore, I think this poem is a way of him expressing his
worries and concerns about the future. He mimics the voice mail and all its
‘countless options’ but implies that with whatever answer you give it takes you
to a ‘dead end’ this creates the idea of voice mails being like mazes, which
shows that the speaker finds this new technology confusing.
The structure of this poem is very irregular. There are 2 stanzas
of which contain different amounts of lines. The first stanza is much longer
than the second it contains 50 lines whereas the final stanza contains only 3
lines. The long stanza could be to exaggerate how voice mails are long and
never ending just like the stanza. It could also show how passionate the writer
is about this topic. That he is so angry that he is continuously writing more
and his hate for technology is never-ending.
The language used in ‘Please Hold’ is informal as though it’s
spoken. For instance, ‘I’m talking to a robot’ suggests the speaker is
explaining the event to the reader. However, the reader can understand it’s
literally a mental rant. It’s more the tone that is significant as it’s
sarcastic using dry humour, common to this Irish poet. This tone may be to
emphasise how relatable the poem is and the point of this poem that the
evolution of technology reduces humanity.
He uses a lot of repetition perhaps to mimic the voice mail
as they often repeat themselves or also to show that he has heard these phrases
numerous times and has now memorised them. He often repeats the saying, ‘my
wife says, this is the future’; this could be to show that all he ever hears is
his wife telling him this is the future now because technology is improving day
by day and something new is invented everyday. He then compares the agent on
the phone to a robot. Implying that even if they passed the phone through to a
real person whatever they say will be scripted just like the robot. There is no
real conversation and once again he thinks that ‘this is the future’.
One important feature of this poem is the repetition of the
German phrase ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ (or ‘A Little Night Music’). It is a
popular piece of classical music by Mozart commonly used as ‘holding music’
when one is put on hold. The phrase is used to refer back to the title and the
main theme of the poem but also the repetition, and particularly the swearing
that breaks the last use of the phrase, is created to accentuate the irritation
of the speaker, written by the poet as though the reader is listening to the
music themselves.
As the exam will require comparing two poems, it is
important to discuss what poems can be linked with ‘Please Hold’. Clearly, one
possible link is ‘The Fox in the National Museum of Wales’ as both centre
around the approach of the future.
Another poem ‘Please Hold’ could be linked to is Barber’s ‘Material’ as both
speakers dislike the loss of humanity and the destruction technology causes.
However, both comparative poems lack the same structure as O’Driscoll’s ‘Please
Hold’. On a smaller note, a poem one could compare this poem to, in terms of
structure, is ‘Effects’ as both speakers express themselves in a conversational
manner and both have a irregular pattern- the rhyming of ‘Effects’ and the
repetition of ‘Please Hold’.
