Concrete Cat | Class 11 English notes

Concrete Cat Summary in Short

Concrete Cat | Class 11 English notes

A concrete cat is an example of a concrete poem composed by Dorthy Charles, which is meant for visual perception and not for the brain. The cheap concern of the poem is its physical appearance. It has nothing to do with emotion and feeling. In fact, the poem is pictorial in quality.

The poet is talking about the cat, maybe trying to show catness in action. He has deliberately used capital ‘A’ and ‘Y’ in order to show the cat’s ears and eyes respectively. Similarly, the word ‘Whisker’ has been used in a slanted way so as to show the dispersed mustache of the cat. Likewise, ‘U’ in the middle of the mouth indicates that it has taken out its tongue. Moreover, the word ‘tail’ has been made to go up which indicates that the cat is very alert and is about to make an action. The upside-down position of the word ‘mouse’ shows that it is dead.

The most amusing aspect of the poem lies in the body of cat where we come across the use of pun giving 2 meanings at the same time. The word can be read as ‘stripe, stripe’ or ‘stripes, tripe’. Which gives momentary relief to us.