Reflections on Virginia Woolf and Craig Raine

Craig Raine: A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979) & Virginia Woolf: Street Haunting

Just like in ‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’, Street Haunting also centers around an object (or objects) that are commonplace but can hold a greater story. In Street Haunting, the main character goes out in search of a pencil, though her real intention and desire is just to go outside and walk. The pencil was the reason/excuse she came up with to leave the house, and became the driver of the story. She even clearly states that towards the end of the story she says “Was it not for this reason that, some time ago, we fabricated the excuse, and invented the necessity of buying something? But what was it? Ah, we remember, it was a pencil.”

In ‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’, we see normal day-to-day items from the perspective of a Martian. From his description of the items, it takes some time for the reader to understand what he means. A line that puzzled me for a while was “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.” It took me a while to realize he was talking about books. But that is part of what makes the poem great — it forces you to see objects from a different perspective, and how differently the world seems from that point of view.