Consumer's+report

= //A Consumer's Report// by Peter Porter =

Here is one response to this poem, along with interesting and relevant biographical details on Porter:

Porter was born in Australia in 1929, but after education there, and working in journalism for some years, he moved to England in 1951, and has lived there ever since. He has written very many books of poetry, and has won a number of prizes for his writing.

Peter Porter worked in an advertising agency for some time, and he clearly uses some of this experience in “A Consumer’s Report”. The ‘product’ that he is testing in the poem is life itself, and he approaches it as if it were in fact simply something that can be bought and then used or discarded. He does, however, point out “it’s very difficult to get rid of”, and even “if you say you don’t / want it, then it’s delivered anyway”. The poem makes fun of much advertising and consumer-report writing, but beneath the fun there is a truly and disturbingly serious set of ideas.

The structure of the poem suggests a series of answers to questions put to the ‘respondent’ in a questionnaire. The first 16 lines sound like the entries in boxes on the form, but after that the tone becomes slightly more generalized as if the respondent is becoming disenchanted with having to give limited answers to specific questions (there is a parenthesis berating the company for demanding this). The responses then become briefer and follow quickly on each other, but although the language is still that of a consumer report, the focus is more obviously on aspects of experience.