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“Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass” Introduction
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"Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass" is Simon Armitage's tongue-in-cheek tale of the battle between humanity and nature. The poem's speaker heads out into his garden, chainsaw in hand, to destroy some ornamental grass. Although his powerful chainsaw seems like "overkill," it turns out that even its destructive blade is no match for the grass's persistence: before long, everything the speaker thinks he's killed grows right back again. This poem suggests that human beings can never beat nature's quiet power, no matter how advanced our technology becomes. This poem first appeared in Armitage's 2002 collection The Universal Home Doctor.
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“Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass” Summary
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The speaker remembers when he went to get his chainsaw out of storage to mow down some ornamental grass in his garden. It seemed, he recalls, like an improbable fight—or as if he and the terrible chainsaw were an odd pair. All winter, the chainsaw had waited angrily in its plastic case, hung from a hook in the speaker's darkroom. The speaker recalls how it greedily drank down engine oil until trickles oozed across its dry blade.
The speaker next went into his garden shed, which was hot and full of clumpy old spiderwebs. He ran a power cord from there into the garden, drawing it out like a trail of gunpowder. Then he flipped the socket's switch, connected the chainsaw to the cord, and turned it on.
The chainsaw, he remembers, came to angry life immediately, its blade rushing the second it got power. It struck him as an indifferently violent machine, willing to slice through whatever it came in contact with, be that clothes, jewelry, or hair. It seemed dangerous, hungry for human flesh and bone, ready to bounce off a nail or a knot in some wood and fly back into the speaker's head. The speaker let it run on, lifted it up so the sunlight glinted off it, and felt its powerful motor revving.
The pampas grass he was going to cut down, meanwhile, stood there looking silly with all its decorative, feathery plumes. It was standing there stealing light from other plants, enjoying the sun, showing off with all its fluffy foliage and its tall stalks. The chainsaw, the speaker felt, was as overpowered for this job as a sledgehammer would be against a nut. All that he'd really need to do to get rid of the grass, he thought, would be to yank it from the ground or dig it up. The chainsaw was a more serious tool than necessary for the job. By merely touching the chainsaw's blade to a stalk of grass, the speaker made the stalk seem to evaporate. He attacked a few stalks, then all of them in a big shoulder-high sweep, starting to have fun with it. He hit lower then, attacking the plant's trunk. Sap and juice from the cut grass spat at him, and clouds of dust rose as he ripped apart the warm, tangly undergrowth.
To give himself more room to work, the speaker brushed all the fallen grass to the side of an outhouse wall so that he could set them on fire. Then, he sliced and raked away most of the grass, until the only thing left was a stump about the size of a barrel's lid, which he found he couldn't dig up. He still wanted to be rid of it, though, so he dug the chainsaw straight down into the plant's roots. The dirt and weeds clogged the blade, and the sliced roots seemed to heal themselves, as if he'd been trying to slice through water or air with a knife. So he poured lighter fluid into the remains of the plant and set it on fire. It caught, smoked for a while, and went out. The speaker felt that was good enough.
Over the next few weeks, the grass began to put up fresh new shoots. By June, it was completely restored, with a new crown of plumes, looking like a miraculous biblical crop of corn. The speaker remembers looking down on it from his window as if he were the pale moon you can sometimes see in the sky during the day.
Downstairs, hanging from its hook again, the chainsaw quietly raged to itself. The speaker left it there all year, letting it dream its angry technological dreams and get over its defeat. All it could do was long to go on cutting.
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“Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass” Themes
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Human Technology Versus Nature
When the speaker of Armitage's poem hauls a chainsaw out of his shed to cut down some decorative feathery “pampas grass,” he admits it’s “overkill”: the chainsaw is a tool of pure destruction, ready to chew through anything in its path, and more than a match for a patch of ornamental vegetation. However, while the speaker and his chainsaw manage to wipe out the grass above ground, its roots persist, and before long the plant has sprung right back up. Nature, this poem suggests, has a quiet power that’s more than a match for mechanical destruction. Humanity might enjoy a brief fantasy of dominance through technology, but technology can never defeat nature.
The chainsaw the speaker pulls out of his shed is a frightening, indiscriminately destructive instrument. To the speaker, it seems just as eager to devour “the flesh of the face and the bones beneath” as to do the jobs it’s intended for: it’s emotionless and pitiless, and its only purpose is to buzz right through whatever it meets. A real technological achievement, it has one job—to saw—and it’s terrifyingly good at it.
All this power is a little scary, but it’s also seductive. Though the speaker knows he doesn’t really need a whole chainsaw to get rid of the unwanted decorative grass in his garden, he also enjoys the feeling that, with the help of technology, he can destroy anything he wants with a mere touch. Just one “blur of the blade,” and the plant he’s fighting “[doesn’t] exist” anymore. With the chainsaw’s help, he feels, he can be the master of the world, asserting human dominance over nature.
He runs into trouble, however, when he tries to “finish things off” by hacking up the pampas grass’s “upper roots” and setting them on fire with “barbecue fluid.” Chopped and burnt, the roots first clog up the chainsaw’s blade, then quietly heal behind the speaker’s back. Before long, “new shoots” spring up. The grass puts out its decorative plumes again as if wearing a “new crown”—a metaphor that suggests that, in the power struggle between tool-wielding humanity and nature, nature will always come out on top in the end.
The poem thus makes some wry fun of humanity’s illusions of control. People enjoy the idea that, through cleverness and technology, they can bend nature to their will. But no matter how people try to manipulate (or destroy!) the world around them, nature will always quietly go on doing its thing behind their backs.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-68
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Violent Force Versus Quiet Persistence
The chainsaw this poem’s speaker uses to mow down some ornamental grass is a tool of pure destruction: angry, greedy, and violent, it drips with power and danger. The pampas grass appears to be no match for it. But by quietly regrowing even after it’s unceremoniously chainsawed down, the pampas grass wins out in the end. Read symbolically, this poem suggests that gentle persistence and endurance can beat even the most aggressive displays of force.
At first glance, the chainsaw’s indiscriminate power seems unstoppable. As the speaker observes, this machine can buzz through anything the speaker puts in its path, “flesh” and “bone” included. (It feels a little bit frightening for that reason!) Symbolically, this chainsaw represents the kind of power that’s built on sheer strength and violence. The poem hints that this kind of force has a way of getting out of control: used carelessly or left in the wrong hands, hard power can be destructive.
With this tool of sheer power in his hands, the speaker has no trouble cutting down the pampas grass. But he can’t kill it altogether. The pampas grass doesn’t fight the speaker or the chainsaw; it has no hard power of its own. Instead, it simply persists, refusing to let apparent defeat keep it down. Its soft power, slow and steady as the proverbial tortoise’s, wins out against the chainsaw’s violence in the end. Not long after the speaker thinks he’s hacked it to death, it’s sprouted again, placidly “sunning itself” in the exact same spot.
Through the symbolism of the violent chainsaw and the peaceful grass, the poem thus suggests that soft power is ultimately stronger than hard power. Violent domination might seem as if it conquers all, but that just isn’t the case.
In this light, some readers have also interpreted this poem as a tale of stereotypical masculinity versus stereotypical femininity, with male dominance ultimately losing out to female persistence and patience.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-8
- Lines 19-68
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass”
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Lines 1-8
It seemed an ...
... the dry links.The poem begins with what the speaker calls "an unlikely match." In the light of the title—"Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass"— this might be a match in the sense of a fight: the battle between a chainsaw and some unruly decorative grass. As the speaker hauls out his chainsaw to do a spot of light gardening, the outcome of this "match" seems like a foregone conclusion. No way could grass fight back against a chainsaw.
In these first lines, though, the "unlikely match" could also be an unlikely partnership. Hefting the chainsaw, the speaker feels awe, alarm, and titillation at its power—emotions that make him seem like a very "unlikely match" indeed for such a singlemindedly destructive piece of equipment.
Right from the start, the chainsaw seems dangerous. The speaker personifies it, picturing it "grinding its teeth" as it waits "all winter unplugged"; it sounds frustrated and angry at its long inactivity, more than ready to leap into action again.
It's also thirsty. It "knock[s] back a quarter-pint of engine oil" like a belligerent drunk doing a shot at the bar, and an overflow of "juices" messily run down its blade into its "dry links" like dribblings into stubble. The speaker follows the course of that oozing oil as it crosses "the guide-bar and the maker's name" embossed in the metal, making it sound as if he's looking the chainsaw up and down in admiration and fear.
In short, the speaker seems in awe of the chainsaw, treating it not like a tool he's about to use, but like a dangerous guest who's been lurking in his "darkroom" all winter long. He's fascinated by the chainsaw's brusque gulpings and grindings. Perhaps he himself is not the kind of guy who grinds his teeth and knocks back a quarter-pint of anything; perhaps he'd sort of like to be. This will be a tongue-in-cheek poem about the allure—and folly—of violent power.
The speaker will tell this tale in seven irregular stanzas of free verse, without rhyme or meter. This flexible form will shift its shape to mirror his experiences.
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Lines 9-12
From the summerhouse, ...
... . . .
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Lines 13-18
from there, I ...
... gunned the trigger. -
Lines 19-26
No gearing up ...
... into the brain. -
Lines 27-29
I let it ...
... in its throat. -
Lines 30-38
The pampas grass ...
... Overkill. -
Lines 38-45
I touched the ...
... dark, secret warmth. -
Lines 46-51
To clear a ...
... from the earth. -
Lines 52-59
Wanting to finish ...
... it at that. -
Lines 60-64
In the weeks ...
... the midday moon. -
Lines 65-68
Back below stairs ...
... as it got.
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“Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass” Symbols
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The Chainsaw
The chainsaw symbolizes violent power, technology in general, and the futile human urge to dominate nature.
The speaker sees the chainsaw as an unstoppable force, ready to indiscriminately slice through the pampas grass or human "brain[s]." Holding it makes him feel both powerful and frightened. In this, the chainsaw suggests a fantasy of domination. With such a tool in his hand, the speaker feels, he has great power. But that power—like all violent power—is dangerous, volatile, and liable to backfire.
Trying to master the pampas grass with the chainsaw, the speaker is also trying to assert human dominance over nature through technological skill. This, the poem suggests, is futile. No matter how powerful or clever technology gets, nature will always win out.
Some readers might also see the chainsaw as a symbol of male dominance in particular. The image of the chainsaw destroying the "dark, secret warmth" of the pampas grass could be read as a fantasy of violent sexuality.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-8: “All winter unplugged, / grinding its teeth in a plastic sleeve, the chainsaw swung / nose-down from a hook in the darkroom / under the hatch in the floor. When offered the can / it knocked back a quarter-pint of engine oil / and juices ran from its joints and threads, / oozed across the guide-bar and the maker’s name, / into the dry links.”
- Lines 19-29: “No gearing up or getting to speed, just an instant rage, / the rush of metal lashing out at air, connected to the mains. / The chainsaw with its perfect disregard, its mood / to tangle with cloth, or jewellery, or hair. / The chainsaw with its bloody desire, its sweet tooth / for the flesh of the face and the bones underneath, / its grand plan to kick back against nail or knot / and rear up into the brain. / I let it flare, lifted it into the sun / and felt the hundred beats per second drumming in its heart, / and felt the drive-wheel gargle in its throat.”
- Lines 35-45: “This was the sledgehammer taken to crack the nut. / Probably all that was needed here was a good pull or shove / or a pitchfork to lever it out at its base. / Overkill. I touched the blur of the blade / against the nearmost tip of a reed — it didn’t exist. / I dabbed at a stalk that swooned, docked a couple of heads, / dismissed the top third of its canes with a sideways sweep / at shoulder height — this was a game. / I lifted the fringe of undergrowth, carved at the trunk — / plant-juice spat from the pipes and tubes / and dust flew out as I ripped into pockets of dark, secret warmth.”
- Lines 52-54: “I took up the saw / and drove it vertically downwards into the upper roots, / but the blade became choked with soil or fouled with weeds,”
- Lines 65-68: “Back below stairs on its hook, the chainsaw seethed. / I left it a year, to work back through its man-made dreams, / to try to forget. / The seamless urge to persist was as far as it got.”
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The Grass
The pampas grass symbolizes the quiet power of nature—and soft, passive power in general. Its regrowth and rebirth in the face of destruction suggest that dogged persistence beats out violent force in the long run.
By sprouting right back up almost as soon as it's cut down, the pampas grass makes a mockery of the speaker's oh-so-scary and oh-so-powerful chainsaw. It doesn't matter how violently one attacks nature, the regrown grass suggests: nature keeps on doing what it does. This image might even offer an environmentalist message, reminding readers that people who try to master or exploit nature only embarrass (and harm) themselves in the end.
The grass's resurrection also suggests that persistent, gentle growth always defeats violent destruction. Destruction takes violent effort; regrowth quietly goes on and on.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 30-34: “The pampas grass with its ludicrous feathers / and plumes. The pampas grass, taking the warmth and light / from cuttings and bulbs, sunning itself, / stealing the show with its footstools, cushions and tufts / and its twelve-foot spears.”
- Lines 55-56: “what was sliced or split somehow closed and mended behind, / like cutting at water or air with a knife.”
- Lines 60-63: “In the weeks that came new shoots like asparagus tips / sprang up from its nest and by June / it was riding high in its saddle, wearing a new crown. / Corn in Egypt.”
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“Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Personification
By personifying both the chainsaw and the pampas grass, the poem's speaker hints that the struggle he describes—violent force versus calm persistence—might appear within human society, not just in the battle between humanity and nature.
Right from the start, the chainsaw is a violent, shady character. Even before it's plugged in, it lies in wait "grinding its teeth," as if anger is its natural state. It "knock[s] back a quarter-pint of engine oil" like a cantankerous drunk at a bar. When the speaker turns it on, its nasty character becomes even clearer: with its "perfect disregard" for human flesh and its "bloody desire" to chew up whatever comes in its path, the chainsaw sounds practically psychopathic. It's a killing machine, and it seems to love its job. All these images of uncontrolled rage, violence, and binge drinking have led some readers to interpret the chainsaw as a symbol of stereotypical violent male dominance in particular.
By contrast, the pampas grass is a placid, gentle creature: it "sun[s] itself" like a cat (though it also selfishly takes the "warmth and light" that would otherwise go to "cuttings and bulbs" at its feet). It's showy and dramatic, setting out "footstools, cushions and tufts" to decorate its surroundings. However, it also has "twelve-foot spears," a reminder that it can defend itself in its own way. While those spears "swoon[]" when the speaker applies the chainsaw's blade to them, they also spring right back up in mere weeks, donning a "new crown" that shows the grass is the true ruler of this garden.
In personifying these nemeses, the speaker also sets up a contrast between two ways of being in the world: aggressive and active versus passive-but-persistent. The latter way, the poem suggests, tends to win out in the end.
Where personification appears in the poem:- Lines 2-3: “grinding its teeth in a plastic sleeve, the chainsaw swung / nose-down from a hook in the darkroom”
- Lines 4-5: “When offered the can / it knocked back a quarter-pint of engine oil”
- Line 19: “just an instant rage,”
- Lines 21-26: “The chainsaw with its perfect disregard, its mood / to tangle with cloth, or jewellery, or hair. / The chainsaw with its bloody desire, its sweet tooth / for the flesh of the face and the bones underneath, / its grand plan to kick back against nail or knot / and rear up into the brain.”
- Lines 28-29: “and felt the hundred beats per second drumming in its heart, / and felt the drive-wheel gargle in its throat.”
- Lines 31-34: “The pampas grass, taking the warmth and light / from cuttings and bulbs, sunning itself, / stealing the show with its footstools, cushions and tufts / and its twelve-foot spears.”
- Line 40: “I dabbed at a stalk that swooned, docked a couple of heads,”
- Lines 61-62: “by June / it was riding high in its saddle, wearing a new crown.”
- Lines 65-68: “Back below stairs on its hook, the chainsaw seethed. / I left it a year, to work back through its man-made dreams, / to try to forget. / The seamless urge to persist was as far as it got.”
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Imagery
Unlock all 307 words of this analysis of Imagery in “Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Simile
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Juxtaposition
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Parallelism
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“Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Darkroom
- Summerhouse
- Mothballed
- Powder from a keg
- Coupled the saw to the flex
- The mains
- Pampas grass
- Nearmost
- Swooned
- Docked
- Undergrowth
- Prised
- Seethed
Darkroom-
(Location in poem: Lines 2-3: “the chainsaw swung / nose-down from a hook in the darkroom”)
A room used for developing photographs, usually lit only with a dim red bulb.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass”
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Form
"Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass" is written in seven irregular stanzas of free verse. Rather than sticking to any standard stanza form or regular pattern of rhyme or meter, Armitage allows the poem to develop in a loose, organic way; the verse shapeshifts to mirror the speaker's emotional experience.
For instance, compare the two long, elaborate stanzas in which the speaker describes how he sawed the pampas grass into oblivion and the short, simple closing stanzas in which the grass grows back and the personified chainsaw "seethes" in rage at its defeat. This movement from intense descriptions of violence and destruction to the casual, matter-of-fact payoff works like a punchline, suggesting that it's pretty funny when people believe (foolishly) that they can take on nature and win.
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Meter
"Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass" is written in free verse, so it doesn't use a meter. Instead, the speaker uses varied, flexible line lengths to give the poem a conversational tone—and to create moments of drama.
For instance, listen to the way the lines move when the speaker describes lifting the buzzing chainsaw:
I let it flare, lifted it into the sun
and felt the hundred beats per second drumming in its heart,
and felt the drive-wheel gargle in its throat.That first shortish line isolates the moment the speaker gets to grips with this dangerous machine: it's as if he takes a moment just to watch it glint in the sunlight. The longer lines suggest the chainsaw's ceaseless, terrifying whir.
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Rhyme Scheme
Written in free verse, "Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass" doesn't use a rhyme scheme. Instead, it plays with sound through evocative alliteration and assonance.
When the speaker first attacks the pampas grass with his chainsaw, for instance, the /bl/ alliteration in "the blur of the blade" suggests the sawblade's unbelievably quick, sputtering motion. By contrast, the gentle /uh/ assonance the speaker uses to describe how the pampas grass overshadows "cuttings and bulbs, sunning itself" feels soft, luxurious, and calm.
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“Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a man from the suburban UK. He's rather enjoying the idea that he can master his garden with the help of a violently powerful chainsaw. Though he supposes it's "overkill" to haul out such a mighty machine to hack down a few stems of ornamental grass, it turns out the chainsaw isn't powerful enough: the grass comes right back the second the speaker's back is turned, leaving him to look on sourly from his "upstairs window," safe back inside his suburban home, where he belongs.
This poem's tongue-in-cheek description of a failed gardening adventure suggests that this speaker is someone who privately fancies the idea of himself as master of all he surveys—but who's also willing to see the funny side of his ignominious defeat.
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“Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass” Setting
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The poem is set in an ordinary suburban backyard. Moments of dialect (calling a garden shed a "summerhouse," for instance) suggest this yard is in Armitage's native UK.
In this setting, the pampas grass is both a normal decorative landscape feature and a little bit exotic: it's not a native plant, but an imported one. Still, it's made itself at home; placidly deep-rooted, it's much harder to kill than the speaker anticipates.
The poem's utterly normal suburban landscape also contrasts with the violent imagery around the chainsaw and its "bloody desire" to buzz right through whatever gets in its way. This juxtaposition between calm neighborhood and terrifying machine hints that the speaker might be just the tiniest bit bored, excited to get the chance to do something noisy and destructive.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass”
Literary Context
Simon Armitage is one of the UK's most popular contemporary poets. He was born in Yorkshire in 1963 and began writing poetry at a young age. His first collection, Zoom!, was published by Bloodaxe in 1989 and was an immediate success, widely acclaimed and shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. "Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass" first appeared in Armitage's ninth poetry collection, The Universal Home Doctor (2002).
Armitage's poems are known for their dark comedy, clarity, and playfulness. Their outward simplicity often conceals a complex emotional world and reflects the influence of other important 20th-century poets like Ted Hughes and W.H. Auden.
Armitage is the current serving Poet Laureate of England, having taken over from Carol Ann Duffy. This is a ceremonial role, the original responsibility being to compose poems on significant occasions. Nowadays, the Laureate tends to focus on furthering poetry's audience, particularly within an educational context—the kind of work that Armitage has been doing for many years.
Historical Context
This poem's tale of one man's violent efforts to dominate nature might be read as an allegory of the way that humanity and nature interact more generally. When Armitage published this poem in 2002, the troubled relationship between human beings and their environment was becoming a prominent and serious political issue. More and more scientists and politicians were raising the alarm about the dangers of climate change; for instance, Al Gore's important documentary An Inconvenient Truth (which explained the science of global warming and called for political action against it) would appear only a few years after Armitage's book.
Armitage has been open about his belief that poetry should address the climate crisis (among other major contemporary issues). This poem's tongue-in-cheek portrait of a man trying to bend even a part of nature so small as his own garden to his will might thus be read as a serious reminder of humanity's ultimate weakness. When people think they can shape or exploit the natural world for their own purposes, this poem suggests, they're only fooling themselves: nature wins out every time, with consequences that might range from humiliation to extinction for foolhardy humanity.
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More “Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass” Resources
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External Resources
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An Interview with Armitage — Watch a brief interview with Armitage in which he discusses his poetic philosophy.
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Armitage's Official Website — Visit Armitage's website to learn more about his recent work.
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Armitage's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
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Armitage as Laureate — Learn more about Armitage's position and duties as Poet Laureate of the UK.
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What Is Pampas Grass? — Learn more about pampas grass, at once an invasive species and a modern home decor trend.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Simon Armitage
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