Can I have some help in the analysis of "Laundrette" by Liz Lochhead?We sit nebulous in stream It calms the air and makes the windows stream...

The first part of an analysis of a poem is understanding
what is being said! This may be a bit of a challenge with Lochhead's "Laundrette." The
reason is that she takes Shakespearean plays on words and puns to new 20th century
heights. The beginning of analysis, then, is a consultation with a good
dictionary.

Let's take on a few of Lochhead's words and see if we can
find our way. The first line presents a pun in the third word. "Nebulous" may mean
unclear or vague. It may also mean cloud-like and hazy. While there may be a double
meaning to Lochhead's choice of "nebulous," let's examine the more immediately sensible
of the two. If we apply the meaning of cloud-like and hazy, we find an orientation to
the setting of the poem: the setting is a laundromat where the air is so full of the
steam of wash that a cloud has formed that is engulfing the patrons and streaming in
droplets down the windows. This nebulous presence also establishes that the speaker is
not alone, there are others in the laundrette, which is important later on when
individual patrons are examined and described.

As the droplets stream
"rippling" down, we look out the window beyond the laundrette and see big houses across
the street ("the hinterland": areas remote from cultural centers) that have been
rendered into "bedsits" (i.e., a room furnished with a sink in a mini-kitchenette, a
chair and a bed, or accommodations for poor people)--nothing like the elegant homes they
once were. Through this very interesting technique of following a nebulous cloud to the
windows covered with rippling droplets and beyond to big houses turned into weekly room
rentals, Lochhead expands the setting and describes the socio-economic level of the
patrons of the laundrette.

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We sit nebulous in stream
It calms the
air and makes the windows stream
rippling the hinterland's big houses to a
blur
of bedsits - not a patch on what they were
before.

Let's drop down a bit
to two instances of personification:

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Our duds don't know which way to
turn.
The dark shoves one man in,
lugging a bundle like a wandering
Jew.

The focus has shifted
from the patrons to the washing being done. The "duds," a colloquialism for clothes, in
the first personification, are disoriented and "don't know which way to turn," which is
a pun on the agitating action of the washing machines (which may be its own pun and part
of the cause of the duds’ disorientation: agitation!).

The second
personification redirects attention back to consideration of the patrons and paves the
way for a psychological examination of some. The personified dark “shoves one man in."
He is shoved either because he is reluctant to enter the nebulous steam of the soapy
laundrette or because he is too weak under his load, "lugging a bundle," to manage to
get through on his own--or both. The use of the simile "like a wandering Jew" leads to
the conclusion that weakness and suffering are surely part of the man's story. The poem
progresses by examining the  "youngwife" and the "deadpan" woman and the
"dourman."

Some other words to look up for further understanding
are:

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rickle
smithereens
finale
fankle
flotsam

[I
found each on href="http://www.tfd.com/">TheFreeDictionary.com, which is an online
catalogue of definitions from reputable established dictionaries like Collins English
Dictionary and American Heritage Dictionary]