20 CSEC CXC Poems Flashcards
South by Kamau Brathwaite
In the poem, the persona is reflecting on the island home of his childhood. He has travelled to many places, but appears to be constantly homesick. The poet compares the “South”, the southern hemisphere where his home is and the northern places where the winter is harsh and the people are cold. He misses his home and the beautiful ocean and beaches, which he can not get in the north. He remarks the stark contrasts between the “stoniest cities” and his own homeland, and seems overcome with happiness once he recounts the wondrous memories of his childhood.
•Themes:
nature
idealization of childhood
nostalgia
Patriotism
places
desires and dreams
•Mood:
Nostalgia and longing
•Stanza Analysis
Stanza 1:
The speaker is thinking back about his past and childhood he spent on the islands. He talks about the beauty of the beaches and the mist sprayed by the ocean. The speaker talks about how he was born and then grew up listening to the sound of the sea, and compares it to the sound of life heaving and breathing.
•Literary devices in stanza 1
Alliteration in lines 1-2 & 4-5
Imagery in lines 1-2
Assonance in lines 5
Stanza 2:
Then the speaker talks about how he has left his home on the island and travelled around the world. He talks about how he has moved away from the beaches and has lived in cities made of stone, cold weather and desert. All of this led him to have a house in a forest where he is surrounded by the shadows of the trees. And the only source of water is rain and the river, which he does not like.
•Literacy devices
Alliteration in lines 13-14
Personification lines 16-17
Contrast(In all stanzas)
Sonnet conposed upon Westminster bridge by William Wordsworth
An African thunderstorm by David Rubadiri
The poem is about nature it talks about colonialism and the way people can live so peacefully and the way it comes expected but expectedly(The storm). It describes the true power of nature and the effects of a storm on people.
•Themes : Colonization and nature vs man
•Literacy devices:
Repetition: “the wind whistles by and tress bend to let it pass”
onomatopoeia: “Rumble, tremble and crack”
simile:”Like sinister dark wings” & “like a plague of locusts” & “Like a madman chasing nothing”
biblical allusions:”Like a plague of locusts”
Personification: “Pregnant clouds” & “The wind whistles by. And trees bend to let it pass”
Metaphor: “Tossing up things on its tail”
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
In the poem a mirror describes its existence and it’s owner who grows older as the mirror watches. The poem is written from the point of view if a personified mirror the poets own fears regarding aging and death. The mirror insists that it objectively reflects the truth- a truth that greets the woman who looks in the mirror each day as it “terrible” reminder of her own mortality she searches the the mirror each day for an image that reflects the way she sees herself and feels inside yet finds only increasingly older woman staring back.
•Themes: Nature, nature vs man, dreams and desires
•Literary devices: Simile “Rises towards her day after day like a terrible fish”
Personification: “Now I am a lake” & “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions”
Metaphor: “In me she had drowned a young girl” & “I think it is part of my heart”
Imagery: “It is pink, with speckles” & “But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over”.
Death, be not proud by John Donne
The speaker directly addressed the personified figure of death, which proceeds to mock,declaring that death cannot kill him. The persona speaks to death as if is a person.
•Themes: death, god and religion, appearance vs reality, power and powerlessness
•Tones: confident and author
•Literary devices:
Bird shooting season by olive senior
Once upon a time by gabriel okara
The woman speaks to the man who employed her son by Lorna Goodson
A single mother speaks to a gang leader who given her son a gun as she loses/prepares for his death. The mother placed all her hopes in her son but feels betrayed as he has chosen a life of crime instead of her ambitions of him. In the poem the persona seems to be addressing a man who has taken a woman’s son into a life of crime and gun violence. She’s also was pregnant with him and a single mother so her son had no father so she had to play both roles in his upbringing. Etc
•Themes:
•Literary devices: Simile “She carried him like the poor carry hope” & “He says you are like a father to him”
Allusion: “What kind of father would give a son hot and exploding death, when he asks him for bread.” & “She says psalms for him, she reads psalms for you” & “She is throwing a partner with Judas iscariot’s mother the thief on the left hand side of the cross, his mother is the banker” & “Absalom”
Biblical allusion: Stanaaz 5 & 6
Dreaming black boy by James berry
A black little boy wants to be accepted by society and not fight for basic rights. He wishes he could have regular things in life. Things such as congratulatory hug, to be educated to the highest level and to travel without harassment. The persona yearns to stop fighting for basic rights to be successful and to rise above societal expectations.
Themes: Racism and discrimination,childhood experiences, social class/classism, dreams and desires, oppression
Tones: saddest,
Literacy devices: Repetition “I wish”
Allusion: “
Landscape painter, Jamaica by Vivian virtue
