Age Flashcards
What are the themes in this poem?
Life, time, aging, legacy and isolation
What device is used in ‘My age fallen’?
Metaphor of growing older and reflecting on life at death
What is the other device is ‘My age fallen like white swaddling’?
Simile - protectiveness of youth has disappeared
What can be inferred through ‘Floats in the middle distance’?
Connotes the gentleness of youth, now unattainable as youth is something abstract and unreachable
What can be inferred through ‘A lighted tenement scuttling with voices.’?
Looking back at youth, now older. Metaphor used to describe bustling, enclosed, imposing nature of life
What can be inferred through ‘Now I wade through you like knee-level weeds’?
Speaker is tried of conforming to societal expectations. The concrete imagery makes reference to the effect of aging
What device is used in ‘translucent bergs’?
Concrete imagery - as he reflects he realises life isn’t meaningful and lacks significance in the wake of death, shows how we change our perspective on approach of death
What can be inferred through ‘Silence and space’?
What he thought was significant is actually lacking - alternatively a euphemism for death?
What device is used in ‘nest here of my head’?
Animal imagery/metaphor - past memories have left his mind/no longer matter/lack significance
What device is used in ‘whether of feet/ Or spoor of pads, or a bird’s adept splay’?
The polysyndenton explores the speaker reflecting/thinking about his uncertain legacy. Time and age leads to speaker becoming more philosophical however there is no answer to the question which is typical of The Movement.
What AO3 can be linked?
Anti-Romantic sentiment, acutely aware of death and ‘kind of welfare state subpoetry’
What tone is there?
Nihilistic
What is the rhythm and rhyme?
Free verse mimic the speaker’s uncertainty. Time is something we cannot control and shows its continuous movement
