Anthology Flashcards
1
Q
Five quotes from ‘The Manhunt’ by Simon Armitage
A
- The title ‘The Manhunt’ suggests a chase or searching for something that he has lost.
- Images of delicate materials ‘porcelain’ and ‘silk’ suggest beauty and vulnerability.
- Images of broken body parts ‘grazed heart’, ‘broken ribs’ suggests human casualties of war and the vulnerability of mind and body.
- Pain still growing mentally and physically ‘foetus of metal’ and ‘unexploded mine’ suggest potential to still explode or permanent scarring.
- Final words - ‘only then did i come close’ suggests it is a journey through his pain and healing and their reconciliation as a couple. She is finally closer to ‘catching’ him.
2
Q
Five quotes from ‘Sonnet 43’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A
- The opening line ‘How do I love thee?’ suggests an intimate conversation between lovers.
- ‘Depth’, ‘breadth’ and ‘height’ are weighty concepts which suggest her love is comprehensive and allows her to reach impossible extremes.
- Poem of comparisons - ‘Most quiet need’ and ‘men strive for Right’ are two very different ideas.
- Replaced her faith in God with her love for her husband – ‘lost saints’
- Final words - ‘I love thee better after death’ suggests even death will not part them. Their love is eternal.
3
Q
Five quotes from ‘London’ by William Blake
A
- The opening ‘I wander thro’ shows the poem is structured as a journey.
- Repetition of ‘charter’d’ suggests London is owned and people have been robbed of their rights.
- In stanza two, the repetition of ‘every’ suggests the enormity of poverty from children through to adults.
- Blake places the blame on the church and state - ‘black’ning Church’ and ‘Runs in blood down the palace walls’.
- Final words - ‘blights with plagues’ suggests everything good is destroyed. ‘Plagues’ implies decay and pestilience.
4
Q
Five quotes from ‘She Walks in Beauty’ by Lord Byron
A
- The title and opening line ‘She Walks in Beauty’ celebrates female beauty, a portrait of a woman through someone else’s eyes.
- References to light suggests an inner radiance - ‘starry skies’ and ‘tender light’.
- Sense of mystery surrounding her - she is compared to the darkness of night and ‘raven tress’ is associated with bad omens.
- Suggestion of a recent encounter as description is superficial - ‘smiles that win, the tints that glow’ suggests her inner modesty and she is loved by all.
- Final words - ‘A heart whose love is innocent!’ is the first time love is mentioned and her beauty is described both internally and externally.
5
Q
Five quotes from ‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brooke
A
- The title ‘The Soldier’ suggests an anonymous person, reflecting how many soldiers died during WW1. It is a sonnet, a love poem to England.
- Opening lines ‘If I should die’ suggests an acceptance of death and modal verb ‘should’ indicates a willingness to die for his country.
- The words ‘richer dust’ suggests the remains of his body are superior to the ground he lies in because he is English not foreign. Dust also relates to the religious idea of our bodies becoming ‘dust’ when we die.
- ‘A pulse in the eternal mind’ suggests his presence in the soil of foreign land will always live on, making him immortal.
- Final words, ‘under an English heaven’ shows his pride in England as he is suggesting England is almost like paradise and to die in England’s name would bring him ‘peace’.
6
Q
Five quotes from ‘Living space’ by Imtiaz Dharker
A
- The title is ironic as there isn’t much ‘living space’ in the slums of Mumbai.
- The enjambment of the poem reflects how the structures lean over and are on top of each other and the central stanza is ‘squeezed’ in to reflect how living spaces are ‘squeezed’ into small gaps.
- Language such as ‘crookedly’, ‘clutch’ and ‘leans dangerously’ suggests it is unsafe.
- The image of the ‘eggs’ shows ordinary objects make the slums feel like home and also reflect the fragility of life.
- Final words, ‘Thin walls of faith’ suggests the existence of these living spaces is a miracle and implies they still have ‘faith’ even in difficult conditions.
7
Q
Five quotes for “As Imperceptibly as Grief“ byEmily Dickinson
A
- The title and first line ‘As Imperceptibly as Grief’ links the idea of grief to the passing of summer.
- The tone is melancholic, space ‘Twilight long begun‘ suggests that grief is overtaking her happiness.
- The image of the end of the day/season such as ‘dusk’, ‘twilight’ and ‘Summer lapsed away’ suggest the passing of time and life.
- Final words, ‘Summer made her like escape into the Beautiful’ suggests the passage of time is inevitable but will end with something more positive, possibly a release into heaven.
- The tone of the final words are more helpful than the rest of the poem.
8
Q
Five quotes for ‘Cozy Apologia’ by Rita Dove
A
- The poem is in the first person and could be autobiographical, ‘I could pick anything and think of you‘.
- Uses a cliche ironically, ‘the chain mail glinting’ and has a dreamy tone but is affectionate and humorous.
- it is a love poem filled with day-to-day detail such as ‘compact disks’ and ‘faxes’ which shows it is about the realities of relationships not the divine.
- The hurricane ‘Big Bad Floyd’ has allowed her to daydream about the ‘worthless’ boys of her past.
- Final words, ‘ I feel this stolen time with you’ suggest their relationship is happy and appreciated and the tone is reflective and thoughtful. Being content is better than great romance, it is consistent.
9
Q
Five quotes for ‘Valentine’ by Carol Ann Duffy
A
- The title suggests a typical love poembut the opening line ‘Not a red rose or satin heart’ suggest the poet flouts traditional images of love.
- The poem is written in first person, ‘I give you an onion’ immediately debunking the idea of a traditional gift.
- The idea of love is it elevated or refined as ‘a wobbling photo of grief’ suggests love can be paid for and all emotions can overwhelm us.
- language such as ‘blind’, ‘face’ and ‘possessive’ suggest an intensity to love that will only last as long as they are true to each other. ‘If you like’ implies the intensity of love is not dependent on a wedding ring.
- Final words, ‘cling to your knife’ suggests love can be dangerous and all consuming. The slightly sinister tone suggest an obsessive side of love.
10
Q
Five quotes for ‘A Wife in London’ by Thomas hardy
A
- The poem is structured in two halves ‘The Tragedy’ and ‘The Irony’ showing it is like chapters in a tragic story. The two stances could suggest her life has been split in two.
- The language is ominous, indicating darkness and tragedy- ‘tawny vapour’, ‘webby fold’ and ‘waning taper’. Her whole world is covered in gloom.
- ‘He - has fallen’ is a euphemism to shield the widow from the harsh truth but the dashes represent her grief and inability to process the news of her husband‘s death.
- pathetic fallacy of the ‘ fog hangs thicker‘ shows her grief is settling in.
- Final words, ‘ New love that they would learn’ Shows the irony that he was looking forward to the new life together. It heightens the tragedy and heartbreak of his death because they will never be together and rekindle their relationship.
11
Q
Five quotes from ‘Death of Naturalist’ by Seamus Heaney
A
The title is metaphorical, the ‘death’ symbolises the speaker’s loss of innocence as it grows up.
- The tone of the poem at the beginning is almost enthusiastic, the verbs ‘sweltered’, ‘vested’ and ‘gargled’ suggest the speaker is almost relishing the vile smells of the dam.
- Language such as ‘jampotfuls’, ‘fattening dots’ and ‘mammy frog’ suggest childhood innocence.
- The tone changes on ‘The one hot day’ and the time becomes more aware of the dangers, ‘angry frogs’.
- Final words, ‘spawn would clutch it’ shows the contrast when he would collect the ‘jelly specks‘, he has grown up and no longer wants to play the games of his childhood.
12
Q
Five quotes from ‘Hawk Roosting’ by Ted Hughes
A
- The title of the poem ‘roosting’ suggests the hawk is still, not a sweeping bird of prey as we imagine. This gives a sense of the Hawk meditating on his powers of destruction.
- The tone is haughty. The Hawk is focused and not distracted, ‘no falsifying dream’.
- The language gives an arrogance to the Hawk, ‘I hold creation in my foot’, ‘it is all mine’.
- there is a sense of control and that the Hawk is playing God throughout the poem, ‘allotment of death‘.
- Final words, ‘ I am going to keep things like this’ shows the power that the Hawk has. It is a statement suggesting he is king of the animal kingdom untouchable.
13
Q
Five quotes from ‘To Autumn’ by John Keats
A
- ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ The first line of the poem suggest that autumn is a season of change but despite this, it is a calm season.
- ‘Thee sitting carelessly on the granary floor’ by personifying ultimate suggest the autumn Cumbria season which can be quite thoughtless in the change it brings.
- Keats continues to personify autumn and addresses it directly, ‘the watchest oozings’. He implies that autumn ‘behaves’ as if it has all the time in the world even though time is passing by.
- The last line ‘And gathering swallows twitter in the sky’ shows that winter is drawing in on time is coming to an end, I could represent the circle of life.
14
Q
Five quotes from ‘Afternoons’ by Phillip Larkin
A
- The title ‘Afternoons’ suggested end of the day and time passing.
- The town is restful and the poem has a sense of longing for the past, ‘summer is fading.’
- The language suggests there is little meaning in the lives of the ‘young mothers’, ‘hollow’ and ‘assemble’ suggest routine and boredom creating a sense of emptiness.
- The idea of time passing is developed throughout the poem - ‘their beauty has thickened’ Suggests ageing.
- The last line ‘to the side of their own lives’ echoes the idea of ‘setting free their children’ from the first stanza. There is the implication that their lives are ruled by their children who ‘ expect to be taken home.’
15
Q
Five quotes from ‘Dulce et decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen
A
The opening image of the soldiers, ‘bent double’, ‘coughing like hags’ suggest they have been physically broken by Will. They are exhausted and dirty, they ‘trudge’ they march ‘asleep’ and they are ‘drunk with fatigue’.
- The use of the exclamation mark And capitalisation in ‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!’ Suggest the agency in fear of the impending gas attack.
- The stand-alone stanza, together with the verbs ‘guttering, choking, drowning’. Also suggests the impenetrability of the gas and how it is invading his lungs.
- The repetition of ‘dreams’ emphasises how war has infiltrated his, sleep how he can never have peace, not even when he sleeping.
- Final words, ‘the old lie’, allows Owen to highlight how war is not honourable glorious, but cruel, degrading, dirty and horrifying.
