ED-Slant

Question 1

certain Slant of light /Winter Afternoons

Connotations
metaphorical setting

Answer 1

→connot ‘slant’ = obscurity of vision (X clarity) immediately evokes speaker’s psych. discomfort
→setting ‘winter afternoons’ = the light may be slanted b/c it is retreating (day is dying) ∴speaker senses death in nature

Question 2

oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes –

Ponderous diction
Trochaic pulse

Answer 2

→speaker’s intuition of death in nature triggers despair which ‘oppresses’ with its ‘heft’ / light is not airy but heavy
→ED accentuates weight of speaker’s misery by referring to ‘Cath. Tunes’ which should bring comfort but instead intensify tactile ‘heft’ sp’s despair
→also accen. by trochaic pulse (note sim. diction + trochaic pulse in Funeral–treading/treading)

Question 3

internal difference Where the Meanings, are –No scar

Sharp /i/ assonance
Ungrammatical comma
imagery

Answer 3

→assonance evokes despair’s painful sharpness, cutting through and affecting us @core ‘where the meanings, are’ / ungrammatical comma implies disturbance @ heart of identity.
→image of ‘no scar’ →evokes isolating invisibility + alienation caused by despair

Question 4

‘Heavenly Hurt it gives us’+ ‘Imperial Affliction.’

Oxymoron + diction of regality
Incl ‘us’

Answer 4

→God sends desp. Through nature to all humanity (‘us’) / oxy + dict evokes speaker’s ambiv. re powerful ‘imperial’ God thought to be ‘heavenly’ but who deliberately ‘hurts’ humankind from distance / speaker seems to lament cruelty of a God who creates humanity only to make it suffer + die

Question 5

‘shadows -hold their breath -’

personification

Answer 5

→shadows hold breath b/c as light fades towards its death, they too will die ∴ poem ends on note of death with which it began

Question 6

‘we’ and ‘us’

Incl lang

Answer 6

→h/w inclusive pronouns in poem remind readers human pain + mortality = shared fate, making ED’s poetry an occasion for human connection even in midst of suffering