English Anthology Quotes For Each Poem

Question 1

A poison tree

Answer 1

‘And I summed it with smiles and with soft deceitful wiles.’

Highlights the way we keep our anger and resentment bottled up inside. It encourages to act in a ‘two faced’ manner smiling at our enemies while secretly plotting our revenge on them.

Question 2

Poison tree

Answer 2

‘And it grew both day and night till it bore an apple bright’

Metaphor - in time this resentment will bear fruit, his illusion with his enemy is growing and growing until it becomes a strong and tempting thing

Question 3

The destruction of Sennacherib

Answer 3

‘The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold’

Simile - showing the power of the Assyrians

Question 4

The destruction of Sennacherib

Answer 4

‘And the tents were all silent…the lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown’

Synaesthesia

Question 5

Extract from the prelude

Answer 5

Quote 1: ‘Mountain echoes’
Quote 2: ‘a huge peak, black and huge, as if with voluntary power instinct…and measured motion like a living thing, strode after me.’
Personification - puts in to perspective how scary the mountain is how it almost towers over him.

Question 6

Extract from the prelude

Answer 6

‘Troubled pleasure’
Technique = Oxymoron

Question 7

The man he killed

Answer 7

‘Staring face to face I shot him as he at me. And killed him in his place’
Technique = imagery
Created an image of personal relationships but then an image of brutality as he had no choice; kill or be killed.

Question 8

The man he killed

Answer 8

‘I killed him in his place’ …. ’I shot him dead because he was my foe’
Technique = enjambment
Shows doubt and also lack of knowledge of why he had to kill him

Question 9

Catrin

Answer 9

‘I can remember you’
Technique = repetition
(Repetition of the first line of the two stanzas -Catrin represents the universal child and experience of motherhood)

Question 10

Catrin

Answer 10

‘Red rope of love’
Technique = metaphor
For umbilical cord (central metaphor in poem ties poem together like a rope)
.Bound together almost painfully -combination of conflict and love.

Question 11

Catrin

Answer 11

‘I wrote all over the walls with my words’

Technique = (alliteration of the W) and metaphor shouting as the poet is giving birth
The visual and the aural are combined imagery like the ‘dark scream’ in War Photography

Question 12

Half caste

Answer 12

‘Explain what yu mean when you say half caste’
Technique = rhetorical question
Imperative verb - more demanding and blunt than first stanza

Question 13

Half caste

Answer 13

‘Is a half-caste canvas’
Technique = alliteration and repetition of sounds

Question 14

Half caste

Answer 14

‘Wid de whole of you eye’
Technique = metaphor (to see the real him)

Question 15

The class game

Answer 15

Note: strong use of repetition of rhetorical questions throughout.
‘Have I a label on me head, and another on me bum?’
Technique = rhetorical question

(Here the poet is working to challenge the reader’s immediate stereotypes of her class, highlighting how she has experienced being labelled just because of the way she talks.) also makes the reader question themselves, feeling bad for the narrator

Question 16

The class game

Answer 16

‘Me say ‘Tara’ to me ‘ma’ instead of ‘bye mummy dear’?’
Technique = personal pronouns
Implies the difference in diction and colloquialisms means that she feels distanced from the rest of the society she lives in.