Genetics Flashcards
Form
5 tercets and a quatrain, specific rhyme scheme
How many lines
19 build in Tone and intensity, each stanza revise initial idea
Repetition of the words
‘Palms’ ‘hands’
Structure
Large gap between consecutive rhymes
‘Hands palms’ ‘hands palms’
Repetition
Title
Ironically not just your genetics that your parents influence
- 3 syllables
- positive, nostalgic, certain
First line of poem
Imagery of two joined hands can be separated, individuals fingers, palms hard to seperate
Their hands are physically
Similar, connotation of marriage
‘Palms’ first line
Literally but metaphorically represent unity of parents
‘Pleasure’
Hyphen used as reflective pause, rhythm
‘Made’
Sculpted, moulded
‘Seperate hemispheres’
Imagery of two joined hands being separated, individuals fingers and palms hard to separate
‘Repelled to separate lands’
Negative, magnetic repel and attract parents separation
‘But friends’
Enjambment, lack of clarity
‘By my fingers’
Visualise marriage in church
- reflectivity, nostalgia, rose tinted view
‘Quarry for their image by a river’
Stagnant, sounds similar to quarrel, allows us to question if speaker has been effected by parents separation
‘My body’ is their marriage register
Whole body
- marriage and separation divorce only implied, marriage is intended
- reflects that this is forever in her genetics
‘I’ll bequeath’
Total surrender, traditional conventions of marriage
‘Steeple stands’
Dedicated to childhood nursery rhyme
‘Parents make us by our hands’
Bigger picture, important that there is a permanent union, children that what may happen in the future of their own relationship
Identity is not just
Within generations but also our own personal relationships both romantically with children and parents
- darker undertone
The narrator is trying to come to
Terms with the diverse
‘So take me with you’
In light of separation
- hope
‘Reciting psalms’
Psalms sand like palms religious, marriage
‘Genetics’
One word, ambiguous, scientific, factual evidence of how people are made up
Last stanza
Suggestive of her future children, cyclical aspect to poem
Union
There is a permanent union within them through their children
Use of end stopped lines
Adds a rhythmic effect
