History Flashcards
Structure
Fractured and impressionistic lines
Enjambment - sense of overwhelming
His lines have more regularity when his ideas and thoughts make sense and coalesce
Gains more recognizable structure just a making more sense of the events of 911
The meandering structure mirrors the movement of tides on the beach
911
World
Nature
Relationship with Child
Both sense of man’s ability to destroy things
St Andrews: West Sands; September 2001
Today
as we flew the kites -
the sand spinning off in ribbons along the beach
and that gasoline smell from Leuchars gusting across
the golf links;
The tide far out
and quail-grey in the distance;
people
jogging, or stopping to watch
as the war planes cambered and turned
in the morning light –
Epigraph sets the scene instantly
Clauses and brokenness - trying to reconcile
Saint Andrews - beautiful setting contrasts 911
Human references as well throughout / loose connections
‘Sand spinning’ - alliteration evokes the imagery of gusting wings on the coastline / peaceful beauty in this landscape and danker
Ribbons - playful and majestic
Gasoline smell - contrast the natural imagery / gasoline is also fuel for a fire / sinister undertones of human activity and destruction
‘Jogging’ and ‘stopping’ present continuous / reliving the moments within the past as if it were the present / fluidity of time
‘As the war planes cambered and turned / in the morning light-‘ - the dash and the broken syntax mirrors the way in which the world had been broken and disrupted and how the buildings of the twin towers had been destroyed
Morning light - peace and solice
‘War’ - is the world at war / reactionary anger ? / connotations of destruction
Tide far our - syntax creates and mirrors isolation and isolation of the beach and isolation of saint andrews
Fragmented words - fragmented mind / unsure and uncertain of what to do
today
- with the news in my mind, and the muffled dread
of what may come –
I knelt down in the sand
with Lucas
gathering shells
and pebbles
finding evidence of life in all this
driftwork:
snail shells; shreds of razorfish;
smudges of weed and flesh on tideworn stone.
Snails shells; shreds - sibilance/solace in nature / nature is mimicking the destruction that occurred on that day
News -> global news on the events
“muffled and may” alliteration -> speakers anxiety but tamp it down for children
Finding evidence of life - relating to finding the evidence of life in the rubble of 911 / structure and spacing forces the readers eye to sweep back and worth mimicking the search for life
Flesh on tideworn stone - visceral imagery / dead people on the stone of the buildings
With Lucas - the persona hopes to stabilise the world and existence for his child / trying to protect his son and keep his son safe in an unsafe world
Tide worn stone - the erosion and attrition here is slow and natural, in juxtaposition to the impact and sudden shock of 911
At times I think what makes us who we are
is neither kinship nor our given states
but something lost between the world we own
and what we dream about behind the names
on days like this
our lines raised in the wind
our bodies fixed and anchored to the shore
Nihilistic view
Connected stanza - his present more connected thoughts and interpretation of events / maybe representative of human unity / people expressing solidarity with victims of events
Reflection now on wilder ideas
Kite - metaphor for human relations with the world - the lines are what anchor the kite and bind them to the world / humans are nothing without relationships / without solidarity and unity we have nothing but chaos and destruction /
Kite -> symbolise the literal kite strings but can also reflect how his mind is almost like it is “raised in the wind” and his mind soars past his current immediate surroundings
and though we are confined by property
what tether us to gravity and light
has most to do with distance and the shapes
we find in water
reading from the book
of silt and tides
the rose or petrol blue
of jellyfish and sea anemone
combining with a child’s
first nakedness.
Property - we make our own divisions and decides - we have property and this property is what keeps us captive and locked within society but also what gives us freedom too at the same time, our property is our own and is our freedom too
Gravity and light - forces and laws of nature also confine us too
Shapes we find in the water - we and water we are actually connected and are maybe one with nature / we come from nature via evolution we can never sever these links
Reading from the book of slits and tides -> metaphor of a book suggests that nature of full of wisdom and knowledge
Rose - symbolic of love and romance
Anemone - symbolic of the death of a loved one
Child - innocence / feels as though the innocence and the good of this world is being corrupted by the evil around it
Nakedness -> purity / exposure / vulnerability
Sometimes I am dizzy with the fear
of losing everything – the sea, the sky,
all living creatures, forests, estuaries:
we trade so much to know the virtual
we scarcely register the drift and tug
of other bodies
scarcely apprehend
the moment as it happens: shifts of light
and weather
and the quiet, local forms
of history: the fish lodged in the tide
beyond the sands;
the long insomnia
of ornamental carp in public parks
captive and bright
and hung in their own
slow-burning
transitive gold
jamjars of spawn
and sticklebacks
or goldfish carried home
from fairgrounds
to the hum of radio
Lexical choice
Water imagery - feels the push and pull of the ‘drift and tuf / of other bodies’
All living creatures, forest -> asyndeton quickens the pace mirroring the growing panic of the persona as well as the quicking destruction of nature
‘The moment as it happens’ - appreciation of everything around him acts as a moment of potential terror of
Diacope of “scarcely”-> hammers home how little we pay attention to our immediate lives
‘The quiet, local forms/ of history’ - everything is changing even the past and history / what is ignored easily
‘Ornamental carp’ - fish and water imagery / fish and nature is seen as treasure
‘Slow burning / transitive gold’ - slow and gold sense of majesty / allusion of goldfish won at fairs - seen as outdated practice / captivity / banned now due to the suffocation and cruelty / mirror 911
Jam Jars -> human’s entitlement and extraction of resources from nature killing this sense of joy
but this is the problem: how to be alive
in all this gazed-upon and cherished world
and do no harm
a toddler on a beach
sifting wood and dried weed from the sand
and puzzled by the pattern on a shell
his parents on the dune slacks with a kite
plugged into the sky
all nerve and line
Patient; afraid; but still, through everything
attentive to the irredeemable.
‘How to be alive
And do no harm’ - problem for persona
‘Gazed upon’ international television broadcasting
‘Toddle on the beach’ - attention back on the innocence of children / completely oblivious to what is happening
‘Sifting’ - sifting through the destruction to find life in 911
‘Patient afraid’ - contrast to child / parent’s anxiety in comparison to the child’s wonder and curiosity
“Plugged” -> focused on the planes above / threatened by anxiety
‘Irredeemable’ - existentialist / focus on the important things within life / allusion to Jesus who is our redeemer / we need to be saved from all this evil
