history - john burnside Flashcards
irregular form
confusion of poet
enjambment
loss and outpouring of emotions which the speaker cannot regulate
‘today, as we flew the kites’
temporal deixis - contrasts history
innocent
childlike
connotations of freedom - kites were banned by the taliban
‘sand spinning off in ribbons along the beach’
sibilance - links to the planes
natural beauty - contrasts 9/11
mirrors twin towers
‘gasoline smell from leuchars’
more noticeable - paranoid
tense atmosphere - mirrors how people felt
everyone is affected
sounds like lucas who is unaware of what is happening
‘quail-grey in the distance’
mood of the poem - pathetic fallacy
caesura - everyone is affected
society makes tragedy
dull - no emotion because people are so shocked
future is uncertain - can’t see what’s coming
‘people jogging, or stopping to watch’
jogging has connotations of being relaxed #
calm
paranoid
people - separation and distance
community?
‘turned in the morning light’
innocence lost
beautiful imagery
disjointed from the current events of the poem
‘muffled dread of what may come’
emotive
fear
drowning it out - don’t want to acknowledge it
knows something is going to happen
represents billions of people
uncertainty
‘i knelt down in the sand with lucas’
praying
desperation
looking for answers
naïve and innocent child
‘finding evidence of life in all this’
contrasts the war
uncovering bodies - death
irony?
‘smudges of weed and flesh on tideworn stone’
natural things - echoes 9/11
imagery
semantic field of ocean
‘at times i think what makes us who were are’
philosophical tone
thinking deeply - that’s what history causes us to do
iambic pentameter - clarity
‘something lost between the world we own and what we dream about behind the names’
the essential nature of humans are our aspirations
material world that we live in
aspirations connect us
we want to be happy with our lives
‘lines raised in the wind…fixed and anchored to the shore’
dream like - links to the kites
society’s tragedy
trapped and vulnerable
anchored to reality