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
‘confined by property’
house
stuck
‘what tethers us to gravity and light has most to do with distance and shapes we find in water’
nature is part of history
everything comes from water
the answers to our questions are in nature
‘reading from the book of silt and tides’
we learn from nature - gives us answers
‘rose or petrol blue of jellyfish and sea anemone combining with a child’s first nakedness’
humanity is the cause of nature’s suffering
intangible things
blends into 1
humans are nature
going back to innocence
‘sometimes i am dizzy with the fear of losing everything’
collective emotion
temporal deixis
violence can destroy valuable things
‘we trade so much to know the virtual we scarcely register the drift and tug of other bodies’
meaningless
do we care about nature?
we don’t live in the moment anymore`
‘scarcely apprehend the moment as it happens: shifts of light and weather’
children live in the moment
the world is transient
‘local forms of history; the fish lodged in the tide beyond the sands’
personal history
stuck in debris
part of us
‘but this is the problem: how to be alive in all this gazed upon and cherished world do no harm’
we don’t know how to live
ironic - lack of respect caused tragedy
how to see the world without ruining it
‘toddler on a beach sifting wood’
go back to innocence- simplicity and curiosity
‘goldfish carried home from fairgrounds’
man and nature working together
‘puzzled by the pattern on a shell’
examining history
alliteration - harsh events in history
‘kite plugged into the sky’ all nerve an line’
connected to nature
scared for the future
‘patient; afraid; but still, through everything attentive to the irredeemable’
can’t get back the moment
appreciate the moment, it will never come back
we fear what we lost, but we can preserve what’s meaningful
headlines
we fear uncertainty
innocence should be protected
the world in always changing
life is to be lived in the present
we should appreciate the moment
humans will always be part of nature
humans have lost the ability to connect with the natural world
