JSLR Flashcards
Speechless 1, 3 quotes?
“orders her/ to fold her voice down into a small,/pocketable silence.”
“until its broken wood, tangled nylon,/a few snagged keys.”
“At 15, she has a voice like ripe Jamoon wine”
Talk this way, 3 quotes?
“dear Queen’s best/cool and clipped as seams pressed sharp”
“dear love letters/pressed deep into vinyl platters”
“thank you for your many tongues./Now to find my own.”
Song for a Spent 100W bulb, 4 quotes?
“too costly my mother feared/your appetite, guzzling the mains,”
“little sun/I rhymed into”
“searing fistful of feverish light”
“capable/of being held, of being rolled/in a boy’s hot palm, singing/ one soft blind note.”
Magnitude, 3 quotes?
“each swollen grain; a real, fleshy equation”
“her Akan blood arrows back up to royalty”
“following darts of sunlight riding/ the backs of black waves,” -water as a point of pain but also relief.
Turning Darker Still, 4 quotes?
“The sun, a spotlight. Under it’s attention, he glowers,/turns darker still.” turn deeper into yourself to find relief and identity.
“Dreams/of oceans, cool and black.” darkness as a relief.
“The sun fingers his hair without asking” cultural commentary
“The sand gets everywhere. Between his toes./Under his tongue. In his ears.” -depriving his senses and taking away his voice.
After Lazerdrome, McDonalds, Peckham Rye, 3 Quotes?
“be baptised by city songs urban hymns seamless/sound a brimming seas of sound”
“slouching in moulded seats drowning in silence/light headed leavened waiting” -makes the reader fell tired and exhausted, leavened is religious, its a goodbye so very sad.
“to dance/alone in the dark let the music play us meat and bone” -mass and moments of awe, sensory deprivation, darkness as a point of relief, lexical cluster of flesh throughout poem.
Speechless II, 3 quotes?
“astronauts make the first untethered space walk/and I attend singing lessons every Saturday morning.” makes what he’s doing feel even lamer. Her loves that his mom loves it but he wants t ride BMX bikes.
“I’ve been promised the freedoms/my mother never had” -theme of family is it really what he wants. Perhaps some generational trauma.
“I’m silent, pressed up against the car’s window//watching boys on their BMX bikes.” -pivotal moment in the epic poem where he starts to think about what he wants and is exposed to it for the first time.
Speechless III, 4 quotes?
“I’m the shadow/in the corner of every room, the single dark cloud” -relating to darkness as a relief. Cultural commentary of racism.
“I don’t have a chip on my shoulder/but I feel like an ink blot on a blank page” -beautiful imagery. Metaphor for being the only black kid in a white school. More cultural commentary.
“it’s best when it’s physical, reaching deep down,/resounding like an hallelujah or amen in one of God’s houses.” -music associated with religion and described as a tangible thing. Common theme throughout.
“and rejected its cold, dead weight.” -pivotal moment of rejecting the pre-cast mould and overcoming people’s expectations.
Speechless IV, 4 quotes?
“By the time Dante’s born again/and denounces hip-hop/as the devil’s music,” - Dante is an antisemitic poet, denouncing as if music were a religion/belief in the first place.
“n-/ is launched from a passing car window/like a slow motion bullet.” -isolated n word like a disease. Cultural commentary of drive by’s and racial violence. simile
“I offer a devotion of my own:/Grant me a tongue/worthy of the weight/ of everything I’ll come to know.” -religious, monumental moment.
“there are silences I’ll break/and be broken by” -explores the power of silence throughout his poems. Relates to ‘dear silence-‘ in talk this way.
Speechless V, 4 quotes?
“Bangladesh, a red Honda generator,/how there’s nothing like family,”-listing and triadic structure emphasis the meaningfulness behind it.
“because poetry means writing, and writing/is ~long man~” italics for speech, internal rhyme, London dialect you can almost hear the accent.
“~We’re the dumbs kids, sir,/ says one. ~Why did they give you to us?~” -hopelessness.
“will compare herself to a broken slot machine/in the basement of a pub, inside out/and forgotten in the widening fissure/between her parents.” broken luck, being left being.
Plummeting, 3 quotes?
“sporting a corona of sweat like a plume/of peacock’s feathers,”-anatomical reference to corona which looks like a crown denoting wealth and power.
“left, right, launch-step” -repetition divides the poem into two sections and paces, plummeting towards something intentionally.
“deep bone-ache”
Plummeting being a continuos verb.
