Mean Time

Question 1

What type of title is ‘Mean Time’?

Answer 1

Polysemic

Question 2

Meanings behind the title?

Answer 2

-Greenwich mean time
-Malevolent time
-Period of waiting

Question 3

What is the poem about?

Answer 3

A break-down of relationship shown through the metaphor of time and the clocks sliding back an hour, leading to more physical and mental darkness

Question 4

Techniques used in “shortened days… endless nights.

Answer 4

-Pathetic fallacy (melancholic)
-Binary opposition

Question 5

What is the technique where the line continues on without punctuation?

Answer 5

Enjambment

Question 6

What does the enjambment in “unmendable rain//fell to the black streets” mean?

Answer 6

Mimics the unstoppable nature of the rain. This is also shown through the active verb ‘fell’.

Question 7

“Where I felt my heart gnaw// at all our mistakes.”
Meaning of ‘our’?

Answer 7

Possessive determiner, which connotes to being controlled by two people

Question 8

“Where I felt my heart gnaw// at all our mistakes.”
Meaning of ‘heart gnaw’?

Answer 8

An aggressive active verb used on a sensitive personal noun. -> Animalistic personification

Question 9

Technique and meaning in:
“There are words I would never have said nor have heard you say.”

Answer 9

Lexical set of active verbs which may be referring to a regretful conversation in the past.