needed poems

Question 1

London

I wandered through each chartered street
The mind forged manacels I hear
Every blackening church appalls
Runs in blood down palace walls
And blights with plague the marriage hearse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w-Vg9xbUzU

Answer 1

1. Simplistic form, like a poem written for children, written as a protest and in order to get it across it is meant to be memorable
2. The streets have been expanded, complaining about urbanisation destroying which is natural - the river
3. The streets are owned, so everything is owned by people
4. Contrast - he wanders so he can still be free if you start looking at London in different ways
5. Metaphor of people being owned by something else, which has been done by yourself
6. Condemning how the society is built like it is with layers, saying it is just how it organised in our minds, but if we stop believing then we will be free
7. The forge is a factory a blacksmith ownes. It is also to fake things. Shows our belief in the social heirarchy is a fake system and built by us.
8. Churches are turning black as there is smog, also pointing out how chimney sweepers are dying
9. He is trying to get the church to do something about it, he is saying the church has lost its way
10. Appalls means shocked so saying the church should be shocked at what is happening to all the children being exploited
11. However he is complaining the church does not do anything so attacking it for its complacency
12. Appall also a material put over a coffin, every church is wearing one and becoming black showing the church is dead and has turned away from Christs teaching
13. Asking us to imagine the French revolution, where the nobles are all executed suggesting this kind of revolution is imminent on the UK
14. Suggesting the soldiers will die defending the King
15. Focuses on instution of marriage
16. He is not condemning it as it benefitted him as he believes in equality for marriage
17. Complaining about men killing off their marriages due to STDs and that therefore literally kills their wives over times
18. Also can harm the child as it will mean they are born with disabilities

Question 2

Remains

On another occasion we got sent out
I see every round as it rips through his life
One of my mates goes by and tosses his guts back into the body
And the drinks and drugs wont flush him out
His bloody life in my bloody hands

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTfizAjH-8

Answer 2

1. Begins in media res
2. Incident that had a great effect but it was one of many
3. However it is the occasion that had the worse physocological effect on him so he saved it till last
4. Language for deployed, doesn’t sound like a job for the soldier but a punishment, which can show war is a part of exclusion and it is negative
5. Dramatic pause before it, as he swears, cursing himself as he remembers the memory
6. Volta as he begins to blame himself, moving from we to I
7. Emphasised by the violent imagery and the metaphor of it ripping
8. Sees it in the present tense as when the soldier imagines it it is traumatising
9. Uses round instead of bullet, giving idea of circularity which is reflective of him mind always coming back to it so he cannot escape
10. Colloquial language, he does not want to stop at the memory so he ‘goes by’
11. He tosses, casual action which juxtaposes the horror described
12. Sibilance, with repetition of ‘s’ sound, emphasising the casual action and adds a sinister mood while the narrator tries to downplay it and go past quickly
13. Tosses guts is to be sick, which shows how he feels ill looking back while at the time it was a casual action, reflected by the colloquial language
14. Sense of repetition, where he is turning to depression or addiction trying to escape the memory
15. Armitage is not describing one induvidual but many as the soldiers remain with experiences as they return
16. Flushed out metaphor, using language soldiers would use to expose an enemy as they would flush them out of hiding place
17. Flush is also with toilet, which gives us the idea of excrament, which this image is what he wants to get rid of
18. This excrament is how he now sees himself after his part in the killing, he now believes he is worthless
19. Final admission of his own guilt
20. Hands ends with, which structural with land and sand, which describes the dead looter
21. No rhyming couplet for the actual ending which shows discordance. Also emphasises with hands ending with s and not land and sand, showing his lack of control
22. This is a literary illusion, referring to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth representing his guilt and showing that the looters life was just as prescious as the kings
23. The consequence of killing the looter was just as tragic as Macbeths and Lady Macbeths
24. Change in personal pronouns, where he sees himself as the guilty party, giving him a motive for self destruction and suicide
25. Seems like he is talking to someone so if reporter it may be self destruction but it could be to a medical army person, where he is getting a cure by accepting and understanding what he has done

Question 3

Storm on the Island

This wizened earth had never troubled us
So that you listen to the thing you fear, forgetting that it pummels your house too
You might think the sea is company, exploding comfortably down on the cliffs
Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37cCEMpOn-k

Question 4

Exposure

Our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knive us
Dawn massing in the east, her melancholy army attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey
So we drowse, sun-dozed, littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses - Is it that we are dying
Therefore not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, for love of God seems dying
All their eyes are ice, but nothing happens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JQ5_koeI8U

Question 5

Ozymandius

I met a traveller from an antique land
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed
Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!
Of that colossal wreck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUN2BmHjO3Y

Question 6

War photographer

In the dark room, he is finally alone with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows
A priest preparing to intone a mass. Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Pehn. All flesh is grass.
A half formed ghost. He remembers the cries of this mans wife, how he sought approval
The readers eyeballs prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers
From an aeroplane he stares impassively at where he earns his living and they do not care.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUN2BmHjO3Y