Poems

Question 1

Ozymandias - Shelley
Kamikaze
Quotes

Answer 1

• Recounts meeting a traveller who describes the statue, alone in an expansive desert.
• Power, mortality, the individual (romantic)
• ‘I met a traveller from an antique land’ - framed narrative (distant), ‘antique’ = old, precious, important, mystery, exotic quality
• ‘frown/And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command’ - cruel nature captured, ‘sneer’=word doesn’t sound nice, ‘c’=harsh
• ‘these lifeless things’ - even powerful Ozy dies, only memory in the statue, power of nature rhyme with ‘kings’ emphasises his loss of power
• ‘Look on my words, ye mighty, and despair!’ - imperative=feels power over God, ‘ye mighty’=addressing deity, ‘despair’=narcissistic
• ‘the decay/Of that colossal wreck,’ - caesura=impact, ‘nothing beside’ and ‘decay’=alone and uncared for, ‘colossal’=power, ‘wreck’=damaged+old.
• introduces the poem in the past tense, traveller’s description and words of Ozy are in the present = important, ongoing story, timeless and universal

Question 2

London - Blake
Checking Out Me History
Quotes

Answer 2

• Blake walks through the streets of London as an observer, providing a snapshot of the city and its inhabitants in late C18, from a collection of poems - ‘The Songs of Experience’
• Powerlessness, insouciance of those in power.
• ‘mark in every face I meet/Marks of weakness, marks of woe.’ - antanaclasis=note the suffering caused, strong emotive nouns=amplifies damage done.
• ‘In every cry of every man, / In every infant’s cry of fear’ - Persistent anaphora of universal terms=universality of suffering, ‘cry’=strong emotion noun.
• ‘The mind-forged manacles I hear’ - Repetitive stanza builds to a crescendo, powerful final line. Long vowels=hard to say (representing mental restrictions it describes?), both controlled by authorities and themselves.
• ‘harlot’s curse…blights with plagues the marriage hearse’ - STD ruins marriages+kills, oxymoron represents Blake’s feelings about marriage (religious control).
• four quatrains = simple and affecting song and 4 stresses most lines = rhythm of walk + ??pounding effect to convey a strong message??

Question 3

Extract from the Prelude - Wordsworth
Storm on the Island
Quotes

Answer 3

• Describes an episode in his childhood where he took a small boat on the lake and was deeply affected by the powerful presence of the natural world when he saw a peak. Part of the epic autobiographical poem ‘The Prelude’
• Power, memory.
• (led by her) - mother nature, not in control.
• ‘an act of stealth / And troubled pleasure’ - ‘stealth’=trespassing on nature, oxymoron=feels guilty, still enjoys it.
• ‘lustily I dipped my oars’ - enjoying it, relaxed+calm, intimate relationship with nature.
• ‘a huge peak, black and huge,’ - repetition of extreme adjective, so afraid, lost for words, ‘black’=dark+deathly+ominous
• ‘As if with voluntary power instinct,/Upreared its head’ - personified, semantic field of power and dominance, agression
• ‘unknown modes of being’ - cannot describe this psychological experience. Ominous. Deeply affected and disturbed by nature and his imagination (a romantic concern).
• one continuous stanza + enjambment = journey on water, conversational+confessional voice (blank verse close to rhythms of natural speech)

Question 4

War Photographer - Duffy
Remains
Quotes

Answer 4

• was friends with a war photographer, writes to show the struggles that come with the job and makes the reader question how they respond to this sort of photograph.
• Effects and reality of conflict.
• ‘spools of suffering set out in ordered rows’ - metaphor for the suffering in the images. Ordered like war graves? Coping mechanism?
• ‘Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.’ - Triplet, short syntax, no explanation needed, biblical, humans are alike+transient.
• a half-formed ghost’ - two meanings: image developing and/or the ‘stranger’ is dead, perhaps someone young.
• ‘A hundred agonies in black and white’ - hyperbolic, ‘black and white’=expression of clarity? ironic? (never able to fully understand)
• ‘The reader’s eyeballs prick/with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers’ - emotive crying but minimised by verb ‘prick’, everyday activities contrast with images of horror depicting children who ‘explode’. People carry on regardless. Desensitised, Westerners’ attitude to war that doesn’t directly affect them - uncaring.
• regular rhyme scheme and stanzas = order from chaos

Question 5

My Last Duchess - Browning
Poppies?
Quotes

Answer 5

• Dramatic monologue of Duke of Ferrara, during dowry negotiations, he talks to the Count’s Envoy (an implied listener), narrator may be unreliable so reader questions validity of his account of events.
• power (individual (class), men over women)
• ‘That’s my last Duchess’ - objectification (‘that’ and captured in a painting so no agency - prefers women contained in art than alive), possessive pronoun - proud ownership of women as trophies to collect. Repetition of title=emphasis. ‘last’-foreshadows suggestion of her death and shows his intention to move onto next wife in a dispassionate way. He controls who gets to see the art by drawing the curtain, even in death, he is controlling her and keeping her to himself.
• ‘She had/a heart…too soon made glad’ - He was jealous when she was grateful for the kindness of others, he felt she should only be thankful for him and his ‘nine-hundred-years-old name’ not the kindness of strangers. Shows his vanity and desperation for her exclusive attention.
• ‘I choose/never to stoop’ - enjambment=emphasis, he will never talk to her about the things upset him about her as he feels that would be an act of submission and he is too proud to do that.
• ‘I gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together’ - climactic, revelatory line, ‘commands’=power, sibilance is sinister and suggests that he that he ordered her death. Shocking to the reader and reinforces his vanity and desire to control his wife, he cannot so he has her killed then controls her in her painting.
• ‘Notice Neptune…cast in bronze for me!’ - final word ‘me’=feeling of self-importance, ‘Neptune’ is a powerful figure ‘taming a seahorse’-reflects ideas of control and subjugation in the poem. Boastful mentioning of artist name=continuing theme of his insecurity and desire to always be above everyone else.
• One long stanza with only an implied listener = dominating nature of duke

Question 6

The Charge of the Light Brigade - Tennyson
Exposure
Quotes

Answer 6

• Describes the famous Battle of Balaclava, honours soldiers and criticises incompetence of those in charge.
• Experience of conflict, power of leaders in combat, powerlessness of soldiers.
• ‘Theirs not to make reply,/Theirs not to reason why,/Theirs but to do and die’ - Anaphora, they are doing their duty and don’t question it.
• ‘Cannon to’ - repetition shows the tension of being surrounded, makes it very intense + immersive + futility of the attack + striking visual to readers.
• ‘jaws of death…mouth of Hell’ - repetition, terrifying, they know what they are riding into but do it anyway, obedience. Deathly + hellish personification = devoured by enemy.
• ‘Rode the six hundred…Not the six hundred…Left of six hundred…Noble of six hundred!’ - final line of each stanza as a refrain, only a number, no individuals, ?not an isolated incident? Reinforced noble with exclamation mark.
• ‘someone had blunder’d’ - strong declarative - poet’s opinion, whole poem questioning why this happened, who had blunder’d? - ‘all the world wonder’d’
• begins in medias res, very dramatic start = straight into the action = chaos and confusion like the soldiers may feel. Regular rhythm, line and stanza length = conveys idea of galloping horses

Question 7

Exposure - Owen
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Quotes

Answer 7

• Stasis in WW1 trenches, Owen was a soldier in WW1, wrote from personal experience and doesn’t celebrate heroism but exposes brutal reality.
• Powerlessness of soldiers, destructive power of nature.
• ‘The merciless iced east winds that knive/us’ - sibilance-harsh and sinister nature of wind, personification of nature-powerful, +military terms eg.’army’=dangerous and aggressive, also deliberately vicious and inescapable.
• ‘What are we doing here?’ - rhetorical Q, anticlimactic endings of stanzas=boredom of soldiers, what they are doing feels pointless, they aren’t contributing to the war they are just sitting there, slowly dying. ‘We’=connected to the soldiers on a personal level,
• ‘we drowse, sun-dozed’ - flashback to before the war, sign of impending death, remembering happier times, reflecting on their lives. Hypothermia setting in.
• ‘love of God seems dying’ - they were previously religious, the pointlessness of them being there and dying for nothing causes them to lose faith as they feel God has turned his back on them. They can no longer trust him
• ‘All their eyes are ice’ - ‘their’-feels separate from the others now that they are dead, contrasts ‘we’ before. ‘eyes’ and ‘ice’-nearly homophones, close relationship between the two. It is inevitable that he will also die?
• regular rhyme scheme = regimentation and constriction, half-rhyme = mental confusion as certainties are lost

Question 8

Storm on the Island - Heaney
Extract
Quotes

Answer 8

• Irish, no place or time (universal man v. elements), storm metaphor for Irish troubles.
• Power of nature, endurance of a community under threat.
• Pronouns: 1st pl. = community’s close bond, 2nd sing. = direct address of reader, conversational register. ‘you know what I mean’
• ‘no trees, no natural shelter’ - repetition of negatives = they are exposed to the elements, nothing is protecting them. Primal fear.
• ‘You might think that the sea is company/Exploding comfortably…/But no’ - oxymoron = accustomed to storms, enjambment = delay, so surprise, direct address = involving the reader, even sea not reassuring.
• ‘wind dives…strafes…’ - semantic field of war, personification = image of a plane diving down and firing at them + aggressive + powerful nature
• ‘a huge nothing that we fear’ - oxymoron, just air, irony of their fear, started ‘prepared’, now afraid - can’t ever truly be prepared?
• one stanza = short + immediate experience of storm

Question 9

Bayonet Charge - Hughes
Exposure
Quotes

Answer 9

• WW1, nameless soldier (representative figure), his father fought, great interest in wildlife and nature.
• Experience of military conflict, powerlessness of nature.
• ‘h’ sounds at start = panting, breathless + In medias res = jolted into action, start of frantic + confusing charge
• ‘Bullets smacking the belly out of the air’ - plosive ‘b’ = violence, personifies bullets, violent active verb, sharp, onomatopoeic ‘smacking’ = sense of danger he feels.
• ‘In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations/Was he the hand pointing that second?’ - metaphor - clockwork - he is just second hand in clockwork of politics and fate, controlled by others, small part of large mechanism, moment of reflection. Alliteration of hard ‘c’ = mechanistic (dehumanised).
• ‘The shot-slashed furrows/Threw up a yelllow hare’ - pain, destruction of nature, agony, ‘sh’ = sound of shells, immersive
• ‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera/Dropped like luxuries’ - tricolon of ideologies/motivations, etcetera = dismissive+insignificance of motivations, he doesn’t care any more
• 3 irregular stanzas + irregular lines + active verbs = frantic action

Question 10

Remains - Armitage
War Photographer
Quotes

Answer 10

• interviewed soldiers, Gulf War, he isn’t a soldier, 1st person dramatic monologue
• Experience of military conflict, psychological effects of war.
• ‘On another occasion’ - temporal reference, suggests in a casual tone that it’s a common occurrence as it gives the impression that it’s part of a longer list of similar reflections - this kind of experience has become normalised.
• ‘probably armed, possibly not’ - killing may not have been justified, questioning ethics of his violence.
• ‘we get sent out’ - 1st person pl. = united but anonymous as a group, passive verb=he felt it was easier to commit violence under orders. More capable of violence when shielded by group identity.
• ‘sort of inside out’ - casual, colloquial lang. = convincing voice + ?more shocking because dispassionate tone + blunt and graphic lang. to depict violence?
• ‘His blood-shadow stays on the street’ - mark on the ground where looter bled to death, metaphorical shadow of guilt that haunts soldier, ‘shadow’ = memory imprinted on his mind forever.
• ‘his bloody life in my bloody hands’ - finds it difficult to differentiate between the looter and himself - guilt has affected his logic, bloody = either expletive = will never forgive himself, visceral and permanent effect on the soldier or the actual scene and he has the looter’s blood on him, alludes to lady MacBeth trying to wash blood off her hands after committing murder.
• Mostly unrhymes quatrains with some longer lines emphasising interesting ideas, but the last stanza is 2 lines, heightens the impact of the final image of guilt.

Question 11

Poppies - Wier
My Last Duchess?
Quotes
Effects of conflict, loss and absence, memory, fear

Answer 11

• Mothers saying goodbye to sons from mother’s perspective, like Susan Owen, in Gulf War. Focuses on maternal concern and love.
• Different perspective on war, emotional cost of war.
• ‘spasm of paper red, disrupting a blockade/of yellow boas binding’ - ‘spasms’ = injury - son’s death, ‘red’ = blood+injury, powerful emotive image, ‘spasms’ = uncontrollable, she feels uncontrollable waves for grief and fear. ‘paper’ = ?soldiers disposable to those in power?, poppy disrupts uniform like war disrupts family life, ‘blockade’ = militaristic lang., ?barrier between her and son, he is excited, she is afraid?
• ‘All my words/flattened, rolled, turned into felt’ - metaphor - ?tank, militaristic lang.? felt used to make military uniform, feels like her voice has been crushed like this felt as it is made as she is lost for words seeing her son go off to war. Also part of semantic field of sowing = ?stitching together the gap left by her son leaving?
• ‘the world overflowing/like a treasure chest.’ - simile - The way the son sees his future is like a treasure chest, he is naive in his patriotism and the caesura after chest highlights his dramatic decision.
• ‘leaned against it like a wishbone’ - symbol for wishing her son’s name wasn’t there (he was alive), leans against it as she is weak with grief or wishbone over heart and traditionally, wishbones broken so the physical therefore emotional protection of her heart is gone/she is heartbroken?? or her and son like the two halves of the wishbone, without the other, they are incomplete but are destined to be ripped apart.
• Frequent sensory and tactile lang. show the need for connection and intimacy between mother and son.
• free verse with frequent enjambment and caesura and no rhyme gives the impression of natural thought.

Question 12

Tissue - Dharker
Emigrée
Quotes

Answer 12

• Inspired by seeing an old book of her father’s and feeling its significance, interested with identity and multiculturalism.
• Significance of paper in our lives as well as the fragility of human life.
• ‘this/is what could alter things’ - declarative=paper (and what is written on it) has the power to effect change - powerful.
• ‘thinned by age or touching’ - paper deteriorates just like humans. Paper has the power to store history, is used in religious texts, maps, currency, architecture yet can be worn down and lose its power by something as simple as touching, it is powerful but like humans, its power is ultimately transient.
• ‘fly our lives like paper kites’ - simile - power of money + our wavering quality and dependence on money to direct our lives. Kite flies freely but is ultimately being controlled by a person = we are free to do what we want but money controls our lives.
• ‘trace a grand design/living tissue’ - part of the extended metaphor of humans as delicate tissue - transient and powerless, however enjambment also links the grand design to living tissue - as well as paper being necessary for architecture=powerful, humans are also necessary and even in their transience, people are still necessary for making these giant structures that will long outlive us.
• Unrhymed quatrains are used to range across the different types and uses of paper, enjambment and uneven rhythm suggest the fluttering, unsteady quality of life.

Question 13

The Emigrée - Rumens
London
Quotes

Answer 13

• First person account of displacement in the voice of an emigrant. Speaker describes memories of her homeland as well as a sense of her experiences in a new country.
• Memory, belonging.
• unnamed ‘country’, ‘city’ + title - universal/representative
• ‘the bright, filled paperweight’ - ‘paperweight’ is a metaphor for the solid, unchangeable ideas she has of her home, imagery of home as light, repeated throughout.
• ‘That child’s vocabulary…/like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar’ - language (identity), left her country clutching onto her beloved lang. but has to hide it away as she integrates into her new home but she cannot contain it. Seemingly intentional grammatical mistake=child-like lang. As an immigrant, she has to be something she isn’t to integrate into society otherwise she is alienated by others.
• ‘It tastes of sunlight’ - about lang. love of lang. synaesthesia=strong sensory=strong connection to lang.
• ‘My shadow falls as evidence of sunlight’ - ending, believes that her existence and memories is proof that her country was once a place of peace and joy with which she felt a very close, intimate connection.
• Each stanza ends with a reference to sunlight, this positive view of her country is constant and unwavering.

Question 14

Checking Out Me History - Agard
London
Quotes

Answer 14

• Explores the fact that his education in Guyana negates his heritage and promoted a Eurocentric history. In the poem he celebrates non-British historical figures and in doing so makes his mark by writing about and celebrating his own rich history.
• Power, heritage.
• ‘Dem tell me’ - non-standard grammar and pronunciation to reflect his natural dialect and heritage, anaphora lends the poem a strong campaigning voice as well as conveying his anger and frustration. ‘ Dem’ - feels separate from the white establishment. ‘tell’ - he is ignored.
• ‘Bandage up me eye with me own history/Blind me to me own identity’ - Images of blinding and obscuring sight to show how children were kept ignorant to their heritage and their identity. Plosive - his anger at the establishment.
• ‘1066 and all dat’ - childlike lang. describing Western figures, has a dismissive tone - his indifference, he views their ancestors as they viewed his. 1066 - ?England invaded but his culture is still marginalised in Britain today?
• ‘Nanny/see-far woman…/fire-woman…/hopeful stream’ - becomes more lyrical and metaphorical describing figures from his history. ‘see-far’ = a visionary, ‘fire’ = passion? a light (lots of this) = hope? power? leadership as a beacon of light?, ‘hopeful stream’ - positive guidance + inspiring.
• ‘I carving out me identity’ - first use of ‘I’ = at last asserting himself rather than accepting what he is taught, taking control and learning about his own culture, focus is on him and his journey now. ‘carving’ - active verb, takes time and energy to do but the result can be powerful and last a long time. Powerful to end on identity as that is what he as been denied. No punctuation even at end = his journey to find his identity is not complete and may continue for a long time.
• Italicised sections with shorter lines give emphasis to every idea and image and slows down the pace for reflection, tone is admiring rather than resentful as the rhythm becomes more gentle as the insistent rhyming of the rest of the poem dissipates.

Question 15

Kamikaze - Garland
Ozymandias
Quotes

Answer 15

• Recounts the story of a woman who’s father (a kamikaze pilot) turned back while on his suicide mission.
• Decline of power of the individual, the transforming power of nature, the power of family and heritage.
• ‘A Samurai sword…/a shaven head/full of powerful incantations’ - powerful lexis of Japanese military tradition shows readiness to die for country, ‘sword’ = if he loses his honour by not dying, he can regain it by committing suicide, shows extent that soldiers went to to serve their country, explains what happens to father as he relinquished his honour but didn’t regain it through suicide.
• ‘little fishing boats/strung out like bunting’ - ‘fishing’ - integral part of Japanese culture, he saw the essence of his country in the boats, simile of bunting suggests a celebration = as though he is being celebrated by Japanese culture for his mission.
• ‘dark shoals of fishes/flashing silver as their bellies/swivelled towards the sun’ - sibilance+soft sounds = sound of sea = emphasis on nature, images of fish is prevalent as it is an important part of Japanese culture. He is noticing the small things in life in what he believes to be his last moments. ‘swivelled’ = foreshadows him turning around? Japanese pilots flew away from the Sun so that they are harder to see so when they swivel towards the Sun that is like him turning around. Also turning back to the Land of the Rising Sun = turning towards the Sun. ‘silver’ - precious and beautiful nature.
• ‘a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous’ - tone darkens to prepare for the disappointment at the fact he turned around? Good things in his life - his accolades - a large fish, hard to catch, remembering his achievements fondly? ‘dark’ = night = entering sinister and dangerous time of his life. Powerfully personified tuna = powerful nature?
• ‘he must have wondered/which had been the better way to die’ - metaphor conveys loss of respect for him, wonders whether he would have preferred to have really died or suffer this psychological death. Powerful and poignant ending shows how impactful and severe his rejection by society was.
• free verse - flood of memories and conversational voices and reflections, seven stanzas convey the stages of the pilot’s decline. Italicised section is his granddaughter, and described her learning to understand his rejection.