Poetry Flashcards
Give 10 quotes and analysis from ‘Mametz Wood’
“For years afterwords, the farmers found them”:
-fricatives = gentleness
-temporal marker = time has evolved yet war’s impact is still prevalent on both nature and people
-ambiguous collective pronoun = deconstructed identities of brave patriots
“Plough blades”:
-contrast in harsh and soft plosives = contrast of violence and fragility
-allusions to agricultural healing = arid land is finally being given back its identity - no longer a battlefield
“Tended”:
-farmers serve as a nurse for the land, as if it’s wounded alongside the soldiers
-immortality of humans, but nature’s ability to restore itself = optimistic opening to the poem
“Wasted young”:
-futility of war has left the men without futures
-dissipated potentials
“A chit of bone”:
-abrupt transition to harder consonants = introduction to graphic imageries of war
-receipt of war = grim
-‘bone’ = synecdoche for corpse
“Blown and broken bird’s egg of a skull”:
-plosives = act of violence —> destruction of human life
-metaphor for embryo = hasn’t hatched, links to ‘wasted young’
-contrast of fragile egg amidst violent gunfire is poignant
“Relic”:
-appears old and ruined, but it is in fact a precious memory, showcasing beauty of life that remains after a devastating event like war
-antithetical ideas = perhaps an attempt to discourage war, as Sheers is an anti-war poet
-war’s ability to dissect
“Sentinel”:
-connotes protection, portraying nature as an eternal guard for the corpses buried within it (almost maternal care - Mother Nature can’t be destructed by war)
-sibilants = danger of conflict for the earth, contrasting the sense of defence that nature has created for it
“Like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin”:
-land is a part of the post-war healing process
-simile could be a disturbing image, as bodies are rejected in the same way that a splinter would be
-but there’s underlying optimism: the men are finally given posthumous dignity with this excavation
“Broken mosaic”:
-oxymoron is moving, as beautiful masterpiece is ruined by armed conflict
-perhaps it is the remains of war’s devastation that has been rearranged into art
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘Mametz Wood’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘The Manhunt’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘Sonnet 43’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘London’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘Living Space’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘Valentine’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘Cozy Apologia’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘The Soldier’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘She Walks in Beauty’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘As Imperceptibly as Grief’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘Death of a Naturalist’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘Hawk Roosting’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘To Autumn’
Give 3 pieces of context for ‘Afternoons’
