Poetry Flashcards
To Althea, from prison
Richard Lovelace
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty
The rape of the lock- pope
Trophies of his former loves
Swells her breast with conquests yet to come
Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast when husbands or when lap dogs breathe their last
Millers Tales 1386
‘yonge wyf to rage and pleye’
Petrach 1304
'heartened those in whom all hope had died' 'burn for you' her smile' shot the dart' 'I left you' 'scattered on the wind'
The clod and the pebble - Blake ROMANTICISM
Love seeketh not itself to please
Builds a heaven in hells despair
So sung the little clod of clay
Trodden with the castles feet
But a pebble of the brook warbled
Love seeketh only self to please
To bind another to its delight
Builds a hell in heavens despite
Amoretti
‘cunning’ ‘net of gold’
men = ‘frail eyes’
When we two parted - lord Byron
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow
It felt like a warnings of
What I feel now.
They know not that I knew thee
The passionate shepherd - Marlowe
‘I will make thee a bed of roses’
‘The shepherds swans shall dance and sing for your delight each morning’
The Nymph’s reply to the Shephard - Raleigh
‘If all the world and love were young?And truth in every shepherds’ tounge’
‘flowers do fade
‘Had joys no date nor age no need’
Donne 1572-1631 THE FLEA
‘This flea is you and i and tbus
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is’
‘In this flea our two bloods mingled be
Thou know’st this cannot be said
A sin or crime or loss of maidenhead.’
‘purpled they nail in blood of innocence’
The Flea - structure
Rhyme - couplets, childish, patronise. make argument flow.
Donne - Valediction forbidden mourning
‘Twere the profanation of our joys
To tell the laity of our love’
Love so much refined, that ourselves know not what it is’
‘Dull, sublunary lovers love, whose soul is sense’
Valediction - techniques
Rhyme - ACBD inevitable, together even when separated.
internal rhyme - ‘Wilt thou be to me who must’ have to be together.
The scrutiny 1618-1657
‘fond impossibility’ ‘tedious twelve hours space’
‘ I must search the black and the fair,
Like skilful mineralists that sound
For pleasure in unploughed up ground’
Marvel - To his coy mistress
‘An age to every part
And the last age should show your heart’
‘Times winged chariot hurrying near’
Deserts of vast eternity’
‘Then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity’
‘Quaint honour turned to dust
And into ashes all my lust’
‘every pore with instant fires’
‘our time devour’
To his coy mistress structure
Rhyme, especially across stanzas make time appear to be hurrying.
inconsistent stanza size, no time to be net or ordered.
Marvell - the definition of love
‘fate does iron wedges drive’
‘Love’s whole world on us doth wheel’
‘so truly parallel, though infinite, can never meet.’
‘conjunction of the mind
And in opposition to the stars’
Magnanimous despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing’
The definition of Love- structure and form
ACBD rhyme scheme reinforces divide
Personfication of love and fate- supernatural
Religious- love is other wordly
Patterned stanza - unity even if barred, reinforce last line.
Wild Oats, Larkin, 1964
‘In seven years after that
Wrote over four hundred letters’
‘A bosomy English rose
And her friend in specs i could talk to’
‘parting, after about five rehearsals’
’ i was too selfish, withdrawn, easily bored to love’
colloquial lang - non idealistic. No rhyme.
The voice - hardy VICTORIAN
Woman how much missed, how you call to me, call to me
‘Air blue gown’
You being ever dissolved to wan witlessness
Thus I faltering forward
Leaves around me falling
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward
And the woman calling
Remember - Christina Rossetti - 1862
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than remember and be sad
When you can no more hold me by the hand
Or I half turn to go yet turning stay
Annual Mirabilis - Larkin
Up to then there'd only been A sort of bargaining A wrangle for the ring A shame that started at sixteen And spread to everything
Life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank
A quite unlovable game
Warming her pearls - Carol Anne Duffy
My slow heat entering each pearl. Slack on my neck. Her rope.
Tales from Ovid: Echo and Narcissus
She followed him like a starving wolf
But love was fixed in her body
Like barbed arrow. There it festered
Her bones they say, turned
into stone, sinking
Her voice roamed off by itself
Unseen in the forest unseen
Snatch their last words
Kipling 1915
If any question why we died
Tell them because our fathers died
Richard Lovelace - to Lucasta. going to the warres
I could not love thee dear so much
love’d I not honour more
Petrach 1300s
Sonnets
Inspired by Platonic Love
Courtly love - originating from troubadour poetry- idealising physical passion
Petrarchan conceit- pain and pleasure juxtapose ‘sick health’ Romeo
Chaucer 1343-1400
One of the first works written in English
Reflect social upheaval of the period and change- Black Death and rise of the merchants
Donne 1512-1631
Metaphysical poet-
Conceits to subvert expectations to make a point - ingenuity more than justness. Inspired by Petrarchan metaphor
Appreciate wit
Lovelace 1617-1657
Cavalier poet - Carpe Diem, sensual love, platonic love.
very devoted to the King
Social, religious and political turmoil as civil war
Pope 1688-1744
Controversial satires, made mundane grandiose as reaction against consumerism of society, satirise high society
Rejection of deism and political leaders weakened
Augustan period- imitate roman classics. Augustus gave stability after ceasar, attempt to do the same for art after puritans
Blake 1757-1827
Context: loss of enlightenment after French Revolution
Romanticism- imagination more important than reality
Yearn for idealised simple past
Loosening of the rules
Pastoral poetry
Rossetti 1830-1894
Victorian- strict moral codes, especially for mourning
Poetry growing less detached
Thomas Hardy - 1840-1928
Rise of modernism
Fatalist- juxtapose downtrodden man with beauty of nature
1912- estranged wife dies
Philip Larkin 1922-85
Context- breakdown of culture and class
- swinging sixties
Poetry- reaction against dreaminess of Victorian era
Imagists- boil lang down to its essence
Annus Mirabilus ‘year if miracles’ 1974
Mimetic of Beat Generation of 1950s, criticise capitalism, discuss taboos, jazz critic
Carol Anne Duffy 1987
Roman Catholic family
In a relationship with Jackie Kay
1987 - Aids crisis 1 die every day.
Ted Hughes
Married to Sylvia Plath
Tales from Ovid 1997
Animals as savage and beautiful key theme across his work.
Spenser
Inspired by Petrach
