Poetry Anthology Flashcards
Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson (4)
Poet Laureate. tribute to British cavalry, admiration of all brave figure, six stanzas (six hundred), short (paralleling cavalry charging), dactylic dimeter (one stressed, two unstressed)
- “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward”, repetition represents long distance soldiers travelled
- “Into the valley of Death”, echoing Bible, funeral overtones, ‘six hundred’ scale of loss.
- “Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die”, ‘theirs’ soldiers duty / obedience, anaphora (referring back) in first two, change in last (emphasises inevitability)
- “Honour the Light Brigade”, imperatives commands respect & remembrance, patriotism, repetition shows poet’s message
Tissue by Dharker (3)
The power of paper in our lives
- “Paper that lets the light shine through”, symbolises hope or God
- “Where a hand has written in the names and histories”, the power of words - paper represents lives
- “Smoothed and stroked/thinned to be transparent”, alliteration shows care
War Photographer by Duffy (4)
War photographer reflects on the trauma they have documented, four sestets & iambic pentameter (reflect methodical approach of photographer), breaks (disrupted feelings)
- “Spools of suffering set out in ordered rows”, sibilance imitates solution splashing, objectifies people (‘ordered’), juxtaposes uncontrolled battle (‘spools’) with neatness (‘rows’), contains / diminishes conflict
- “Running children in a nightmare heat”, alludes to “Napalm Girl” photo, suffering from Americans, children also suffering, American ‘freedom’?
- “Blood stained into foreign dust / a hundred agonies in black and white”, permanently imprinted on foreign land, double entendre, hyperbole (ironically round number)
- “And they do not care”, frustration at ignorance, normalised, people desensitised
Remains by Armitage (4)
Soldier shoot looter; suffers PTSD, dramatic monologue, free verse (realistic speech), quatrains (contrasts irregular metre, reflects soldiers’ outside lives)
- “His bloody life in my bloody hands”, ‘bloody’ is polysemous (frustration / swearing & incident / guilt), metaphorical on hands
- “It rips through his life - I see broad daylight on the other side”, double entendre (physical hole / heaven & light), bullet personified
- “Probably armed, possibly not”, adverbs in proximity, creates doubt, uncertain in force’s necessity
- “And the drink and drugs won’t flush him out-“, permanence of war, pluralised nouns, turns to self-medication
Bayonet Charge by Hughes (4)
Patriotic soldier at war loses faith, free verse (reflects immediacy / battlefield terror)
- “The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye / sweating like molten iron”, patriotism slowly becoming painful / sombre, missing part of ‘blood, sweat, tears’ suggests ‘blood’ remains (death)
- “That blue crackling air / his terror’s touchy dynamite”, signifies fear ignited by air, transforms men into weapons, links to metaphorical ‘explosions’ of PTSD
- “A yellow hare that rolled like a flame and crawled in a threshing circle”, double entendre, sick / cowardly, echoes characters, “crawled” (agriculture) in ‘threshing circle’ (makes nature powerless)
- “King, honour, human dignity etcetera, dropped like luxuries”, listing highly-valued human traits, reduces to “dropped”, conflict affects nobility
Exposure by Owen (6)
WW1 trench soldiers attacked by the weather, autobiographical, regular rhyme (reflects continually bad conditions)
- “Our brains ache”, assonance, long vowel sounds represent boredom, double entendre, personal experience
- “Merciless iced east winds that knive us…”, sibilance imitates hissing wind, nature antagonised, pathetic fallacy (weather betraying), ellipsis shows waiting
- “Mad gusts tugging on the wire”, personification, corrupted by war (antagonised), ‘tugging’ (sense of dying)
- “But nothing happens”, recurring theme, increasing desperation, short sentence
- “Cringe in holes”, no real patriotism / heroism, scared for lives, zoomorphism
- “All their eyes are ice”, metaphor, dead men frozen, nature’s power inescapable.
Ozymandias by Shelley (2)
Sonnet about a broken statue and lost power. Sonnet form (14-lines, tension), iambic (unstoppable time)
“Colossal wreck, boundless and bare / the lone and level sands stretch far away”, oxymoron, enjambment adds vastness, plosives (harsh feel)
- “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone”, once great, metaphor for empires, contrasting adjectives
Kamikaze by Garland (4)
Kamikaze pilot turns back; shunned by family and friends, narrative, seven sestets & free verse (contrast pilot’s divisive emotions)
- “Dark shoals of fishes flashing silver as their bellies swivelled towards the sun”, samurai sword reminder, power over life / death
- “He must have wondered which had been the better way to die”, regrets returning, lived shameful life, bleak, criticises patriotism, daughter perspective suggests uncertainty
- “Her father embarked at sunrise with… a samurai sword”, cultural significant items convey patriotism, power, memories
- “Enough fuel for a one-way journey into history”, supposed to be suicidal mission, effects on family
