Poetry Anthology Flashcards
Manhunt: Character roles
He is silent voice and passsive, she is active (also shown by enjambment - continuously tracing him)
Manhunt: Title meaning
Personal manhunt - speaking is trying to reconnect post-trauma
Manhunt: Ending
The speaker is only just beginning to understand the real impact of war on her love, that is difficult to overcome
Manhunt: Structure
- Couplets - Action,reaction and intimacy
- Mix of rhymes and half-rhymes - relationship is fragmented and they’re recovering
Manhunt: Context
- Soilder coming home from Bosnian war
- UN Peacekeeper
- Trauma of PTSD
- Modern warefare
- Impact on the wife, Laura
Manhunt: Repetition of ‘only then’
Gradual tentative process of getting used to her husband
Manhunt: Verbs associated with speaker
Te
Tender, active verbs
Manhunt: Imagery of ‘scan’ and ‘foetus of metal’
Pregnancy imagery - Permenantly changed the relationship
Manhunt: ‘blown hinge of his lower jaw’
He has no jaw - metaphor for how he can’t use his words to explain how he feels
Manhunt: ‘where the bullet had finally come to rest’
Personification of bullet shows how it’s always with him now
Manhunt: ‘unexploded mine buried deep in his mind’
Violent, military imagery - PTSD could go off at any time
London: Atmosphere, Semantics and tone
Gloomy and depressing semantic field + Speaker has melancholy tone
London: Repetition of ‘every’
Inescapeable human condition - everyone is victim in a city of woe
London: Rhymescheme
- ABAB rhymescheme, iambic tetrameter
- Unforgiving and relentless nature of life + routine in the capital
London: Structure
- Quatrains - unbroken misery
- Enjambment in S1 to show everyone is linked by misery
- Repetition in S1+2 to show how no one is unaffected
London: Context
- Industrial revolution - workhouses for children and capatalist use of slavery
- French revolution
- Hypocricy of church, prostitution
- Early romantic
- Radical political views
London: ‘Mind-forg’d manacles’
Image of entrapment - mentally impriosned in London
London: ‘every infant’s cry of fear’
Everyone has misery from birth
London: ‘Chimney-sweeper’s cry’ and ‘Harlot’s curse’
Poverty-striken
London: ‘Runs in blood down palace walls’
Very emotive image - class attack
She Walks in Beauty: Form and who written to
Ode to lover
She Walks in Beauty: Rhyme-scheme
ABABAB - Beauty is constant and perfect
She Walks in Beauty: ‘A heart whose love is innocent’
- Unaffected by struggled
- Exists in her own bubble of beauty
- Her beauty is innocent
She Walks in Beauty: ‘serenely sweet’ and ‘pure’
Emphasis on innocence - her beauty is innocent
She Walks in Beauty: Semantics of light and dark
- Beauty is harmony between 2 distinct elements
- Contrast shows the woman is perfect balance of opposites
- Emphasise innocence and radiant purtiy, which shines through
- Antithesis
She Walks in Beauty: Balance of language
Sensual language of body is balanced against moral language of goodness
She Walks in Beauty: Tone
- Lyrical
- 3rd person - only talks about woman
- Conveys speakers adoration, but possibly objectifying her as no more than a vessel of beauty
She Walks in Beauty: Structure
- Three stanzas of equal length
- Sense of fluidity, and reflects her effortless grace, poise and elegance
- Iambic tetrameter
- Speakers thoughts are convicting
She Walks in Beauty: Progression of focus
- Begins to focus on woman’s physical/external beauty
- Concludes by considering inner goodness which is outwardly manifested
She Walks in Beauty: Context
- Lord Byron slept with countless men and women
- English Romantic
- Apreciated aesthetic beauty
- Emotive tribute to perfection
She Walks in Beauty: Examples of light and dark
- ‘night’ and ‘starry skies’
- ‘best of dark and bright’
- ‘tender light’
- ‘One shade the more, one ray the less’
Living Space: First line echoing structure
Line breaks in unexpected, giving irregular form (‘There are just not enough straight lines’)
Living Space: Form
- Irregular
- Stanzas and lines of different lengths
- Mirrors random construction and chaos of the bulding
- Also mirrors precarious nature of life
Living Space: No rhyme/rhythm
- Reflects disorder of living space
- Look isjointed on page with lines sticking out, broken and short
- Just like the building it describes
Living Space: First stanza structure
Caesuras emphasise the building is under stress, and how loosely connected different parts are
Living Space: Last 2 stanzas
One enjambed sentence - shows how such fragile structures sustain life and give hope
Living Space: ‘nails clutch’
- Desperate verb
- Emphasise instability of building
- Personify it’s desperation to stay upright
Living Space: ‘miraculous’
- Shifts the tone
- When it becomes someones home. the tone becomes one of wonder
Living Space: Key symbolism of the egg
- Symbolises faith and new life
- They are miracles like the buildings
- The contain new life like the buildings hold people, the eggs hold chiks
Living Space: Sparseness of poem
Paralleled with how the living space is sparse
Living Space: Context
- Dharker born in Pakistan, raised in Glasgow
- Her poetry often expoles life in India
- Probably about slums in Mumbai
- Millions of people live in slums as a community
Living Space: ‘leans dangerously towards the miraculous’
People creating something out of nothing
Living Space: ‘thin walls of faith’
Community built on faith
Cozy Apologia: Name meaning
Poem of defense - defending the ordinary
Cozy Apologia: Who is it written to
Her husband - Fred
Cozy Apologia: Comparing Fred to ‘lamp’, and ‘rain’ in S2
Saying mudane is beatiful
Cozy Apologia: ‘I could choose any hero, any cause or age’
Any hero reminds her of him - she is constantly reminded of him
Cozy Apologia: ‘shooting arrows to the heart’
Romantic image - connotions to cupid
Cozy Apologia: ‘sissy names’, ‘thin as licorice and as chewy
No ex can compare to Fred
Cozy Apologia: ‘We’re content, but fall short of divine’ + ‘when has the ordinary ever been news?’
- They’re not heavenly or a perfect couple but she’s embarisingly happy to be with him
- As who was ever happy with the ordinary
Cozy Apologia: ‘There you’ll be’ + ‘chain mail glinting’
Imagining Fred as a fictional, stereotypial hero/knight
Cozy Apologia: S1, constant comparison of Fred to others
So besotted by Fred that everything reminds the speaker of him
Cozy Apologia: Tone + Speaker
- Free verse - converstaional tone
- Number of syllables vary in each line, acting like a chain of thought
- Thoughts running away with her (like hurricane)
- S2 - S3
- First person - personal feeling
Cozy Apologia: Rhyme-scheme
- S1 is regular rhyming couplets - conforms to traditional presentation of their love an intimacy
- S2 rhyme-scheme is distrupted as she thinks of past relationships she regrets
- ABAB rhyme-scheme returns when domestic harmony is restored
Cozy Apologia: Structure
- Present tense talking about feelings
- When reflecting on previous relationships, there’s a contrast of past tense
- Returns to present when thinking of Fred again
Cozy Apologia: Context
- Response to post-modern collapse of meaning
- Written when Hurricane Floyd hit east coast of USA in 1999
- Very domestic - writer so autobiographical
Cozy Apologia: Significane of line 15
- Storm hits
OR - Thinking and reminicing on past
Valentine: Comparison to traditional love poems
Rejects cliches and typical forms like sonnets
Valentine: Form
- First person
- Stanzas of irregular length
- Some stanzas one line
- Doesn’t conform to traditional love forms
- Love isn’t perfection
Valentine: Rhyme and rhythm
- Lacks rhyme and rhythm
- Disjointed feel
- Free verse - more genuine
Valentine: Single word lines
- Forceful and aggressive in tone
- ‘Lethal’
Valentine: Onion
- Extended metaphor - layers of love
- Gradually reveals deterioration of love over time
- Hopeful to threatening as when looses layers makes you cry
Valentine: Tone
Starts playful and optimistic, then forceful and optimistic and hostile at end
Valentine: Repetition
Adds element of coercion
Valentine: Direct address
- ‘I give you’
- Combined with imperative verbs like ‘Tke it’
- Honest, personal tone
- Also commanding and forceful
Valentine: Negative/threatening language
- ‘it will bling you’ + ‘wobbling photo of grief’
- Unusual for a love poem
- Hints at the dangerous and possessive side to love
Valentine: ‘It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light’
- Metaphor
- How the mundane can be beautiful
Valentine: ‘I am trying to be truthful’
- Feels abrupt
- Sincere and to the point
- Gives a gift whih reflect tumultious nature of life
Valentine: ‘possessive and faithful’
Summaries the tine of poem
Valentine: platinum loops shrint to a wedding-ring’
Symbol of love and devotion
Valentine: ‘Lethal, Its scent will cling to your fingers, cling to your knife’
image of marriage with ‘lethal’ and ‘knife’ feels contradictory
Valentine: Context
- Radical poet
- Interested in feminism
- Response to a challenge from radio presenter who asked her to write a original poem for Valentine’s day
- Conceit - reminiscent of metaphysical poeets like John Donne who used object to explore ideas of love
- At a young age she had a love affair with poet Adrian Henry, many years her senior
Death of a Naturalist: Form
- First person
- Blank verse (no rhyme)
- Sounds conversational and personal
Death of a Naturalist: Structure
- Iambic pentameter not always secure with often over-spilling into 11 syllables
- Reflects richness of nature and unpredictability of change
- Enjambment coveys speakers enthusiasm and nature’s inability to be constrained
Death of a Naturalist: Stanzas
- S1 focus on childhood wonderment and secure relationship with nature
- Hints of negative language and ominous tone like ‘rotted’ foreshadows change at end
- Seems to captivate, not scare the speaker
- S2, shifts in tone for more fractured relationship with nature
- Nature in unfamilar and threatening
Death of a Naturalist: Quotes to show nature as threataning
- ‘air was thick’ - Stifling atmosphere
- ‘invaded’ + ‘grenades’ - military language and personification weaponises frogs
- ‘I sickened’
Death of a Naturalist: Synaesthesia
- Combines all 5 senses at once
- Wealth of sensory qualaties conveys richness and abundance of nature
Death of a Naturalist: How is contrast used
- Reveal the troubled relationship that develops with nature
- Imagery of life and beauty contrasts imagery of decay, repulsion and death
- ‘gargled delicatley’
- ‘punishing sun’
Death of a Naturalist: Speaker involvement
- Active participant (I would fill jampots)
- Passive and horrified observer - Conditional ‘if’
Death of a Naturalist: Title
His view of nature as joyful is tarnished = death of his views
Death of a Naturalist: ‘I would fill jampots full of the jellied specks’
Collecting tadpoles (childhood innocence) - positive experience with nature
Death of a Naturalist: Context
- Irish poet
- From farming community
- Romantic poet - from childhood innocence to adulthood experiance
- Strong Roman Catholic upbringing - sexual maturity and church’s repulsion
- Only sees troubles with IRA now
Hawk Roosting: Form
- Dramatic monologue from perspective of hawk
- First person voice gives hawk authority and commands poem without debate/interuption
- No rhyme (no lyrical quality) - cold, harsh and blunt
- Quatrains - decisive, controlling nature of hawk
Hawk Roosting: Structure
- Begins with hawk perched high in tree, happy being top of hierarchy
- Develops to consider it’s own perfection
- Ends on assured statement of complete future control
Hawk Roosting: Brutal and violent imagery
Dominates the poem and conveys the destructive power of hawk.
Hawk Roosting: Pronouns
- Use of ‘I’
- Repetition of ‘my’
- Formal and complex
- End-stopped lines contribute to its uncompromising nature
Hawk Roosting: ‘Nothing has changed since i began’ + ‘I am going to keep things like this’
Natural world and cycle of life will always be the same in past, present and future
Hawk Roosting: Context
- British poet
- Famous for poems on animals
- Grew up in rural Yorkshire
- Enjoyed hunting and fishing
Prelude: Form
- First person autobiography focused on a specific memory
- Blank verse and iambic pentameter makes it sound natural and unforced - like a personal and intimate conversation with the reader
- Steady rhythm creates impression that memory is clear and certain
Prelude: Structure
- Enjambment creates a spontaneity to the memory and sense of joy
- Caesuras pause to emphasise glory of moment
Prelude: ‘evening died away’
Passing of time is unstoppable just like growing up
Prelude: Volta in Line 16
- Older voice reflects of childhood in serious and mature tone
- Pessimistic diction like ‘melancholy’, ‘alien’, and ‘died’ is introduced adding a sombre tone
Prelude: Sibilance
- ‘hiss’d’, ‘polished’, ‘ice’
- Recreate active memories of ice skating
Prelude: Sibilance
- ‘hiss’d along polish’d ice’
- Activly reliving the memory
Prelude: Pace
Active verbs such as ‘wheel’d’ and ‘flew’ creates speed and youthful energy
Prelude: Context
- Early romantic powet
- Grew up in idyllic setting of Lake District
- Comes from a longer autobiographical poem
- Belives nature was the ‘Great Universal Teacher’
