Poetry (Power And Conflict)

Question 1

Ozymandias methods

Answer 1

Form/Structure:
- Single stanza
- break in iambic pentameter (3-4)
- regular metre (4-5) “frown”
- Start : story by word of mouth
“I” doesn’t return
- Oxymandias only gets 2 of 14 lines
- Iambic pentameter

Language:
- “a” traveller (one of many)
- alliteration “t” sound + sibalance (“two vast and trunkless legs of stone//Stand in the desert”)
- “lies” as in on the ground/telling a lie
- “desert” e.g sands of time
- “colossal wreck”
- “boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away” : end
- “King of Kings” (God like)

Question 2

London

Answer 2

Form/structure
- 4 stanzas, 4 lines per, 4 feet per line, regular rhyme scheme (abab)
- End stopped stanzas
- Start: “wandering”
- present tense

Language:
- “chartered Thames”
- “mark” - make a mark/to notice
- repetition “In every…”
- “black’ning church appalls”
- “marriage hearse”

Question 3

Extract from the prelude

Answer 3

Form/structure:
- autobiography
- blank verse
- first person
- historical
- past tense epic poem
- conversational tone
- Single stanza (enormity)
- Enjambermant (Obsession)
- Large volta (line 22)

Language:
- “her” (nature - personal pronoun)
- “unloosed her chain” (as though setting free)
- “troubled pleasure”
- assonance (“i”) + sibilance
- semantic field of serenity “elfin pinnace”, “like a swan”,
After line 22
- language becomes dull and simple = “huge”x2, “black”
- repetition of “struck” (quite violent)
- iambic pentameter line 28 “measured motion” (elongates the sentance)
- “strode after me”
- “bark”
- “the mind” (disconnected)
- alliteration of M and N near the end

Question 4

My last duchess

Answer 4

• First person unreliable
• dramatic monolouge

Duke’s power:
- Admition of having his last wife killed ( fears no consiquence) Line 45-46
- Duke is the only one to speak - interupts himslef
- Hight dynamic (listener is sat down)
- Duchess killed in less than a line
- Art showing power and wealth “painted”, “neptune (…) cast in bronze” (beginning and end)
- single stanza
- sense of control (iambic pentameter, rhyming couplets)
- he has control over the curtain

Question 5

Charge of the light brigade

Answer 5

• repetition of “half a league” and “cannon to …… of them” (mimics horses)
• “valley of death” (psalm 23) - only hope is in God
• “the six hundred”
• “some one had blunder’d // theirs not to make reply (…) theirs but to do and die”
• “right”, “left”, “front” (surrounded) + “jaws of death”, “mouth of hell”
• “wonder’d” (confused)
• “wild”
• “noble six hundred”

Question 6

Exposure

Answer 6

Structure/ Form:
- 8 stanza, 5lines per stanza (4 short, 1 long)
- 1st person plural, present tense (ononymous) + 8th stanza future tense
- half rhyme (ABBA)

Langauge:
- asonance ‘i’, “in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”
- “tugged on the wire like twitching agonies”
- “incessently”
- “like a dull rumour of someother war”
- “dawn massing (…) her melancholy army”
- personification “pale flakes with fingering stealth”
- allitieration “flakes with fingering (…) feeling our faces”
- 1-4 : monochrome “night”, “dull”, “ranks of grey”, “snow”
- 5-7 : many colours “grassier”, “sundozed”, “littered with blossoms”, “fires”, “dark red jewels”, “sun’s smile”
- 8 : monochrome “frost”, “mud”, “ice”

Question 7

Storm on the island

Answer 7

Form/ structure:
- single stanza
- irregular rhyme scheme
- 1st person plural (anonymous)
- sentence lengths varry
- Iambic pentameter

Langauge:
- “we” - “I”
- “blast”
- “you know what I mean” (coloquial langauge)
- “forgetting that it pummels your house “
- “like a tame cat turned savage” (break in iambic pentameter
- “tragic chorus” = contrasting juxtaposition
- semantic field of warfare “strafes”, “salvo”, “bombarded”

Question 8

Bayonet Charge

Answer 8

Stanza 1 = unprepared/uncomfortable
Stanza 2 = Bewilderment
Stanza 3 = Panic, Alarm, Terror

Form/Structure:
- 3 Stanzas
- Past tense
- little forward progress as peom goes on “green hedge”
- Free verse
- anonymous

Language:
1
- “suddenly he awoke” en media res
- repetition of “raw”
- “hot”, “sweat heavy”, “stumbling”, “dazzled”, “hearing” (sensory), “smacking out the belly”, “numb”, “sweating like molten iron”
2
- “in what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations was he the hand pointing that second?”
- “listening between his footfalls for the reason of his still running”
- “foot hung like statuary”
3
- “yellow hare that rolled like a flame” (metaphor for himself)
- “threshing circle”
- “terrors touchy dynamite”
- “etc….dropped like luxuaries”

Question 9

Remains

Answer 9

Form/Structure:
- 6 4line stanzas, 1 2line stanza (no closure)
- present tense
- 1st person plural (anonymous)
- In media res “on another occasion”
- 1-4 stanzas = numb to what they are doing
- 5-7 stanzas = feeling the after effects

Language:
- “on another occasion”
- coloquial language “legs it”, “i swear”, “sort of”, “letting fly”, “well”
- “probably armed, possibly not” (repetition - beginning and end)
- “myself and somebody else and somebody else”
- Volta line 17 (5th stanza)
- “i blink and he bursts again through the doors of the bank”
- “sleep, and….”, “dream, and….”
- sybilance “some distant sun stunned , sand-smothered land or six-feet-under in desert sand”

Question 10

Poppies

Answer 10

Form/structure:
- dramatic monolouge
- 1st person, direct address
- into her head
- Free verse
- Enjambermant
- past tense
- Transitions between chronology is messy

Language:
- Sees normal things through the lense of war= semantic field of war “crimped” (forcably enlist) , “blockade”, “spasms”, “bandaged”, “rounded up”, “graze”, “rienforcements”
Semantic field of textiles “binding”, “crimped”, “blazer”, “lapel”, “cat hairs”, “turned to felt”, “scarf”, “gloves”, “shirt”, “stitch”
- “steeled the softening”
- “all my words flattened, rolled, turned to felt, // slowly melting” (enjambermant)
- “i was brave”, “intoxicated” / “like a treasure chest”
- “released a song bird” (metaphor)
- “my stomach”
- cold “stone”/warm “son”
- “hoping to hear”

Question 11

War photographer

Answer 11

Stanza 1 = orderly
Stanza 2 = Effected
Stanza 3 = Haunted
Stanza 4 = insignificance

Form/structure:
- 4 stanzas, 6 lines long
- rhyme scheme ABBCDD
- Iregular sentence lengths
- long sentence line 15-18

Langauge:
1
- “he is finally alone”
- “spools of suffering set out in ordered rows”
- “as though this were a church and he a priest ready to intone a mass”
- “all flesh is grass” (isiah 40 6-8)