Poetry Quotes Flashcards
Two quotes for ‘Singh Song’ and structure with effect
‘Putney’ and ‘chutney’
- playful rhyme about him and his wife’s sex life
- humorous
‘Whispering stairs’
- personification
- sense if secrecy
STRUCTURE- alternating stanzas from love to work - pull between work and other commitments/ two things grabbing at the speakers attention
Two quotes for ‘Mother, Any Distance’ and structure with effect
‘You at the zero-end, me with the spool of tape’
- physical distance/relational distance
- umbilical chord imagery
‘Fall or fly’
- natural imagery- natural thing to do
- indecisive - severity of situation
STRUCTURE- no fixed rhyme scheme, and varying line lengths- uncontrolled/unpredictable nature of relationship
Two quotes for ‘Walking Away’ and structure with effect
‘A sunny day with leaves just turning’
- autumn imagery- reflects transition
- ‘turning’ - dying sense of loss/pain
‘Saying what God alone could perfectly show’
- biblical imagery- right thing to do
- *compared to MAD ending is more optimistic
STRUCTURE- quintets - fathers desire for control and order | caesura- stop in rel.
Two quotes for ‘Sonnet 29’ and structure with effect
‘My thought do twine and bud about thee’
- extended metaphor [vine&tree]
- natural imagery, love is flourishing
‘Drop heavily down - burst, shattered, everywhere!
- desperation, wants to be with him
STRUCTURE- sonnet form is imperfect- imperfect nature of relationship
- enjambment -ceaseless flow of love from speaker to lover
Two quotes for ‘Letters from Yorkshire’ and structure with effect
‘The first lapwings return’
- natural imagery
- bird serves as a metaphor for the mans hope that the speaker will ‘return’
‘Feeding words onto a blank screen’
- negative image, adj ‘blank’ and dull verb feeding greatly contrasts the mans life and the natural imagery which is described in such
positive terms - yearns for his lifestyle
STRUCTURE- caesura, stops and pauses reflects the problems/fractured nature of relationship- not flowing
Two quotes for ‘Before you were mine’ and structure with effect
‘Stamping stars from the wrong pavement’
- link to Hollywood, she believes her mother was destined to do big things
‘Whose small bites on your neck sweetheart?’
- abnormal relationship, role reversal
- possessive language, TITLE
STRUCTURE- caesura, believe she is responsible for her mothers lost joy
Two quotes for ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ and structure with effect
‘Flying like a hare’
- simile- dehumanises her, making her emotions alien, inexplicable and unaccounted for
- no effort to understand the girl
‘Three summers since i chose a maid’
- unnerving how he still refers to her as a ‘bride’, the verb ‘chose’- highlights her lack if choice
STRUCTURE- irregular stanza lengths- imbalanced relationship
- caesura- sexual frustration!!
Two quotes for ‘Porphyria’s Lover’
And structure with effect
‘Yellow hair’
- repetition, fixation(lusting)
- foreshadows murder, emphasises his madness
‘As shut as a bud that holds a bee’
- describes her dead eyelids l, natural simile - makes her still seem alive
- adds to the sinister cheerfulness at the end
STRUCTURE- enjambment, distorts rhythm of the poem and therefore highlights the madness of the speaker
Two quotes for ‘Follower’ and structure with effect
‘His shoulders globed like a full sail strung’
- comparing ploughing to sailing (imagery)
- admiration for his fathers expertise
‘It is my Father who keeps stumbling behind me and will not go away’
- drifting further apart, fathers shadow is almost following him
- role reversal
STRUCTURE- tightly ordered (art of ploughing)
- sons lack of control
Two quotes for ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ and structure with effect
‘Like warm ice’
- oxymoron, simile
- ice= emotional barrier in rel. ->
Ice is melting, barrier is being broken down and they are becoming closer
‘Slow pulse of his good heart’
- suggesting a moral quality in contrast to the physical-> gradual closeness
STRUCTURE- enjambment, continuous nature of the climb- adventure for the two
Two quotes for ‘Neutral Tones’ and structure with effect
‘A few leaves lay on the starving sod’
- a sense of everything dying
- ‘starving sod’, once alive and fertile now struggling to survive much like rel.
‘Grin of bitterness’
- should be genuine warmth between them there is a ‘grin of bitterness’
STRUCTURE- cyclical structure- 1st and last stanzas have the same emphasis on the pond
- stuck in an emotional cycle
Two quotes for ‘Love’s Philosophy’ and structure with effect
‘The fountains mingle with the river’
- natural imagery, natural to be together
- personification- ‘mingle’ semantic field of touch
‘If thou kiss not me’
- persuasive, desire to make rel. real
- rhetorical question, anastrophe - ends with ‘me’ -lasting thought
STRUCTURE- monosyllabic lines- wants him and his love interest to be at one, union
Two quotes for ‘When we two parted’ and structure with effect
‘A knell in mine ear’
- metaphor, a bell symbolising death, shows the poets feelings for his ex lover- dead
- upset when he hears her name
‘Colder’ ‘hear’ ‘knell’ ‘shudder’
- sensory imagery - the rel. was more ab sensory pleasure, wasn’t serious -> more about physicality and sexual intimacy
STRUCTURE- accentual verse, lines 5 and 7 break the structure- shock as he was rejected
- repetition of ‘silence and tears’ - cyclical nature, cannot get rel. out of his head
Two quotes from ‘Eden rock’ and structure with effect
‘They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock’
- fictional setting, garden of eden- biblical imagery
- image of paradise/heaven -> perfection of relationship
‘I had not thought it would be like this’
- monosyllabic childish language reflects desire to be close to his parents
- wants to go back to child like state
STRUCTURE- quatrains- tight structure creates a peaceful tone, parents bring him peace and security
- final line is isolated- reflects how speaker feels
Two quotes for ‘winter swans’ and structure with effect
‘The clouds had given their all- two days of rain’
- pathetic fallacy, presents negative state of relationship
- as if clouds have been attacking couple, victim mentality of speaker
‘Swum the distance between us’
- metaphor, dynamic verb ‘swum’ couple mirroring swans actions
- unity swans positive influence
STRUCTURE- written in tercets but the end is couplets - imbalance which goes to optimism
- each line of couplet reflects each lover
