The Emigrée Flashcards
1
Q
Quotes p.1.
A
“There once was a country”
“my memory of it is sunlight-clear”
“cannot break my original view, the bright, filled paperweight”
“It may be war”
“it may be sick with tyrants”
“I am branded by an impression of sunlight”
“white streets” “graceful slopes” “glow”
2
Q
Quotes p.2.
A
“time rolls its tanks”
“child’s vocabulary” “carried here like a hollow doll” “spills a grammar” “coloured molecule”
“banned by the state”
“I can’t get it off my tongue”
“It tastes of sunlight”
3
Q
Quotes p.3.
A
“I have no passport”
“there’s no way back at all”
“my city comes to me in its own white plane”
“I comb its hair” “love its shining eyes”
“They accuse me of absence”
“they circle me”
“They mutter death”
“my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight”
4
Q
STRUCTURE
A
- Speakers memory of the city grows and solidifies as poem moves on
- City becomes a physical presence for speaker in final stanza
- Each stanza ends with “sunlight”; speaker sees city in +ve light
5
Q
FORM
A
- First person
- Three 8 line stanzas
- No regular rhythm or rhyme scheme
- First two stanzas contain lots of enjambment; more end stopping in final stanza
—> reflects speakers feeling of confinement in her new “city of walls”
