War Poetry Flashcards
Charge of the Light Brigade
(bravery in sacrifice)
‘Into the valley of death/ Rode the six hundred’
Charge of the Light Brigade
(nobility in blind obedience)
‘Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die’
Charge of the Light Brigade
(momentum and excitement)
‘Plunged into the battery smoke / right through the line they broke’
Exposure
(inertia, weakness)
‘we cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams and stare, snow-dazed’
Exposure
(refrain)
‘but nothing happens’
Exposure
(nature, metaphor for authority)
‘(Sudden successive flights of) bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow’
Exposure
(death without heroism)
‘this frost will fasten on this mud and us’
Remains
(moral conflict)
‘probably armed, possibly not’
Remains
(guilt, ptsd)
‘I see every round as it rips through his life’
Remains
(gruesome, nonchalance)
‘One of my mates goes by
and tosses his guts back into his body.’
Remains
(volta, remains of guilt)
‘end of story, except not really’
Remains
(nightmares ptsd)
‘Dream and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds’
bayonet charge
(disoriented, questioning loyalties)
‘in what clockwork of the stars and the nations was he the hand pointing that second’
bayonet charge
(anger, control of patriotic propaganda)
‘patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye’
bayonet charge
(meaningless patriotism and bravery in chaos of combat)
‘King, honour, dignity et cetera dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm’
Poppies
(internal conflict)
‘All my words flattened, rolled, turned into felt’
Poppies
(maternal instinct)
‘I resisted the impulse to run my fingers through the gelled blackthorns of your hair’
Poppies
(excitement of war)
‘The world overflowing like a treasure chest’
‘intoxicated’
War photographer
(religious imagery, ceremonial)
‘A priest preparing to intone a mass’
War photographer
(guilt)
‘He sought approval without words to do what someone must’
War photographer
(serialisation)
‘A hundred agonies in black and white’
War photographer
(trying to make sense of horrors of conflict)
‘spools of suffering set out in ordered rows’
Kamikaze
(heroism, legacy)
‘A one way journey into history’
Kamikaze
(patriotism)
‘Her father embarked at sunrise
with a flask of water, a samurai sword’
Kamikaze
(perspective, beauty of life, nature)
‘He must have looked far down at the little fishing boats strung out like bunting’
kamikaze
(conflict of love vs societal pressures)
‘This was no longer the father we loved’
the Emigree
(power of identity)
‘It may be sick with tyrants but I am branded by an impression of sunlight’
The Emigree
(conflict)
‘They circle me. They accuse me of being dark in their free city.’
the Emigree
(hope)
‘My shadow falls as evidence of sunlight’
