What Are The Poems About? Flashcards
When We Two Parted
Narrator recalls day of break-up
Still affected
Love’s Philosophy
Narrator persuades woman to be with him romantically
Everything in nature connected - why ignore God?
Porphyria’s Lover
Woman meets man in cottage
He ignores her flirting
Fixated on her
Strangled her with own hair
Spends the rest of the night with her dead body
Sonnet 29 - ‘I think of thee!’
She (narrator) fears her thoughts will obscure the reality of him
However, she reassures him that her thoughts do not folate to him
Neutral Tones
Narrator remembers day at pond - unpleasant memory - relationship ending
Lover found narrator boring and fallen out of love with him
Whenever he is hurt by love, he remembers day at pond
The Farmer’s Bride
Farmer married for 3 years but bride frightened of him and other men.
Relationship went wrong / he doesn’t questions whether he has any responsibility for wife’s fear.
He finds her rejection of him almost unbearable -> struggling to resist taking her by force at the end?
Walking Away
A father remembers watching his son play first game of football -> father worried as he watches his som walk away from him.
Memory of that day still deeply affects him 18 years later -> important memory to him.
However, he understands this natural process and every child must experience increasing independence and parents must let go.
Letters from Yorkshire
Man works in his garden. Sees first lapwings of the season and wrists to narrator about it.
Narrator reflects on their different lives (man in a Yorkshire and narrator far away -> city?) spends time writing inside.
Narrator wonders if his life is more fulfilling because he’s closer to nature -> he lives in a different world -> letters he writes helps her to connect to him and his way of life.
Eden Rock
Narrator imagines young parents on bank of a stream - idyllic scene (mother 23 father 25)
Narrator on opposite bank. Parents encourage him to join them.
Setting = Real memory?
Beckoning to afterlife?
Follower
Narrator describes father’s expert ploughing, which he followed wrong the farm and would occasionally stumble or fall.
Wanted to be like father but was a nuisance
Roles switch -> reversed relationship -> father ‘follows’ son. Nuisance.
Mother, any distance
Mother helps narrator measure house.
Mother must let him go as he walks away to measure.
Narrator looks forward to independence but is also scared.questions if he’ll succeed or not ‘space walk’ but she will always be there for him on Earth.
Before you were mine
Narrator imagines/ looks at a photo (Marilyn.) of her younger mother. Mother isn’t told off by her own mother and stays out late dancing.
Speaker says her mother was happiest during 10 years before her birth -> remembers some from when young. She remembers mum teaching her to dance.
Winter Swans
Couple walk around lake after 2 days of bad weather.
Don’t talk to each other and walk apart - troubled relationship.
They stood at sight of swans which tip underwater and swim away. This changes mood of couple.
Couple Carrie’s on walking and end up holding hands / reconciliation.
Singh Song!
British Indian Narrator talks about life working at father’s corner shop.
Recently married -> sneaks out to spend time with new wife, also Indian, but dresses in British clothes and acts in a Modern, Western way.
Narrator neglects shop duties -> customers complain.
When shop shuts -> couple sit and talk. He tells his wife how much she means to him.
Climbing My Grandfather
Narrator imagines climbing grandfather
Him is climber and grandfather is mountain.
Narrator imagines or remembers being a child, playing with grandfather and observing things about him, OR climbing metaphor of getting to know him as an adult.
