World literature

Childhood poet

Frances Cornford

Childhood Form and Structure

Rhyme scheme AABBCC to DEED

Childhood evidences

Enjambment: I used to think that grown-up people chose/ to have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose

“I used to think”

Simile: Veins like small fat snakes

Banisters: symbolism

Onyx Beads:

Repetition: Helplessly

Juxtaposition of old and young

Alliteration: How her onyx beads had come unstrung

My Parents poet

Stephen Spender

My Parents structure

3 Quatrains and lack of rhyme scheme

My Parents evidence

Rough: Euphemism

Threw words like stones:

Alliteration: Climbed cliffs, stripped by country streams

Simile: muscles like iron

“Salt coarse pointing”:

Repetition of I feared

Bullying is public: on the road

Follower poet

Seamus Heaney

Follower structure

6 Quatrains to reflect father’s neatness

Follower evidence

Shoulders globed like a full sail strung

Horses strained at his clicking tongue

An expert.

His eyes narrowed and angled at the ground

Mapping the furrow exactly

Technical farming language: steel-pointed sock, sod, headrig

I wanted to grow up and plough

But today it is my father who keeps stumbling behind me and will not go away

For Heidi With Blue Hair poet

Fleur Adcock

For Heidi With Blue Hair evidences

Metaphor: When you dyed your hair blue (or, at least ultramarine for the clipped sides, with a crest of jet black spikes on top)

“Not specifically forbidden”: excuse, pretext

Synecdoche: Tears in the kitchen

You wiped your eyes, also not in school color:

Irony: unfair to mention your mother’s death

Zoomorphism: teachers twittered

The school had nothing else against you:

“Black friend”: sympathizes with Heidi

The school colors precisely: rebellious act

A Quoi Bon Dire poet

Charlotte Mew

A Quoi Bon Dire structure

ABAB Rhyme scheme (Reflects that love is constant and knows no bounds)

A Quoi Bon Dire evidence

Apostrophe:

Sibilance: Seventeen years ago you said / Something that sounded like Good-bye

Something that sounded like Good-bye:

But I:

As I grow stiff and cold: although her body is decaying, her love and relationship with her significant other will not (Dualism)

To this and that say Good-bye too:

Polysyndeton: will meet and kiss and swear

Parallelism: And everybody think you are dead but I / And everybody sees that I am old But you (Their relationship may be invisible or perceived as gone to others, but is still alive and strong in their eyes)

Meeting At Night poet

Robert Browning

Meeting at Night structure

ABCCBA rhyme scheme

2 Sestets

Meeting At Night evidence

Long black land, grey sea: Ambiguous to create uncertainty and suspense

Nighttime setting: Uncertainty and secrecy and risk

“Leap in Fiery Ringlets”: Lust and passion, anticipation

Alliteration: pushing prow, slushy sand

Repetition of conjunction “and”: shows its gradual, takes time

Warm scented beach, three fields: Memorized, done it before, familiar

Quick sharp scratch: urgency of their long awaited reunion

Praise Song For My Mother poet

Grace Nichols

Praise song for my mother structure

Lack of rhyme scheme: mother is special, isn’t the same as regular ones, indescribable

Praise Song for My Mother evidence

Descriptive imagery: Emphasizes mother’s uniqueness, unable to express easily(complex adjectives connote mother is special)

You were water to me: necessity

Polysyndeton: Deep and bold and fathoming, struggling to find the right words, speaking with emotion

Moon’s eye: orbiting, watching over, emotional pull

Rise and warm and streaming: Continuous love

Sunrise: Sun is essential to all life on earth, degree of necessity

Fishes red gill to me: Needed to breathe, an organ, a part of the speaker

Go to your wide futures, you said: Still remember her advice, holds it close to her heart

Because I liked you better poet

AE Housman

Because I liked you better structure

Rhyme scheme: ABCB melodic and songlike (simplicity of love)

Structure: 4 quatrains to reflect rigidness of society

Because I liked you better evidence

Enjambment: Creates tension after his rejection

Irony: promised to throw the thought away, but didn’t 

Hyperbole: Still loves them a lot (To put the world between us)

“Stiff and dry”: Emotionless, respects societal expectations

“Clover whitens”: Coldness, numb feeling of speaker

Periphrasis: dead man’s knoll, termination of relationship, heartbreak, poets feelings only end at the grave

Heart no longer stirred: Heart shows love, synecdoche

Because I could not stop for death poet

Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for death structure

Slant rhyme scheme: ABCB

Because I could not stop for death evidence

Personification: Death is personified as a gentleman, distancing effect because he is silent throughout, solitude, mystery of death itself

Symbolism: Carriage symbolises journey from life to death, calmness shows inevitability of death

“He knew no haste”: Patient calm, inevitable

Anaphora: Repeated “We passed”, hypnotic effect, everyone passes away eventually

“Setting sun”: Alliteration shows life is ending, extinguishing her light

“He passed us”: Speakers relation to life has changed, sun has left her, not in human time, nearing timeless grave

“For only Gossamer, my Gown - My Tippet - only Tulle”: unprepared for journey, no one can prepare, transition from physical to spiritual, weightless, ghost like

“A House that seemed / a swelling of the ground”: death is welcoming, rebirth or waiting period

Time’s Fool poet

Ruth Pitter

Time’s Fool evidences

The title

Rhyme scheme

The tone change "Times fool but not heavens"

The plosive in first stanza

The natural imagery in first and second stanza

Epistrophe

The juxtaposition at the end "happy and poor"

Where the discarded stuff is reused in second stanza

One Art poet

Elizabeth Bishop

One Art structure

Villanelle: able to conform to this form, showing her mastery

One Art evidences

Refrain: The art of losing isn’t hard to master

“So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost”:

“Loss is no disaster”:

Asyndeton: losing farther, losing faster, reveals panic

Anaphora: I lost, confession accumulating weight

three loved houses went: house instead of home, disconnecting her emotions

Alliteration: losing, love, lied, slippery l sound shows loss is hard to control, brings all the painful concepts together

The art of losing’s not too hard to master: Crack in her facade