poetry essay plans

Explore the ways in which Stevenson powerfully contrasts the body and the spirit in 'The Spirit is Too Blunt an Instrument'?

write intro:

follows a speaker encouraging the reader to admire the intricacies of a baby’s body and consider how such a messy, unrefined concept as human passion could create such a sophisticated, perfect body.

Stevenson memorably contrasts the two by comparing ideas of complexity against simplicity, by contrasting anatomical language to abstract, intangible ideas, and by using an argumentative, separating form to contrast the baby’s body and spirit.

Explore the ways in which Stevenson powerfully contrasts the body and the spirit in 'The Spirit is Too Blunt an Instrument'?

paragraph about general abstract vs concrete (precise, anatomical) nouns

PRECISE/CONCRETE/ANATOMICAL VS ABSTRACT

• Specific biological terms with a definitive, formal quality – ‘capillaries’, ‘ganglia’, ‘neural filament’, ‘vertebrae’ and more.

  • the physical, fragile yet solid nature of the body.

  • this body exists out of the mind, that it can be felt and looked at and admired – unlike the spirit and emotion.

• The words used to describe emotion and feeling in the last stanza are abstract nouns like ‘sentiment’, ‘affection’, ‘despair’, and ‘anxiety’ that contrast the previous physically anatomical words.

• Whilst the physical features – ‘spine’, ‘knees’, of a human are always present, the lack of, and changeable nature of ‘despair’ and ‘affection’ and ‘love’ are what make those feelings different and important.

• A word like ‘ganglia’ is easy to define, whereas finding a simple explanation of ‘love’ and what it feels like, has stumped humanity.

  • These abstract ideas are unknowable and unpredictable in a way that, I think, scares the mother in the poem – there is no textbook medical definition of the spirit and no way to fully comprehend or fix or alleviate emotion.

• It is interesting that the last word in this list, and the final word in the poem is ‘pain’, as it can be considered both an abstract and concrete noun. Pain brings both contrasting sides of the poem together – physical pain exists, and so too does emotional pain. This conclusion at the end of the poem suggests a bleak understanding that that one thing the body and the spirit have in common is ‘pain’.

Explore the ways in which Stevenson powerfully contrasts the body and the spirit in 'The Spirit is Too Blunt an Instrument'?

paragraph about tininess vs general abstract largeness

SMALLNESS VS LARGENESS

• Baby's body - as a new born, is the smallest form a human body will ever be

• ‘tiny/blind bones’ and ‘fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae’

  • in the first stanza, using words like ‘tiny’ and ‘fine’ to emphasize the small and delicate nature of the body.

• In the second stanza, attention is drawn to the smallest body parts – like ‘eyelashes’ and ‘fingernails’ and ‘the ear’.

  • This makes the baby’s body seem as though it is made up of very small individual parts to form a larger structure, adding to its anatomical, intricate feeling.

•  ‘miniature to minute/ossicles’ – ossicles, which are the three tiny bones in the ear that include the smallest bone in the body, ‘capillaries’ – which are blood vessels, the smallest in the vascular system, ‘invisible’ – something small they cannot be seen with the naked eye, and ‘filaments’ which are thin thread-like fibres that make connections across the nervous system.

Explore the ways in which Stevenson powerfully contrasts the body and the spirit in 'The Spirit is Too Blunt an Instrument'?

paragraph about complexity vs simplicity

COMPLEX VS SIMPLE

• The first direct description of the baby is of it having ‘intricate/exacting particulars’.

  • All three of these words are Latinate, and three or four syllables long, adding to their perceived complexity.

  • ‘intricate’, ‘exacting’, ‘particulars’ - all underscore a feeling of containing many parts, being elaborate. The use of these words immediately sets up the baby’s body as a complex and demanding organism.

  • That phrase also includes the assonance of ‘i’ and repeated hard consonant ‘c’ and ‘t’ sounds that add to the precise, meticulous description of the baby’s body.

• Throughout the first two stanzas, the poet uses words that highlight the interconnected complexity of the body – like ‘meshings’ that describe the interlocking or fitting with something else, ‘involutions’ that can mean turning inwards or being entangled in something, ‘connections’, and ‘filaments’ that help the nervous system to pass impulses across the body. All these words contribute to the reader’s understanding that this baby’s body is remarkable in its complexity and interconnected functioning.

• In contrast to this, the reader is called to ‘name any passion or sentiment/possessed of the simplest accuracy’.

  • By daring the reader to point out a single feeling that is as straightforward and precise as the body, the speaker implies that, unlike this straightforward body, the spirit is messy and unknowable; it lacks ‘accuracy’. 

  • The repeated ‘p’ and ‘s’ sounds of the lines create a punchiness, a rhythm, that emphasises the speaker’s disdain for ‘sentiment’. The harshness of the sounds makes it almost seem as though the speaker could be spitting out the words, ironically, with intense feeling.

• The list-like layout and polysyndeton of the last two lines – ‘love and despair and anxiety/and their pain.’ create a feeling of a rushing of emotions and a build-up of momentum that parallel the idea that is the overwhelming, inescapable, immeasurable quality of the spirit, opposing the minuteness of this body.

• Throughout the poem, the words used to describe the baby’s body are generally polysyllabic, formal, and alliterative. On the other hand, the mind and spirit are mentioned with short, simple vocabulary like ‘pain’, ‘blunt’ and ‘unskilful’ – all of which hint that the speaker thinks they are less admirable and complex – when arguably feelings of such ‘despair’ and ‘desire’ are the most convoluted and complex of all.

Explore the ways in which Stevenson powerfully contrasts the body and the spirit in 'The Spirit is Too Blunt an Instrument'?

paragraph about form/structure

• to view the poem itself as a metaphor for the baby – the mother made the baby; the speaker made the poem.

• The writing of a poem is a result of both emotion and precise crafting, and to make a baby is the same.

• In fact, each of the three stanzas of the poem is nine lines long – reminiscent of the nine months of pregnancy and three trimesters it takes to grow a baby.

• the poem follows a structure like that of a written argument – with a claim that is the title and the first two lines, evidence which is found in the first and second stanzas and a conclusion at the end, on the inadequacy of the spirit. Through that argumentative form, the speaker pushes the question of the spirit versus the body into a state of conflict, emphasising the contrast.

• frequent use of imperatives, instructing the reader to ‘observe’, ‘imagine’, and ‘name’, enhances this argumentative quality.

• Also, the deliberate physical distance and separation of words associated with the spirit and those with the body (starting with a statement about the spirit, then describing only the body for two stanzas, and then back to the spirit in the final one) serves to highlight their different qualities.

  • The intricacies of the baby’s body are mirrored in the subtle complexity in the rhyme and form of the poem – the last word of almost every line of each stanza rhymes or half-rhymes with the equivalent line of the other stanzas. This is most clear in the first and last lines of each stanza – ‘instrument/crescent/sentiment’, ‘spine/brain/pain’, but may also exist within the body of each stanza – ‘tendons/connections/precision’, ‘resilient/filaments/invent’.

Explore the way Porter strikingly conveys thoughts and feelings about life in ‘A Consumer’s Report’.

paragraph topics

1. consumerism

2. disappointments of life

3. speaker himself, changes + humour

4. full of contradictions

satire - parody of a sceptical product review

Explore the way Porter strikingly conveys thoughts and feelings about life in ‘A Consumer’s Report’.

paragraph 1 - consumerism

extended metaphor of life as a consumer product

satirizes the pervasive consumerism of modern times

• everything is a product to be bought, even life

• to some extent it is: life, health insurance, cost of living

• consumer culture distracts them from appreciating the life they already have.

• title:

  • wouldn’t know it’s a poem by the title

  • A Consumer - could be anyone, defined by capitalist usage (not positive, not giving only taking)

  • formal, little emotion

• instructions are fairly large… so many of them… contradict each other

  • religious instruction (Bible, commandments)

  • many religions

  • that contradict each other/within the Bible

  • Life is not a convenient product - most products put emphasis on how easy something is to use. Not life.

• speaker views life as completely "overdone"—something people should "take for granted.

  • the way fashion trends or songs are overdone

• things are piling up so fast

  • then momentum build up, enjambment, no punctuation

  • material goods, overpopulation

• they

  • faceless, unnamed corporate gods, some oppressive force

• it (Life)

  • uncomfortable to reduce Life to all-encompassing, two letter word it

  • but isn’t what consumerism turns life into? A series of its

Explore the way Porter strikingly conveys thoughts and feelings about life in ‘A Consumer’s Report’.

paragraph 2 - disappointments of life

• the price is much too high

  • unsettling - we would like to think of life

• didn't feel much while using

  • desensitized, jaded, overstimulated by consumerism

• left an embarrassing deposit behind

  • deposit as money in a bank or a layer of something natural left behind somewhere

  • human physical remains/material possessions left behind/the consequences of our actions (on other people and the planet)

• very difficult to get rid of

  • as if he’d want to

  • fight or flight - the body wants to keep you alive

• a lot of different labels/sizes an colours should be uniform

  • complains about multiculturalism

  • sexuality, race, weight, etc.

• all contradictions

• we should take it for granted

  • to take for granted - fail to appreciate

  • twist of the phrase implies there is little to appreciate

• we shouldn’t/care

  • enjambement - we shouldn’t take it for granted.. but thats not it.. we shouldn’t Care

• despite all complaints: So finally, I’d buy it

  • so he himself is contradictory

  • pivot line - I’d agree

  • previously: lots of verbs he does - I don’t like/want/know (complaining)

  • then settles down

Explore the way Porter strikingly conveys thoughts and feelings about life in ‘A Consumer’s Report’.

paragraph 3 - speaker himself + humour

in general:

speaker has humour, ironic, contradictory, self-important

in general very negative and uncertain: verbs:

• I didn’t feel much whilst using it

• I don’t know

• I’m not sure

• I don’t like

• I suppose

• I think

humour:

• I’m not sure such a thing/should be put in the way of children

  • absurd - can’t have life without being a child at some point

  • can’t stop having kids

• bracketed bit - after a build up of anger and existential angst

  • and self important

    • ‘you‘ from ‘your man‘ is clearly powerful, having given the speaker Life

    • but still the speaker makes a petty request to not be reduced to the respondent (tbh does sound like despondent)

• I’d agree it’s a popular product

  • funny because of course it’s popular literally everyone’s got it

speaks on behalf of humanity

• A consumer - vague, could be anyone

• no more distinguishing feature other than I and middle-aged (no gender, race, etc.)

• end of poem, after complaints/gaining confidence

  • We (start of line)

  • We are the consumers

• universal experiences

  • used much more than I thought

    • didn’t notice time passing

Explore the way Porter strikingly conveys thoughts and feelings about life in ‘A Consumer’s Report’.

paragraph 4 - full of contradictions

• it doesn't keep / yet it's very difficult to get rid of."

  • we all die eventually, but it's hard to die willingly

  • fight or flight - the body wants to keep you alive

• answers are confidential

  • yet it’s a poem read by GCSE students everywhere lol

• seemed gentle on the hands/but left an embarrassing deposit behind

• [the many instructions] seem to contradict one another

• it’s waterproof/but not heat resistant (the body)

• if you say you don’t/ want it, then it’s delivered anyway

  • lack of agency - power to the unseen god

• poem itself:

  • completed the form you sent me

    • form as in form of a poem?

  • wouldn’t know it’s a poem by the title

  • report is formal, little emotion - poems are emotional

Explore the way Porter strikingly conveys thoughts and feelings about life in ‘A Consumer’s Report’.

think about life as a product

different

• sex vs mechanical production

• relationships with other people

• no-one is identical

• no agency in choosing to have it

same

• use once, then gone (unless religion but not really)

• everyone gets the same basic foundations (body)

• can put a price on it (life, health insurance, cost of living)

• deteriorates in quality as it ages + it becomes antiquated/obsolete

the city planners:
In what ways does Atwood convey her strong emotions about the city planners?
(first paragraph)

• disdain for attempting to control two fundamentally chaotic and uncontrollable forces: nature and humanity

  • order, perfection, no deviation is contrasted with hiding sickness and physical suffering

• pedantic rows, planted/sanitary trees, rational, straight

• hysteria, split oil a faint/sickness lingering, bruise, poised in a vicious, too-fixed stare

• pretence of control (roofs all display)

• feels hostility - rebuke to dent in car door (offended by her imperfection)

the city planners:
In what ways does Atwood convey her strong emotions about the city planners?
(second paragraph)

• contempt for the City Planners’ poor organisation

  • corporate gods, nameless

  • meaning of plan

  • insane faces of political conspirators

  • in his own private blizzard

• would think they are organised, but

  • are scattered

  • concealed

  • guessing directions

  • sketch

  • tracing

  • transitory, meaning = not permanent, moving - paradox, rigid as wooden borders

• all half-done or unsure, panicked, trying to exert control they don’t have

the city planners:
In what ways does Atwood convey her strong emotions about the city planners?
(third paragraph)

• form and poetic devices like enjambement

  • form - free verse, no rhyme, human passion - not ordered, no normal/the lines don’t fit in with each other

    • unlike the pedantic rows, or suburb streets she describes

  • enjambement

    • overflowing

    • neatly/sidestep hysteria (feels playful)

    • transitive vs intransitive verbs

    • 2nd to 3rd stanza → subtly slides into the future, no punctuation

    • 3rd stanza → build up of emotion, worry, frustration

    • contrast cruising and guessing, tracing

  • alliteration, repetition

    • sanity, sanitary → etymological doublet (sanitas/sanus)

  • personification of objects instead of people

    • material society

    • empty of people

    • soulless → not a soul (person) is there, no spark of human creativity

How does Atwood convey such striking impressions of the city created by the planners in this poem?
(paragraph titles)

• order, perfection + stagnation

  • pedantic rows

  • No shouting - like command (rare capital letter)

  • nothing more abrupt

  • rational

  • straight

• nature is controlled

  • sterilised - sanities, sanitary

    • white, clinical, white picket fence, madness of snows

  • things only grow where you want them to

  • discouraged grass

  • planted

  • stifling heat - dry sunlight, hot sky

• secret sickness/physical suffering

  • personification of objects = soulless

  • hysteria

  • spilt oil

  • sickness lingering

  • splash of paint

  • bruise

  • poised in vicious

Explore the ways in which Hardy makes He Never Expected Much such a memorable poem.

paragraph plans brief

1. pessimism

2. voice of the World

3. form/softness/nursery-rhyme-ness of the poem

Explore the ways in which Hardy makes He Never Expected Much such a memorable poem.

pessimism

considers the wisdom of not expecting too much out of life.

written when Thomas Hardy turned 86, published posthumously

childhood. He tells the World that it has lived

up to its promises ("kept faith with me"), adding that "Upon the

whole you have proved to be / Much as you said you were." Life

hasn't bitterly disappointed him—although the qualifiers "Upon

the whole" and "Much" suggest that he may have some hidden

bitterness.

his lack of disappointment comes

from his lack of initial hopes. The world turned out to be as

harsh as it looked to start with, so his lack of disappointment

isn't the same as satisfaction!

never…expected life would be all fair → fair as in just, beautiful

subtle irony, the speaker says he

"failed not to take" that warning—in other words, he did take

it—and has therefore remained stoic in the face of life's

troubles.

Explore the ways in which Hardy makes He Never Expected Much such a memorable poem.

voice of the World

• you said, since have said, since have said

  • slow, repetitive, doesn’t change ideas

  • not very full of life

• conversational, colloquial → Well, World

  • some apprehension

Keep faith, proved, credit, failed not - all about promises and trust (that has been kept) and permanence

PERSONIFICATION

• The World talks

  • Mysterious - inaccessible, unknowable to the reader

  • Holding secrets

• Shed

  • Rhymed with said - more habitual verb for voice

  • Animal, natural, gradual

  • Shed light - knowledgeable, revealing

  • Shed tears

  • Emphasis

• Voice sounds tired

  • Rhymes at the end, slowing down polysyllabic

  • Many - list, relentless, for years

  • Sounds immortal - will always be there

  • Not attached to anyone, so many experiences

• The whole of nature speaks this message

  • Voice of God

  • aware of death/mortality

    • till they dropped underground (matter of fact, cacophony vs prev.)

    • long vowels at the end of each line

anthropomorphic

Explore the ways in which Hardy makes He Never Expected Much such a memorable poem.

nursery rhyme/slow

Relaxing, sounds like whispering, doesn't sound angry or normal conversation

Not dramatic

Quiet

About peaceful acceptance of disappointment

• lots of alliteration, sibilance, assonance (Well World, Wise warning, stem such strain, smooth serenity)

• long vowel sounds at the end of each line - slowing down

• like a nursery rhyme

  • AAAB CCCB - same structure each line, like a verse

  • iambic

• appealing to the ear

How does Wright vividly present the speaker’s thoughts about her great-great-grandmother in ‘Request to a Year’?

paragraphs

1. stoic and steady, distant

2. disadvantaged as a woman artist

3. admiration, relating to herself

How does Wright vividly present the speaker’s thoughts about her great-great-grandmother in ‘Request to a Year’?

stoic and steady, distant

• having had eight children

• sat one day on a high rock

• difficult distance viewed

• Nothing, it was evident, could be done

• my great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene

• the firmness of her hand

one day → vague, unspecific time → fairy tale phrase but also distant, long ago, distant to speaker through time

high rock → in the distance, on a pedestal, superior, danger (+Switzerland, mountain? Uluru)

sat → simple verb, emotionless

difficult distance viewed

• viewed - simple looking, surveying, passive

  • unexpected as reader reads of dangerous story (enjambement)

• d sounds - obstructive, plosive

nothing…could be done;

• start of stanza after first full stop

• colon as halt in momentum/enjambement as before emphasises the finality

• stoic, accept situation and move on

hastily sketched the scene.

• hastily → worry about the sketching not the boy

• ‘st‘ - artist’s, hastily, story

• full stop - finality, no further emotion, just the sketching

firmness of her hand

• as artist - steady hand, control, praised

• as mother - firmness = discipline, seriousness, harshness

• conflict/struggle between the two

• hand - holding hands, maternal, connection reaching out

• having had - simple, repeated verb, - just had, no emotion in raising of eight children

emotional stoicism is usually attributed to male characters

• another gender subversion like son/daughter story above

How does Wright vividly present the speaker’s thoughts about her great-great-grandmother in ‘Request to a Year’?

experience as woman artist

• great-great-grandmother/legendary devotee of the arts

• little opportunity for painting pictures

• daughter, impeded,/no doubt, by the petticoats of the day

• artist’s isolating eye

• the sketch survives to prove the story by

• choice to sketch the scene instead of futilely attempt to save son

• great-great-grandmother → like an epithet, used twice, takes up a lot of space on the line, importance of female lineage

• legendary devotee → start of line, emphasis on legendary

  • legend → famed, fictitious, biblical story, or an inscription, esp. on a coin or medal.

  • supposed/mythical/inscribed somewhere - as in apparently she was [a devotee] but no-one knew she was/she wasn’t actually famed for it

• devotee - zealous religious follower

  • something about muse vs artist and assuming woman to be the muse

• the arts - great being

  _____________

• little opportunity - implied: because of having had eight children

• painting pictures - (+ opportunity) - plosive, alliteration - pictures sounds juvenile, like a hobby/not taken seriously

• feels like despite little opportunity she still paints

  ________________

• artist’s isolating eye

  • isolating as in the artist’s eye can isolate moments to depict, or that the artist’s eye isolates the artist (from society?)

  • eye - solating, eye, I as in me

_____________

• the sketch survives to prove the story by.

  • need for proof - not trusting women

  • creates her own power base through her own art

  • very human, leave your mark, cave paintings

  • important sentence on one line

________

• choice to sketch the scene instead of futilely attempt to save son

  • role of the artist in difficult times

    • memorializing life's events, no matter how tragic, is central to the artist's mission. Artists may not be able to alter events, but they can depict them, preserve them, and prevent them from being forgotten.

  • Judith Wright’s environmental/Aboriginal campaigning

  • meta - the poem survives

How does Wright vividly present the speaker’s thoughts about her great-great-grandmother in ‘Request to a Year’?

admiration, relating to herself

• I should like

• the attitude

• Mother’s day present

• reach back and bring me

• hand

apostrophe - to Year (arbitrary, to herself, like New Year’s is stupid)

reach across time and distance (Switzerland vs Australia)

holding hands - reaching for connection, feels alone, wants not to feel isolated by reaching out to ancestor

Inspiration as artist and mother

mother’s day present as gift and also as current time - no present as a mother, will be an artist instead

v polite, trying to be grandmother

order to reach and bring, reach = aware of distance

etc.

In what ways does Turner make this such a memorable poem?

paragraphs

• the fly as an angel

• relationship between human and fly + perspective

• shift to death imagery

In what ways does Turner make this such a memorable poem?

fly as an angel

initial fly associations

• annoying, insignificant, rubbish/poo, stupid (windows)

• dead bodies, disease - rightful realm of death

• has crushed thee here between these pages pent

  • aspirant h = soft papery texture of fly’s wings

  • contrast pages pent - plosive alliteration + t

  • crushed thee - sympathy

  • detailed location - sympathy

  • speaking directly to fly dignifies, magnifies it - repetition of thine, thee, thou, etc.

• wings gleam out

  • wings - angelic

  • gleam - light, iridescent, shining

  • gleam Out - bigger than itself, impact on the world

• lovely as these wings

  • lovely - uncommon for ugly fly

• pure relics of a blameless life, that shine

  • angel

  • relic - item/body part of saint - fly as a saint

  • blameless life - christian ideal, pure, implies speaker isn’t blameless, human destruction of goodness

  • shine - light, lightness

angel = larger than life, highness, light, life

but fly is not immortal

fly associated with death - bad

angel associated with death - good (heaven)

elegiac praise

In what ways does Turner make this such a memorable poem?

relationship between human and fly

great reaction to the death of the fly

title: On Finding…

• On [topic] .. think Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, On Liberty - published 1859, vs this poem - 1873

• feels rational, scholarly, an inquiry → contrast to actual topic of intimate, quiet discovery

  • shift in scale is comic, tragic

• or, read as: what happens just after the finding

that this small fly triggers a poem

• sonnet, no less - romantic, ode to fly

• never meant to do thee hurt → feels need to apologise/justify accident - for fly or human?

• blameless life → blameless life - Christian ideal, pure, implies speaker isn’t blameless, human destruction of goodness

• Just as/unlike thee

  • similarity between human and fly

  • that death may come unexpectedly, and just before greatness

• yet leave no lustre

  • fly leaves shining residue, humans don’t

  • but human goes to heaven - life ourselves?

• soar away - contrast, humans don’t fly

unexpected connection with the fly - that we are similar in ultimate death, and lesser in our blame and ugly residue, but come on to greater things (lift, soar away)

In what ways does Turner make this such a memorable poem?

• shift to death imagery

contrast light of before

• gleam

• shining

• wings

• shine

to

• Our doom is ever near:

  • volta, isolated by caesura

  • statement, final is

• peril

  • ominous beside us, day by day

• is/is/will

  • certainty - death is certain, final

• close upon us

  • crushed like fly in book

• closing book

  • Book of Life

    • list of names of who will get to heaven - ironically eternal life

    • angels write all your good/bad deeds

    • book is closed = no more deeds = dead

• stop our vital breath

  • breath/death rhyming coupled - opposites, ever connected

• page of death

  • last word of poem, reader may be reading page in book = page of death

  • otherwise, death certificate, obituary

poem as a monument to the fly, worst is to be forgotten

monument - monere latin to remind, connect to memories

iambic pentameter is cool

etc.

In what ways does Harrison make this such a moving poem? (Long Distance)

paragraphs

• portrayal of father’s grief

• strained relationship between father and son

• similarity between father/son’s irrational expression of grief

In what ways does Harrison make this such a moving poem? (Long Distance)

portrayal of father’s grief

• ‘kept her slippers warming by the gas’

  • Warmth/warming her dead body

  • He took care of her - domestic

  • Kept - persistence of the action, trying to stay, actively doing this

• ‘put hot water bottles her side of the bed’

  • Bring her warmth in the bed back to him

  • Caring about her health

• ‘still went to renew her transport pass’

  • She's travelling and alive

• “Though my mother was already two years dead.”

  • evokes sympathy within the reader

• (third stanza) “sure that very soon he’d hear her key/scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief”

In what ways does Harrison make this such a moving poem? (Long Distance)
strained relationship between father and son

• “You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.”

  • caesura → blunt and annoyed tone

  • sharing impatience with the reader

• “He’d put you off an hour”

  • shows the growing distance between father and child.

• “look alone/as though his still raw love were such a crime.”

  • "crime" - his shame

  • "raw love" - open wound

  • "look alone" - isolating

  • "still" - been going on for a while, perpetual

• “He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief”

  • blight → a thing that damages something else

  • his disbelief ruins the idea he had in his head

In what ways does Harrison make this such a moving poem? (Long Distance)

• similarity between father/son’s irrational expression of grief

• “He knew she’d just popped out to get his tea.//I believe life ends with death, and that is all.”

  • Knew is a very certain and rational verb while believe is very wishy-washy

  • It flips it - the father is sure and certain that his mother is there whereas he is not sure

• change in tense!!

• “just the same”

  • caesura - change in thinking

  • similar to dad

  • irony

• “in my new black leather phone book there’s your name/and the disconnected number I still call”

  • new → holding on to grief

  • disconnected → separation between life and death

  • 2nd person address → makes it more personal for reader

In what ways does Auden use words and images to powerful effect in this poem? Funeral Blues

paragraphs

1. silence and stillness

2. hyperbolic roles of lover

3. sun and moon as props, packing up

In what ways does Auden use words and images to powerful effect in this poem?

silence and stillness

Stop all the clocks

• hyperbolic all

  • stop time itself

• like Miss Havisham??

• starting a poem with stop - emphasis on seriousness of order

• command

• affects everyone

Cut off the telephone

• another imperative

• the telephone - recent invention used for business/commerce

• isolate himself - no-one reaching out

Prevent the dop from barking

• silence - no happiness

• another imperative start of line

lots of hard consonance

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

• silence

• pianos used for raucous/celebration - stop that

• everyone else has to suffer in his mourning

muffled drum

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

• only sounds allowed are for mourning

• drum - military, moaning - lamentation, wailing, keener (people who wail/sing for death)

• plural aeroplanes - new invention - one aeroplane is not enough

my talk, my song - maybe that’s why all the other sounds are so detested

In what ways does Auden use words and images to powerful effect in this poem?

hyperbolic roles of lover

(3rd stanza)

my North, my South, my East and West,

• anaphora

• all directions, all-encompassing, no escape

working week and Sunday rest

• alliteration

• takes up all time

• bookends the week, no escape

My noon, my midnight

• deepest parts of night/day

• hyperbole

• no escape, book-ends the day

He was and He Is Dead

• littler info on the guy himself

• only exists in the capacity of the speaker’s grief - only survives through his grieving

hyperbole:

• all, every, nothing, ever

• getting crepe bows on pigeons, etc.

In what ways does Auden use words and images to powerful effect in this poem?

sun and moon as props, packing up

The starts are not wanted now; put out every one

• not wanted now, given up hope

• star-crossed lovers

• light and hope - not wanted

• navigation - doesn’t want a way out of the grief, wants to wallow

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun

• pack up and dismantle - like they are fake, like props

• break the fantasy - since love in stories/plays is perfect, that idea is over - pack up and dismantle the reminder of what could have been

• grief as so powerful to get rid of ancient, massive object

pour away the ocean

• great influx/overflowing

• metaphor for crying?

• and leave emptiness - feeling of void

sweep up the wood

• sweep up

• cleaning up debris

— all: get rid of painful memories and funeral objects - what’s left? nothing (end of poem)

for conclusion:

• private to public to celestial (with interlude of monumental personal grief)

• possible its satire with all the hyperbole

How does Lowell strikingly convey his feelings in Night Sweat?

paragraphs

1. stagnation of the mind, ennui

2. sickness and death imagery

3. form and structure

How does Lowell strikingly convey his feelings in Night Sweat?

stagnation of the mind, ennui

• work-table, littler, books and standing lamp

  • work-table, where the speaker sits unmoving in each day

  • lamp is standing - immobile

• plain things, my stalled equipment, the old broom

  • Stalled - stopped, something that has broken (engine stopped/won't start), stall - procrastinating, in a stall (enclosed)

  • equipment → his creativity, body, writer’s block

  • things, plain, old - stagnancy, stasis, lack of movement, inactive

  • a new broom sweeps clean

    1. proverb

       people newly appointed to positions of responsibility tend to make far-reaching changes.

       • but he is old broom (phrasing implies he is the old broom)

• but I am living in a tidied room

  • tidied (by someone else)

  • tidied as empty, uncreative, devoid of chaos

  • But implies the tidied room is his mind/despite the stagnant clutter as described above, his mine is tidied

opening of poem

first word is work-table

How does Lowell strikingly convey his feelings in Night Sweat?

sickness and death imagery

Overall

• Sickness - physical, also physical and spiritual, kind of death

• depressed

• Uncomfortable, gross

creeping damp/float

• damp = mould, gross

• creeping and float = creeping up on speaker, ominous, unsettling, supernatural

sweet salt embalms me and my head is wet

• sweet salt - contrasting flavours

• Salt has been used in embalming since ancient times to preserve bodies by drying them out and inhibiting bacterial growth

my life’s fever soaking in night sweat

• Fever - disease, sickness, burn with passion, energy, elevated intensity

• Fever of creativity, burning too much, put out by wetness

• soaking - drowning in night sweat

• Sweat - recycled quality, waste product, feels like Stagnant water

one life, one writing! /// one universe, one body

• —phrasing that suggests writer’s block poses a real existential threat to the speaker. He feels compelled to create “one writing” that will define his “one life,” before time runs out—before he succumbs to the “downward glide” of life.

But the downward glide

• human experience - failure, ageing, death, peak, overall loss of potency, mourn the loss of an ability

a heap of wet clothes, seamy, shivering

• reduced to illness, inhuman

in this urn.. the spirit burn

• other way after death (cremated, embalmed)

Inside me is the child who died - like a parasite, the poems he didn't produce, unborn writing (like Hedda Gabler - killing your baby)

• clammy, gross

• feels helpless and frustrated

How does Lowell strikingly convey his feelings in Night Sweat?

form and structure

• two sonnets (first, Shakespearean, then Petrarchan)

  • sonnets take poetic skill - illness not completely taken over

  • love poems - second as love letter to wife

  • first as many desire for creativity, or lack of said love

• volta - one life! one writing! - very important (writer’s block)

• volta - my wife! - love

• no metre, changing line lengths - uncontained, chaotic, unrefined/unsophisticated

• introduction of wife

  • 2nd person - involves the reader, breaks the 4th wall

    Exclamation marks - suggest excitement, movement, activity, danger, surprise

    Behind - he couldn't see her but she was there, unnoticed

    Reason behind something/has your back, support you

    Behind every great man is a great woman

• and rhymes

• Sound changes

  • Gets a rhythm

  • Lots of alliteration

  • Internal rhyme

  • The music of poetry - dabble dapple day - comes back because of her

• light imagery:

• Presence of her makes:

  • I feel the light lighten

  • Dapple

  • Day

  • Light

  • Exploding into dynamite

  • Lightness

• Tortoise - she is wise, slows down for him, steadfastness, loyalty, wisdom, resilience, humility, patience

How does Gunn vividly convey his feelings about his own body in 'The Man With Night Sweats'? 

paragraphs

1. contrast between past vitality vs present frailty of body

2. emotional isolation

3. breaking down of form/structure/rhyme as lost of body

Contrast Between Past Vitality and Present Frailty

Paragraph 1: Contrast Between Past Vitality and Present Frailty

• Quotation: “My flesh was its own shield: / Where it was gashed, it healed.”

  • Reflects past resilience and self-reliance; the body could recover from harm.

• Quotation: “I grew as I explored / The body I could trust”

  • Indicates a period of confidence and trust in his physical self.

• Quotation: “The given shield was cracked”

  • Suggests a loss of that former resilience; the body is now vulnerable.​

Emotional Isolation and Self-Comfort

Paragraph 2: Emotional Isolation and Self-Comfort

• Quotation: “Hugging my body to me”

  • Depicts a solitary act of seeking comfort; emphasizes loneliness.

• Quotation: “As if to shield it from / The pains that will go through me”

  • Highlights the inevitability of suffering and the desire to protect oneself.

• Quotation: “As if hands were enough / To hold an avalanche off.”

  • Conveys the overwhelming nature of his condition; personal efforts feel insufficient

Structural Elements Reflecting Decline

Paragraph 3: Structural Elements Reflecting Decline

• Observation: Transition from regular rhyme and meter to irregular patterns in later stanzas.

  • Mirrors the deterioration of the speaker's physical and mental state.

• Quotation: “My mind reduced to hurry, / My flesh reduced and wrecked.”

  • Repetition of “reduced” emphasizes the diminishing of both mental and physical faculties.

• Observation: Use of half-rhymes like “sorry” and “hurry” instead of full rhymes.

  • Reflects a loss of control and the disintegration of the speaker's world.​Poem Analysis

Explore the ways in which Shelley makes this such a powerfully dramatic poem.

paragraphs

what kind of sonnet, when written/just after what

1. wreckage of statue, fragments

2. vastness of sands

3. many speakers + importance of art // contrast between sculptor and ozymandias power

Petrarchan sonnet

1817 just after fall of Napoleon

Explore the ways in which Shelley makes this such a powerfully dramatic poem.

1. wreckage of statue

first description of statue

• two vast and trunkless legs of stone/stand

vast - huge, massive

trunkless - introduces idea of having a trunk then takes it away

stand contrast lies

• shattered visage lies

• frown/and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

  • cold in death

• Crumbled, fallen, wrecked, broken, its destruction:

  • Sunk, shattered, sneer, decay, wreck

  • harsh sounds

half-sunk - like a shipwreck, contrast sand

• face has fallen on the ground near legs

  • fall from power, like Icarus

  • statues are overturned in anger/after some ruler is gone

  • statue is a visual physical reminder of someone’s power

    • Shelly reminds us of the transience of power

• fragmentation of body parts - wrecked,

• focus on parts which would have given it power: sneer of cold command, frown, wrinkled lip → upset authority

  • but now means nothing because its fragmented

• fragmentation of grammar - the hand that mocked them…

  • doesn’t make sense, brokenness of body = poem line

• lifeless things

  • lifeless - long dead

  • things - no use, unimportant, inanimate, could be anything, reduced

• Nothing beside remains

  • beside as preposition, or nothing else except for remains

  • nothing compared to great epitaph

• colossal wreck

  • colossal - like Colossus of Rhodes (snapped at the knees after an earthquake)

  • wreck - juxtaposed, contrast

Explore the ways in which Shelley makes this such a powerfully dramatic poem.

sands

• Stand in the desert…

  • ellipses = emptiness of desert

  • so vast, gives traveller pause

• half sunk

  • ability to consume greatness

• boundless and bare/the lone and level sands stretch far away

  • away/decay

  • alliteration, sibilance = hissing of sand

• sands as sands of time

  • hourglass marks passing of time

  • tiny grains have huge impact

• left with final image of sand consuming power, transience of power

• line 3 - sand

• last line - sand

  • poem is contained, surrounded like Ozymandias, by sand

wasteland - human mortality, time, power etc.

Explore the ways in which Shelley makes this such a powerfully dramatic poem.

1. many speakers + importance of art // contrast between sculptor and ozymandias power

5 speakers - I, traveller, visage (subject of tell), sculptor, Ozymandias

• Sculptor well those passions read

  • = sculptor successfully sculpted the Pharoah’s passions/emotions

  • sculptor job is mentioned before Ozzy’s - King of Kings

    • Sculptor is more important

    • art outlasts and is more powerful than powerful people

• volta

  • after fragmented grammar and body parts

  • come to solid epitaph + pedestal (has placed himself on a pedestal)

  • says: Look on my works

    • ironic: king has no works, but sculptor’s artist works remain

    • ye Mighty - to us, to future pharaohs, them of the time?

    • look + despair - imperative

      • why not celebrate?

      • arrogance of power

• works as reference to Shelley

  • considered outsider, poor reputation, not respected

  • his own desire to be remembered through his art

In what ways does Cheng make The Planners such a powerful poem?

1. power and anonymity of the planners

2. disturbing dental imagery

3. they vs nature/the natural order of things

In what ways does Cheng make The Planners such a powerful poem?

power and anonymity of the planners

start with they - anaphora

• dehumanized

• no name, no face, can’t fight against it

• corporate gods, big brother

verbs:

• plan

• build

• will not stop

• erase

• have the means/have it all

• knock off

lots of caesura, powerful

Caesura also breaks lines up into blocks, much like buildings in a city might look.

‘they‘ are so powerful they don’t even need the pronoun ‘they‘

• e.g. all spaces are gridded BY THEM

• desired points - THEIR desired points

powerful people build buildings to exert that power, statues, highrises, etc.

build → intransitive, they can build anything they want

also build as in grow, accumulate themselves (like a storm)

two categories of destruction vs creation

• ultimate power, god

• possession, ownership

In what ways does Cheng make The Planners such a powerful poem?

disturbing dental imagery

in contrast to great big knocking down of building blocks

erase

blemishes - as if minimal, easy to get rid of

dental dexterity

gaps are plugged (think later new history, falsify records)

country wears perfect rows/ of shining teeth

Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis - tricolon

it will not hurt

• should, they have power over pain

• Latinate → elite, power of Latin + education + ancient

• artificiality

• unpleasant, invasive, fake production of beauty

In what ways does Cheng make The Planners such a powerful poem?

they vs nature/the natural order of things

sea draws back

skies surrender - sibilance

• submission

• military, war imagery

the drilling

• learn by repetition

• more military imagery - marching, etc.

buildings.. in alignment with the roads

grace of mathematics, permutations

• orderly, no chaos

• humans impose straight lines on nature

“[t]he drilling goes right through / the fossils of last century.” On the

one hand, this refers to the way that modernization erases

humanity’s past. But this also might subtly allude to humanity’s

reliance on fossil fuels, which has directly contributed to

climate change. In any case, the poem links human progress

with destruction on a personal and global scale.

and destroys history

grace, and desired express concepts linked to aesthetic beauty (grace) and the future (desired, plan, possibilities)

Rain

Explore the ways in which Thomas makes this such a moving poem.

paragraph titles

+extra 3 for speaker’s emotions

1. emphasis on solitude

2. environment (bleakness, rain, cold and dark)

3. attitude to death + biblical allusions + washing away of sin

lonely, helpless + unclean, attitude death

Explore the ways in which Thomas makes this such a moving poem.

emphasis on solitude

solitude as in the state of being alone, and also means a lonely place - a solitude

,and solitude, and me

• solitude isolated on the line by caesura (commas)

• ‘me’ is solitary then, by association, and is also isolated on the back of the break in momentum from the second comma + also its the end of the line.. drifting into space

• solitude becomes like a noun, physical person, thing - on same physical plane as the bleak hut + me

solitude.

• full stop, very few end stops in this poem; solitude is solitary

bleak hut

• hut - not homey, basic shelter

• image of isolated cabin in the wilderness

• bleak - barren, bare, lonely, exposed to elements

lots of I and me - no reference to other people apart from ‘the living and the dead‘ and ‘whom once I loved’ → not present, no active

• creating a person out of the rain - can be heard, given thanks, tells speaker something

Explore the ways in which Thomas makes this such a moving poem.

pathetic fallacy + environment + rain

most obvious about this poem: rain

• including title (used 9 times)

Rain,

• first word, three times, beginning, middle, end.

• starts with emphasis → rest of poem largely iambic pentameter, Rain, stands out

rain →

• blessing from God

• judgement → Noah’s ark

• in any case, power of nature - destructive + rejuvenating, forces you inside, fun to play in, chaos and danger and gloom

hut → little to protect from crashing rain

first description → midnight

• dark, spooky

• also on the boundary (veil of life and death, evening and morning - liminal space!!)

• also wild - so nature, chaos, uncontrollable, scary

rain has powerful actions

• despite consuming nature:

  • can be heard

  • rains upon (itself) → both subject and verb - powerful existence

  • can dissolve love

  • tells (as the tempest)

  • can wash clean

• god-like

rain is always there - internal rhyme

• constant background, like rain in real life

cold water - cold rain?

Explore the ways in which Thomas makes this such a moving poem.

attitude to death, biblical allusions, washing away of sin

washing me cleaners

• baptism

• absolution of sins, guilt

• Pontius Pilate - washing hands of Jesus’ death

• was previously dirty

born into this solitude.

• original sin

• inevitable human condition, he could never escape it

blessed are the dead

• quote from the bible

• rain rain's upon: - semi colon throws the statement out to the page

death is bad:

• I shall die/ and

  • emphasis on repeating of remembering again implies this isn’t a good thing

  • then line continues after die after enjambement - implies doesn’t want to die? expect nothing but there is an ‘and‘

• pray none whom once I loved/Is dying tonight

  • death for others is bad

death is good:

• love of death

• perfect - but not necessarily good, just entire, absolute

• cannot disappoint

less death is good, more respect/acceptance

broken reeds

• broken bodies of WW1 soldiers

• bible metaphor for weak/unreliable people - fragility of man + human condition

• repetition + myriads