Poem themes

Poems of the decade: titles, key themes, context, technical terminology

Please Hold themes-

• Limitations and frustrations of technology.

• Humanity vs AI.

• Relationships

Please Hold summary-

• Talking to a robot on the phone.

• The Robot does not understand or meet needs.

• Get frustrated.

• Wife becomes like the robot.

Please hold terms-

• Satirical- sarcasm.

• Parallelism.

• Paratactic, no conjunction between clauses.

• Free verse.

• Epistrophe- repetition of word at end of successive clauses.

• diacope- repeating words/ clauses, “to be or not to be”

Genetics themes-

• Family and inheritance.

• Marriage and relationships.

• Identity and new beginnings.

• Genetics.

Genetics summary-

• Happy that they are a combination of their parents traits.

• Parents now live far apart- divorce.

• Imagines parent’s wedding.

• Addresses their own partner, asks to have kids- healing/ desire to pass on genetics.

Genetics terms-

• Caesura.

• Iambic pentameter- heartbeat- broken on first and second line.

• Diacope.

• Metaphor.

• Villanelle- first/ third line repeated at end of following stanzas.

• Asyndeton.

TMNYOS themes-

• Joy and the innocence of childhood.

• Freedom/ hope

• dangers of society.

TMNYOS summary-

• Adult women asks her 9-year old self to forgive her.

• Tells younger self to appreciate time.

• Refers to childhood dream.

• Reflects that she has nothing in common with her young self.

• Doesn’t tell her something negative as doesn’t want to taint young self.

TMNYOS terms-

• Hypallage (scared lanes)

• Dramatic monologue.

• Anaphora- RPT of words at beginning of sentences.

• Enjambement.

• End-stops.

TMNYOS symbols-

• White paper- innocence youth and potential.

• Rope swing- happiness/ exuberance of childhood.

• Summer- growth, warmth. Younger self metaphorically embraces living fully.

An easy passage themes-

• Adolescence vs adulthood.

• Joy/ girlhood.

• Freedom vs conformity.

An easy passage terms-

• imagery

• caesura

• consonance

• Ext metaphor (passage)

An easy passage summary-

• Passage = transition from teenage to adult.

• House = comforting world of childhood she wants to be in.

• Girl is climbing the roof of her house with her friends.

• Girls are far away from the adult workers- who are bored.

• Successfully climbs into house.

On her blindness themes-

• Loss, pain, helplessness.

• Disability, stoicism and suffering.

• Perspective of death.

On her blindness summary-

• Poem speaker remembers that his mother hated being blind.

• He discusses that lots of people make disabled people seem like heroes and ignore their suffering.

• He mentions how his mother always tried to ignore her blindness, even dangerously so.

• Ends in her funeral where she can finally not pretend to see, in hospital she said that she was glad to die.

On her blindness terms-

• Intertextual reference to a sonnet.

• free verse

• alliteration

• asyndeton

• internal rhyme “pretend, end”.

Giuseppe themes-

• Evil, cruelty, dehumanisation.

• Guilt, shame and horrors of human nature.

• discrimination/ alienisation.

Giuseppe summary-

• Poetic voices uncle recounts story from the war.

• Pretty square, where mermaid is butchered.

• They debate that she is not a women for various reasons.

• They feed her to the soldiers.

• The uncle can not look the nephew in the eye at the end of the poem.

Giuseppe terms-

• end stops

• enjambement

• irony

• mermaid = those suffering with persecution.

The Lammas hireling themes-

• Passion, sin guilt.

• Superstition and folklore.

• Agriculture/ tradition

The Lamas hireling summary-

• Lammas festival, celebrates harvest, farmer rents out a worker.

• worker has positive, almost supernatural, impact on livestock/ crops.

• Farmer has nightmare about his dead wife.

• Farmer finds hireling and thinks he is a male witch.

• He shoots him, and then tosses his body into a river.

• he is then haunted by his actions for the rest of the poem, confesses to priest.

The Lammas hireling terms-

• dramatic monologue.

• assonance

• alliteration

• moon = symbol of witchcraft

• anaphora.

• caesura.

The Deliverer themes-

• Gender discrimination.

• Infanticide.

• connection/ family

• Cyclical nature of suffering

The deliverer summary-

• Two parts of the poem.

• One based in India and depicts the suffering of girls and women.

• Includes infanticide.

• The second part is in America where she has been saved and adopted by new parents.

• As the baby grows up she imagines her origins and the suffering their face.

The deliverer terms-

• Polysyndeton.

• asyndeton

• Diacope

• repetition

A minor role themes-

• The ordinary/ unassuming life

• the isolation/ tedium of life

• chronic illness/ death

• societal discomfort with death

• Hope

A minor role summary-

• Discusses a sick women feeling like she is playing a part in a play.

• she is never the main character and never tries to upset people.

• she is constantly waiting.

• however, she suggests that life is still worth living even if you are not a main character.

A minor role terms-

• Extended metaphor

• Intertextual reference

• assonance

• asyndeton

The Gun themes-

• The intoxication of power

• Dominance

• Man vs nature

The gun summary-

• A gun is brought into a house.

• this changes the feeling of the house and leads to lots of killing.

• however, it also revives a relationship

• Ending in a vivid/ confusing image of king of death meaning hope.

The gun terms-

• Juxtaposition

• symbolism

• phallic imagery

• personification

Chainsaw vs Pampas Grass themes-

• Violence vs quiet persistence

• human technology vs nature

• masculinity vs femininity

Chainsaw vs Pampas grass summary-

• The poem's speaker heads out into his garden, chainsaw in hand, to destroy some ornamental grass.

• Although his powerful chainsaw seems like "overkill," it turns out that even its destructive blade is no match for the grass's persistence: before long, everything the speaker thinks he's killed grows right back again.

• Showing persistence, eventually the man gives up.

Chainsaw vs Pampas grass terms-

• personification

• semantic field

• parallelism

• alliteration

• phallic imagery.

Eat me themes-

• Sexism, objectification and dehumanisation.

• power, abuse and control.

• Feeder/ abusive relationships

Eat me summary-

• The female speaker's partner objectifies, devalues, and abuses her, fattening her up to satisfy his own sexual appetite.

• Her partner can only see the speaker as a sexual object rather than a real person; he treats her as though she's food that exists solely for his consumption.

• She then kills him.

Eat me terms-

• intertextuality, Alice in wonderland.

• Metaphors.

• cliches

• diacope

• anaphora

• heteroglossia- two viewpoints. speakers.

LWHCTD themes-

• Treatment of immigrants

• persecution

• hope/ freedom

• life as a immigrant

LWHCTD summary-

• Starts with their harsh journey to get to the UK.

• They are then put in a Bedford van.

• They are mistreated and struggle once they get to the UK and are viewed as pests.

• They still have dreams/ hopes for a future where they are accepted.

LWHCTD terms-

• Semantic fields- suffering/ hope.

• Epigraph- extract of another poem at the start of a poem- can indicate what the poem is about.

• pathetic fallacy.

Effects summary-

• Explores the poet’s memories of his mother as, after she has died.

• Mother's rings are removed, revealing faded memories.

• He holds her hand and waits to receive her belongings.

• There is a deep sense of regret throughout the poem, with Jenkins wishing he had done more to connect with his mother while she was alive.

• Protagonist's last words are "please don't leave," but he leaves.

Effects terms-

• Parallelism

• Verbal irony

• Symbols (wedding ring)

• Alliteration

• Metaphors

Effects symbols-

• Watch

• Ring

• Bag of effects

Effects themes-

• Loss, memory and absence.

• Mother, children and family dynamics

• Class and generational divide

History themes-

• Fear, uncertainty and connection

• Innocence, curiosity and vulnerability

• Humanity, identity and nature

History summary-

• The speaker, flying kites, is overwhelmed by anxiety and fear following 9/11

• The speaker's son, Lucas, collects seashells and small rocks to escape these worries- symbolising innocence/ curiosity.

• The poem contrasts big-picture concerns with small, tangible experiences.

• It suggests people are not only shaped by their backgrounds/ states and that true connection comes from engaging with nature. Which the speaker fears the loss of.

• The poem questions how people can live with fear, loss, and uncertainty while still focusing on the world's beauty

History terms-

• Refrain

• Structural gaps/ echoes of the sea

• Asyndetic listing

• Parentheses