Poetry flashcards

Mixture of Power and Conflict and Unseen poetry

Unseen paragraph structuring

Intro

F orm + structure

O pening

T echnique

T echnique

E nding

R eason (poet’s viewpoint)

Conclusion

Unseen comparison structure

• Only one line of intro

• 6 quotations (one or two words)

• >5 comparisons (what + how + why)

• Structure not necessary

Poetry comparison structure

Thesis

FOTTER - 1st poem

Comparison of poet’s purposes (e.g. both poems use TECHNIQUE.)

FOTTER - 2nd poem

Conclusion

Techniques

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Alliteration

• Sibilance

• Imagery

• Contrast

• Repetition

Form

• Free verse - freedom

• Iambic pentameter - second syllable stressed

• Trochaic meter - first syllable stressed

• Sonnet - 14 lines, rhyming couplets

Emigree

Female migrant who has to leave their country. The poet isn’t a migrant herself.

1. There once was a country… I left it as a child but my memory of it is sunlight-clear

   • Sounds like a fairy tale story

   • “was” - the country no longer exists like that. She has lost her identity

   • Sunlight is a recurring motif of hope

2. It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants, but I am branded by an impression of sunlight

   • She has migrated to a better place now

   • She has positive memories of her country

   • Carries hope with her - for herself and for her country

   • Branded is a mark of ownership that suggests we can’t escape the past

   • Psychological - we can’t escape experiences of childhood

3. That child’s vocabulary I carried here like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar

   • Her childhood identity has shaped her today

   • Had a child’s innocent view of the world. Assumed the country was happy

   • “hollow” - memories are not full perspective of life

   • “grammar” - structure to her memories. Clings onto the past and her roots since she can’t go back

4. It lies down in front of me, docile as paper; I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.

   • Poet is recreating the city on the paper through the poem

   • Lots of attention to her memories suggesting loneliness - no people from her country with her here

   • Eyes of a doll are blind suggesting false memories

   • Child who has been uprooted. Affected her greatly as a child

   • City doesn’t return the love since she can’t go back

5. My city hides behind me. They mutter death, and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.

   • “they” - tyrants from country or people in her new country

   • Criticises those who rejects migrants

   • She saves her city by holding onto the language. Saving it for herself and others

   • Contrast of shadow and sunlight

   • Her shadow shows how she was shaped by her original upbringing. Need light to create a shadow

6. Form + structure - no rhyme scheme or strict form

   • The final stanza has 9 lines instead of 8 (like previous two)

   • This stresses that the final line is important

   • The last word is sunlight, not death

   • This shows the celebration of culture, allowing migrants since they enrich our society, rather than kill it off

Poppies

A poem about motherhood and the poet discovering her own voice after her son leaves. Originally designed to be a war poem. Poet is a clothes maker, so lots of sowing metaphors.

1. Spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding around your blazer.

   • “red" - poppy, but also blood

   • “spasms” - her pain of him leaving home, or his physical pain of death

   • “blockade” - a pattern on clothes, but also blocking the enemy’s supplies

   • “blazer” - a school uniform, not soldiers. Suggests he is simply leaving home

2. Blackthorns of your hair. All my words flattened, rolled, turned into felt, slowly melting.

   • Shows his relationship with his mother, and how he is desperate to get away

   • “blackthorns” - nature and purity but is also thorny. Suggests he deliberately picked a hairstyle to discourage her from touching him

   • Breaking the bonds of motherhood since he is prickly towards her

   • “melting” - her feelings are melting which suggest tears

3. Threw it open, the world overflowing like a treasure chest.

   • She is letting her son go to find new opportunities and experiences

   • No longer about war, it’s about her son leaving home

4. After you’d gone, I went into your bedroom, released a songbird from its cage.

   • “bird” - he was trapped by the family home, or his protective mother

   • “song” - he is free to find his song, but she is also free to write poems and do what she likes

   • Direct address shows her talking directly to her son

5. The dove pulled freely against the sky, and ornamental stitch, I listened, hoping to hear your playground voice catching on the wind.

   • “dove” - peace. Symbolises that mother and son are both free to do what they like

   • “playground” - she wants young child to return. If it were a war poem, she would want her adult son back, but here she is trying to recapture the memories or the past

6. Form + structure - no rhyme scheme or strict form

   • The mother is exploring her feelings, so it feels like a monologue

Tissue

1. Paper that lets the light shine through, this is what could alter things.

   • “light” - religious symbol of Christianity and Muslim, showing the similarities

   • God’s light shining down

   • Wants to alter reader’s perspective and promote acceptance that we are all equal

2. the back of the Koran, where a hand has written in the names and histories,

   • The tissue represents our skin, not the paper

   • It is our skin that provides us with history and culture

3. Maps too. The sun shines through their borderlines,

   • Another example of something interrupting our view and obscuring what is important

   • “map” - shows divisions of different places suggesting everyone is different

   • Metaphor of light shows everyone is same on both sides and division is an allusion

   • “sun” - symbolises how god sees everyone the same

   • Maps are a fragile construct that we have invented, but don’t actually exist

4. Find a way to trace a grand design with living tissue

   • Building imagery of making a big community with all types of people

   • “grand” - lots of people from different cultures, much bigger than something local

   • “find a way” - not an easy task to bring everyone together

   • “trace” - for a design but also tracing back the family tree. We all come from common ancestors, so we are all the same

5. And thinned to be transparent, turned into your skin.

   • “thinned” - differences between cultures are thin and easily broken

   • “transparent” - helps you understand the person on the other side

   • The poet wants everyone to realise that we are all the same inside

6. Form + structure - no rhyme scheme or strict form

   • Free verse - like natural speech in order to persuade us

   • Each stanza is 4 lines long, other than the last line. This emphasises it

Storm on the Island

Has an extended metaphor of an island facing a storm, but this is a symbolic reference to the political state of Ireland.

1. Storm on the Island

   • Stormont is the parliament in Northern Ireland

   • “island” is a homophone to Ireland

   • It is a political poem about Protestants vs Catholics

   • Although it is seen as a huge storm, it is only on this island. This suggests that the problem can be overcome easily

2. Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate. This wizened earth has never troubled us

   • Sibilance creates a sinister mood. The storm is sinister, but so is the conflict

   • Consonance shows the harsh suffering of the island and people living there

   • “wizened” - starts with wisdom but then ends with age. Symbolises how the political state is damaging society

   • Juxtaposition of building walls that are sinking. Shows how the political war is a mistake and is unnatural

3. So that you listen to the thing you fear, forgetting that it pummels your house too.

   • Direct address shows how the division between Protestant and Catholic is not real. They are the same thing

   • “fear” - both sides have fear in common. If they got rid of the fear of each other, they would live in peace

   • The violence is destroying everyone’s homes and way of life

   • Fricatives show anger at the readers who are only listening to their fear, not to the poet

4. You might think that the sea is company, exploding comfortably down on the cliffs

   • “exploding” - the fight included bombings

   • “comfortably” - suggests they are used to the bombings, but reminding readers that it is unnatural

   • The juxtaposition makes the reader question the fight and its consequences

5. Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

   • “strange” - getting the reader to pause and realise how strange the conflict is

   • “huge nothing” - oxymoron shows how the nothing has a huge impact in their lives

   • The moral lesson is that there is nothing to be afraid of. No reason for the conflict

6. Form + structure - no rhyme scheme or strict form

   • All stanzas are 5 lines, but the last one is only 4

   • It ends in a half rhyme creating unease that the conflict has not been resolved

   • Missing a line to invite readers to create a solution to the conflict and finish the poem

Remains

The poet is telling the reader how experiences like these stay with soldiers after they return.

1. On another occasion, we got sent out

   • In a conversation about his different patrols. This is one of many

   • Soldier has been building up to this conversation and save it till last, since it has affected him the most

   • “sent out” - sounds like a punishment or dismissal. War excludes the soldiers

2. I see every round as it rips through his life-

   • Acts like a volta since “we” shifts to “I” and he blames himself

   • Harsh alliteration of R emphasises the utterly destructive metaphor

   • In present tense showing how he can’t get rid of the memory and is always thinking about it

   • “round” - a bullet, but also represents circularity. He keeps coming back to the memory

3. One of my mates goes by and tosses his guts back into his body.

   • Colloquial - casual language that you use with friends. Shows how he is used to it

   • The casual tone juxtaposes with the horror that the reader would feel

   • Sibilance created a sinister mood

   • The soldier passes it off as normal, but it actually horrifies reader, reminding them of the horror of war and what their soldiers face

4. And the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out -

   • Repetition creates a sense of being overwhelmed. He has built an addiction on drink and drugs

   • “flush out” - in the army it means to expose an enemy. For the reader, it means to get rid of

   • He feels self-disgust and has a harsh judgement on himself

   • Repetitive patterns show how he is trying to cure himself

5. But near to the knuckle, here and now, his bloody life in my bloody hands.

   • Literary allusion to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s bloody hands that represented their guilt in killing the king

   • Suggests the looter’s life was as precious as the king’s, and the consequences will be as tragic for the soldier

   • Using first person singular to show how it is his fault

   • “here and now” - he won’t escape the memory, and it will always be in his mind

6. Form + structure - monologue, but no rhyme scheme

   • In media res - starts in the middle of a conversation

   • Just before the end there is a rhyming couplet showing the looter’s resolved ending

   • The last line doesn’t have rhyme showing the soldier’s unhappy ending

War Photographer

Discusses the moral dilemma of a war photographer.

1. In his dark room he is finally alone with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.

   • “dark room” - the place where photographs were developed, but symbolises that his purpose is dark

   • “finally” - he is pleased to be on his own. The war has made him dislike humanity

   • Each photograph conveys the suffering of the people

   • Sibilance suggests sinister photos but also how he is a public observer and is not interfering

   • “ordered rows” - allusion to death and graves. The photographer is earning a living through the suffering of others

2. A priest preparing to intone a Mass. Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

   • Is a rhyming couplet but only has a half rhyme which unsettles the reader

   • Plosive creates a violent sound that links to how the people have dies

   • Metaphor of him being like a priest, but he is recording death

   • Suggests that God doesn’t exist since mass slaughter isn’t being stopped

   • Listing of conflicts that get bigger and bigger

   • “all flesh is grass” - biblical illusion that is used to excuse death. Suggests that death doesn’t affect the photographer anymore

   • Ironic since he wants the reader to feel shocked. He has sacrificed his humanity to make readers more human

3. A half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries of this man’s wife, how he sought approval.

   • “ghost” - reminds readers that the person in the photo is dead

   • The photographer can only focus on the living wife’s cry. This emphasises her pain

   • “approval” - asking permission to take a photo, but approval isn’t given

   • Moral dilemma of taking the photo to show the horrific war and help prevent it. But also, an intrusion of privacy

4. The reader’s eyeballs prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.

   • Internal rhyme makes it feel jolly. Ironic since the readers should feel shock and horror

   • “prick” - tiny and shows lack of emotion

   • The photo didn’t have the desired effect on the readers so despite his effort, the photographer has no impact

5. From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where he earns his living and they do not care.

   • “impassively” - staring at the place without feeling. Either Britain or the country at war. He can’t make a difference in either country

   • He is destroyed by his role and is now unable to feel pleasure

   • Contrast of him living, but the people dying

6. Form + structure - no rhyme scheme or strict form

   • Switches between trochaic metre and iambic pentameter throughout the poem to unsettle reader

   • Trochaic metre - first syllable is stressed

   • Iambic pentameter - second syllable is stressed

   • Ends with rhyming couplet that is meant to feel complete. But this is ironic since the photographer feels empty

Charge of the Light Brigade

Focuses on celebrating the heroism instead of criticising the generals who sent the order. Following patriotic duty.

1. Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death

   • Anaphora recreates the sound of the horses’ hooves

   • “valley of the death” - literary illusion to the Bible creating a Christian idea that God is on their side and their souls will go to heaven

   • Repetition shows how long the journey is and emphasises the danger since they are exposed for so long

2. Theirs but to do and die.

   • Alliteration and consonance emphasise that death is inevitable

   • “and” - shows there is no escape and they will do both

   • This shows the heroism of the soldiers. They are putting themselves at risk no matter the consequence. They are doing it for their country and duty

3. While all the world wondered.

   • “world” - is stressed so disrupts the dactyls and shows a disruption in poet’s thoughts

   • Quietly questions why the men were sacrificed

   • “wondered” - rhyming with rest of the poem shows how people are wondering why the soldiers were sacrificed for no reason

   • But main message is that their sacrifice was so glorious that people around the world are celebrating it

4. All the world wondered

   • Repetition emphasises the phrase

   • Wants the reader to question it and disapprove

   • It undermines the patriotic view

5. Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade,

   • Anaphora uses imperative verbs that gives the reader an instruction

   • Newspapers at the time had started criticising the instructions, but the poem ends with the celebration, showing how the positive is more important

6. Form + structure - dactyls

   • Song-like which celebrates the heroic sacrifice of the soldiers

   • Dactyls - emphasis the first syllable for every 3

The Prelude

Pantheism is the idea that God is found in everything. It is a celebration of nature.

1. One summer evening (led by her) I found a little boat tied to a willow tree

   • “her” - personification of nature that is helping him to steal the boat. It isn’t his fault

   • “willow” - sadness which hints at his emotions later on. This contrasts with the happy summery metaphor at the start

2. The horizon’s utmost boundary; far above was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

   • “horizon” - looks like a boundary but is actually an allusion. Suggests that all boundaries society places are not real

   • Romantic poets’ views are that life should be focussed on experiences

   • “sky” - offers unlimited possibilities

   • “nothing” - there is no god. Rejecting Christianity since it places boundaries

   • It is an autobiographical poem where he is deciding whether to accept society’s boundaries. Since he steals the boat, it shows how he doesn’t accept them

3. And growing still in stature the grim shape towered up between me and the stars, and still.

   • The mountain is blocking the sky so blocking his freedom

   • It accuses him of committing the crime, and forces him to face consequences

4. My brain worked with a dim and undetermined sense of unknown modes of being.

   • Pantheistic idea that God has been speaking to him and accusing him of taking the boat

   • Conflict since nature also told him to steal the boat

   • Introduces a moral dilemma of who makes the rules and who decides if they should be followed

5. But huge and mighty forms, that do not live like living men, moved slowly through the mind by day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

   • Mountain is now described in plural suggesting the world is full of accusing voices

   • Deeply personal and symbolising his guilt

   • Suggests nature will teach the difference between good and evil so religion isn’t needed

6. Form + structure - no rhyme scheme or strict form

   • One single stanza emphasising freedom

   • No rigid form putting boundaries, allowing poet to be free