Love and relationships poetry

Give the themes and two main lines of argument (and sublines) for When We Two Parted by Lord Byron

Themes: loss and heartbreak, transgression, unrequited love, betrayal (of lover and society)

• Arguably autobiographical, written at the time of one of his scandalous love affairs with Lady Webster; she left him for a man of higher social class

  • Critical of social hierarchy that prevents true love from flourishing, destroyed their love

    • Turns beautiful, life-giving love into something dead and tainted with guilt and shame

  • Critical of conservative social norms that force him to grieve in secret

    • Explores the destructive effects of secretive and forbidden love: becomes poisonous through concealment

      • Unable to express grief and move on healthily, leaving him rigid and stuck within his emotion (cyclical structure)

• Uses poem as a medium to purge his betrayal and resentment; feels abandoned and misled

  • Dangers of unreciprocated and imbalanced love; dangers of overattachment — causes pain and agony

    • Perhaps dangers of love overall; lasting, haunting nature of past relationships — inescapable, warns not to follow whims that lead to pain; love is mourned almost elegiacily, as if a lost life

  • Also a commentary on male patriarchal control of women

    • Feels entitled over her love and behaviours, purges his despair and powerlessness through the poem. The authority he feels is propagated due to the patriarchal society that the narrator exists within (19th century)

      • Although not the author’s intention, a modern readership can acknowledge this and see the consequences — emotional despair and bitterness

Give the structure, form and 5 quotations for When We Two Parted

Structure and form:

• Rigid ABABCDCD rhyme scheme

  • Even language and words are trapped and confined, cannot express fully

  • Never escape the pain

    • Alternative: feels less authentic and instead more measured and controlled, a cultural performance (contextual: emotions were a mark of nobility and sophistication — attempts to villify her due to his bitterness at her rejection)

• Repitition and cyclical structure of “silence and tears”

  • Sibilance creates a hushed tone

  • Suggests that the secrecy is causing his obsession as he cannot purge his emotions; cyclical structure mirrors his emotional entrapment and inability to escape pain

    • Alternative: perhaps ironic as as if he was grieving in secret; may be interpreted as him trying to make her seem bad “vows are all broken”, “light is thy fame” — self victimisation, patriarchal entitlement and control

• Enjambment

  • Creates a sense of disconnectedness and separation, but also ultimately connected through their grief. Society fails to separate them

Language quotes:

• “Silence and tears”

• Motif of death: “Pale grew thy cheek” and “colder thy kiss”

• “knell in my ear”

  • Hyperbaton (inversion of word order) creates a sense of powerlessness and resignation; no control over it

  • Suppressing true love causes the death of the self, she is not truly there anymore

  • Cold, death-like imagery: lost love is like mourning a lost life — heartbreak as a form of psychological death, an ending of a part of himself

    • Alternative: implies that secrecy is fatal and can turn love into something rotting and doomed

  • Bitter because she’s rejected him

• “Dew of the morning” — link to religion and “knell”

  • Biblical symbol of truth, virtue and faithfulness — subverts this to an omen of betrayal

  • Her betrayal is so sinful, it goes against God’s teachings; pompous — patriarchal control, religion as controlling women

• “Sever for years”

  • Didn’t grow apart over time, but terminated immediately

  • Violent, painful imagery

  • Polysyllabic (se-ver) — the phonetic disjunction reflects how the relationship has too been broken

• “Rue thee”, “Why wert thou so dear”?

  • Bitter regret, rhetoric

  • Personal “thee”; knew too well

  • Archaic language; forced to hide it due to society

  • Doesn’t namely address

Give the context of When We Two Parted by Lord Byron

Written at the same time as one of his scandalous love affairs;

• Love affair with Lady Webster — left him for Duke of Wellington (higher social status), resentful and blamed social hierarchy and society

• Notorious for controversial romantic and sexual relationships (eg. cousins, affairs)

• One of major figures in the Romantic movement, reflected in the speaker’s deep emotional suffering and introspection

• Unlike modern day, emotional sensitivity became a mark of sophistication - allowing men to appear noble, deep and morally superior. The poem is not just an expression of grief, but a cultural performance

• Male’s entitlement for women’s emotional affection and behaviours; he purges his grief over his lack of expected control within a patriarchal society

What poems to compare to When We Two Parted?

• Sonnet 29

  • Forbidden love

  • Transgressions

• Neutral Tones

  • Mourning the loss of love like a death

    • Subverts contemporary, stereotypical notion of love as a beautiful, fulfilling life force — holds immense power to destroy and cause great agony

    • Dire consequences of romantic infactuation; loss of identity and the self within relationships

  • Love can be so painful that it distorts ones’ entire outlook of life, creating a miserable and melancholic existence

  • Both speakers victimise themselves and are self pitying — blameful of different things

• Love’s philosophy

  • Male entitlement to women, attempting to manipulate women’s emotions to coerce a relationship// guilt

  • Both reflect 18th century patriarchy

Give the themes and three main lines of argument (and sublines) for Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy

Themes: death of love, pain of love, betrayal of love and life (deception), lasting emotional pain

• Challenges the contemporary stereotypical notion of love as fulfilling and beautiful, argues that love holds more power to destroy than it does to enrich

  • Love as destructive and wounding (illustrating the dangers of overinfactuation)

  • Trapped and unable to escape, don’t engage in romantic whims

• Can distort the way we see the world and our outlook of life

  • Can create a miserable and melancholic existence

  • Becomes blameful of God as believes life is destined for pain

• Apathetic relationships cannot be forced to be harmonious again regardless of how much you try; they must be let go

  • Real love needs true harmony and emotional connection; the emotional instability leaks through the attempt of a rigid structure of the poem

Give the structure, form and 5 quotations for Neutral Tones

Structure and form:

• Cyclical structure of pond

  • Trapped within pain, never move on

  • Pond symbolises emotional stagnancy

• Enjambment

  • Dragging, monotonous passage of time — pain is unrelenting despite all these years, all these lines

• Rigid rhyme scheme ABBA CDDC EFFE, and eye rhymes

  • Rigid rhyme scheme; reflects rigidity of life. Creates an elegaic and mournful tone, mourning lost life and identity

  • However, upon closer introspection, utilises eye rhymes eg. “love and rove”

    • Perhaps indicates that despite attempting to create a strict, rigid form, he fails; revealing how forcing relationships will too fail and must be let go

      • Sonic misalignment, reader encouraged to see loath fits better — speaker still attempts to force the love and relationship, but all attempts are futile as they are fundamentally disharmonious

      • Real love needs true harmony, while this only shows a superficial closeness

        • Believes that true love is an illusion; there are always disharmonious and a lack of emotional connection

Language:

• Monochromatic colour imagery: “Sun was white

  • Symbol of life, but also symbol of masculinity — identity within the relationship

• “Chidden of god”

  • Active verb

  • Tone of purposelessness and hopelessness — no meaning to life, lost hope in God

  • Pain so sever and agonising it must be a punishment from God for trying to force animous and disharmonious relationship

  • Universal malevolence, love is bound to be futile, best to deny it

    • Context: much of writing developed a critical stance towards God — perhaps due to a fruitless love life and miserable existence

    • Christian raised in predominantly Christian society — much of his literature developed a critical stance, portraying worlds where religion is challenged

• Natural imagery of seasons: “greyish leaves” “Winter”

  • Death of nature reflects dying relationship

  • Natural part of life, pessimistic — blames God

    • Context: influenced by romanticisim (as seen through natural imagery), but regarded as a realist poet influenced by the later realism movement; attempts to depict human experience in a more truthful and realistic manner

• “Starving sod”

  • sibilance

  • suffocating, drained of joy and life

  • painful suffering

What poems to compare to Neutral Tones?

• When We Two Parted

  • Mourning the loss of love like a death

    • Subverts contemporary, stereotypical notion of love as a beautiful, fulfilling life force — holds immense power to destroy and cause great agony

    • Dire consequences of romantic infactuation; loss of identity and the self within relationships

• Winter Swans

  • Loss, nature

  • Reconciliation and trust in nature and the world vs giving up and universal malevolence

• Love’s philosophy

  • Nature, dysfunctional romance

  • Trust in nature and world vs universal malevolance

Give the themes and two main lines of argument (and sublines) for Winter Swans by Owen Sheers

Themes: natural, enduring, trust in the world, reconciliation, authentic relationship that experiences struggles, space

Love is a part of the world’s natural rhythms, trust in relationships as nature intends for things to be in pairs, it will draw relationships back naturally, without force

• Love is a part of nature, so conflicts and difficulties are destined to occur, and this is natural

  • Take guidance from nature; we have become disconnected, eg. social media

• Encourages optimism and trust; as nature brings things back, no need to force

  • Importance of space and giving relationships time

Give the structure, form and 5 quotations for Winter Swans

Structure and form:

• Enjambment, free verse

  • Reflects emotional overflow; creates a sense of imbalance and instability within relationship, unresolved

    • Encourages patience and perseverance through natural turbulence

  • Alternative: shows that their relationship, like the lines of the poem, continues even when words fail. Space and time even when words aren’t coming, as they are innately together

• Volta;

  • When swans came and focused on nature, reflecting nature

• Mirrored ending where they’re walking side by side

  • Shows that it is likely to change and repeat again, but this is natural and that’s okay

  • As long as they continue to walk next to each other and wait for each other, their relationship will remain

• At end, final couplet

  • Reconciliation: effects of waiting, space

    • Mimicking nature “swans” and trust

Language:

• Semantic field of pairings

  • “two days of rain”

  • two swans

  • “pair of wings”

  • Nature wants things to be in pairs; trust in nature, its on their side, will gently guide and support couples to be together

• Pathetic fallacy and use of contrasts

  • Weather as a symbol of conflict, emotional heaviness and gloom

  • Contrasts: “clouds and rain” to “afternoon light”

  • “dark water” “stilling water”

  • Relationships are ever-changing and fluctuating, not to be feared

• Extended metaphor of swans

  • “Hands swum the distance between us”

  • Personification; symbol of unity, partnership and faithfulness

  • “Halved” “Paused” before “returning”

  • Mimick and follow the natural ebbs and flows of nature

• Lake

  • Acts as a symbol for emotional depth and reveals why relationship is worth saving

  • “Dark water” →can’t see future fear and uncertainty — danger of drowning, however they persevered

  • “Stilling water” → clear, see through, hopeful and reassured

  • Not quite still yet, shows that there will always be times of uncertainty and that’s okay :)

What poems to compare to Winter Swans?

• Neutral Tones

• Walking away

  • Nature + trust in nature

  • Natural cycles and letting go, but allowing to come back

Give the themes and two main lines of argument (and sublines) for Love’s Philosophy by Percy Shelley

Themes: nature, romantic longing, manipulation, anti-society, persuasion, the divine, unity

• Appears innocent and playful

  • Acts actually as a structured syllogism; attempts to manipulate and persuade lover

    • Reflection of patriarchal 19th century control of women; manipulative attempt to persuade — sinister and calculating

    • Intense infatuation and desire is merely a means to control

    • Male entitlement: believes that he sets the laws of nature; declining him is a rejection of laws of nature

• Critical of humans and human nature

  • A mediation on conservative society that views sexual relationships as taboo, when actually it’s natural

    • Criticism of the societal, legal and religious restrictions on sexuality and love, regarding them as unnatural — advocacy of free love and rejected Victorian-era monogamy ; love should be free and not confined, just like nature

Give the structure, form and 5 quotations for Love’s Philosophy

Structure and form:

• Dramatic monologue; arguably a syllogism (structured philosophical argument)

  • Voiceless adressee

  • Male entitlement under patriarchy

  • Laid out in a way that seems irrefutable

• Enjambment

  • She cannot get a word in, only what he says matters

• ABABCDCD rhyme scheme and trochaic metre

  • Hypnotic, dreamy feel — attempts to seduce

  • Measured and calculated

Language:

• Personification of nature, lexical field of physical interaction

  • “Mingle”, “Mix”, “kiss”, “clasp”

  • Allusions to sex; compares sex to the way natural elements interact in attempts to seduce

  • Nature and man are the same thing; united by love

    • “Fountains mingle with river”

    • “Winds of heaven mix”

      • Better job at being people; failings of society due to rigid constraints (contextual: free love, non-monogamy, sees marraige as bondage, six children, multiple wives)

      • Alludes to a sense of spiritual and emotional connection

• Lexical field of water imagery

  • “Ocean”, “River”, “fountains”

  • Different names for the same thing

  • Same as humanity; we are all one and the same united, just different names

• All allusions to nature “mountains” “sea” “ocean”, are unmodified and lack descriptive clutter

  • Connote to a sense of purity and innocent love

  • Humanity has become disconnected from this purity (written during industrial revolution, had a large impact on his work — humanity has become disconnected, destroying true humanity and love (poor standard of living, destruction of nature)

  • Expelled at Oxford for producing a pamphlet about atheism; political oppression and restriction of human freedom

    • “Sister- flower, disdained brother”

• Allusions to “heaven”

  • Interesting, as a atheist and anti-Christian

  • Reflection on attempting to deceive and persuade

• As poem goes on, kinaesthetic imagery becomes more demanding and authoritative

  • Imperatives “see”

  • And shift from more passive “mingle” and “mix” to “kiss” “clasp” etc.

  • Shows that speaker’s mask is slipping

• Archaic language

  • Sounds more poetic and sincere

  • Blend of this and philosophical, transgressive visions of the divine suggests the timelessness and eternal nature of love and human connection

• Rhetorical questions “Why not i with thine?”, “If thou kiss not me?”

  • Just wants to control her actions and her choices

  • Desire and longing is but a product of his want for control

Give the themes and two main lines of argument (and sublines) for Letters from Yorkshire by Maura Dooley

• Love and relationships can fulfil and support one’s life; provide support through hardship

• Physical distance doesn’t need to create emotional detachment — meaningful human connection is not weakened by distance

  • However, requires and thrives off of effort and communication

Give the structure, form and 5 quotations for Letters from Yorkshire

Structure and form:

• Cross stanza enjambment

  • Symbolises how words and communication allows them to pass through the “snow” (represented by physical white blocks between stanzas) and overcome difficulties in the relationship

• Free verse — closeness

Language:

• Motif of nourishment

  • “planting potatoes” “feeding words” “pouring air and light into an envelope”

  • Relationships need constant ‘feeding’ → communication

  • Nourishment that the love brings to their lives and themselves

  • Chremamorphisised into a plant (needing air and light)

    • “Pouring air and light into an enevelope”

      • Passive, stationary state → survival is dependent on his nourishing words

• Recurring use of gerunds (-ing words)

  • Creates a sense of activity and continuous movement

  • “Digging” “planting” “feeding” “clearing”

  • Association of love with labour; provides purpose and meaning to ones’ labour and life

• “Our souls tap out messages across icy miles”

  • Spiritual connection overcomes physical

• “Knuckles singing”

  • Personification

  • Childlike joy

  • Converts harsh labour into something joyful and loving

What to compare letters from yorkshire with?

• Sonnet 29

• Love’s philosophy

• Winter Swans

Give the themes and three main lines of argument (and sublines) for Sonnet 29 by Elizabeth Barret-Browning

Themes: nature, transgression, sexuality, desire + longing, societal critique, extreme

• Love as a powerful, suffocating force — desperation and extensive yearning for lover

  • Interpreted as autobiographical

  • Forbidden to marry, societal constrains catalysed passion — restrictions fail to prevent love and ironically heighten emotions

• The excessive desire caused by constraints can serve to distort reality and alter perceptions — interestingly not negative as shows nothing is as good as the real thing

  • So idealised and romanticised

  • Spent much of her time in doors due to lifelong debilitating illness — hours alone, romanticising and yearning

• Transgressive of societal norms; protofeminist and celebratory of women’s sexuality as natural and pure, goes against society

Give the structure, form and 5 quotations for Sonnet 29 by Elizabeth Barret-Browning

Structure + form:

• Sonnet

  • Archaic structure, alongside archaic language “thee”, timeless nature of love — perseveres for centuries against constraints

• Adapts form to shift volta early

  • Connotes urgency, desperation

• Cyclical structure “I think of thee!” - “I do not think of thee - i am too near thee”

  • Satisfaction, achieved

  • Despite heightened, real thing is always better than fantasies

  • Encourages rebellion — allow you to free yourself from your desires

  • Dominates her life and mind

Language:

• Personification of her thoughts, simile and extended metaphor of nature “twine and bud” wild vines”

  • Bud connotes life, positive

  • Suffocating, invasive, strangling — big overcoming feelings

  • Dependency on lover “trunk”

• “Broad leaves” “Nought to see”

  • Obscures reality, heightens infactuation

• Imperatives “will not have my thoughts” “drop”

  • Protofeminist, powerful woman

  • Desperation

• “O my palm tree”

  • Use of apostrophe, personification — heightens intimacy and immediacy

  • Palm tree — biblical symbol of guidance and success

  • Wants God to intervene so that they can be together

  • Alternative: biblical references portrays sexuality as pure and holy, biblical purpose

    • “bare trunk” — phallic, erotic imagery; transgressive

• When they are together, it brings a sense of rejuvination and frees her from her dominant “vines” — solidity and comfort

  • “New air”

  • Solidity of trunk

What to compare Sonnet 29 by Barret-Browning to?

• Porphyria’s lover

• Singh song!

• Love’s philosophy

  • Nature

  • Desire

  • Sexuality

Give the themes and two main lines of argument (and sublines) for Farmer’s Bride by Charlotte Mew

Themes: society, patriarchy, control, imbalance, nature, longing and desire

Creates a dysfunctional and unrequited relationship, depicting a love founded upon patriarchal corruption and power imbalance

• Displays how patriarchy corrupts all relationships, destroying and ravaging all love

  • Lack of choice fails to control and instead propogrates rebellion and resentment — no one is happy

• Power imbalance

  • Ridicules this and shows the corruption

Give the structure, form and 5 quotations for The Farmer’s Bride by Charlotte Mew

Structure and form:

• Iambic tetrameter and third person pronouns “they”

  • Wider society are to blame for their complicitness in this injustice

  • Required collective collaboration to uphold these harmful, exploitative systems

    • Lexical field of hunting

    • “Chased” Caught”

• Dramatic monologue - alongside antonomasia “bride” — defined by him

  • Voicelessness, powerlessness

• Stanzas are of irregular length and irregular number of symbols

  • Seems like regular poem from title, but wanders off into irregularities

  • Patriarchy is expected to work but does not, causes dysfunction that is ignored

• Irregular rhyme, no fixed pattern, a few couplets

  • Attempts at relationship but ultimately fails as it cannot be forcedI

Language:

• Natural imagery and zoomorphia to present patriarchy and gender constraints as punishing and natural

  • Pattern of similes to compare to animals throughout

    • “Frightened fay”

    • “Flying like a hare”

    • “Like a mouse”

    • Predatory, vulnerability, no power — infantilisation, no authority

      • Her rebellion is a symbol of a desire for freedom; portrays patriarchy as a prison

    • Moreover, not humans — alienated from society if they refuse to submit

      • Sense of alienation; Mew believed to be a lesbian — felt out of place within heteronormative romance and therefore society, feels unnatural to her

    • “t’wasnt a woman” “all things human”

      • Paradox; patriarchy doesn’t make sense

    • How society defines women and demands of her

• Antonomasia - “chose a maid”, “abed”

  • Active verb, objectification

  • Sexual entitlement

Parallels to:

• Beasts in stall” look round at her call

  • Relates more to the animals in captivity than other humans

  • Bred to produce calves for food; parallels how she is expected to bear children — dehumanising nature of patriarchy

  • Horrors and sickening nature

  • Property, confinement, control

• Colloquial speech

  • Lack of intelligence, ridicules — only knows farming yet has complete power of her

  • “ ‘mong” “us was wed”

• Imagery of attic

  • Familiar character trope of ‘madwomen’ in attic, archetypal Victorian trope

  • Symbolises the repression of desire and repression of women

  • “alone” - “but a stair” between them

    • Oddly threatening and ominous

    • Alludes at sexual abuse of which patriarchy facilitates

    • Descent into madness with repitition of “hair” “eyes” — vulnerability

What to compare The Farmer’s Bride to?

• Porphyria’s Lover

• Sonnet 29

Give the themes and two main lines of argument (and sublines) for Porphyria’s Lover by Robert browning

• Critical of overinfactuation and obsession with romantic relationships and the desire to love; this intense desire can cause distortion of the mind where passion becomes obsession and control

  • Warning against romantic conventions

• Dangers of extreme desire to control and possess lover

  • Preserve her innocence from anyone else — not romantic, its possession

    • Protofeminist

      • Poem is used to explore the danger of patriarchal values that plagued Victorian society

      • Women’s sexuality is controlled and punished

      • Relationships are created as unequal and not romantic

      • Porphyria is a victim of a patriarchal society: he kills her out of desire to control and possess her completely

        • Killed for her sin; question the justice in religious patriarchy

• Marxist interpretation

  • Love and relationships are shaped by and ultimately dominated by societal inequality and class power

  • Porphyria as a symbol of class and how the class hierarchy dominates love and relationships, preventing true love from flourishing

  • Class and social snobbery has warped her perception of him, meaning although she loves him, the class system has caused her to ‘scorn him’

  • Her death is a symbol of inevitable marxist revolution

    • He refuses to conform and punishes lover for not living and loving as her true self

Give the structure, form and 5 quotations for Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning (and context)

Structure and form:

• ABABB rhyme scheme throughout one long stanza

• Irratic indentations

  • Speaker attempts to end on a rhyming couplet; symbolises his attempt to force the love — this does not succeed, showing that love cannot be forced through control and possession

  • One long stanza may symbolise a loss of control and speaker’s insanity as not the quatrain form that is expected from ABABB rhyme scheme — asymmetry reflects irrationality

  • ABABB is unbalanced, just like power dynamic

• Dramatic monologue

  • Voiceless addressee; represents Victorian womens’ voicelessness in relationships

  • Allows the poet to distance himself from speaker to explore speaker's corrupt psychology while exploring taboo Victorian controversies — challenges ideas and encourages questioning

• Exclamatory sentence structural end

  • “And God has not said a word!”

Language:

• Opening is typical of romantic conventions (nature, strong emotions, focus on the self)

  • Interestingly subverts these conventions to reveal a darker side of romantic love, illustrating that it exists within society but is not spoken about — passion becomes obsession and control; romantic focus turns into distortion of the mind

  • Uses the familiar romantic framework to critique excessive emotions and overpowering passion that can catalyse irrational and insane decisions, typical of romantic conventions

  • Pathetic fallacy: “sullen wind” “rain”

    • Reflects speaker’s internal turmoil and emotional state

    • Contrast Porphyria “blaze up”

    • Reflects a lack of control over nature — similar lack of control over Porphyria; emotional distress

      • Context: infactuation and obsession is a product of his belief and entitlement over her sexuality and choices — insanity over his absence and control over power he believes he is entitled to, attempts to reclaim this by ultimately killing her. Dangers of patriarchy

• “Tore the elm tops down for spite”

  • Elm tops, allusion to Greek mythology

  • Symbol of death, entrance to the underworld + used for making coffins

  • Foreshadow: reveals that her death was a result of him “spiting” her for her uncontrollable nature — blames her, she tore down her own “elm tops”

• “Soiled gloves” + “yellow hair”

  • Allusion to fallen woman

  • Dirty, stained, disgraced

  • Transgressed social ideas of purity by taking a lover before marriage; sex before pleasure — hypocrisy

    • Expected to wear hair up in public; reserved for private intimacy

    • Shocked Victorian audience with her sexual suggestiveness and brazenness — signal for intimacy and passion

    • Ironically her hair becomes an instrument of her own death — sexual response is a form of bondage and slavery. Killed by her own sexuality and femininity

  • Encourages questioning — good character, “blaze up”

• “gay feast”, “that all it scorned at once is fled” “pride and vainer ties”

• “too weak” “set struggling passion free”

  • Reputation and social class

  • Resentment stems from social inequality, need to overcome this through absolute regain of control

    • Marxist interpretation: Porphyria as a symbol of class, preventing healthy relationships and instead propagating an intense, unnatural festering of emotions that then produce immense desire that leads in tragedy

    • Only named person, speaker is defined by her, sits at home alone

    • Her death is a symbol of the power of the masses, who can overthrow their social superiors and will once

• “And yet God has not said a word!”

  • Critical and questioning of Christian morality

  • Encourages to accept the status quo and Great Chain of Being — this will eventually propagate violence and injustice

  • Patriarchy allows men as gods

• “As a shut bud that holds a bee”

  • Shut bud, not fully flowered, mature

  • Preserving her sexually

Context:

• Ran away and married Elizabeth Barret-Browning against parental wishes

  • Significantly higher social class due to slave labour sugar plantations

    • Forbade marraige due to need to control family’s reputation

• One of original titles for poem: madhouse cells

Poems to compare Singh Song to?

• Sonnet 29

• Love’s Philosophy

Give the themes and three main lines of argument (and sublines) for Singh Song by Daljit Nagra

Themes: transgressive love, celebration of culture, differences, comedy, modern, romantic love, passion, identity, oneness

• Boundaries and constraints

• Trangressive love; love surpasses suppresses norms

  • Just catalyses secrecy

• Love is a powerful force that can drive to shape and transform society into a freer, happier world shaped by love

• We are all more similar than we realise; love as a sense of oneness and togetherness

  • (Love’s philosophy)

Give the structure, form and 5 quotations for Singh Song by Daljit Nagra

• Motif of secrecy

  • “Lock” “Moon” “Midnight”

  • Alone and hidden from the world

• “Down the whispering stairs”

  • Personification and sibilance, hushed

  • Forced into hiding, society and voices overshadow relationship

• Anonomasia, repetition of “baby”

  • Affectionate, loving; lighthearted, love can still be fun and sweet

• Repetition of “shoppers”, 2nd person pronoun “yoo” creates distance between speaker and society

  • Speaker is alienated from society

  • Rejected from the British, but also from his own British-Indian identity due to his lack of desire to work and unconventional relationship

• Assonance mimics the musical nature of Punjabi accent; effortless integration of English and Punjabi phonetics

  • Symbolises the message that despite cultural differences and societal expectations, love is a powerful force that can defy these constraints and allow one to create a new identity and belonging for oneself

• “Lemons are limes”, “tartan sari”

  • Alliteration; attempting to be something he is not

  • Interplay of British and Punjabi culture; juxtaposition but also a symbol of how cultures can effortlessly integrate

Form:

• Dramatic monologue, free verse, lines at varying lengths

  • Excessive overflow of passion

    • however she speaks at end

  • Not conforming to rules of poetry either, just free

• Irregular rhyme scheme and repetition of “baby”, along with title

  • Gives a playful song-like quality

  • Purpose of life is to love (and be happy) and to not care about society

• Structurally ends with short rhyming couplets in the nightime

  • Shows that actually they are and can be harmonious

Context:

• 2nd generation immigrant, doesn’t want to disappoint his parents

  • Lexical field of money “charge”, “cost”, “come to”

  • Reflects how his pressures to live up up to bringing material wealth and success to family due to the sacrifices his family has made infiltrates and impacts his love

    • Feels a lack of identity

    • Love as escapism

• Constraints of society, cultural clash

  • Catalyses desire

Give the themes and three main lines of argument (and sublines) for Before You Were Mine by Carol Ann Duffy

• Loss of relationship, critique of society

  • Appears as envy but is actually just longing to be with her

• Unconventional relationship; ironic as she appears more to be the mother than the daughter — shows how she futilely attempts to regain power over her loss and allow their relationship and love to transcend the norms that has diminished her mother

• Admiration and idolisation of her previous transgression of norms

  • Now been tainted by society; admiration is soiled by a longing

Give the structure, form and 7 quotations for Before You Were Mine by Carol Anne Duffy and context

• “Marliyn.”

  • Caesura

  • Connotations to sexual, admiration

  • However, suicide — didn’t end well, destroyed by society

• “Hands in high-heeled red shoes, relics” (contextual links)

  • Colour imagery, sexual, death of youth

  • Attempts to mimic her

  • “Love bites”

    • Takes on an ironic paternal tone

    • Attempts to take power over the loss of her mother; comes across unnatural and uncomfortable, reflects her difficulties with this

• Loud, possessive yell, best one eh?

  • Synecdoche — consumes her whole life

  • — dramatic monologue, voiceless

    • Rhetorical question, purges her guilt

    • Forgives her for changing and blames society — encourages empathy and understanding for parents

• Synaesthesia through “clatters” “see” “clear as scent”

  • Her mother’s memory consumes every aspect of the daughter’s existence

  • Alternative: desparate longing

• Motif of dance

  • Onomatopoeia “cha cha cha!”

  • “I knew you would dance like that”

  • Trisyllabic meter creates a waltzy feel

• “Teach me the steps on the way home from mass”

  • Dance connotes to spontaneity and freedom and creates tension between this and conforming to society

  • Individuality and pursuit of selfhood

    • Mother was Roman Catholic

• “Wrong pavement”

  • Wrong choices

    • Reflected further through rigidity of quatrains and rhythmic variation of metre

Form + structure:

• Trisyllabic metre and free verse!!!

  • Creates a waltzy dance like feel

  • Reflects tension between individuality and pursuit of selfhood verses rigidity of conforming to society

• Free verse reflects freedom vs uniform quatrains

  • Constraints of motherhood

• Cyclical structure of pavement

  • Trapped remembering it

Contextually:

• From mean times

  • Natural part of life and love

  • Formal and regular quintains — reflect the regularity of time and how it inevitably comes to us all and shapes our relationships

• Societal expectations of women and mothers

What poems to compare to mother any distance?

• Follower

• Eden Rock

• Mother any distance maybe

Give the themes and three main lines of argument (and sublines) for Eden Rock by Charles Causely

• Depicts parental relationships as divine and perfect or alternative: paradise can be found in ordinary, simple love

  • And therefore they are enduring and transcendent; they will never stop guiding us (in the same way a God would) even through death

• Explores the fears and incompleteness of losing parents

  • Despite this, it’s still a natural process

Give the structure, form and quotations for Eden Rock by Charles Causely and context

• Biblical motifs and allusions

  • Title

  • Oxymoron, heaven and earth; heaven can be found on Earth through love

• “colour of wheat” “take on the light”

  • Christian idolatry, angelic imagery

  • Connotations to nourishment

  • God, guidance, guardian angel

• “Lit by three suns”

  • Holy trinity

  • Divine, transcends norms

• Juxtaposes colloquial everyday objects

  • “HP sauce bottle” “thermos”

  • Paradise can be found in the everyday

• Natural imagery

  • “Stream path”

    • Flowing, life goes on

    • Symbolises gap between life and death

  • “Grass”

    • Death as a natural and comfortable part of life

  • No rigid rhyme scheme, caesura, enjambement and iambic pentameter creates a calm and conversational tone

• Fearful; brings him back to a childlike state — natural flow of time

  • “I had not thought that it would be like this”

  • One line on its own separated

  • Childish, monosyllabic

  • However, last line in perfect iambic pentameter — rejoining them encourages not to fear

• Gentle imperatives “beckon” “call”

  • Imagery of guidance

    • Everlasting and enduring nature of love, it never leaves you even in death

    • Brings him back to a childlike nature

Form:

• Use of half rhymes

  • Incompleteness

• Five quatrains, last line detattched

  • Stream path is the boundary between life and death

• Lyric poem

Context:

• Nursed his mother for 6 years when she was dying, had a lot of time to contemplate death

• Never married — suggests the reason for the intense closeness and prioritisation of parental relationship

• Father died when he was younger, suggesting the closeness of his mother

Give the themes and three main lines of argument (and sublines) for Follower by Charles Causely

Themes: role reversal, natural cycle of life, parental, celebration of culture, inferiority, power imbalance

• Admiration and idolisation of older generation due to their capabilities and power

• Power imbalance; creates a sense of inferiority due to the pressure of expectation and following in footsteps

  • Shows that we can still be skilled and talented in our own expertise

  • Take admiration, but don’t have to follow rigidly

• Role reversal + changing relationships, cyclical narrative

  • Time weakens the people we once saw as powerful

  • Ambiguous ending

  • Difficulty taking responsibility

Also a love for traditional Irish life and agriculture, pondering on what has been lost due to mechanisation

Give the structure, form and quotations for Follower by Seamus Heaney

• Nautical language to employ an extended metaphor of father to be both the captain and the ship

  • “Shoulders globed”

    • Elongation of the vowel sound in assonant “shoulders globed” accentuates the size and broadness

    • Lexical choice of “globed” acts as a mythological allusion to the mythological figure Titan, tasked with holding up the heavens and the Earth — allusion suggests the raw power and God like ability of the father

  • “Full sail strung”, “wake”

    • Takes the wind, takes the son’s problems and continues to direct him in the right direction

    • Wake suggests harsh ocean

• “Expert.” Caesura

  • Perhaps jealousy

  • Tone of finality, no room for discussion

  • Encourages reflection

• Contrasts to lexical field struggle through “tripping, falling, stumbling”

  • Contrasts perfection

  • Not as good a farmer

  • However, use of enjambment mimic the rolling of sod

  • Is as perfect as the father, just in a different way; importance of carrying ones’ culture in their own way: him by reflecting the virtues of rural Irish life (much of his poetry explores Irish culture)

• “Rode me on his back”

  • Lexical inversion, intimate imagery

  • Passive syntactic arrangement

  • Father is central to his world view, everything is in relation to him

  • But also dependency, fear of having to take responsibility and grow

• From “stumbled” to “stumbling”

  • Role reversal and changing relationship

• “will not go away”, volta at “but today”

  • Sudden shift of time

  • Ambiguous ending, monsyllabic, childlike

  • Yearning to return when wasn’t responsible

Form + structure:

• Rigid quatrains, repetitive ABAB rhyme scheme

  • Rigidity, perfection

• However, interestingly when there is a shift to “I” at the beginning of the last three stanzas, employs half rhymes

  • Feelings of inferiority, imperfection

• Enjambment

  • Mimicks his father’s perfect rolling of sod

• Iambic tetrameter

  • Breathless, quickens the pace

Contextually:

• Much of his poetry explores Irish culture

  • Importance of their own heritage and exploring this through the older generation, before it is too late and traditions die with them

• Carry on heritage in own way; not an Irish farmer but writes Irish literature — enjambment mimicking the turning of sod

Give the themes and three main lines of argument (and sublines) for Climbing my grandfather by Andrew Waterhouse

• Admiration; older generation are powerful and strong

• Importance of relationships with the older generation

  • “Nourishing”, don’t let knowledge die with them

• There are difficulties due to vastness, intimidating nature as a result of generational divide, however pursuing this is still so worth it

Give the structure, form and quotations for Climbing my grandfather by Andrew Waterhouse

• Extended metaphor of mountain (+ one long stanza)

  • Monumental natural figure — environmentalist, admired nature around him

  • Vastness, scary; distant and dwarfs others

    • Obstacle, immovable

  • Dominates landscapes

• Lexical field of climbing

  • “Do it free”

    • Risk and fear, but encourages

• However, “reach the summit” “clouds and birds circle”

  • Environmentalist, natural imagery, solace from daily grounded life

• “Drink among teeth”

  • Semantics of nourishment, consumption of wisdom (experience)

• Paradoxes through “warm ice.” and “easy scramble”

  • Caesura after warm ice, encourages reflectiob

    • Paradoxical — shows that misconceptions have changed, what appeared to be cold like ice is actually warm and comforting

    • Enjoy the struggle

• “splintered” “earth-stained” hands

  • Yet, they “give good purchase”

    • Divide, distance

    • Sacrifice and hard work

    • Grounded

• “climbing has its dangers” declarative

  • Learning too much, breaks the illusion

    • Warm ice — melting down the illusion of perfection

Structure and form:

• One long stanza (alongside mountain)

  • Reliability, stability, support

• Free verse and enjambment

  • Speaker’s pursuit of natural closeness and comfort, attempting to mimic a natural conversational tone

  • Also represents a breathless climb

Context:

• Environmentalist, masters in environmental science

• Poet struggled with depression and mental health

  • Importance of familial relationships to almost take us away from this and relieve it

Give the themes and three main lines of argument (and sublines) for Walking Away by Cecil Day-Lewis

Themes: growing older, pain, natural

• Explores the emotional turbulence and pain changing relationships and children growing up brings

  • Poet was distant throughout child’s childhood (boarding school) — encourages cherishing of childhood

• Shows that change is a natural process — may be painful but is completely necessary

Give the structure, form and quotations for Walking Away by Cecil Day-Lewis

• “Leaves just turning”

  • Autumn, changing

  • Pathetic fallacy — death

  • Afraid change will lead to the death of the relationship

• “Like a satellite wrenched from its orbit” “Drifting away”

  • Violence and anguish — blames the world and the natural cycle of life in a way to numb this pain

  • Juxtaposition wrenched vs drifting — gets easier after initial pain

    • Satellite connotes to an idea of dependency

• Space imagery and “wilderness”

  • Dangerous, new

  • Need to protect the child

  • Published in 1960s during 1960 space race — prominent in media, unsettling time — new and scary

• “Like a wing seed loosened from its parent stem”

  • Natural imagery, natural process

  • Purpose of life

  • Potential for new growth, optimistic

  • Perhaps parent holding it back

    • Purpose is to nurture until they are ready to fly

• “Scorching ordeals” “Fire ones’ irresolute clay”

  • Biblical reference to God making people out of clay

  • not fully formed yet

  • After hardships (fire) solidifies and forms its shape, becomes stronger

    • Transformative

    • Father was a vicar — relationship as not just natural but also God’s plan

• “Love is proved in the letting go”

  • Declarative

  • Form and structure: first and last lines in iambic pentameter

Form and structure:

• ABACA rhyme scheme

  • Sense of incompleteness

    • Reflects instability and emotional struggle of separation

    • However, repeated A rhyme keeps returning, shows that love is enduring despite change

    • However, A rhyme always ends on vowel sound, creating a mournful elegaic tone

• Enjambment

  • Emotional overflow

  • Physical act of walking away

  • Creates a gentle and reflective tone; life continues to go on despite hardships and separation

• Cyclical use of iambic pentameter in first and last line”

  • “Love is proved in the letting go”

    • Perfect iambic pentameter

    • Mimics steady heartbeat, shows father’s constant love throughout

    • Cyclical nature shows how he has resolved his upset, pain does not last forever

Context:

• Difficult relationships with son

  • Sent to boarding school

  • Struggled with alcoholism, left their mother which affected the family dynamics

• Father was a vicar

  • Biblical messages shaped the way he viewed family

Give the themes and three main lines of argument (and sublines) for Mother any Distance by Simon Armitage

• Maternal bond is innate

  • Strength and flexibility

  • Love endures even when physical distance grows

  • Love that lasts is love that evolves

• Love as a selfless force that supports growth:

  • Love requires allowing space to grow; doesn’t trap and possess but is instead is empowering

    • Parents demonstrate by trusting children and giving them space to grow

Give the structure, form and quotations for Mother any Distance by Simon Armitage

• Space imagery to reflect uncertainties

  • “Space walk” and “endless sky”

  • New uncertainties

• Recurring motif of distance

  • Lexical field of length “metre, distance, acres, centimetres, length”

  • Growing physical distance

  • However, given in the context of their collaboration together, linked by the spool of tape

    • Symbolises how like the spool of tape will lengthen and shorten — distance between them will physically vary, but emotional connection will prevail

• “Spool of tape”

  • Symbolises umbilical chord

• “Fall or fly”

  • Fricatives

  • Imagery of flight

  • Kite line is resonant of umbilical cord

  • Kite flying off, cutting of umbilical cord

  • May be painful and difficult but must occur for child to grow and fly — real love doesn’t trap

• “Anchor. Kite”

  • Ceasura, abrupt cutting of chord

  • Support vs freedom, still allow

Structure and form:

• Broken sonnet

  • Adds fifteenth line

  • Shows that rigidity needs to break

  • Child growing up and gaining a new identity

• No rigid rhyme structure, instead there are many internal and slant rhymes

  • Sonic harmony communicates that they still remain in sync even though there’s no rigidity

Context:

• From ‘book of matches’

  • Poems short enough to read before match burns out

  • Fear of fleeting relationship and it burning away

  • Explores loving, familial relationships