Grade 11 Poetry Study: Selected Poems and Literary Devices

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical context, poetic forms, and figurative language across six poems: 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', 'Those Winter Sundays', 'We Wear the Mask', 'Eating Poetry', 'Da Same Da Same', and 'A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning'.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) mentored by Siegfried Sassoon, known for depicting trench and gas warfare in poems like "Anthem for Doomed Youth"; killed in action at age 25.

Passing-bells

Church bells rung at the time of a person's death or funeral; in "Anthem for Doomed Youth", Owen questions their absence for soldiers who "die as cattle".

Hasty orisons

Rushed prayers for the dead; an archaic term used by Owen to show how careless last rites are when mimicked only by rapid rifle fire.

Pall

A heavy cloth spread over a coffin; in "Anthem for Doomed Youth", this missing cloth is replaced by "the pallor of girls' brows".

Volta (Anthem for Doomed Youth)

The structural turning point of the sonnet occurring at line 8 ("And bugles calling for them from sad shires"), shifting focus from battlefield violence to mourning communities at home.

Robert Hayden

American poet (1913–1980) raised by foster parents in Detroit who became the first African American appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1976.

Blueblack cold

An invented compound word describing morning cold so extreme, dark, and bruised that it felt like a visible colour.

Banked fires

Fires covered with ashes to keep the coals burning slowly overnight so they can be rekindled the next day.

Chronic angers

Ongoing, constant tension and emotional conflict in the speaker's childhood home, persisting over a long period.

Offices (Those Winter Sundays)

Duties, services, or acts of quiet devotion performed for family, rather than a physical place of work.

Austere

Strict, plain, and severe, lacking luxury, comfort, or outward show of emotion.

Indifferently

Speaking or behaving without care, warmth, or interest, reflecting the speaker's youthful emotional distance from his father.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

African American poet, novelist, and playwright (1872–1906) born in Ohio to formerly enslaved parents, renowned for works written in both formal English and African American dialect.

Rondeau

A strict French poetic form of 15 lines that uses only two rhymes throughout and incorporates a short refrain repeated three times.

Refrain (We Wear the Mask)

The recurring line "We wear the mask", which appears three times to reinforce the exhausting, deliberate performance of concealing inward suffering.

Guile

Cunning, craftiness, or clever deception; described by Dunbar as a "debt" that forces marginalized people to smile falsely.

Myriad subtleties

Countless small, delicate adjustments of expression required to maintain a deceptive, smiling outward facade.

Over-wise

Attempting too hard to scrutinize, investigate, or count another's private tears and sighs.

Mark Strand

Poet whose surreal, imaginative verse incorporates the unreal and the unconscious, making sudden leaps between ordinary settings and the bizarre.

In media res (Eating Poetry)

A narrative technique in which the text begins in the middle of the action, with the speaker already in the process of consuming poetry.

The Dogs (Eating Poetry)

Animals emerging from the basement stairs that symbolize the wild, primal forces of human imagination and animal instinct unleashed by reading poetry.

The Librarian (Eating Poetry)

A character representing rigid order, conventional rationality, and emotional restraint, who is horrified by the speaker's primal transformation.

Tercet

A poetic stanza composed of three lines; "Eating Poetry" consists of six tercets.

Sipho Sepamla

Trained teacher and poet born in Krugersdorp who belonged to South Africa's "township poets" and opposed white domination during Apartheid.

Township poets

A collective of South African writers during the Apartheid era who utilized accessible public verse to resist oppression and satirize state-sponsored "Bantu Culture".

Poetic license (Da Same Da Same)

The intentional manipulation of standard grammatical rules, spelling, and vernacular speech to convey a shared human identity beneath racial labels.

John Donne

Metaphysical poet (1572–1631) and Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London who rejected conventional Elizabethan romantic clichés in favor of intellectual wit and conceits.

Valediction

A formal farewell, leave-taking, or goodbye statement.

Metaphysical conceit

An extended, intellectually complex, and startling metaphor that draws an intricate comparison between two vastly dissimilar things.

Profanation

The act of debasing, desecrating, or disrespecting the sacred; public displays of weeping at departure are described as cheapening a private, spiritual love.

Laity

Ordinary lay people who do not belong to the clergy; used by Donne to describe common lovers whose relationships lack elevated spiritual understanding.

Trepidation of the spheres

Subtle vibrations and trembling motions of planetary spheres in early astronomy, described as harmless and innocent compared to violent earthly earthquakes.

Sublunary lovers

Earthly lovers beneath the moon whose affection is grounded purely in sensory and physical presence ("whose soul is sense") and cannot withstand absence.

Gold to airy thinness beat

A simile illustrating how two spiritually united souls endure physical distance not as a breach, but as an expansion, like malleable gold beaten into fine leaf.

Stiff twin compasses

A conceit comparing lovers to a drafting tool: the wife is the stationary center foot leaning after the roaming husband, ensuring he completes a perfect circle back home.