Poetry

Ozymandias (Context + Form + Structure)

Context

Shelley was a radical, Romanticist

Believed in the power of nature

Sublime

• Its ultimate beauty invoked fear

  • Nature is so beautiful that it strikes fear making humans think about their comparison to nature

Anti-monarch and pacifist

• poem aimed at those in power - seeks to expose those who desire greatness and its fickle nature

Shelley who believed humans should be free and live more simplistic lifestyles without the burdens of complex society weighing on them.

Form

Sonnet

Sonnets usually have ideas of love and respect

• This juxtaposes the ridicule the statue suffers

  • This allows Shelley to ridicule Ozymandias’ lack of loves and respect

  • as well as his excessive hubris

    • results from his infatuation and love with barbaric power

Petrarchan sonnet and Shakespearean (irregular rhyme scheme)

Iambic Pentameter (each line has 10 syllables)

• motif of control and order

  • demonstrates the frightful regularity of the oppression by those in power on those they rule.

  • no way to break free, constrained by the oppressive tyrant that rules them

Enjambment

Point 1

• The free flowing nature shows the way that people should be free without rule of a complex society

Point 2

• The tight constraint of the stanza and its lines shows the tight constraints of the people

Both allude to the illusion of freedom

End stops

Despite the Enjambment at the beginning the end stops towards the end shows the transient and semi-permanent nature of human power and its easily curtailed by nature’s omnipotence

"Nothing beside remains."

Nothing-Emphasises loss of power,

Beside-Represents the singularity of nature and how the remains of Ozymandias' kingdom is nothing but nature now

Caesura (.) is used to create a pause in the line and to break the rhythm to help portray how his kingdom has broken down and there is nothing left of his power.

"Wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command”

Adjective (Wrinkled) is used to show how Ozymandias' power was already beginning to break down and also helps to emphasise the cruel nature of the Pharaoh

Noun (sneer) is used to present Ozymandias as being a mocking figure who enjoys the failures and misfortunes of those around them

Adjective (cold) is used to present how with his vast amounts of power Ozymandias became an emotionless figure similar to the statue which now represents him

Noun (command) is used to show how Ozymandias' abused his power to control those below him.

*Overall use of negative vocab in the poem

"Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!”

Noun (works) is used to emphasise the irony and seemingly foolish claims of Ozymandias as his kingdom has fallen into nothing,

Adjective (mighty) is used to show how Ozymandias was once a significant ruler but now contrastingly has nothing.

“Look on my works” contrasts the surrounding area being a barren and featureless dessert

“despair” irony

“Boundless and Bare”

Alliteration (Boundless and Bare) is used to emphasise the idea of everything becoming more free and simplified due to the power of nature.

This helps to put an emphasis on the romantic idea of Percy Shelley who believed humans should be free and live more simplistic lifestyles without the burdens of complex society weighing on them.

War Photographer (Context + Form + Structure)

Context

references the Vietnam war

• living memory to Duffy’s readership.

Duffy may have been critiquing how over time the impact of war photograph is not enough recognition of the suffering that is endured all over the world

Structure

A rigid form using six line stanzas and a constant ABBCDD rhyme scheme

• reflects the order seen in the photographer's home country of England and acts as a contrast and in conflict to the chaotic warzones the photographer has been to

A cyclical structure

• is used to show the inevitable nature of conflict as the photographer cannot seem to break the cycle as he returns to the war zone ultimately ending the poem on a defeated tone and leading the reader to question how they can attempt to stop conflict and its relentless nature

Caesura

• Reiterates the notion of detachment “Rural England” is separated between two full stops. This highlight how overtly isolated “rural England” was from the war zones where Duffy installs a visual and audible barrier between it and the rest of the poem

“Spools of suffering set out in ordered rows”

Juxtaposition between the suffering and chaos of war and the organisation of the photos

Alliteration also emphasises how there is so much suffering in war that it can be set out in spools.

“Belfast. Beirut, Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass”.

Asyndetic listing: shows the ongoing peril that the soldiers go through under many locations

Biblical reference used to show how life seems to be very easily lost in war as it compares people's flesh to just grass.

“running children in a nightmare heat”

Shows how dangerous warzones can be and how everyone even children can be harmed or killed in it. The adjective 'nightmare' also suggests the cruelty of the warzone.

*References to the Nick Ut’s ‘Napalm girl’ photograph, a 9-year-old girl running naked towards the camera in agony during the Vietnam war

“A hundred agonies in black and white from which his editor will pick out five of six”

Shows what these photos represent for the photographer, crystallisations of excruciating pain and suffering

Metonym - The photos are photos but are described as agonies to portray how each photo represents agonies.

Juxtaposition between black and white - Between how the photographer views them and how the world views them

“five or six” The western world doesn’t care for each “agony” (photos) and looks at them casually

The Emigrée (Context + Form + Structure)

Context

Rumens used her work to comment on socio-political customs within foreign countries

• The Emigrée investigates emotional aspects of this

The poem lacks identification of a country

• allows the poem to universally focus on all of the emotional experiences of emigration

*relevant throughout time

Structure + Form

The repetition of an aggressive and accusatory tone

makes the city seem threatening and hostile and draws the reader's attention to the idea of racial discrimination ultimately presenting the threat of a new societal conflict to the speaker

A lack of free verse or rhythm

perhaps presents the chaos and lack of control over the speaker's previous country however this is then contrasted with positive imagery perhaps attempting to represent freedom

Repetition of “they”

• imposes a belligerent tone and creates a separation between her and ‘them’ depicting her struggle to assimilate with the citizens of her new city

• Also creates a s threatening quality of those in her new city creating a suffocating atmosphere of “them” closing in on herContext

"I am branded by an impression of sunlight”

Juxtaposition (branded-sunlight) shows how the girl faces a struggle when she loves her country because it is put through so much

Noun (sunlight) presents the theme of hope and possibly of returning to her country one day as she believes that it is still good

Verb (Branded) suggests that she cannot leave behind her identity and her country and also emphasises how although she is technically 'branded' with her identity she likes having it as a label because she is proud of her identity.

"the graceful slopes/glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks”

Personification (time rolls its tanks) shows how even time seems to attempt to attack her country and presents the experiences of Emigrees as being extremely unfair as almost every element of the world seems to be against

Adjective (graceful) helps to create an image of beauty surrounding the Emigrant's original country and shows how this beauty is broken down by the world surrounding it

Verb (glow) suggests that the Emigrant's country was bright and hopeful before issues started occurring due to misfortune.

"It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants”

Simile (sick with tyrants) portrays the Emigrant's country as being ill and therefore not behaving as it should be helping to show how it is not the country's residents fault but rather the problems of individuals which make the country one which needs to be fled

Noun (war) shows how the girl has been forced to flee her home and how she would've rather stayed if she could've.

“may”: repetition shows her lack of knowledge about her child and the detachment that she now has from her country exhibiting her lack of connection to her metaphorical child

"They accuse me of being dark in their free city”

Pronoun (They) suggests that it is society who persecutes the girl and not just one person

Juxtaposition (dark-free) places emphasis on how unfair the treatment of the emigrant is as she is persecuted in a place where she is meant to be 'free’

Possessive Pronoun (their) suggests that the girl is not allowed to share ownership of the city and is segregated from the original inhabitants of the city who do not wish to share it with her.

Exposure (Context + Form + Structure)

Context

Wilfred Owen fought in WW1

Killed in battle one week before armistice (war is never ending for Wilfred Owen)

Critiques patriotism and jingoistic (extreme patriotism) attitudes

Wrote poetry to express the horror of war as opposed to internalising it

Structure

Cyclical structure

• "nothing happens" connecting the end to the beginning of the poem and emphasising the aimless nature of war as throughout the entire poem nothing has been achieved

Anaphora

• used to draw attention to the line "But nothing happens" portraying the futility of war and therefore pushing the reader to question its purpose

Repetition of "ice”

• at the beginning and the end of the poem emphasises how nature has preserved itself through the conflict and therefore has managed to prevail over the soldiers

“Our brains ache, in merciless iced east winds that knive us”

personification : “merciless” - wind does not have the ability to be merciless and has no thought

metaphor : “east winds” - the east is where the sun rises (a sign of hope) but instead callous winds are coming from this direction.

personification : “knive us” - the power of nature giving it human qualities, the ability to knive them.

*Our brains ache” = “My heart aches

• alike to his favourite poet John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale

• uses “brains” to make it work in a war context

  • plural eludes to the collective suffering that they had faced

“Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence”

Sibilance attempts to place the reader in the experience of the soldiers

the bullets break through the most peaceful scenario

constant bullet

“wearied we stay awake because the night is silent”

fear of peace highlight belligerent and barbarity and do not take comfort in peace as it will lead to more barbarism

“For love of God seems dying”

Their faith in God is dying at the constant effect of experience

becomes disillusioned with the ideas of religion

previous thoughts of sacrifice, honour and God become meaningless in these conditions

“But nothing happens”

repetition connotes to the monotonous tone of the poem

Bayonet Charge (Context + Form + Structure)

Context

Ted Hughes was not actually alive during WW1 however his father fought in WW1 and therefore Hughes may have received an influence on his thoughts and feelings of war

Ted Hughes grew up in Yorkshire in a post-War society, not fighting in a war but living in the effects of war

Structure + Form

In the 1st stanza enjambment

• stops the reader from being able to take a break from reading quickening the pace of the poem and showing the panic which would be held by the soldier in the poem by creating a tense atmosphere

Caesura

• used in the 2nd stanza to portray how the soldier has been overwhelmed by the harsh reality of war and must pause to recognise his role and his situation

two structural techniques combined

• being used together allow for the poem to feel disjointed and disrupted showing the chaotic nature of war

“Suddenly he awoke and was running”

• ‘He' suggests that the soldiers does not have an identity. In addition to this the poem starts with running showing how the war is full of violence and action where no breaks from the conflict happen.

• “Suddenly” shows the in medias res within the reader in the position of the soldier in this conflict concentrated environment under a huge amount of mental pressure

“Bullet Smacking the Belly out of the Air”

• Plosive alliteration - mimics the harsh sound of danger and emphasises the cruel and harmful nature of war

• Personification of the air - War is so dangerous and deadly that it affects the atmosphere itself

• “smacking” : verb - personifies the bullets to be intentionally malicious

“Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame”

• Similar images to war and nature through “flame

  • shows how nature has become caught up in war and its affects