Poetry Flashcards
Half-Caste - John Agard
Quotes
‘Mix a black key / Wid a white key / Is a half-caste symphony?’
‘Explain yuself’
‘overcast, so spiteful dem dont want de sun pass’
‘I dream half-a-dream’
‘but you must come back… wid de whole of yu mind’
No Problem - Benjamin Zephaniah
Quotes
‘I am branded athletic’
‘I am not de problem’
‘These conditions may affect me as I get older’
‘Sum of me best friends are white’
‘Yu put me in a pigeon hole, but I am versatile’
Charge of the Light Brigade - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Quotes
‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward’
‘Cannon to right of them / Cannon to left of them / Cannon in front of them’
‘Rode the six hundred’/ ‘But not the six hundred’
‘Honour the charge they made!’
‘Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell’
‘Exposure’ - Wilfred Owen
Quotes
‘Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous’
‘Twitching agonies of men among its brambles’
‘Slowly our ghosts drag home’
‘What are we doing here?’
‘Dawn massing in the east… ranks on shivering ranks of grey’
‘But nothing happens’
‘Catrin’ - Gillian Clarke
Quotes
‘Hot, white room’
‘First fierce confrontation, the tight red rope of love’
‘I wrote all over the walls with my words’
‘As you ask may you skate, in the dark, for one more hour’
‘Taking turn at the traffic lights’
‘Child’
‘Cousin Kate’ - Christina Rossetti
‘Contented with my cottage-mates’
‘To lead a shameless shameful life, his plaything and his love’
‘To sit with him on high’
‘Even so I sit and howl in dust, you sit in gold and sing’
‘Yet I’ve a gift… my fair-haired son’
‘War Photographer’ - Carole Satyamurti
‘The reassurance of the frame is flexible’
‘I seek out the tragic, the absurd’
‘Sun-gilded girls, rolling, silk-crumpled on the grass in champagne giggles’
‘A small girl, staggering down some devastated street’
‘Boundaries arbitrary as a blood stain on a wall’
‘Poppies’ - Jane Weir
‘Crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of bias’
‘Sellotape bandaged around my hand’
‘The world overflowing like a treasure chest’
‘Hoping to hear your playground voice catching on the wind’
‘Without a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves’
‘My words flattened, rolled over, turned into felt, slowly melting’
‘The Man He Killed’ - Thomas Hardy
‘Ranged as infantry, and staring face to face’
‘I shot at him as he at me’
‘Killed him in his place’
‘He was my foe, just so: my foe of course he was’
‘Was out of work’
‘Yes; quaint and curious war is!’
‘A Poison Tree’ - William Blake
‘Angry’
‘I water’d it in fears, night and morning with my tears’
‘Sunned it with smiles’
‘Day and night’
‘An apple bright / shine’
‘My foe outstretched beneath the tree’
‘The Class Game’ / ‘No Problem’
Similarities:
- rhyme scheme; shows intelligence, which in both cases contrasts stereotypes
- beginning angry; shifts towards more reflective tone
- colloquial language
Differences:
- imagery used much more in ‘No Problem’
- sarcastic tone throughout ‘The Class Game’ (only at end in ‘No Problem’)
‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’ / ‘Charge of The Light Brigade’
Similarities:
- present war in a glorious or honourable way
- use of exclamation marks at end for climactic finish
- religious references / imagery
DIfferences:
- interpretations of religious references / imagery
- use of punctuation throughout (much more in COTLB)
- regular rhyming couplets / irregular rhyme scheme
- use of syntax and indentation
‘What were they like?’ / ‘Poppies’
Similarities:
- use of metaphors
- emotive language
- free-verse, lack of structure
Differences:
- format (Q and A / 4 main stanzas)
- tone created by imagery (violence / peace)
- personal / cultural loss
‘The Prelude’ / ‘Exposure’
Similarities:
- personification of nature (although interpretations differ) also description as feminine (‘her’)
- free-verse (although half-rhymes in ‘exposure’)
Differences:
- tone shift / constant
- differing ideas about nature and the poets’ relationships with it
- punctuation used more in ‘exposure’ for suspense
‘Belfast Confetti’ / ‘Poppies’
Similarities:
- both blank-verse (although different effects)
- metaphors used throughout (and both use at least some military imagery)
- lexical field of military (though also some nature in Poppies)
Differences:
- tense, violent / melancholy, peaceful tone
- indentation and line lengths in Belfast Confetti / free-verse ‘Poppies’
- violent imagery / natural imagery
