Winter Swan - Owen Sheers Flashcards
Winter Swan
This poem brings the message that relationships require work to overcome turbulent periods. They will not always be smooth. In modern society, we should try to make marriage or relationship work and not separate too easily.
General Context
- This poem is taken from Owen Sheer’s collection ‘Skirrid Hill’. ‘Skirrid’ comes from the Welsh word ‘Ysgariad’, which means separation.
- Sheer could be commenting on how easy it is to separate or divorce in the modern society, and that relationship have their ups and downs and need to be worked at.
‘the clouds had given their all - two days of rain and then a break’
L - pathetic fallacy
L - personification
The rain might represent their tears or their stormy relationship. The break in the rain symbolises a break in their argument.
‘in which we walked’
L - verb
This might represents that relationship is an emotional journey.
the waterlogged earth gulping for breath
L - pathetic fallacy
L - personification
It implies that the relationship has become suffocating.
‘we skirted around the lake’
L - verb
Perhaps they are skirting around and avoiding their problems.
‘until the swans came’
L - time connective
It marks the turning point in the poem and their relationship.
The swans are the catalysts for the couple reuniting or resolving their differences.
‘tipping in unison’
L - noun
The swans are in perfect harmony in contrast to the couple.
‘iceberg of white feather’
L - metaphor
It describes the whiteness and the shape of the swans visually.
D - it implies that, like icebergs, there is more underneath the surface of relationships than what is seen.
‘like boats righting in rough water’
L - simile
This reflects the turbulent period in the couple’s relationship but like the boats righting themselves, they can make the relationship right again.
‘porcelain over the still water’
L - metaphor
The swans are white as porcelain.
D - porcelain is fragile just as relationship can be fragile and easily destroyed or broken.
‘our hands, somehow, swum the distance between us’
L - choice of verb
It suggests that the swans have brought them together as they have a subconscious effect on the reunite of the couple.
‘like a pair of wings settling after flight’
L - simile
Implies the swans brought them back together.
The flight represents the possibility that they might be parted but now they are settled back together.
Enjambment between the final two stanzas
Just as the enjambment joins the final stanzas, it presents the couple reuniting in their relationship.
The poem is written in three line stanzas until the final unrhymed couplet
Suggests that they have become a couple again nut the fact that they are unrhymed, could symbolise that in the future, their relationship might not always be harmonious and there are still issues to resolve.
