Poetry Anthology - Basic Knowledge Flashcards
The Manhunt
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Author: Simon Armitage
Key themes: romantic love, feelings of loss in a relationship, war, mental health, love
Who: from the perspective of Eddie Beddoe’s wife, Laura Beddoes
What: About Eddie’s recovery after PTSD from a war
Where: from the Bosnian war (modern 1992 - 1995), he’s a UN peace keeper
When: Written in 2007
Why: raises awareness to the effects of PTSD and the effects it has on loved ones
Key quotations:
‘After the first phase’ - has military connotations (first phase of a battle)
‘The frozen river which ran through his face’ - a river should run, like his life but because the river has frozen, he can’t move on with his life
‘The damaged, porcelain collar - bone’ - porcelain remind the reader how fragile a human is
‘Parachute silk of his punctured lung’ - both are survival mechanisms and has militaristic references ‘parachute’
Language:
Combines physical imagery with metaphors
- alliteration
- juxtaposes physical language and emotive language to show links between injury and trauma
Form/structure:
- Couplets that form 13 short stanzas
The structure reflects the ladder (the ‘rungs’ which the speaker must ‘climb’)
Conveys that they are a couple
- Beginning - couplets rhyme
Shows the pair are close - middle - couplet don’t rhyme
Shows him and his wife are becoming further and further apart - End - couplets start to rhyme again
Shows they couple are beginning to get close to each other
Sonnet 43
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Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Key themes: Love, romantic vs spiritual love, devotion, intimate relationships
Who: Written by Elizabeth Browning to Robert Browning (they eloped)
What: born in 1806 in Victorian era her work focuses on love
Where: eloped to Italy which may be why she uses a Petrarchan sonnet
When: written in the early 19th century
Why: her poems are deeply intimate and personal which was shocking in the Victorian era, she is rebelling against the conventional London society
Key Quotations:
‘How do i love thee? Let me count the ways’ - rhetorical question that is answered immediately by listing all the ways they love someone
‘I love thee freely as men strive for right’ - she will fight for his love, love is equal
‘With my lost saints’ - she loves him more than she loves her religion as they have failed her but he hasn’t
‘In my old griefs’ - he has taken away her sadness and made her happy
Language:
She uses a hyperbolic list to emphasise her love
She uses natural imagery related to the light
She connects love and religious ideas to show that it is universal and infinite
Form/structure:
The poem is in first person, and implies a listener ‘thee’, the poem is a sonnet and follow abba cdcdcd rhyme scheme
Its a Petrarchan sonnet - octave/sestet with an iambic pentameter, the rhyme scheme breaks with ‘faith’ and ‘breath’ to show their significance
London
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Author: William Blake (romantic poet)
Key themes: suffering is never ending and has an impact on everyone, oppression
Who: William Blake (romantic poet)
What: rejected established religion for various reasons, mainly the failure of the church to help children in London who were forced out to work
Where: London
When: 1757 - 1827
Why: He hated the corruption that he saw and how the people in power weren’t doing their job and people were suffering because of it
Key Quotations:
‘Marks of weakness, marks of woe’ - breaks from the iambic pentameter - shows if people rise up they can free themselves
‘Every infants cry of fear’ - children are supposed to be innocent and shouldn’t have to suffer, shows every life is destined for misery
‘The mind-forged manacles i hear’ - internal oppression, they cannot escape
‘Every black’ning church appalls’ - evil and immorality on the church, criticising the church for not helping people
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Form/Structure: iambic tetrameter
Shows order and control and creates a sense of relentless oppression
Language:
- Juxtaposition, Anaphora, Semantic fields
The Soldier
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Rupert Brooke
Soldier during WW1
Died of blood poisoning on a boat
He experienced no fighting
This poem shows how patriotic he felt about England
Written in 1914
Themes: Patriotic, war, romanticising death
Petrarchan sonnet
‘If i should die, think only this of me’
‘Blessed by suns of home’
‘All evil shed away’
‘Under an English heaven’
She walks in Beauty
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Lord Byron - scandalous life
Romantic poet (nature, freedom, feelings)
Written in 1814
About his cousins wife Mrs Wilmot who he met at a social gathering and thought she was beautiful
Themes: romantic love, beauty, nature, desire
Key quotes:
‘Like the night’
‘One shade the more, one shade the less’
‘Nameless grace’
‘A hearth whose love is innocent’
Language:
Alliteration
Sibilance
Images of dark and light
Form and structure:
Iambic tetrametre to contribute to sense of order and harmony
Three stanze tribute to a women with each stanze describing different aspects of her beauty
Living Space
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Imtiaz Dharker born in Pakistan
Lived in Mumbai so saw the slums everyday
Modern poet
Themes: fragility, faith, boldness
‘Someone has squeezed’
‘There are just not enough’
‘And even dared to place’
‘The bright thin walls of faith’
Form/structure:
Thin stanzas
‘The whole structure leans dangerously’ is longer than the others
Rhyme acts as a way to hold the poem together
First half describes the structure
Second half describes the image of something inside - people/eggs
Language:
Contrast between light and dark
Words to emphasise the instability
As Imperceptibly as grief
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Emily Dickinson
1830 - 1886
Lived her life in recluse
Fascinated by death - her window over looked a graveyard
Before she wrote this poem several friends and family members had died
Themes: death, faith
‘As imperceptibly as grief’
‘Yet harrowing grace’
‘As twilight long begun’
‘Our summer made her light escape’
Form/structure: dashes to create a hesitant and disjointed pace representing her state of mind
One stanza
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Uses beautiful language to show her distress, summer is a symbolism for happiness, she writes this poem to represent her own emotions and struggles
Cozy Apologia
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Rita Dove
Modern poem during Hurricane Floyd in 1999
USA
Themes: Biography and memory, weather, men, love
‘One eye smiling’
‘Sweet with a dark and hollow centre’
‘Still, its embarrassing, this happiness’
‘I fill this stolen time with you’
Form/ Structure:
Autobiographical, first person narrative, 3 10 - line stanzas, stanza 1 has 5 rhyming couplets, rhyme breaks down in stanza 2, reflecting the disruption of an incoming storm, stanza 3 a new rhyme scheme symbolises a new beginning and order after the chaos
Language:
Relaxed informal language to show she is happy and content
Metaphor
Simile
Hurricane is personified
Valentine
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Carol Ann Duffy
Rejects cliches associated with Valentine’s Day
Explores why onions are a more suitable gift
Written in response to write an original poem for Valentine’s Day
Unconventional
Modern poem
Themes: intimate relationships, love
‘It promises light’
‘It will blind you with tears’
‘It’s fierce kiss will stay on your lips’
‘Cling to your knife’
Form/Structure:
First person, varies in line and stanza life, the speakers voice is life-like and natural, written in free verse with internal half rhymes
Language:
Metaphorical imagery
Alliteration
Sarcasm
Nature and sensory imagery
A wife in London
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Thomas Hardy
2nd Boer war (1899-1902)
High casualties
Thomas Hardy was a novelist
The poem refers to the effects of war on the men and families at home
Written in 1899
Themes: grief and love
‘She sits in the tawny vapour’
‘Whom the worm now know’
‘Page full of his hoped return’
‘And of the new love that they would learn’
Form/structure:
Divided into two events like the chapters in a book symbolising her life has been split in two
Clear rhyme scheme creating a sense of inevitability to these tragic events
Present tense to create a sense that the story is unfolding infront of us making it more dramatic and emotional
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Pathetic fallacy is used to create an ominous atmosphere
Simile
Metaphor
Alliteration
Death of a Naturalist
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Seamus Heaney
Irish Poet - Grew up im a farming community
Written in 1966
Follows the romantic
Themes: Nature, Childhood ending, Death, emotions, memory
‘Bubbles gargled delicately’
‘The slap and plop were obscene threats’
‘Poised like mud grenades’
‘Their blunt heads farting’
Form/Structure:
First person
Unrhymed
Iambic pentameter
Language:
Ominous, dramatic language - increases fear
Semantic fields - of war
Childlike and adult like colloquial language - mixed to give impression of a memory
Hawk Roosting
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Ted Hughes
Poet Laureate until his death in 1984
Fascination with the natural world
Themes: Power, Nature
‘I sit in the top of the wood’
‘It took the whole of creation’
‘The allotment of death’
‘I am going to keep things like this’
Form/Structure:
Made up of 6 four line stanzas - controlled like the hawk controlling his environment
Uses personal and possessive pronouns
Free verse
Language:
The hawk is portrayed as arrogant and powerful
Each stanza describes a different part of the hawk and how great his life is
To autumn
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John Keats
Romantic poet
Keats found out he was going to die soon after writing this poem, so the poem may be about his life coming to an end
Themes: nature, ripeness, time passing
‘Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness’
‘Think not of them, thou hast thy music too’
‘Sinking as the light wind lives or dies’
‘Wailful choir’
Form/structure:
In the form of an ode - praises Autumn
Usually uses 10 lines in each stanze, but in this he uses an extra to show the idea of abundance
Iambic pentameter
First four lines of each stanza follow abab, then next 7 show variation, 9 and 10 have rhyming couplets
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Personification
Apostrophe - season as a person
Rhetorical questions
Sibilance
Afternoons
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Philip Larkin
Published in 1964
Celebrates the ordinary details of day to day life
Larkin never married or left the UK
Themes:
Time passing
Change
Loss of innocence/growing up
‘Afternoons’
‘Summer is fading’
‘Their beauty has thickened’
‘Something i pushing them to the side’
Structure/form:
Three unrhymed stanzas with 8 lines each
First stanza: Larkins cynical view of marriage
Second stanza: Describes mothers being alone with little support from their working husbands
Third Stanza: the mothers focus is on the children and that they have been pushed out of their own lives
Language:
Imagery
Symbolism
Alliteration
Enjambment
Repetition
Irony
Dulce et Decorum Est
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Wilfred Owen
Died a week before the armistice was signed
Written first hand experiences
Themes:
War
Blame
Death
‘Bent double like old beggars’
‘’an ecstasy of fumbling’
‘Guttering, choking, drowning’
‘Like a devils sick of sin’
Form/structure:
Irregular structure reflects life as a soldier
Rhyme abab
First stanza is slow reflection the soldiers feelings that the march will never end
Second stanza: fast paced through exclamation marks, sense of panic
Third stanza: slows again to reveal the feeling that war will never end
Language:
Intense tone
Emotive language
Repetition
Similes
