Memorial

Question 1

'’Everywhere’’

‘‘No’’

Answer 1

Repetition:
- The poet cannot escape awareness of the death of his loved one.

• The repeated use of the negative “no” emphasises how inescapable and ubiquitous her death is for him.

Question 2

“the silence of her dying sounds through the carousel of language.”

Answer 2

Paradox:
- The silence is so intense it makes an impacts as a loud noise would.

• As a poet, words are hugely important but what he saw as a fun, bright, colourful and musical ride is now silenced by her death.

Question 3

” web on which laughter stitches itself”

Answer 3

metaphor:
- as the silence becomes a web with its connotations of a deadly trap.

-On it, laughter is doomed to become stuck – it stitches itself.

Question 4

“She grieves for my grief”

Answer 4

Paradox

- does not immediately make sense. She feels sorry for the loss he will feel.

Question 5

” No crocus is craved more gently than the way her dying”

Answer 5

Metaphor:

- Compares her death to crocus flower, beautiful, natural and fragile

Question 6

“other words, black words”

Answer 6

Tone/ structure:

-poet changes tone here to a bleak and dark tone of hopelessness.

Paradox/ word choice:
- these black words suggest a nothingness

• the poet believes there is both after death.

Question 7

“sound of soundlessnes”

Answer 7

oxymoron:

echoes the earlier paradox in stanza one.

Question 8

“can’t stop dying”

Answer 8

Paradox
- does not immediately make sense just like death.

• Poet is saying that he is eternally dying in his thoughts.

Question 9

“She makes me/her elegy.”

Answer 9

Metaphor:

- Poet compares himself to being a written lament- he himself has become a record of her death.

Question 10

“masterpiece”

Answer 10

Metaphor:
- is used satirically to convey how successful his transformation into an embodiment of death, despair and despondency has been.

Question 11

” true fiction”

Answer 11

oxymoronic

- true fiction cannot be true. The poet uses the confusing contrasts emphasise his confused state of losing her.

Question 12

Structure

Answer 12

• Free verse used throughout poem in order to better convey poet’s confused emotions over her death.

Question 13

Tone

Answer 13

• the tone remains sorrowful throughout. The only hint of optimism lies in the beauty he sees in her death.

Question 14

Key themes

Answer 14

• Facing death

- isolation surrounding death/ illness

Question 15

Themes connect with

Answer 15

1. Assisi
2. Aunt Julia
3. Visiting hour
4. Sounds of the day