Poems and Lines Flashcards
Bird shooting Season- Olive Senior (5)
Metaphor/ Alliteration
“the men make marriages with their guns
Symbolism/Contrast btw boys and girls (more compassionate) & cycle of male dominance-
“Little boys longing to grow up bird hunters too Little girls whispering: Fly Birds Fly.”
Personification:
“my fathers house turns macho”
“women stir their brews” (diff btw men and women)
“Wrap pone & tie leaf, rum” - Caribbean Life
South- Kamau Braithwaite - 7
Alliteration:
“bright beaches, blue mist from the ocean” (mystical setting thats beautiful)
Personification:
“…shadows oppress me”
Alliteration:
“crossed countless saltless savannas”
Simile:
“Their flowing runs on like our longing” (river–>longing for them to come home)
“turbulent soil…since then i travelled” (political struggle)
“By these shores I was born” (patriotism)
“Recapture the islands” -posession
Death Be Not Proud- John Donne -4
Personification
1. “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful”
- “Rest & Sleep”
- “One short sleep past, we wake eternally”
- Paradox-“ Death thou shalt Die!” (he will experience the end of himself but death can never be defeated cause its lifes only certainty)
- Apostrophe
A Stone’s Throw- Elma Mitchell 5
Meatphor
1. “These were love-bites, compared
To the hail of kisses of stone” (hypocrisy)
2. “Frigid rape”
3. “We walked away still holding stones “
5. “Our eyes upon ourselves”
Allusion overall
Ol’ Higue- Mark McWatt 4
- “burning myself out like Cane-fire” - Simile
- “How would you mother…”- Rhetorical question
- “you think I like this stupidness” (tryna gain sympathy)
- “And for what? A few drops of baby blood?”
Mirror- Sylvia Plath 5
- “Like a terrible fish”- Simile growing old
- ” I “ repetition - personification (makes poem more relatable)
- “The eye of a little god, four cornered” - Metaphor
- “I am not cruel, only truthful”
- “In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman”
Overall Allusion to Narcissus and Personfication
This is A Dark Time my love- Martin Carter 4
- “brown beetles crawl about.” - Metaphor to the soldiers
“Strange invaders” - “Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow.” - Personification- can be poppies or red flowers stained with blood
- “It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.” - Oxymoron (dramatic effect to stop and think)
“This is a dark time” solidifies the tense atmosphere
Dule Et Decorum Est- wilfred owen 6
- “like old beggars under sacks,” Simile to describe their tiredness
- “And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime” Simile to show his excruciating pain
- “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”
- “Obscene as cancer” - Simile (comparing dying soldiers face to cancer)
“bitter as the cud.Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues” cud is throw up and well throw up on incurable sores is just ew - “The old lie: Dule et decorum est pro patria mori” (it is sweet and proper to die for ones country)-Irony
Little Boy crying- Mervyn Morris 4
- “the ogre towers above you” Metaphor (ref to jack and the beanstalk)
- “grim giant” Alliteration (thinks his dad should die just as the ogre in the fairytale)
- “you must not make a plaything of the rain”
- “Law” (in order for child to learn life lessons)
African Thunderstorm- David Rubadiri 6
- “like a plague of locusts” Simile (biblical apocolyptic terms )
“Screams of delighted children” (innocense and naivity) - “Like a madman chasing nothing” Simile (behaviour of a madman is unpredictable and destructive)
- “Pregnant clouds” Personification
- “Trees bend to let it pass” Personification
- “wind whirls” Alliteration
- “Tattered flags” paint an image of the political conflict
A lesson for this Sunday- Derek Walcott
4
- “Frail as a flower” Simile (the girl in her yellow frock seems so innocent)
- “Crouched on plump haunches like a mantis prays” Simile (religous undertones)
- “with its frail kites of furious butterflies” Metaphor
- “Frowning like a serious lepidopterist” Simile
My Parents- Stephen Spender 4
- “My parents kept me from children who were rough” “Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothes”
- “And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.” Alliteration
- “I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron”- Hyperbole and Simile
- “Who copied my lisp behind me on the road”
Once Upon A Time - Gabriel Okara 6
- “Once upon a time” Allusion (fairy tale with a moral)
- “I want to relearn how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!” (No longer sincere)
- “Ice block cold eyes” Metaphor (no longer warm but cruel and cold)
- “but now they only laugh with their teeth” (not sincere and no emotion)
- “I have learned to wear many faces like dresses - home face, office face, street face, host face, cocktail face” Repetition
- “once upon a time when I was like you” (his son is still innocent and pure)
West Indies USA- Stuart Brown 3
Oxymoron - title is two opposing ideas but mentioned as if its one
“Dallas of the West Indies” - Allusion(rich america)
“Like a dice”- Simile meaning it can either come up winning or losing as a game of chance, he says puerto rico came up winning with its wealthy exterior
“I repeat stay on the plane”
Sonnet composed upon West Minster Bridge September 3, 1802- William Wordsworth
- “like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning” Personification
- “Dear God! the very houses seem asleep” Personification
- “Dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so touching in its majesty”
- “the river glideth at his own sweet will” Personification
