Poems of the decade Flashcards

Question

Ode on a Grayson Perry urn - Structure

Answer 1

Ode form like Keats to a particular subject (same as Keats) Ekpharasis - describing art in art Iambic Pentametre but a convesational style

Answer 2

Parody and illusion of glorifying the working class youth References to social issues 'daily express exposé' Captures the image of youth and does not discuss the reality of their likely disappointing futures

Answer 3

adjectives of 'Kitschy and Gaudy' to devalue to work Use of colloquial language 'Knocked out' and 'geezer' Use of irony and satire

Answer 4

Speaker recalls how as a child they believed babies came from the mysterious Doctor Kerlin's bag, he would arrive then wash his hands with his bag empty. `the speaker imagined as a child how the doctor had dismembered baby parts he would put together in his bag in a sacred, surreal process

Answer 5

childhood innocence and imagination - to the child's perspective the arrival of a new baby was astonishing and horrific and all centred around the doctor. Out of the bag - not literally his imagination but the truth about sex and birth which now he looks back as an adult realistically Myth, medicine and healing - Links his childhood imagination to catholic uprising, how as an adult visiting ancient healing sights have led him to understand faith, myth have shaped healing experience Poetry and the Creative Process Emphasises the healing power of art

Answer 6

Free verse - Heaney's lose imaginative writing Lack of rhyme gives a free, natural sounding flow Three line stanzas - 3 trimesters of pregnancy

Answer 7

The bag - mysteries of childhood Allusions - to greek mythology and ancient healing

Answer 8

Enjambent - to mimic the fluidity and thought, blending past and present memories combination of past and present tenses

Answer 9

Grapples loss of his mother while memories flow as she hold her hand while she dies. Expresses years of love that flowed under their conflict. Ranges from grief, xenophobia and generational divides.

Answer 10

Ageing/dying memory motherhood/parenthood youth

Answer 11

Single, long stanza showing his rush of memories Sentences which are overly long or only end with ellipsis Loose iambic pentameter which suggests the mixes raw emotions

Answer 12

The watch - a symbol of time, mortality, the fact that she always wears it but now its missing she's dead 'The bag of effects' literally the nurse returning the dead mothers things - handing the legacy over to the sun but also reminding him of memories. (she never wore her wedding ring until her husband died) Multi-sensory imagery of the ward to show the depth and scope of memory

Answer 13

Use of enjambment - running stream of consciousness Colloquial language - 'fags' and 'old-style Oxford tie' shows memories of domestic life

Answer 14

The poetic voice is that of the adult talking to her nine-year-old self. The adult reflects on the changes that have occurred and transformed her identity from a carefree, innocent child to an adult who is much more aware of the dangers of the world and the limitations of her physical self.

Answer 15

childhood identity change

Answer 16

Free Verse - freedom of childhood innocence, no set stanza length or rhyme

Answer 17

Scars White paper - innocence, youth and potential Summer

Answer 18

Direct address to her past self - intimate and conversational Juxtapositions of Youth vs adulthood, Energy vs Restraint, curiosity vs caution Enjambment - breathless energy of a child

Answer 19

The speaker in the poem is a woman trapped in an abusive relationship. Her male partner, obsessed with fat women, feeds her incessantly, and the speaker becomes dependent on him for her one brief "pleasure" in life: the "rush of fast food." Eventually, she becomes so big that she is able to suffocate her partner with her own body, freeing her from his control. The poem highlights the emotional complexity and slow violence of domestic abuse, as well as the dehumanizing power of sexist objectification.

Answer 20

Sexism and Objectification Power, abuse and control

Answer 21

10 3 line stanzas - shows strict control No strict rhyme scheme instead it is matter of fact while she discusses her abusive relationship and the lines get longer and longer

Answer 22

The cake - objectification and cruelty

Answer 23

Alliteration - 'bed, wobble, juggarnaught, judder' Dramatic Monologue Ceasura - mid line pauses used frequently to create a jarring rhythm

Answer 24

Speaker listens to his old uncle guiseppe recount how in ww2 he witnessed the butchering of the only captive mermaid. Slowly becomes clear Giusuppe helped to butcher the mermaid and that he is burdened with gilt. The first step to evil is dehumanisation as she is 'just a fish'

Answer 25

Evil, cruelty and dehumanisation Guilt and shame Human nature

Answer 26

Free Verse - the free will of the men, how their guilt and justification did not stop them Use of end stop - they cooked the fish part - short and matter of fact

Answer 27

The mermaid - a woman, voice, face and hands with a wedding ring. The men's justification is she is a fish yet the hold a funeral for the human parts The golden roe - the doctor makes them aware they have destroyed a potential lineage of mermaids

Answer 28

Ceasura 'she, it, never learned to speak' Giuseppe's moral discomfort Dehumanising pronouns The list of perpetrators (doctor, fishmonger et.c) shows collective guilt

Answer 29

A parent is flying a kite with his son after 9/11 in 2001. Distracted by the news and muffled dread and his own mortality he tries to emerge himself in the present surroundings.

Answer 30

Fear, uncertainty and connection innocence, curiosity and vulnerability human identity and nature

Answer 31

Highly unusual form with varying stanza lengths, indentations and blank gaps. Poems shifting appearance physically reflects the father and son searching the beach but also the parent being tugged between two realities

Answer 32

The kites The speaker throughout blurs the lines between the kite and his body. "our lines raised in the wind / our bodies fixed and anchored to the shore." but also the lines being links between humans The child's nakedness innocence and becoming one with nature

Answer 33

Enjambment - running over one to the next, fluidity of memory and the disorientation following traumatic events Juxtaposition of the peaceful seaside against the 9/11 attacks “today / a child is singing to his toys” versus “somebody died or was thrown / in the sea”).

Answer 34

Tale of how the speaker battles humanity vs nature. He takes a chainsaw attempting to cut ornamental grass however it grows immediately back after he kills it. Human cannot defeat nature no matter the power of the technology

Answer 35

Humanity vs Nature Violent force vs quiet persistence

Answer 36

Irregular stanzas and free verse - so poem develops in a loose, organic way

Answer 37

Chainsaw Violent and destructive power Grass Nature's soft passive power

Answer 38

Personification of the grass and chainsaw Freeverse with enjambment reflects chaos Tone and voice, the speaker at first amused then becomes frustrated exposing the male gaze

Answer 39

Satirisation of an automated phone call as the older use tries to pay a phone bill. With the increasingly frustrated human being offered 'countless' (un)options by the repetitive and flat toned voice it exposed the reality of modern systems. Suggest that these systems dehumanise users rather than help them

Answer 40

limitations of technology Humans vs Technology

Answer 41

Free verse split into 2 stanzas, the building frustration of the user vs the final stanza of repeated dialogue with says," "needs," "robot," "number," "account," "nothing"

Answer 42

epistrophe, which adds rhythm to the language, emphasizes key words and phrases, and underscores the monotony of the speaker's situation. Anaphora

Answer 43

an autobiographical poem about disability and denial. When the speaker's mother goes blind, she feels she has to conceal her suffering from the world. How the abled body world isn't interested hearing disabled stories unless it is inspiring and how some pain can't be alleviated

Answer 44

Disability and suffering loss and pain

Answer 45

Free verse but with a firm two lines in 22/23 stanza's the final stanza is a single line - he wonders about his mother in the afterlife - feels orderly as if his grief is organised like his mother's suppressed feelings Conversational tone

Answer 46

Informal, conversational tone Enjambment - the mother's struggle to retain normalcy

Answer 47

The speaker thinks about the disappearance of a cloth handkerchief. She has grown nostalgic for her mother's old fashioned hankies as they mark a nostalgic world. Modern day is marked by cheaply produced things like paper tissues.m

Answer 48

Tradition, nostalgia, loss Motherhood and generational change

Answer 49

Nostalgic Tone “That was a world of dry routine: / hankies, not tissues, the hall’s / cold hand against my face.” +sensory detail Informal language and conversational tone + natural tone and personal Free verse and enjambment but half rhyme for cohesion and connection

Answer 50

Handkerchief - tradition and motherhood and juxtaposes modern throw-away culture

Answer 51

Alliteration and assonance “mammy” and “mammoth” echo each other, reinforcing the presence of the mother figure. Ambiguous ending

Answer 52

A dramatic monologue based on Northern Irish folklore. The speaker (a farmer) recounts how he hired a hireling - a young man employed to help at the time of the Lammas harvest (celebration of the wheat harvest). The hireling seems to have a natural talent for working on the farm, one night he finds the hireling in a fox trap, realising he's a witch. He transforms into a hare under the full moon. He shoots and kills the hiring then in the present recounts to the audience (like confession) how he doesn't sleep and spends his time making ammunition

Answer 53

Sin and Guilt Superstition and folklore

Answer 54

Dramatic monologue - the farmer as unreliable

Answer 55

* The hireling – Symbolizes the supernatural or the repressed. * Milk and cattle – Fertility, prosperity, possibly sexuality or sin. * Silver bullets – A traditional method of killing werewolves or witches—suggests mythological violence.

Answer 56

Enjambment - builds tension and disorientation that contribute to the dreams and nightmares Ambiguity - The narrative is deliberately unclear—Is the hireling a man, a spirit, a witch, or a mythological being? This ambiguity invites various readings (e.g. psychological, supernatural, allegorical).

Answer 57

Adresses gender discrimination and infanticide in India. Cultural devaluation of women's lives and the effects of poverty. The speaker now an adult reflects on her origin, being found buried alive and brought to the states were the cultures different. The poem explores the treatment of marginalised groups in impoverished countries

Answer 58

Gender and discrimination Poverty, motherhood and adoption

Answer 59

Free verse

Answer 60

vivid and visual imagery “They washed and stitched and cleaned, / gave sterile names.” Juxtapostion of settings The deliverer and ambigious mother figures

Answer 61

Enjambment - unnatural flow of events irony of eastern practices pf rejection vs western notion of saving

Poems of the decade Flashcards

(85 cards)