poems of the decade Flashcards
(20 cards)
Eat Me
Speaker is stuck in an abusive relationship, where her partner is obsessed with fat woman and incessantly feeds her. Eventually she gets so fat that she is ab;e to suffocate him with her own body, freeing her of his control
Chainsaw vs the Pampas Grass
The poem’s speaker heads out into his garden, chainsaw in hand, to destroy some ornamental grass. Although his powerful chainsaw seems like “overkill,” it turns out that even its destructive blade is no match for the grass’s persistence: before long, everything the speaker thinks he’s killed grows right back again.
Material
Speaker meditates on the disappearance of the cloth handkerchief. Though the poem’s speaker found her mother’s “hankies” unfashionable as a child, she has since grown nostalgic for the simpler world those hankies evoke. The speaker thinks that modern life is marked by the mass production of cheap, “disposable” objects like paper tissues, and she also feels guilty about not being as attentive a parent as her own mother was.
History
Written in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. The speaker is flying kites on a beach in Scotland with his son in September 2001. Distracted by “the news” and plagued with a “muffled dread” about the future, the speaker tries to counter his anxiety by grounding himself in his surroundings in the present. The poem suggests the value of reconnecting with nature, paying attention to the world.
An Easy Passage
The poem follows a young girl who is trying to climb back into her house through an open window after sneaking out. It contrasts the intense joys and difficulties of adolescence with the more mundane routines of adulthood, and suggests that the transition from innocence to maturity is far from “an easy passage.”
The Deliverer
Poem addresses the reality of gender discrimination and female infanticide in India. It illustrates how the cultural devaluation of women’s lives combined with extreme poverty can lead women to abandon babies deemed a burden by society: those with dark skin, a disability, or who are female. The speaker’s mother brings one such abandoned baby girl to the United States, where she’s adopted by American parents. The poem ends by returning to India to describe the horrific reality of giving birth for women like the girl’s biological mother, who have little freedom over their bodies and lives.
The Lammas Hireling
The poem is a dramatic monologue set in the past and is based on Northern Irish folklore. The speaker—a farmer—tells the story of a hireling (young man) he employed around the time of the Lammas Harvest (which celebrates the harvesting of the wheat). At first the hireling seems to have a natural aptitude for work on the farm. One night, however, the farmer catches the hireling in a fox-trap under the full moon and realises that he’s a witch. The hireling transforms into a hare, and the farmer kills his new employee with a gunshot to the heart. Switching to the present tense at the end, the farmer tells the reader—who acts like the speaker’s priest hearing confession—that he rarely sleeps, and spends his nights making ammunition for his gun.
To My Nine Year Old Self
The poem is a dramatic monologue delivered by the speaker to her childhood self. The poem expresses fondness and nostalgia for the wonder and curiosity of childhood, while also acknowledging the impassable divide between maturity and innocence. In acknowledging this, the poem suggests, one can move on from the past and into a state of peace and acceptance.
A Minor Role
The poem’s speaker compares themselves to an actor with “a minor role” in a play: they excel at staying out of the spotlight and keeping the action of the play going smoothly just as, in everyday life. The speaker gradually reveals that they’re suffering from a serious illness and describes the tedium of dealing with doctors, hospitals, and intrusive questions about how they’re doing. Despite the confident face they present to the world, the speaker eventually admits that everything isn’t all right, after all. Nevertheless, they insist that life is precious, even when you’re not the star of the show.
The Gun
The poem’s speaker is at first wary when her partner brings a hunting rifle home, believing that its ominous, dangerous presence “changes” the house. But once the speaker gets used to the gun, she revels in the new energy it gives her and her partner. As the pair shoot and eat animals, they experience the intoxicating allure of power: the gun has given them a gleeful mastery over death.
The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled
Speaker recalls the thrill of backpacking across the world and wonders how they ended up settling down into a more ordinary life. But even though their globetrotting days are behind them, the speaker’s life is still filled with adventure: building close relationships, the poem suggests, is just as exciting and challenging as travelling the world.
Giuseppe
Speaker listens as their old uncle Giuseppe remembers a strange experience that he had in Italy during World War II: he witnessed, he says, the butchering of the “only captive mermaid in the world.” Slowly, it becomes clear that Giuseppe participated in this killing—and that he’s still riddled with guilt. That guilt, however, wasn’t enough to stop him from committing a terrible crime.
Out of the Bag
The speaker recalls scenes from his boyhood, particularly the local doctor’s periodic visits to his family’s home. To the young Heaney, Doctor Kerlin is an impressive figure, and even a little frightening—because Heaney believes he’s literally “delivering” new babies that he’s assembled in a workshop! This childhood misunderstanding sparks an extended meditation on innocence, imagination, faith, and healing. Weaving together myth and memory, Heaney dreamily recounts visits to the religious shrines at Lourdes and Epidaurus—but keeps returning, in memory, to the plain little bedroom where he and his siblings were born.
Effects
Its speaker grapples with the loss of his mother, recounting the memories that engulf him when he holds her hand after she dies. Though the relationship between mother and child was challenging, the speaker conveys the deep, largely unexpressed love that ran beneath their years of conflict.
Genetics
Meditates on the way that inherited traits connect people to their past. The poem’s speaker notes that their hands contain features inherited from both their mother and father, linking the now-separated couple within the speaker’s body. The speaker’s hands provide a deep sense of belonging to a family lineage, which the speaker hopes to continue by having a child of their own.
From the Journal of a Disappointed Man
Poem describes this man’s observations of an ill-fated construction job, during which a work crew tries to drive a pile (support column) into a pier. The crew encounters a mysterious problem, gives up on solving it, and abandons the job. Much as the crew leaves the pile hanging “in mid-air,” the incident leaves the speaker hanging—and the poem leaves readers hanging, demonstrating how real life often denies us the tidy resolutions we seek.
Look We Have Coming to Dover
A dramatic monologue spoken by a new immigrant to England, it portrays a group of immigrants’ first years in the country—from their dangerous arrival, to their under-the-table jobs, to their wistful hopes for the future. The speaker highlights the struggles of immigrant life: the lack of official documentation, the difficulty of finding work and housing, and the threat of violence and deportation. But the poem’s sparky, inventive language suggests that immigration is a revitalising force, offering immigrants’ adoptive countries fresh energy and fresh perspectives.
Please Hold
Satirises an automated phone call during which the speaker attempts to pay a phone bill. As the speaker grows exasperated with the “robot” offering them “countless options”—which aren’t really options at all—the poem’s extreme repetitiveness and flat tone evoke the agonising reality of modern technological systems. The poem suggests that these systems frustrate and dehumanise their users, disconnecting people from one another and making them feel expendable.
On Her Blindness
Autobiographical poem about disability and denial. When the speaker’s mother goes blind, she feels she has to conceal her suffering from the world: the able-bodied populace isn’t interested in hearing any stories about disability that aren’t inspirational. But then, the speaker reflects, it’s hard for anyone—himself included—to know what to say or do in the face of such a crushing loss.
Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn
Parodying John Keats’s famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” this poem’s speaker casts an amused eye over a vase by contemporary British artist Grayson Perry, its sides decorated with images of rowdy kids making a ruckus in the street at night. This artwork, the speaker suggests, preserves and celebrates a part of British working-class culture that might just form the basis of a pearl-clutching newspaper “exposé” in its own time. Art immortalises fleeting moments, this poem suggests, and it also transforms and perhaps glorifies the everyday.
