POTD Flashcards
(20 cards)
A minor role - UA Fanthorpe
title - related to ancient greek tragedy, in which a major role would be the tragic hero, and the monor role would be the chorus
- metaphore of the stage is then extended - ‘best observed on stage’ - living simply to fulfil a role
- intertextual reference of oedopus rex - relates to theater lexis
-‘waiting’, ‘driving’, ‘parking’, ‘holding’ etc - continuous verbs listed to show monotonous and strenuous daily life and lack of progression – motonous and repetitive background activity which constitutes the minor role of the speakers life
An Easy Passage - Julia Copus
form - free verse and narrative
voice - 3rd person speaker observing scene and narrating events - appears to be an adult and experienced voice, sympathetic, omnipotent yet subjective, emphathy for the loss of freedom of childhood but the desire to grow up
rites of passage - use of jewellery, nail polish, bikinis - right of passage and youthful desire to be percieved as older
simultaneous distance from, and inevitability of old age
The Chainsaw V the Pampas Grass - Simon Armitage
- hyper masuculine voice -> ‘overkill’ demonstrates awareness + sadistic pleasure from distruction
- form - parodies a traditional war poem - consistant use of hyperbole ‘just an instant rage’, ‘sweet tooth for the flesh’
- pampas grass - feathers, plumes, domestic + soft imagary = stereotypical femininity - ‘sunning itself, stealing the show’ - sybilance + sinister misogynistic views pushed onto the plant by the speaker – tautology + falsification of the speakers justification for excessive violent conquest
- ‘match’ - could suggest romantic pairing - contradicts the violence, re-enforced themes of gender violence
- exploration of what power is - distruction of femininity through violence, vs feminine power create life (regrowth of pampas grass each year)
Eat Me - Patience Agababi
sexism, objectification, dehuminization - suggests that sexual objectification of women is an act of violence + dehuminization - parter is not a partner, but a means to achieve his own personal pleasures and achieve gratification - focus on the body and not her individualuty, passivity and hollowness ‘forbidden fruit’, ‘desert island’ - surreal comparisons which objectify her as a comodity/ comfert to her partner
abuse, power, control - ‘nothing left to eat’ - ambiguous final line which reflects the uncertaintly and hollowness of the speaker/ victims of abuse - representative of how emotionally empty
tercet stanza form
assonant rhyming - long ay sound in first stanza
‘fast food’ vs ‘forbidden fruit’ - fricative alliteration to highlight the breach between her sad reality and his fantasy
Effects - Alan Jenkins
form + structure - single stanza comprised of just three sentences - unrelenting flow of emotion with frequent caesuras - add to the guilt + reflection themes
use of monosylabic, closed plosive words ‘cooked’, ‘ate’ give a bluntness/ possible sense of hostility
use of rhyming couplets ‘and giving love the only way she knew/ in each cheap cut of meat, in roast and stew’ - poetic enshrinement of these everyday moments with the hint that at the time they went unappreachiated - guilt
motif of hands - cyclically links begining and end, idea of pgysical + memory connection between the two
From the Journal of a Disappointed Man - Andrew Motion
form - found poem - takes something out of its origional context, no addition of rhymescheme just structured to add enjamberment - turns the observation of the origional text into an extended metaphor
subtle metaphor for the difficulties of masculinity - ubiquitous frustration + low energy through flat structure and lack of resolution
narrators voice presents two types of masculinity - ‘very powerful men; very ruminative and silent men ignoring me’ - ‘all monosylables’ - detached observation, idea of masculinity being strong and silent wich the narrator subverts
metaphor of the pier - james joyce bridge to nowhere - metaphor for the lack of purpouse and obsolescence of notions of masculinity, both traditional and subversive - leusure activity without purpous, phallic image
Genetics - Sinead Morrissey
villanelle form - intricate rhyme scheme and repetition - linguistically references combination of parental genetics + complex and intertwined structure of DNA - the deviation from this form with the half rhymes becomes informative of how childeren are their own people
- ‘palm’ + ‘hand’ alternating at line end = visual structure of vilanelle
meter - disjointed and jarring - reflection of themes of broken relationships - perhaps comment on subversion of parents to form individual identity
mention of body parts - our lives as physical and embodied, and there is a link between genetics and identity
religious connotations + marriage - juxtaposes genetic + biological themes with religious and spiritual - joining of the flesh/ marraige – idea that the biological embodiment of relationship outlasts the flux of social relations
genetic records of ancestors + past - body as a physical record of marrage records
Giuseppe - Roderick Ford
intergenerational sham surrounding conduct during the war - historical event underlines thematically
colloqual assides to highlight the sense of the construction of a narrative - further highlighted by use of second person pronounds for both justifyers and the mermaid to remove giuseppe from the murder
linguistic choices to absolve guilt of those involved through the erasure of her humanity ‘butchered’, ‘she,it’, ‘head and hands’, ‘ring stayed put’
mermaid becomes a symbol for uniquitous dehuminisation, same with the stock characters of docter and fishmonger
narrative imposed onto the mermaid, loss of voice and autonomy
History - John Burnside
oblique reference to 9/11 with the juxtaposition of a tender family scene with internal fears + external world issues
power of youth - idea of youth, reproduction, wimsy are intertwined through lyrical evocation of his observance of Lucas
thematic prosession from global anxiety to tender peace derived from being present in the first stanza
underlying and subliminal images of vuolence ‘razerfish’ ‘flesh’ and sibilance - ambiguous and connected to death - basal level of life and death
intermittent tighter sections of verse mirror the anxiety and internal throughts
Look We Have Coming to Dover! - Daljit Nagra
mixing of coloqual + non standard + traditional english - evoking the sense that englishness is a continuous process, and is fluid, to be revitalised by immigration
symbolism of the white cliffs of dover - literary reference to mathew arnold who depicted dover as a symbol for the lack of joy in the uk, however here although they are seedy and scummy there is a sense of joy and excitement
elongated vowels in 3rd stanza + plosive alliteration to demonstrate the diffculties of intergration into the uk, further highlughted by use of anti immigration rhetoric ‘swarms’, ‘invade’
final stanza again intertextualy references arnold - highpoint of poem ending in exclamatory phrase and a continuation of england through multiclturalism
Material - Ross Barber
tradition, nostalgia, loss - hankerchief becomes an extended metaphore for her relationship w/ mother + values and traditions of the past - representative of a simpler, interconnected life - eroded in the modern world and the speaker feels complicit for this
motherhood + generational change - comparison of parenting styles + skills, chaning material means changning material reality
modernity, mass production, dehuminization - jeopardization of material = danger to material of human lif, depersonalization
meter - flexible + springy, often iambic tetrameter which becomes looser
ABCB rhyme scheme every four lines w/ slant rhymes
Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn - Tim Turnbull
intertextually references ode on a grecian urn - ekphrastic poem
begins with question like traditional ode
hars consanat alliteration - crash, abrasive but poetically constructed
idea that art transforms the perception of these chulderen from negative to positive, highlights the fact that beauty can be bestowed and that external markers of class will fade with time, and that all will remain is the true beauty
transformation of low culture into high culture - through parody of ending of keats - tension between contemporary perceptions and future romanticisation and elevation through art
uses language of subculture to demonstrate vividity contrasts to the dull and dead suburbs
On her Blindness - Adam Thorp
tone - use of ‘one’ impersonal pronoun to connotate the influence of socieatal pressures surroudning grief - relayed and ingrained attitudes rather than authentic + personal
hedging ‘to be honest’ - conversational phrase - tension between the socieatal language construct and the notion of being earnest
anactodal + proseic langauge - hedging also contrasts figuarive language (used for sarcasm)
intertextual reference to milton’s ‘on his blindness’ - ingrained sarcasm about the brittish tradition of dealing with tragedy through stoicism
Out of the Bag - Seamus Hearney
establishment of childlike perspective in part one through coloqual and childish turns of phrases, simple rhythm, over particularisation
then
use of academic greek terms to establish maturity and allude to higher education
presents idea that poetry itself is a kind of cure
link between mythical appearence of asclepuis to the sick vs the appearence of his childhood god of health (local doctor)
healing and cures in a different sense - medical + biological vs spiritual and emotional
theme of continuation of rituals + vision - intense powerful images, occular proof - tension between sight and understanding
there is space for both irrational, traditional family myths and biological doctor healing
Please Hold - Ciaran O’Driscoll
technology - satitization of automated phone systems and highlights devaluation of human interactions in the modern world - in the face of the innefective technology it is the speaker who is obselete
tonally flat - repetition and short scentences - paratactic style of the lines
free verse - no rhyme scheme of meter -> apoetic and direct, like a soulless robot
epistrophe - emphasis of key words at end of lime + repetition for depersonalization
The Deliverer - Teshani Doshi
title - double meaning of delivering something to demonstrate the reducion of mothers to their biological function
passive construction of verbs related to babies and their mothers - demonstrative of their lack of autonomy within this society + their vunerability
‘squeeze out life’ - ambiguity and harshness, dehuminisation of the mother and the childeren
short scentences mimic the reflective media of video tapes - cuts and reconstruction of history + oral history = fragmented
very little use of poetic language and lack of moral condemnation to focus on the harsh reality of the system rather than individual transgressions
The furthest distance I’ve Travelled - Leonita Flynn
form - 8 quatrains with a volta after the third - movement from past travels to current ‘travels’ - free verse and varying line length + meter
stronger rhyming in the final stanza - represents a high point of unity, ballance and acceptance
first section - past - monosylabic and duosylabic words, ‘on the beaten track’ - inversion of typical + subscribed notion of travel, scattered airports, sterile ‘siberian white’ - half rhyme between tannoy and annonimity - perscribed mass idea rather than individual
second section - more detailed and irrevant discriptions of laundry - much more personal definition of travel, travelling has taken new significance - much more active and less passive - verbs
The Gun - Vicki Feaver
- changing language to discribe dead animals changes throughout poem - ‘a rabbit shot clean through the head’ - monosylabic, blunt, representative of the murder -> ‘entrails, fur and feather, feast’ - indiscriminate killing + desencitised to violence
- transformation of domestic life - gun juxtaposes, then becomes indispensible - image of the kitchen
- unnaturalness of death is disolved ‘streached out like a dead thing’ vs ‘king of death has arrived to feast’ - assimilation of death into their domestic sphere
- amalgamation of masculin + feminin domestic presences to create a unity between death and life
The Lammas Hireling - Ian Duhig
voice - we learn about confession - perhaps lack of reliablility + sense of culpability or surpressed guilt which he cannot confess
surpression - ‘disturbed from dreams of my late wife’ - double entendre of the phrase could relate to the surpression of unhapines in exchange for conformity – ‘company that knew when to shut up’ - alludes to nagging and comparative relationships - surpression of illicit passion spill into violence and distruction
dehuminization - ‘i hunted down’ - predetory verb combined with zoomorphic language used to describe hireling reduces story to predetor and prey - subconsciously reconciling these events through removing humanity from the object of his attraction, and reducing their relationship to the most primal + basal form
use of ‘cow with leather horns’ + ‘muckle’ + ‘elf shot’- dialect + riddles to imbibe the sense of the supernatural and also sense of confusion - unreliable narrator
To my 9 year old self - Helen Dunmore
form - dramatic monologue fillded with nostalgia and a sense of distance, free verse - free spirited, stanza length increases, untill stanza 6 - highlights the increased meditation on her younger self then decreases when the speaker achnowledges differences
younger self - embodies qualities of innocence, enthusiasm, energy, curiosity - parallelsims ‘rather run than walk etc’ - compounded sense of energy
image of scars - symbolise adults physical and emotional deteriation, and the erotion of the youngers resilience and fitness - links to the final image of the scab, which the younger self embraces with curiousity and resilience
vivid imagary and simbolism used throughout to highlight the dynamism and imagination of younger self
