Skirrid A02 Flashcards
(9 cards)
Show: what is distinctly romantic about the poem?
The intertwining of nature and people to create a sense of the sublime, such as the use of metaphor in “early stars against the dust of your skin.”
Hedge School language
Both VISUAL and GUSTATORY language used as the speaker tastes an unripe red blackberry that is “bitter” as well as notes an old one that is “cobwebbed and dusty”. There is clear respect for the fruit in this stanza as the speaker appears like a connoisseur of the blackberries in his savouring of them and all the different varities he tastes with a contrats of textures described as some are “tightly packed” while some are “rain-bloated” with “looseness”
Hedge School: overindulgence
ADJECTIVES AND METAPHORS heaped together which presents rich and cloying experience of the 3rd stanza (disgust/ sickened with the richness/sweetness) image of overindulgence
Hedge school: Tone
With a theme of growing up, there is an underlying tone of fear of the dawning of male adulthood and an understanding of the end of childhood with a confusion of what adulthood holds
The last stanza holds a confessional tone which completely contrasts with the richness and decadence of the previous stanza. The confession comes from acceptance of the violence in which the speaker commited to the blackberries and how he “just once” went off among the blackberries not to taste them but to destroy them - the destruction of something beautiful
The confessional tone leads to the understanding and realisation of manhood and “just how dark he runs inside” with the use of “he” suggesting a nod towards natural violence inherent within men.
Hedge School: Imagery
Sheers continually uses sensuous imagery that creates full bodied images of the boy and the blackberries
Image of richness and over-indulgence from 3rd stanza with “coiled black pearl necklace” and “hedgerow caviar” and “bubbles of just poured wine”. The final sensual overload of “a sudden symphony” is created through this build up (sexual connotations)
Disturbing imagery of last stanza as blackberries are crushed when the speaker closes his “palm into a fist” and what should be perceptions of tasts are wrongly felt as tactile. Speakers hand is “blue-black red” (more connotations of violence and conflict) which presents the image of bruises and blood from destruction
Hedge School structure
4 FREE-VERSE stanzas of unequal length
SESTET (6 lines) sets scene describing how speaker picks blackberries every September on way home from school
The other 3 stanzas reccount different occasions of blackberry picking but become more decadent and dark as they go along
2nd Stanza: speaker describes the blackberries in gustatory (taste) terms as well as visual terms - sensuous experience
3rd Stanza: movements from obvious respect and connoisseurship of the blackberries to full gluttony
Final Stanza: complete shift in tone into confessional of violence towards the blackberries (respect of second stanza contrasts with this disrespect) - destruction of something beautiful
What can be said of the structure of ‘The Singing Men?’
- The first half of the stanza consists of 4 sentences, considers buskers in general and the shared aspects of the busking lifestyle.
- The second part focuses on specific types of busker; the structure breaks down, the five stanzas are written in a single meandering sentence, reflecting the lack of structure and looseness of the lives of buskers.
What can be said of the stanzas of ‘The Singing men?’
The fleeting, two-line stanzas is apt for the subject of the ubiquitous busker.
‘The Singing Men’
How can it be said that the buskers cover may powerful emotions?
What does the omnipresence suggest about the Significance of the singing men?
- Love: ‘ballads on the Satan Island Ferry.’
- Lamentation: ‘Slave songs in New Jersey.’
- Togetherness: ‘Folk songs in Moscow.’
- Sadness: ‘Blues in Leeds.’
There is something necessary, even cathartic about hearing these songs.
