Whatever happened?

Question 1

what are the 2 ideas within the poem?

Answer 1

1. the speaker tries different ways to repress and understand his trauma
2. the trauma keeps reamerging

Question 2

1 - ‘At __ whatever happened’

Answer 2

once - discourse marker = emphasis of how sudden he is dealing with his trauma

Question 3

1 - ‘trousers ripped, light wallets, and lips __”

Answer 3

bleeding - syndetic list = trauma has taken something away from him + the trauma causes him physical damage

Question 4

1 - ‘All’s __ distant’

Answer 4

kodak - attempts to reduce the trauma to something controllable

Question 5

1 - ‘What can’t be __ can be thrown away’

Answer 5

printed - attempts to choose to ignore the trauma + gain some control over it

Question 6

2 - ‘such __ bedding’

Answer 6

coastal - trauma remains under the surface

Question 7

2 - ‘Curses? The dark? __?’

Answer 7

struggling - tricolon of interrogatives = the speakers confusion about his emotions, that he can’t escape from

Question 8

2 - ‘of these __’

Answer 8

yarns - polysemic = confusion about what happened - become tangled and impossible to unravel

Question 9

2 - ‘(except in __, of course)?’

Answer 9

nightmares - parathetical = can’t get over the trauma, and impossible to escape from the demands of confronting his trauma