points to analyse for poem anthology

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London by William Blake

First line Repetition of "charter'd" - street and thames owned, attacking capitalism, sense of suffocation. Contrast to river, sybolising life and freedom - life is being controlled and thinking is being restricted.

point 1 Second stanza, reeption of "every" - never ending, no one left out, compleate oppresion. Kept under constraint, "mancles" through the mind "mind-forg'd" metaphore - can not rise up and chalenge those who tyrannise over them as their minds are in figaritive handcuffs.

Point 2  Mocking christanity as they spend money on a "blackening church" whilst children live in poverty and are forced into laour "how the chimmney sweepers cry" - their soot blackens the church walls. Do not meet the chimmney seepers themselves - insitutions of power such as the govermnet and clergy see their members as slaves. Blake specialised in illuminated texts of religious nature and often critisied the church for their failure to help the poor.

Point 3 Title and structure in a regular way, much like a song - stict rythme with alternating rhyme scheme. Emphasises how they are oppressed by authority.

Point 4 -"Runs in blood down palace walls" Blake was so effected by the french revolution he wrote a poem of warning.

Last line   -Poem ends when the cycle of misery recommences - a baby is born into poverty through his prositute mother - marriage is dead. "Blights with plagues the marriage hearse." Oximoron "marriage herse" even things ellusively good end in death and decay. "plagues" - the disease which comes from prostitution.A promise/prophecy - happiness will be killed. A vehicle in whch love and desire combine with death and destruction.

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Living Space by Imtiaz Dharker

First line- Negative, what the space lacks. Colloquial to represent poverty? The structure is the problem, not the people, trying to lay the blame on the government? An indication that the problem of poverty is bigger than those who are impoverished and includes things that they cannot fix themselves.

Point 1 - Structure - Alot of enganment, just as precarios as the structuresbeing described. "the whole structure leans dangerously" - longest sentence, echoing the fact the structure in imbalanced and leaning. The very idea that the house standing is amazing because there is no logical reason as to why it should be? The poor state of the home is not just something that can be overcome. It is also something that can be used as inspiration to do more.

Point 2  -"Nails clutch at open seams" Buildings unstable and exposed, "clutch" verb personifies the nail, desperatly reaching forward to no avail, can only grasp "open seams"- people can not progress in their lives? "clutch" - desperation. Collect noun for a group of eggs, link to symbolism futher in the poem.

Point 3 -Very short stanza. "someone has squeezed a living space". Enjanment, can not get her words out quickly enough?

Point 4 -Describes the eggs as "bright thin walls of faith" contrast to "dark edge//of a slanted universe" White and pure agianst darkness. Faith, like the shell of an egg, is easy to break. The word 'dared' shows that the speaker has a sense of wonder at the way people are living here. The eggs are a symbol of the people's boldness.

Last line - Though faith is ‘thin’, like the walls of the houses, they are ‘bright’ as if suffused with light. It suggests hope and a positive conclusion. Faith can easily break? Possiblility for goodness is present in every situation?

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Exerpt from "The Prelude"

First line - "frosty season" - premature ending of a winter day. Winter = end of year. "sun" - control, light, hope. contrast to frosty which connotes danger. Enjamnbment highlights shortness of time. Nostalgic in its thoughts about his childhood and the intense feelings of delight he experienced when he was walked or, as a child, played in the counstrysde

Point 1"through the twilight blaz'd" - warmth, comfort. imagery of light - shining through darkness/ bad times. Sun set. Powerless to prevent day turning into night and powerless to stop time.

Point 2"woodland pleasures" "rang aloud" - personification, countryside is alive. "tinkled like iron" - similie, positive anamatopia - high regard for nature. Emphasis on sound highlights beauty of the quitness of nature.

Point 3 -  "Like an untir'd horse" - similie, comparing people to animals. Shows the energ and freedom of youth. Does not think humans have power over animals or nature.

End line - Dying sunshine, the day is ending and the year. passage of time: childhood-adulthood. nature has changed.  Which suggests the vivid image of a sunset as we return to the warm glow of the evening

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Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is the greek name for the Egyptian Pharoah Ramesses II.

First line - "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone" , "vast" - huge, power/importance. "half sunk" - lying in utter neglect, nature does not revere and glorify those who misuse power. "stone" - product of nature - returning to the place it came from, circle of life.

First point - "lifeless things" - suggests was once alive. Nature can be percieved as we like? No longer serves a function.

Second point - "king of kings" - suprlative, reference to God? Rules everything, arrogant pride. His subsequent obscurity was a punishment from God - a subject that Shelley considered in several of his other poems. Pride becomes before a fall.

Third point - "nothing besides remains" - flouishing empire replaced by a barren desert. Caesura - this short, grammatically complete and isolated sentence stands within the poem like the statue in the desert. Shows the power of art.

Last line - "The lone and level sands stretch far away" - Time destroyed the statue, power of nature - final victory. The sand is "lone" eventhough it has a statue - insignficant.

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Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes

First line - "top" -looking down, power, top of chain. "eyes closed" - no worries, carefree, confident - not threatened by anything. Hughes using anthropomorphism to get across his message.

First point - "convieniance", "advantage" -effortless, nature has adapted for him, egotystical - higher than nature. Able to avoid all man-made things and so is able to dominate nature

Second point - All written in first person, using "I" to reflect the Hawk's authority, it assertively speaks for itself and excluding all other powerful entities.

Third point - nature appears to consist only of predators and prey - no harmony. Cynical concept of natural order - Ted Hughes - hard life, 2 suicides). "now i hold creation in my foot" - like God. "hold" - compleate power, dictator, restricted. Nature symbolises plight of man? Willl do anything to survive. Enjambment denotes the long and difficult process of creation, exagerating the Hawk's importance.

Fourth point - "allotment of death" - Hawk is in charge of the graveyard it has created? The hawk allots death, its role is to decide who will live or die, like an angel of death. "allotment" -connotes soething due.

Last line - "I am going to keep things like this" - juxtaposition to "change". Biblical - impossible exept for God. Perfect + permanent. Shows the danger of a tyrannt's mins, no persuasion and a sence of entitlment to dominate and kill.

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Death of a naturalist by Seamus Heaney

First line - "All year the flax-dam festered in the heart" semi-oxymoron - negative/positive. Forshadows end on poem. enjanment of heart - leaving thoughts on a positive. Slow and delibrate pace through repitition of "f" sound, revealing the poem to be about practicalities, along with the abrupt starting.

First point - Listed. pleasant scene - rule of three. Breathless exitment conveys love of nature. When Heaney was a child he grew up in a farm in Ireland and was familia with wildlife. Childlike "warm thick slobber" - umpleasent but appeals to the boy. Relish for natural world - able to overlook. Juxtaposition - safety and comfort vs unpleasantness. 

Second point - "Then one hot day when fields were ran with cowdung" - negative, ugly. See it for what it really is, loss of innocence. Voice changed to the older Heaney.

Third point - "The slap and plop were obscene threats" metaphore for the difficulties in adulthood? Shows disgust and fear. Onomatopoeic, unpleasant change in atmophere. Slows down pace emphasising threat. Hyperbolic, shows child's unrational fear

Last line - Nature has taught him there are repecaussions for things you do. "clutch" strength/power. Not let go. Connotes a bab who instinctively clutches things, full circle back to start of poem. Perhaps conveying idea of dominace in "kings"?

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To Autumn by John Keats

First line - "To Autumn" - personification/apostoph (rhetorical form of adress) informal - old friend/reasuring. Welcoming "mists/ maturing sun" - juxtaposition - sun takes away mist allowing things to live. "maturing" - Growh? Wisdom? Less active than Autumn? Conserving energy? Long vowel sounds emphasis lush and rich.

FIrst point - Naievity of youth. The "bees" think "warm days will never cease" - mortality, youthes feel that time will never pass and they will not grow old. HInts of death in first stanza "later flowers". Each stanza represents a passage of time: morning/afternoon/evening.

Second point "hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind" "winnowing" - seperating grain from plant - easier. Polinating land. A gift, giving life. Imagery of female shows how winter and autumn com together to give us abundance (as men and women do)

Third point - "or by a cyder-press, with patient look" - mezmorised. Alcholic - intoxicated? warming?

Fouth Point -  Imagery/ semantic field of song. Beautiful sounds of music of spring through animals. An ode - similar rhyme scheme.

Last line  -  "and gathering swallows twitter in the skies" - like the end of a day, returning for night. Preparing for migration, winter almost here. Accepts the passage of time/power of nature and circle of life.

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Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

First line - "not" - negative, immediately challenges the conventional symbols of love. Contrast to the title. Abrupt, mirroring Duffy's personality - sincere and realistic. She had been in a relatonship with both men and women, including Henry who was much older than her.

First point - ‘a moon wrapped in brown paper’ metaphore, the moon is considered a symbol of beauty and of femininity but it’s covered in brown paper - not conventinal for a valentines present, humbleness of the gift? "moon" - In ancient mythology the moon was ruled by Diana, a goddess worshipped by the Roman women. She had two sides to her personality; the pure maiden and the huntress - love a desperate hunt? 

Second point - ‘blind you with tears like a lover‘. risk of being left heart-broken.  Duffy was in a relationship with Arian Henry, who died. Shows the power a relationship has, "lind" - helpless, painful.

Third point - "I am trying to be truthful" - A single sentence stanza that stands on its own. Duffy underlines how she is trying telling the bitter truth half-way through the poem. A line conveying honesty. She thinks an onion is a better gift as it represents the complexit of relationships and she wants her audience to embrace this.

End line - violent imagery which implies that the two lovers have become enemies. This is when the image of the moon (Diana) as huntress becomes relevant, as the dark side of romantic love (or the moon) reveals itself in the later stages of the relationship. Shows how relationhips can destroy lives,

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Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth by Browing

First line - Adressed to her husband Robert Browning before marrying him in an attempt to define her love. perhaps trying to hide love from father who disaproved of their relationship. rhetorical question, because there is no ‘reason’ for love. Rather than using “why” she enforces this meaning

First point - "My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight", illustration of how much she trusts him. "soul" - religius conitations, perhaps her love is all-cosuming as religion should be, ephasises importance, shows she loves him with her whole being.

Second point - "freely" and "purely" prompted by the conscience, and that it is pure and selfless, like the action of a humble man unwilling to accept praise, also shown through few endstoppings. "pure"- nothing between them, the only right thing. "free" - should be free to love anyone they want, no one is forced to love someone, you are free weather you want to love or not.

Third point - Uses sonnet form but doesnt uses mostly assoanance, "ways" and "grace" instead of comlpleate rhymes perhaps to symbolise how love relies on us accepting one another compleatly, and does not need the approval of others. Infrequent rhymes also creates a flow to the poem, giving it a sense of purity and also she might be suggesting a sense of completeness in love.

Last line -  Possibly refer to her saying that there is no way that she can love him as much as he deserves it, so she states that she will still love “thee” after her life is over, Also asserts the idea that if God controls her future then she hopes to be reunited with her lover in the afterlife.

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A Wife in London by Thomas Hardy

First line - Image of isolation. "vapour" - polution, blinding, trapped, cant see into future, lost? Ominous atmosphere - reader knows something bad is going to happen

First point - "behind whose webby fold on fold" - idea of being trapped in a spider's web. Struggling without precense of her husband, feels trapped in London, helpless? Ambiguosness may be a critism to the lack of reporting about the scale of the Boar war., also highlighted through imagery of "fog".

Second point - "knock cracks" - The repeated hard ‘c’ sounds replicate the knock of the messenger, vividly recreating the shattering of the sedate sense of place created by the first stanza, also shows the wife’s sense of surprise due to a war letter being sudden and unexpected in its occurrence.

Third Point - "The irony" -  allows the devastating news to sink in for the readers. Mood worsens, more melancholic, "the fog hangs thicker" - pathetic falacy, symbolises added burden to the wife, her grief like an immovable weight. The irony is sinking in. Also symbolises unnatural feel to war. Hardy was fascinated by twists of fate, especially cruel ones

Last line - Ironic, reader can feel pang of death. Life cut short. "would" -certain he would come home, frailty of life no matter confident a person may be, tomorrow is never guaranteed. Some truth - they will have to  learn new love but because of death not "juants". Wasteful nature of war and destructive impact it has.

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The Manhunt by Simon Armitage

Title - The title puns on the idea of the 'manhunt', meaning literally a hunt to capture a man, often a criminal. Here the wife's search is for the husband she knew so well but who seems lost to her, metaphorically, after his experiences at war. Also the name of a children's game, showing how they must go back to basics? creates sympathy.

First line - "after", anaphora, gives emphasis to the suggestion that something bad will happen. Aderbial phrase - builds up suspense, implies that the couple's happiness is undermined by a problemthat will soon be explained.

First point - "and feel the hurt of his grazed heart", half rhymes with contant "h" sounds to suggest heavy breathing effort, the emotional pain and his partner to care for him. "grazed" - onamatopia, connotespain of childhood falls, memories that remain alie and are not easily fogotton. Lon vowel sign also gives a feeling of heaviness

Second point - "foetus of metal" - like having a baby, the couple's relationship will be forever changed by what he has gone through, start of a new life. Also implies that the bullet has embedded itself in his body, impending the healing process. Wound a part of him as a pregnant woemen is with her unborn baby?

Third point - Form/structure - Dramtic monologue, personal eventhough adopting a persona. Rhyming couplets and 2 line stanzas - she them as belonging together. Poem slow pace through endstoppings, shorts stanzas and longer vowel sounds, must explore injuries in small steps? approch him with caution? take a long time to heal?

Last line  - His body, being as broken as it is, has shut down and as much as the wife wishes to support her husband, the relationship between them is strained. Half rhyme suggests the problem is not fully resolved? War perminantly affects people. Only short sentence - partial conclusion as she can never fully understand what he went through.

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Cozy Apologia by Rita Dove

First Line - Hyperbolic and shows how her love is everywhere, creates a romantic mood. Love is like a magical fantasty, all-consuming."-" gives her chance to express her invert bizzare comparison to show extent of her love.

First point - The speaker imagines her partner as a heroic knight in shining armour. This is a cliché of romantic love which may be used in irony. Perhaps joking with her partner?.  “sure as shooting arrows to the heart.” represents Cupid’s arrow. Her husband rescuing him. Medival - comfortable with old-fashioned, simple relationships. Accuracy erhps sugests aptness of reference to a "hero".

Second point - "Big bad Floyd" better to be happy and boring than exiting and destructive. Rhyming couplets distrupted as a hurican disrupts life. Sybolism for powr of love? Pathetic fallacy - tials within/otside marriage? Personificatio - everything makes her thing of Fred.

Third point - "still, its embarrassing, this happiness" - others dont like them being together? Reason for the Apologia. Traditionally, poets are meant to be cynical and unhappy and perhaps her happines subvert norm in this way too. Links to oxymoronic title which suggests she is apolgising for her contentment.

Fourth point - "compact disks // and faxes" , enjambment highlights how much time is taken up by work, away from Fred. Storm allows them time to reflect on relationship. Suggests the monotonousness of life, everyone scared to subvert norm. Easy and safe.

Last line - "stolen" - guilty? Thankful to nature for giving her time to reflect on love. This time is precious and should not be taken advantage of.

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She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

First line - Similie - sets her up in a frame of calm and awe assosiated with clear, starry skies. emphasiss brightness of her beauty. As there is nothing in the sky an assurnce of no problems? Vast, uncontained, unimaginable.

First point - "dark and bright" - oxymoron, perfect combination of all charicteristics? thought that she may be in mourning and wearing black, yet it was decorated with spangles? May also refer to Byron's Romantisist views, heart more powerful than head. "dark" - sense of mystery and misbehaviour, hiding Byron's misdeeds, good v bad. Byron became know as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'.

Second point - "which Heaven to guady day denies" - unrequited love. the women is more beautiful than the sun, and her eyes shine brighter than it. Day is 'showy' but he beauty exells in a more suble way

Third point - Objectifiying women? "eyes","nameless" "smiles" "tints". However describes her hair as "raven" - more than meets the eye? darker aspect as is assoisiated with a bad omen.

Last line - The lady spends much of her time doing good deeds and her "mind" harbours no animosity, therfore her love in innocent? Innocent until he is finished with her? Heart follows mind as it is more important. "all below" - almost like an angel. "Inocent" - promising her he does not lust after her beauty but wants to know her.

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Afternoons by Philp Larkin

First line - Metaphor for the prime of the mothers lives fading. Autumn - everything begins to die and age. Degrading relationship between husband and wife. Verb "fading" connotes sense of loss, youth is lost, negative.

First point - "In the hollows of afternoons" - empty, no feelings or emotions. lots of free time and so their afternoons are hollow, meaningless and empty - lacks fullfilment.

Second point - "Before them, the wind // is ruining their courting-places" Pathetic falacy, acts as an idea of change. As generations pass, romance is lost. Steady erosive power of wind.

Third point - "unripe acorns" -  women were not ready for marriage and commitment. Do not know what "courting" is, just want to play with acorns. "expect" - command, women have no choice, slaves to their children.  Following in the pattern set by their parents, inevitable - enjambement shows unbroken cycle.

Last line - Vague, society making decision. Children pushing parent? Everyone become sideline charcters rather than the protagonist in deciding their own future. Merely cogs in great machine of life, women and fulfilled their role to reproduce and now feel useless.

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The Soldier by Rubert Brooke

First line / title - "The"  - determiner, individualising everyone,, applies to all english soldiers. He now is known as only a soldier. "I" - conditional conjunction, hopes to survive. Beauty of privledge is better than any horrific experience the soldier could go through. Particualy poignant as Brooke did die, but not in combat.

First point - "A richer dust concealed" - patriotic, believes England is more powerful than life, romanticising death. Perhaps seen as propoganda? Even afetr death he will be superior as he is English. Biblcal "dust to dust" - higher morally? Souls live on forever? Ironic as where bodies are buried the decomposition often causes beautiful flowers to grow. WE are merely "dust" and have a duty to contribute to something geater?

Second point - "bore, shaped" - personification, imagery of alovng mother Naive, written at a time when they thought the war would be over quickly, could not forsea the huge loss of life, icluding his own in 1915. Considering all England has given, it is a soldier duty to fight.

Third point  - "gives somewhere bach the thoughts by England given" - an obligation to give back to England. Perhaps explaining the driving impetus of British soldiers. New stanza in sonnet form represents new thoughts.

Last point - Only in death will the soldiers find peace. 'English heaven' England will never leave them. Religious - felt fighting for one's country is a duty, comforts the reader incase of his death but reassures himself that he will go to heaven. Heaven must be "Englsh" if it is perfect. England is the closest thing to heaven in the mortal world?

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Mametz Wood by Owen Sheers

First line - "found them" - implies genuine care by the farmers. Reinforced through "they tended the land back into itself" - helping the land to heal from the mass destruction, as is time. Shows how pwerful war is, still affecting the land. Technique know as "in media res" when telling begining as if in the middle of a story, stimulating he readers interest

First point - "told to walk not run" - treated like young children with no choice in the battle of the Somme, reminder of how young they were. Owen is commending the soldiers for their bravery as they obeyed commands despite being ambushed by the Germans, whilst critising the commanders. Because they were forced to "walk", they were even easier targets for the Germans

Second point - War is unnatural : "nesting machine guns" nesting - new life, nature, undisturbed, War disturbed the natural beauty of the area. Personification. Also implies a natural seamlessness with the woods, showing how well the Germans were hidden, they had become a part of the wood. Contrast of violence vs fragility highlights irony.

Third Point - "in boots that outlasted them" ironic, disturbing, true as boots in the trenches often rotted in the sodden conditions. "outlasted" - used up, dehumanising them as war did.

Fouth Point - 7 short, broken paragraphs to symbolise extent of damage? Perhaps represents the graves, each soldier at different heights/ their death was not organised but random and spontaneous.

Last line - He must speak of their courage for them as they are gone. As if the poem was a hymn for the dead, evoking guilt and sympathy. Have been silenced for a century but can now communicate with the living. "slipped" - unified, inevitable, easy.

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Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen

First line - Immediately questions the wartime progaganda. Hard syllables - certain of death / scared of it. "Beggars" - bottom class, helpless. Vivid description of exhaustion. Ironic as probably were fit, young men. Connotes an image of slavs, abnormally deformedny hard-labour.

First point - "men marched asleep" - stuck in a nightmare? shows extend of fatigue. Brave for carrying on. Written in iambic pentameter - steady beat of monotonous steps however enjambment reflects exhaustion and how they are stumbling.

Second point - "Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!" - sudden sense of realisation, hastened pace, emergency and panic. War was not organised? "ecsasty" -compleate panic, unable to think clearly, apocalyptic language, a if its the end of the world.

Third point - Also highlights mental health. "in all my dreams". In a seperate stanza to show isolation? Before recognised PTSD.  Switches to present tense - turning point in poem, "guttering, choking, drowing" - shows how much the dying man suffered. "all" - will haunt the soldiers forever? No evading war? Present tense, "ing", soldiers are dying all the time and action needs to be taken.

Third point - Sibilance and "you" to place reader in the poem.  Many repeated "w" sounds, like a man trying to talk but can not, pain? drowning? Repetition of "face" draws out poem to let horrors sink in and cobeys anger, building up ryhthm.

Last line - Men were told how glorius war was, however this is a lie. Sarcastic tone - obvious, how can people not see through propoganda? Opposite of "sweet". Shows bitter tone for the suffering he could not alleviate. An injunction to prevent the rest of the poem.

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As Impercetibly as Grief

First line - Questions why grief is so hard to accept. Hard to notice in oneself or in other people? "lapsed" - quietly and slowly, there is no sudden movement and no shock to the event, natural as is grief and death. Must accept it? Had alot of isolated time so could refelct on the passage of it. Transitions from the initial sharp pain of loss towards acceptance and resignation.

First point - "the summer lapsed away" Personification of summer, bringing about a harder time as summer is symbolism of happiness. "lapsed" - expiring, no longer valid. "-" slows time down. Gref comes and goes? Interupts poem as giref iterupts life?

Second point - "as a guest that would be gone" similie - sense of lonliness, as the poet was, alone woth her gief and suffering. As she wrote her poem perhaps looked out her window overlooking graveyad with 5 of he firends buried there. The morning summer sunlight is depicted as a welcome Guest but one that is impatient to leave with the passing of Summer

Third point - "without a wing" - No direction, no purpose, trapped

Fouth point“Our summer made her light escape” "our" possession of summer ; should be hers to keep.The poet and all humankind cannot escape the process of ageing as our lives move from our Summer to our Autumn. Time is a healer.

Last line - As summer will be back soon, so shall grief as it is an inevitable par of life. "light" - Perhaps will lead to something better: heaven.

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