Poetry notes.

Question 1

What is the poem about?

Answer 1

• It describes the experiences of a group of soldiers in WW1.
• They are freezing and exhausted.
• They feel attacked by the weather.

Question 2

Key aspects.

Answer 2

• Repetition emphasises the monotonous experience the soldiers are having to endure.
• The viewpoint Owen chooses shows the soldiers as a united force.
• The use of half-rhyme has a considerable effect.
• Owen uses alliteration.

Question 3

Key setting.

Answer 3

• Owen doesn’t describe the immediate setting of the trenches but their wider surroundings.
• The reader sees the soldiers’ “cringe in holes” which are compared with “grassier ditches”.
• It evokes the experience.

Question 4

Key technique.

Answer 4

• Owen’s use of the present tense throughout the poem has the effect of creating immediacy for the reader.
• The tense makes the soldiers’ experiences seem never-ending.

Question 5

Key quotation.

Answer 5

• Owen focuses on the soldiers’ readiness for action and the repeated dashing of their expectations.

Question 6

London.

Answer 6

Summary:

• The speaker notices how oppressed people in London have become now that everything is chartered.
• This is apparent in all kinds of people.
• The speaker refers to child workers and soldiers, and connects them to institutions such as the Church and the palace, both of which are presented as dramatically stained.
• Finally, the speaker reflects on the pitiful state of the streets at night, linking the ideas of prostitutes, new born babies, disease, marriage and death

Question 7

Key aspects.

Answer 7

• The repetition in the first half of the poem is a key language technique, emphasising the speaker’s initial unhappiness with the situation in London and building up to a strong picture of universal oppression with the five-fold repetition of ‘every’.
• Blake uses a regular rhythm and rhyme scheme.
• Some of Blake’s vocabulary choices are worth noting.

Question 8

Key setting.

Answer 8

Eighteenth-century London was developing rapidly under industrialisation which resulted in considerable poverty and extremely poor living conditions. Child labour was commonplace, and poorer children in particular worked long hours in dangerous environments. Blake’s poem outlines his concerns about Londoners’ lack of personal freedom by underscoring the way the city was being controlled by charters at the time, and suggesting that even the River Thames was controlled by the powerful.

Question 9

Key theme.

Answer 9

Blake states that everyone he sees is affected by weakness and woe.

Question 10

Key context.

Answer 10

Blake was a supporter of the French revolution.

Question 11

Extract from the Prelude.

Answer 11

Summary:
The speaker comes across a boat and uses it to row into a lake at night.
- The boy is pleased with his skill in rowing and describes how he fixes his point on a ‘craggy ridge’ in the distance.
- The boy suddenly becomes scared and turns the boat around.
- He is haunted by the experience afterwards.

Question 12

Key aspects.

Answer 12

• Wordsworth uses the first person viewpoint.
• Personification of nature is used throughout.
• It is in the epic tradition.

Question 13

Key setting.

Answer 13

• Wordsworth presents the reader with realistic descriptions of the lake and its surroundings at night.

Question 14

Key technique.

Answer 14

Wordsworth makes considerable use of figurative language to show the power of nature in ‘The Prelude’. He focuses on the speaker’s attention on small details to demonstrate the beauty in tiny things.

Question 15

My Last Duchess.

Answer 15

Summary:

• The speaker, a duke, points out a portrait of his former wife, inviting the implied listener to admire its lifelike quality.
• The Duke implies that his wife may have been flirting with Fra Pandolf, the painter, and it quickly becomes clear that the Duke believed his wigfe was too friendly or flirtatious with everyone and did not appreciate her husband enough.

Question 16

Key aspects.

Answer 16

• The poem is a dramatic monologue.
• Browning uses iambic pentameter.
• Browning presents the Duke as having no ‘skill in speech’.

Question 17

Key setting.

Answer 17

• This poem is about the Duke of Ferrara, in Northern Italy, whose first wife died at the age of 17.
• At the time, women’s sexuality was often regarded as dangerous.

Question 18

Key theme.

Answer 18

Browning makes it clear that the Duke is upset not just about the Duchess’s perceived infidelity; he is also offended by the fact that she seems as content with less materially valuable gifts than the ones his marriage to her has conferred.

Question 19

The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Answer 19

Summary:

• Six hundred soldiers - the Light Brigade - charge forward into a valley to engage in a battle between British and Russian troops during the Crimean war.
• In the valley they meet the enemy and are badly disadvantaged, but the soldiers press on bravely not acknowledging that their leaders have made an error in sending them into this situation.
• The sights and sounds of battle are described and the poem ends with a call to celebrate the bravery of the soldiers.

Question 20

Key aspects.

Answer 20

• Tennyson uses a strong rhythm to replicate sounds like horses’ hoof beats and cannons.
• Repetition and rhyme combine to make the poem highly memorable.
• The poem’s structure carefully presents the battle as a story in six stanzas with longer stanzas for the battle itself and a short concluding stanza in which Tennyson makes clear how the reader should respond.
• Tennyson chooses many active verbs to create a very lively poem and he uses onomatopoeia.

Question 21

Key setting.

Answer 21

Tennyson’s poem is set in the famous Battle of Balaclava between British and Russian troops in which the Light Brigade were reduced from well over 600 men to 195 partially because of a miscommunication of orders. At the time of writing, Tennyson was poet laureate. It was his job to record national events in verse. The reaction was ambiguous.

Question 22

Key technique.

Answer 22

This is a poem which is well known particularly for its formal elements. The stanza patterns are also tightly controlled.

Question 23

Storm on the Island.

Answer 23

Summary:

• The speaker explains how the community’s houses are well equipped to last through storms, built of strong materials and low to the ground.
• The land is not the type to grow hay or trees which can be difficult in high winds but that means the landscape is wide open.

Question 24

Key aspects.

Answer 24

• Heaney uses the plural pronoun ‘we’ to create a viewpoint which is that of the whole community.
• There are several examples of personification, similes and metaphors.

Question 25

Key setting.

Answer 25

Heaney conjures up the setting of these 'squat' houses for the reader with a wealth of description and imagery.

Question 26

Key technique.

Answer 26

The poem is written in blank verse and in the present tense both of which feel approachable and conversational.

Question 27

Bayonet charge.

Answer 27

Summary: - A soldier runs through rifle fire holding a rifle with bayonet attached. - The soldier becomes confused and pauses for a split second, unsure what he is doing. - The soldier notices a hare in the battlefield which thrashes about dying. - The soldier stops thinking and resumes the charge.

Question 28

Key aspects.

Answer 28

Hughes uses an erratic structure in terms of rhythm. Sound features like alliteration and short vowels evoke the chaos of the battlefield. Hughes uses a range of powerful and evocative imagery.

Question 29

Key setting.

Answer 29

Hughes evokes the sights, sounds and sensations of the battlefield through the soldier's experience of it.

Question 30

Key technique.

Answer 30

Hughes's use of imagery in this poem is varied and connects the battlefield to a range of more common, everyday ideas and objects.

Question 31

Poppies

Answer 31

Summary: - The speaker describes seeing poppies on graves before Armistice Day. - She describes the differences between how she wanted to act and how she did act when he left for war.

Question 32

Key aspects.

Answer 32

- The poem uses the first person and direct address. - Weir uses connectives to create a time frame. - There is a strong semantic field relating to textiles.

Question 33

Key theme.

Answer 33

Weir uses the speaker's memories as central to the poem using time connectives such as before and after. These connectives join all of her memories together and show how the events are related.

Question 34

Key technique.

Answer 34

Weir's interest in textiles shines through the poem in her vocabulary choices and imagery as she introduces physical textures and textiles throughout from the paper poppy to the metaphor of the dove's flight being like a sewing stitch in the final stanza.

Question 35

War Photographer.

Answer 35

Summary: - A war photographer is developing his pictures in a darkroom under a soft red light. - The atmosphere is serious and church-like. - He remembers the context of each paragraph and is aware that only a few of his pictures will be published and that readers will react for just a fleeting moment before continuing with their comfortable lives.

Question 36

Key aspects.

Answer 36

- Duffy uses measured, end stopped stanzas which mimic the photographer's ordered rows. - Contrasts are established between home and the war zones where he works and the understanding and experience and the reader who has become desensitised.

Question 37

Key theme.

Answer 37

Duffy contrasts the photographer's haunting memories of war with the reader's sentimental and desensitised reaction to his pictures. The photographer's attitude on the other hand is shown in more complexity.

Question 38

Tissue.

Answer 38

Summary: - Paper is presented as having the power to change things. - Paper is used in religious texts. - Other items made of paper record large and small details of life. - The speaker suggests that lives could be constructed or reconstructed out of paper.

Question 39

Key aspects.

Answer 39

- Dharker chooses to name the poem tissue although paper is its focus. - The poem uses a neutral viewpoint with a first person perspective.

Question 40

Key theme.

Answer 40

Dharker presents paper as powerful in the world because of the ways it can be used, even though the first quality that she emphasises is its thinness and fragility. The thinner the paper is the more it 'lets the light/shine through'. The more powerful it seems to be. Paper is seen as powerful when used for scared texts such as the Koran especially when a copy of the text is used to record family history.

Question 41

The Emigree.

Answer 41

Summary: | - The speaker describes having left her country behind when she was a child but never losing her child like image of it.

Question 42

Key aspects.

Answer 42

- Rumens uses a range of strong similes and metaphors to present the poem's ideas.

Question 43

Key setting.

Answer 43

The speaker's city is presented as full of light.

Question 44

Key technique.

Answer 44

This is a poem rich in imagery.