Poetry quotes and analysis

Sonnets
1. Petrarchan
  1. Iambic pentameter
  2. Rhyme
    1. 1st octave: abbabba
    2. 2nd sestet: flexible
    3. Change in rhyme = change in subject matter
2. Shakespearean
  1. Iambic pentameter
  2. Rhyme
    1. 3 quatrains, alternating rhyme & a couplet
    2. abab cdcd efef gg
  3. Shakespeare's own sonnets mostly focus on nature, sea & navigation (rival poet's power/constant nature of true love
  4. Wrote approx 150
    1. Over half of sonnets (earlier sonnets) are about a fair young man
    2. Later section are about dark female lover
3. Sonnet 18 (xviii)
  1. Opening line: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
    1. Question conveys a musing tone
    2. Connotations of 'summer': warmth, happiness.
      1. Similar to The Sun Rising because both are above natural things - ie sun is a nuisance in TSR and in here his lover is 'more lovely' than a summer's day
  2. Central idea: Compares lover to the summer, but decides they're much nicer. Focused on everything changing except his love's beauty.
  3. 'Thy eternal summer shall not fade'
    1. despite the changing of nature (he is 'more temperate'), he will remain the samre
  4. Apostrophe - 'thee' 'thou' - direct address
  5. Form: Sonnet, so typical Shakespearean sonnet format.
    1. Consistency of rhythm. Iambic pentameter
      1. it's easy breezy, just like his love
  6. 'Thou (informal, shows familiarity) art more lovely and temperate'
    1. more predictable and calmer than the weather
  7. Challenges the beauty of mother nature
    1. 'Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May'
      1. Personification
  8. 2nd quatrain
    1. His 'gold complexion dimm'd'
      1. talking about the sun when it is cloudy
    2. But lover's 'eternal summer shall not fade'
      1. Connotations of happiness here. His lover is the only constant amid a sea of variables
  9. 3rd quatrain
    1. Realistic: eternal lines will carry on his beauty
  10. Final line: So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
    1. Immortalises him through poetry and genetics, thwarts challenges of time
    2. Caesura slows the pace and breaks the rhythm. Lengthens the line
4. Sonnet 20
'How do I love thee?' - Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 1806-1861
1. Contextual info: age of Victorian Industrial revolution
  1. Pre-occupation with feelings. Society itself suppresses outbursts of emotion
2. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways./ I love thee to the depth and breadth and height"
  1. Monosyllabic - indicating purity and intensity of emotions
  2. Spondee to begin with?
  3. 'depth' & 'breadth' - internal rhyme
3. Petrarchan sonnet
4. Anaphora: 'I love thee' - thee meaning her soon-to-be husband, Robert Browning. Personal
  1. All encompassing love
5. Voice: first person. Telling things to a silent person
6. 'with a love I seemed to lose'
  1. faces prospect of lost love? But their love is eternal?
7. 'I shall but love thee better after death.'
  1. LINK TO JOHN DONNE'S 'THE ANNIVERSARY' - 'THIS IS THE SECOND OF OUR REIGN'
    1. Eternal love
8. Pace is slow and contemplative - caesura
Poetry techniques & significances
1. Monosyllabic lines
  1. Convey intense emotions
2. Repetition
  1. increases musicality and emotional appeal
  2. I.e. rhyme, rhythm, assonance, alliteration
3. Personification
  1. i.e time
4. Paradoxical lines
  1. represents the contradictions that love breeds
  2. expressed through final couplet which contradicts prev argument
5. Antithesis
  1. opposing words
  2. sharp & striking effects
6. Rhyme
  1. Internal rhyme
    1. unifying effect
    2. emphasises meanings of words
  2. creates symmetry & pattern
7. Imagery
  1. emotionally charged words, increases emotional appeal of he poems
  2. For Shakespeare, common theme is time's destructive power
John Donne - Metaphysical poetry (1572-1631)
1. Early modern English
2. Metaphysicals challenged conventions of Elizabethan poetry
  1. Used conceits (witty or unusual comparisons)
    1. Unusual metaphors
  2. Rugged/dramatic vocab
  3. Intellectual ideas and philosophical speculation
3. The Flea
  1. 3 stanzas
  2. 3 rhyming couplets and a triplet
4. 'The Sun Rising'
  1. Central idea: orders the sun around, degrades its status. Place him and his lover at the centre of all importance.
    1. the sun is their servant
  2. Form
    1. 3 stanzas, 10 lines each
    2. Regular, alternate rhyme
    3. Alexandrine at the end of each stanza - also 12 syllables. Couplet.
      1. 2 quatrains and a couplet
    4. First 2 lines are trochaic, then returns to iambic pentameter
      1. What is the effect of this?
    5. SPEAKER IS THE MALE LOVER
  3. Opening line: Busy old fool, unruly Sun
    1. interrogative
    2. 2 strong stresses - spondee
    3. Apostrophe as there is direct address towards the sun
    4. 'Why dost thou thus'
      1. 'thus' shows that a Lady is present
    5. lyrical. immediately sets the scene
  4. Derogatory language: 'Saucy pedantic wretch - conceit?
    1. Different to conventional approaches towards the sun in love poetry - common for poets to compare their lover to the sun, to say they are just as amazing etc (sonnet 18). But here, the sun is a nuisance.
    2. sexual, lively, persistent
    3. 'go chide / late school boys'
      1. bother someone else, not use
      2. but also there is teeming life around the lovers
  5. Asyndetic listing: 'Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time'
    1. They don't have the same worries as other people. Exist outside the markers of time
  6. Context: written during a time when Copernicus' heliocentric theory had been strongly rejected by the Catholic church
    1. JD must have known about this
    2. 'unruly' - the sun has challenged the church
    3. Rejects the theory through degrading of the sun - restores medieval concept where earth is in the centre. HOWEVER Donne goes a step further by placing him and his lover in the centre
      1. The Earth rules supreme
  7. Boastful tone
  8. 'She's all states, and all Princes I'
    1. He's still better than her.
    2. Caesura - he is in charge of the reader, just as he is in charge of the sun and his lover
  9. Can 'eclipse' the sun in a 'wink', but he won't because he would 'lose her sight so long'
The Garden of Love - William Blake
1. Central idea: The church is shrouded in hypocrisy and where it claims to be a cause for happiness, it is not
2. Iambic tetrameter - simple, springy nursery rhyme rhythm which creates feeling of innocence
  1. Combination of simple form/structure contrasts with darker subject matter - emphasises his point. Almost ironic because of this, reflecting the hypocrisy of the church
3. Arranged in three quatrains - regular
4. 'Priests in their gowns, were walking their rounds / And binding with briars, my joys and desires.
  1. Final 2 lines have two sets of internal rhymes, causing changes to the regular rhythm.
  2. Plosive alliteration - shows Blake's anger
  3. 10 and 12 syllables in these lines instead of 8
    1. Because of this and because of internal rhyme, the poem doesn't feel 'complete' - sense of an open end making the poem feel incomplete - just as the Church continued to grow in influence around England
5. 'Tombstones where flowers should be' - ominous
'To His Coy Mistress' Andrew Marvell. (Also a metaphysical poet)
1. Central idea: man trying to convince his mistress to have sex with him in a 'carpe diem' format
2. Addressed to a silent recipient
3. Rhyming couplets throughout
  1. Couplets had a lyrical quality - keeps the reader interested
  2. Regularity suggests well thought out argument
4. Draws upon courtly love - 'coy' means to play hard to get, to be reserved
  1. Coy - appear innocent but provocative undertones
5. 3 stanzas - irregular in length
  1. 20 lines, 12 lines, 14 lines - hasn't got time to make sure they're all equal in length?
6. Iambic tetrameter
7. Opening line: 'Had we but world enough, and time / This coyness, lady, were no crime'
  1. Direct address - apostrophe
8. Supporter of Cromwell - became a republic for a short time
  1. Civil war
9. 'Mistress' = lady. Possessive determiner - she's a possession
10. Uses blazon
  1. fragmentation/objectification/sexualisation of women's bodies
  2. 'Two hundred to adore each breast'
    1. apotheosis of women
    2. hyperbole
11. Regal imagery ties into the apotheosis of women idea
  1. 'rubies'
  2. 'by the Indian Ganges' side' - she is exotic
  3. But he is ordinary by comparison - 'I by the tide / Of Humber'
    1. 'Humber' = Hull - the area he represented in politics. Much less exciting than rubies etc
12. 'My vegetable love should grow'
  1. Wit. Phallic imagery.
  2. 'Vegetable' is elongated to fit the meter of the poem
13. 2nd stanza - describes how he doesn't have time to appreciate her 'till the conversion of the Jews' because he can 'always hear / Time's winged chariot hurrying near'
  1. so they should seize the day
  2. Logical - time isn't endless for them
    1. Their reality.
  3. 'Deserts of vast eternity.'
    1. Stressed, emphasis on notions of his ideas
    2. end stop line
    3. Not an inviting afterlife
      1. More reason to seize today while they are alive and well
  4. 'Worms shall try / That long preserved virginity'
    1. Virginity is useless when dead as worms will violate your body regardless
    2. Contrast to 'The Anniversary' where they will merely be in two separate graves - rotting is not discussed
    3. The grave is 'fine' and 'private' 'but nothing is better than 'there embrace'
14. STANZA STRUCTURE - 1ST STANZA IS AN INTRODUCTION, 2ND STANZA 'BUT' - COUNTER ARGUMENT. 3RD AND FINAL STANZA 'NOW' - CONCLUSION
15. 3rd stanza
  1. 'Now let us sport us while we may'
    1. physical act of sex
    2. 'Now' reinforces the carpe diem tone
  2. Finally, 'Thus' - language of an argument.
    1. Wants to 'make' the sun 'run' - wants to be in charge. Time is the enemy
'Meeting Point' by Louis MacNeice
1. Opening line: Time was away and somewhere else
  1. Final line: Time was away and she was here
    1. 'She' is all that matters
    2. Begins and ends in the same place - time truly has stopped. Nothing has moved forward
2. Form
  1. 8 regular stanzas - ordinary. Reinforces the ordinary scene
    1. Quotidian
      1. 'moving stairs'; 'the clock' ; 'cups and plates'
  2. Use of refrain
    1. First and last line of each stanza is the same
      1. Cyclical motion - never ending. Moving but not growing
  3. Iambic tetrameter
  4. Alternate rhyme scheme - ABAB
3. Quotidian language interjected with exotic, extraordinary imagery: 'camels crossed the miles of sand'; 'tropic trees'; 'forests such as these' - all deal with things of vastness - navigation, navigating each other? Or their love is so vast is fills these things? Transports them elsewhere?
4. Contest: written in the 1930's - stream of consciousness writing
5. Sense of unity: 'one pulse' (1st stanza) and 'one glow' (2nd stanza)
  1. Because everything is stationary but for their 'one pulse' (and the 'stream'), it can be assumed that only their love flows freely in that moment. Will therefore never grow old because 'time was away and somewhere else)
6. 'The bell was silent in the air'
  1. Suspension
  2. A silent time keeper
7. 'Neither up nor down'
  1. reference to the Grand Old Duke of York nursery rhyme. Couple are caught in limbo
8. Sensory descriptions
  1. 'clang and clang'
  2. 'brazen calyx of no noise'
  3. 'like water from a rock'
  4. 'stream's music'
9. Love creates an alternate reality. They have conquered time - it is nothing to them.
10. Enjambement used regularly
  1. emphasises the continuousness of the scene - even the lines flow into each other
  2. 'the clock / forgot them'
  3. 'they planned / to portion out'
    1. flowing. Everything smooth
Woman's constancy - JD
1. 17 line lyrical poem
2. Apostrophe - direct address
  1. Interrogative - demands answers from the supposed female in the situation, but we don't hear her reply
  2. Dramatic monologue because we only hear the speaker's views.
3. Rhyming couplets throughout - still unity in the rhyme scheme even if the couple themselves are 'not just those persons'
4. First line 'NOW THOU HAST LOVED ME ONE WHOLE DAY,'
  1. Monosyllabic
  2. Spondaic
5. Line 2 is iambic, then settles into a trochaic rhythm (more or less) in the rest of the poem - emphasises cynical tone.
6. Interrogative - 'what wilt thou say?' - rhetorical
  1. 6 questions in total
7. Deliberately frames the questions so that the reader sides with him
  1. Shows that he himself is the unstable one - not the woman for she has not left yet - which is ironic because it is about 'WOMAN'S constancy', not the man's.
8. Argument centred around 'proving' - contractual laws: love is binding - at least 'till sleep'

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