English Literature- poetry

Pregunta	Respuesta
Hard Water	Hard Water
content	the poet remembers how the water was soft on holiday. The poet prefers her hard water which reminds her of other things she loves about her town
place	burton- upon- trent is a town in East Staffordshire. For a while the towns main industry was brewing. While the poet is clearly writing about her town, the ideas/ sentiments could apply to any industrial town
Home/ belonging	the holiday in wales provides contrast with life in her town. She 'loved coming home' and although the description may not appeal to an outsider, it has a tone of affection and loyalty. She is aware that her roots have 'marked' her as 'belonging', 'regardless'.
identity and heritage	the water is characteristic of the place she comes from, just like the accent. She is aware her towns industry harmed the environment, but she is also aware of peoples honest hard work in those industries
nature and environment	the hardness of the water is natural, coming from the rocks of the area she comes from. However the air and rain has been polluted by chemicals and industrial waste
education/ ambition	'book-learning' may have taken her away from home, but the poet is aware of its limits and likes the idea of being brought down to earth by those who might think her ideas and perhaps her poetry are 'too bloody deep'.
tenses	the poet writes in past tense, using the first person. Beginning as an anecdote, the poem develops into a reflection of her roots.
stanzas	the poem is in three stanzas 1) short description of experience in wales- doesn't elaborate as not passionate 2) what she likes about homes water- longer, thoughts flowing like water 3) discussing the pollution/ rain- even longer, anger/ ranting feel
language	although most of the poem is in standard English, it includes some words and phrases from her home to illustrate the point of 'straight talk' of the area: 'hey up me duck','don't get mardy' etc
symbolism	the hard water is symbolic of urban working class life. It represents both the positive and negative aspects of her home town
personification	both tap water and rainwater are personified: 'it couldn't lie', 'honest water', 'this rain had forgotten the sea'
sound	The difference between hard and soft water is shown through vocabulary. In the first stanza she uses polysyllabic words many syllables) to show the excitement of the water. In the 2nd stanza she uses short words and full stops to show the bluntness.
imagery- pollution	Although this is an ode to hard water, and the tone is positive, the imagery is sometimes negative: the "sour steam of cooling towers" "swimming-pool smell". the rain in the final stanza "scald[s]" her "eyelids and lips". These are regarded as good qualities, defining the water as "honest": it "tasted of work".
imagery- isolation	There is a hint that the narrator sometimes feels a little isolated: the phrase "in spite of my book-learning" has a defensive tone, as if people around her resent her education. This is picked up in the two quotations at the end "don't get mardy" and "too bloody deep for me", possibly referring to arguments, and perhaps separation from her family or friends.
personification with emotions	The hard water is personified. In the second stanza the narrator describes how she lets "the little fizz of anxiety settle" in a glass of the local water. This personification also suggests that she is projecting her own emotions onto the water, so that it becomes a character in its own right.
imagery- belonging	marks the narrator as "belonging" no matter what happens. This may explain why the narrator even regards the acid rain as acceptable: she opens her mouth to the rain at the bus stop even though it is "thick with a payload of acid".
London	London
content	the poet takes us on a journey with him through the streets of London and shows us some of the people who live there among the churches and palaces: children, chimney sweepers, soldiers and prostitutes
place	the London that Blake knew- the beginning of the industrial revolution and the city's ever- increasing population mostly consists of poor people who struggle to survive. The buildings and the river represent authority and oppression. All the people in the poem seem to be victims.
authority and oppression	Blakes sympathy is with the poor. The Church and State are represented by their buildings: 'the blackening church' and the 'palace walls'. Blake sees all authority as crushing human spirit
poverty	he gives a shocking picture of what life is like for the poor
corruption, sin and death	the lives of Londoners are blighted by poverty and disease, any virtue or hope gone. The 'youthful harlot' is a figure of sympathy, but she is also responsible for the spread of disease
innocence and experience	on the surface it is possible to see innocence as positive and experience as negative but innocence can also be seen as childish naivety. There is more vigour and strenth in experience, as well as more realistic views of the world.
revolution	Blake was influenced by the ideas of French Revolution. Poems like London can be seen as a warning as to what might happen in Britain if things do not change
tenses	the poem is written in first person. It is not about the poet, but still seems personal as he invites us along with him on his midnight walk
stanzas	there are 4 regular stanzas with 4 lines each. Each stanza has a regular rhyme scheme (abab). There is something relentless and inflexible about this which reflects the hopelessness of the subject.
repetition	'in every' and 'i hear' reflecting the idea that the misery goes on and on
imagery	the 'church' and 'palace' represent twin bodies of authority
diction	negative and quite violent, giving the poem and angry, bleak tone
metaphor	'mind-forged manacles' is ambiguous. did authority forge the manacles to keep people in their place or is everyone responsible for their own?
chartered	In the first stanza, Blake uses repetition twice, firstly using the word "chartered". This is a reference to the charters that allocated ownership and rights to specific people. Many, including Blake, saw this as robbing ordinary people of their rights and freedoms.
marks	The second use of repetition is with the word "marks". This has a dual meaning: it refers to the physical marks carried by people as a result of the conditions they endure, and is also suggestive of the speaker recording evidence during his walk through the city streets.
negative words	The poem is full of negative words: "weakness", "woe", "cry", "fear", "appals", "blood", "blights", "plagues" and "hearse" are just some of them.
marriage hearse	The poem ends with a contrast in the language: "marriage hearse". To Blake, marriage should be a celebration of love and the beginning of new life. Yet here it is combined with the word "hearse" - a vehicle associated with funerals. To the speaker of the poem, the future brings nothing but death and decay.
price we pay for the sun	price we pay for the sun
stanzas	Price We Pay for the Sun is written in free verse. The poem is divided into stanzas according to key ideas. The first stanza deals with the islands, the second with the theme of family, and the third summarises the argument of the poem, detailing the "Price" referred to in the title
sound	The short lines and abbreviated syntax contribute to a staccato sound (short and punctuated) in this poem, and draw attention to the half rhymes like "stone" and "foam". The staccato effect also contributes to the uncompromising message of the poem
alliteration	Although the poem is written in free verse, the alliteration between lines (such as "wind" and "whipping") and rhyme or half rhyme (like "volcanoes" and "know") holds the whole piece together, forming a single, powerful unit, rather than a series of fleeting images
personification	The imagery of people and place become mixed in this poem. However, instead of taking the usual poetic route of personifying landscape Nichols describes her family in terms of weather and land, making them much more solid and "more real than flesh and blood".
imagery- danger and threat	The hardness of life in the islands is emphasised from the outset: they "split/bone", describing damage that goes to the centre of a person; while the metaphor of the volcanoes and hurricanes creates a sense of impending natural disaster, and establishes the threatening tone of the poem
pun	Nichols puns on the words 'sulphurous' and 'furious' with "sulph-furious": the humour is black, as we realise that the metaphor of the volcanoes refers to cancer.
'water mirroring palm'	It could suggest the idea of symbiosis between people and nature, because of the word "mirroring". It is the only part of this verse where natural imagery is not linked to danger. However, the "sifting sand" of the line above reminds the reader of the cliché 'shifting' sands, which can't provide a firm base to stand on.
tone	The tone of Price We Pay for the Sun is quite angry: it challenges the "picture postcard" image of the Caribbean, and questions the views of the tourist who see the place only as a holiday destination.
people and nature	the mixing of descriptions and metaphors shows how people and place are connected, underlining the idea that the islands are much more than images.
ending	"girl" reminds us we are ignorant. grandmother may be addressing the narrator, teaching her a lesson. There is a sense that this is a choice not curse: poverty is the "price" the islanders pay for the good (sun). final line "run come" creates a positive tone and may represent narrator getting on with life
the moment	the moment
content	about the relationship between humankind and the world. Nature rebels at the idea that humans can own part of the planet, even though the planet tolerates and looks after people. At the moment when humans believe they own the world, nature withdraws its gifts and benevolence so that "you can't breathe".
structure	three stanzas of 6 lines. The first 2 stanzas combine to make one sentence. The final stanza has six sentences, nearly all of which are end-stopped. This sentence structure creates breathlessness in the first 2 verses. The final stanza has an air of quiet, determined finality.
sound	repeated phrasing and sentence structures create a sense of echo within the 2nd and 3rd stanzas. This contributes to the idea of the poem being a 'moment': everything is happening within an instant. As the poem is read aloud, the end-stopping in the final stanza creates pauses to develop quietness and gravity.
tense	The Moment is written in the second person, putting the reader at the centre by addressing them and making the message more immediate.
listing	The listing in the first stanza - of all the places that could belong to you - has two effects: it creates a sense of the poem as universal (this message applies to everybody, no matter where and how they live); and it gives a certain pace to the poem, driving the reader on to the twist and message at the end.
personification of nature	the trees, birds, cliffs and air "whisper" their message as a direct address to the reader in the final verse. The words used to describe aspects of nature are not what we would expect: the branches of the trees are "soft", not hard, emphasising the idea that nature has been previously nurturing.
Humans military actions	Actions of humans are military and acquisitive (greedy): "climbing the hill, planting the flag". They are "proclaiming" instead of like the "whisper" of nature. Humans are seen as less significant/permanent than nature, a "visitor" The military actions are futile and the gentle "whisper" of nature is more poignant.
humans and the world	the idea that humans don't own the world or nature, but are instead allowed to share the planet on sufferance (with leniency). It moves from what seems to be a celebratory attitude towards accepting our place in the world, to undermining that with rejection and human futility.
humans staking their claim	The theme of humans staking their claim is repeated through the poem. There is a sense that the "you" to whom the poem is addressed represents the whole race, which is created by the universal list of places in the first stanza and the phrase "time after time" in the last.
neighbours	neighbours
structure	The poem is written in eight stanzas each of three lines, known as a triad (a traditional form in Welsh poetry). Perhaps Clarke deliberately groups her lines in threes to allude to Welsh traditions and give an air of mythic, monumental significance to the Chernobyl disaster.
closeness between Russia and Wales	the alliterative"glasnost" and "golau glas". 'Glasnost' translates as openness and 'golau glas' translates as blue light. ('Glas' is a Welsh word that can be translated as 'blue' or 'green' or 'grey'.) Both these phrases are musical and help to create a sense of hope at the end of the poem.
alliteration	In the early part of the poem, which deals with birds, there is quite a lot of alliteration: it could be used to suggest birds' wing beats; or refer to the wind that carried the radioactive particles from Russia
imagery- disaster	unnatural deaths of birds as a symbol of the radioactive danger spreading across Europe. a post-apocalyptic feel at the start, and the effect on the birds shows the impact that the disaster had on the natural world. There is a sense of foreboding, as these deaths foreshadow what could happen to humanity.
imagery- lamb	A lamb appears twice in the poem. Lambs are often symbols of innocence, but the first image of crows drinking from the dead "lamb's eye" is particularly horrific.
imagery- pandora's box	In the fourth stanza the imagery refers to the myth of Pandora's box, the "old story" of a "box of sorrows" that contained all the evil in the world.
pandoras box- hope trapped in jar	This is particularly appropriate because the poem ends with a note of hope, suggesting that something good may follow from this disaster - presumably more openness (last line) and a greater sense that many nations are neighbours now.
everyone in the world being "neighbours"	something far away is shown to affect things close at hand and we are asked to empathise with people no matter where they are from, Finland, Poland, the Ukraine or Wales. This is shown in the towns "twinned" with Chernobyl, and 'twinning' of the hearts of people in Europe and fireman and child from russia
disaster is the ultimate "democracy"	"virus and the toxin" treat everyone alike. This period in world history comes at the end of the Cold War and represents a time when the Soviet Union was becoming Russia so the poem notes this change in politics.
compare- Neighbours and crossing the Loch	references to nuclear power or weapons. Both are poems by Celtic writers, firmly rooted in Wales or Scotland There is a life-affirming and positive ending to both poems: one ends in hope and the other in a joyful jump to safety. Both poems use the first person plural "we" a lot
compare- Blackbird of Glanmore and Hard Water	Both poems express admiration In both poems the central subject is a symbol for something significant. Both poems create a strong sense of location, probably because they are autobiographical and so the poets can refer to authentic features in those places.
compare- Blackbird of Glanmore and Neighbours	Both use birds as a central image The birds in each can be seen as ominous The Blackbird of Glanmore is a personal poem where there is a real connection between the bird and the narrator. Neighbours emphasises political or historical events affecting society
compare- Price We Pay for the Sun and Hard Water	Both poems are about the narrator's/poet's birthplace. In both there is a tension between the positive and the negative. Both poets emphasise the "real" (Price We Pay for the Sun) or "honest" (Hard Water)
compare- Price We Pay for the Sun and Crossing the Loch	In both poems water is key to the poet's depiction of place. In both poems negative features - nuclear submarines or the industrial setting - turn out to be positive. The poets focus on the beauty of the phosphorescence of the water or the honesty of hard work.
compare- Blackbird of Glanmore and Crossing the Loch	Both poems have the theme of memory In both poems something negative is turned into something positive: The style of each poem is very different: although both use alliteration, Heaney's is a more aural poem (dependent on sound effects).
Compare- London and A Vision	although it is also a 'vision' of a city, it is a clean, futuristic one. Of course, that isn't the reality in A Vision either. In both poems there is a sense of the city as an unhealthy place. In Armitage's poem the negatives are all created by what reality is not – the imagined city is beautiful, but that vision is now in the "landfill" site.
Compare- London and Price We Pay for the Sun	Grace Nichol's poem also focuses on people in relation to the place they live. Although the landscape is very different, it is also a place where people live in extreme poverty and suffer. The form of the poem is very different - it is much less strictly structured. It also has a song-like quality to it, however.
compare- A Vision and Hard Water	Although these poems are very different in style, they both use detail to create depictions of their main subject. Both poems are narrated in 1st person Both poems have paradoxical ideas in them - the future is in the past and apparently negative characteristics describe positive traits (in Hard Water).
common themes	common themes
memories	the prelude, cold knapp lake, wild swans at coole, hard water, the blackbird of glanmore, crossing the loch, a vision
childhood	cold knapp lake, hard water, london, price we pay for the sun, wild swans at coole
the people who live in a place	london, price we pay for the sun, cold knapp lake, neighbours, a vision
death and mortality	neighbours, cold knapp lake, the blackbird of glanmore, london, price we pay for the sun, the wild swans at coole
the power of nature	the prelude, spellbound, below the green corrie, storm in the black forest, wind, the moment, crossing the loch
the beauty of nature	crossing the loch, below the green corrie, wild swans at coole, the prelude
man and nature	hard water, neighbours, wind, storm in the black forest, the moment
towns and cities	hard water, london, a vision
home/ belonging	hard water, the blackbird of glanmore, spellbound, wind, the moment, neighbours
the environment	hard water, a vision, the moment, neighbours
quick guide	structure 1 line 5 words 1 word 5 feelings 1 feeling 1 image 1 sound

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	Creado por vittoria howard hace casi 10 años