6698393
Description
Flashcards by ash prince, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by ash prince
almost 8 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| LETTERS FROM YORK SHIRE The poem opens with a description of a man working in his garden, planting potatoes, seeing lapwing birds return after winter, then the speaker imagines him coming inside to write to her. The poem does not reveal what the relationship is between them - they could be friends or family. The speaker is busy with her work, typing on to a computer and thinking about the news headlines. She asks the direct question 'is your life more real...?' because he is connected with the land, but knows he would not agree with this. She describes the letters as being filled with 'air and light' as if the fresh Yorkshire air has been posted to her. This helps to make her feel that their souls are connected 'across the icy miles'. | NEUTRAL TONES The speaker reflects back to a particular moment in their life when they realised that the love had died between them and the person they were in a relationship with. They consider what this moment has meant to them since. The four stanzas of the poem are all written from an individual first-person perspective. Given the subject matter, the reader might expect the speaker to be bitter and resentful about what had happened in the past but as the title highlights, the speaker seems to be almost neutral about the experience they're describing. |
| CLIMBING MY GRANDFATHER The speaker of the poem may be thinking back to his childhood and how he used to view climbing his grandfather as climbing a mountain. Another interpretation could be that as an adult, climbing a mountain now reminds the speaker of his grandfather. Either way, Waterhouse presents the reader with an extended metaphor, which compares a kindly old man and a craggy mountain. | WINTER SWANS A couple are walking through the 'gulping' mud alongside a lake in winter. They are 'silent and apart' and the reader feels as if the previous 'two days of rain' might have coincided with an argument between the pair. They appear distant. By the end, their hands have ‘swum the distance between’ them and folded ‘like a pair of wings’, implying that their differences are now reconciled. |
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