Exercise 1 – Poetry and theme
After reading the 3 given poems. I have decided that The Lost Land, By Eavan Boland, speaks about place in relation to identity and exile. There are poem lines indicating that it is written from longing in exile, Other lines speaks of leaving Ireland out of emergency or necessity rather than will:
‘I can see the shore of Dublin Bay.’
‘Shadows falling
On everything they had to leave?
And would love forever?’
‘I imagine myself
At the landward rail of that boat’
‘The Herefordshire Landscape’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning purely evokes a sense of place in a nostalgic manner, without arousing negative emotions.. As its lovely lines are full of fine descriptions of local weather, plants, scenery & smells of an old familiar place, or possibly a childhood home?
‘Slough’ by John Betjeman, is full of social comment about progress and place. The poem lines indicate strong revolt and protest over the industrial takeover of Slough. Mentioning is it no longer fit for ordinary living to the point that the poet invites the bombs to destroy it. The mention of bombs as well as tinned food, provided a clue that this poem is possibly from the WW2 era. ‘Tinned minds, tinned breath.’ is possibly an expression of discontent over the war time manic public state. Which often suppresses personal freedoms in the name of emergency, or state cause.
Poetry, modernism and postmodernism
Branching out into different styles and expression forms seems a positive development to me. Just as in biological evolution, art & poetry continue to evolve too as new styles emerge. The art of poetry changes and gets reinvented with society. New forms, reflect cultural changes.
I believe it is healthy for rules to be questioned, stretched, challenged and re-tested. My personal taste in poetry is somewhere in the middle, I enjoy both modernist as well as post-modernist poetry and find expression in both forms: There’s great beauty & emotion in classic poetry, as well as power and expression in a spoken word performance or a good rap song.
Rap or Romantic?
• Her untimely exit from her, heavenly body – Rap
• Five miles meandering with a mazy motion – Romantic
• Victims of wordly ways, memories stays engraved – Rap
• A dead bird flying through a broken sky – Romantic ( I got the wrong answer – Turns out Rap can be very romantic )
• Drive my dead thoughts over the universe – Romantic
A rough guide to poetic devices – Exercise 2
Poetic devices examples I found in other poems:
Rhyme
Words that sound alike, usually at line endings.
Example found in a poem:
“Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
Robert Frost, Fire And Ice
Source accessed 19-04-20 : http://www.poetry.org/frost.htm
My own example:
Outside my window, sweet savior stands.
Playful sunbeams stroke leafy strands
In fickle times, all paths refute.
I’m holding on to mango roots.
Rhythm
A metered structure of syllables, consonants, breathing, or pauses.
Example found in a poem:
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I love Thee, Source accessed 19-04-20 : http://www.poetry.org/browning.htm
My own example:
Mango rain, when will you return? Come now – hard & heavy.
Wash away the dust from my soul. Quench me, cool me, soak me.
Turn me into your river and let all things flow.
Repetition:
Example found in a poem:
“Intentional repetition for reinforcement and effect.
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!”
Edgar Allan Poe, The Bells, Source How Do I love Thee, Source accessed 19-04-20 : http://www.poetry.org/poe.htm
My own example:
It’s raining, raining, raining, raining, but never ever snows.
The honest rain, where true illusion grows.
Alliteration
Two or more words in a line of poetry that begin with the same initial sound.
Example found in a poem:
“and watched as they burnt to ashes, watched
and worked on his whiskey, working hard.”
BJ Omanson, Nowhere to Nowhere, Source accessed 19-04-20 : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/153611/nowhere-to-nowhere
Assonance
Repeating vowel sounds without repeating consonants. In poetry, often used as an alternative to rhyme.
“My brother is dying and I am not.
I drag him behind me like a spiritless balloon, like the first robot,
like the last clown-car clown, his ridiculous Fiat, his lot
to be crushed, left for dead, covered in snot,
his puffy hands, his outsized shoes, his flower pot,
like Virgil Earp, Clanton-ganged, at the Not
OK Corral, un-brothered, gutshot,
like the night without sleep in Turandot.”
Hodgen John, Forget-Me-Not
Source accessed 19-04-20 : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/89337/forget-me-not
Consonance
Repeating consonants without repeating vowels. Consonance gives melody to verse.
“My single acre, to be safe, to be still
and watch the planet’s purposeful turning
behind a cairn of roughly balanced stones.
Uprooted, scarred, weather-gray of bones,
I love their old smell, the familiar unknown.
To be sure this time I know where I belong
I have brought, at last, the vagrant road home.”
Scavenging The Wall Source accessed 19-04-20 :https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41081/scavenging-the-wall
Onomatopoeia
A word that imitates the sound made by the thing being described.
“When a poem is born What is the chance Of words in rain Drip drop dance Ping ting sing Pitter patter rhyme Rain dance acceleration Makes my poem climb”
Victoria Reome, Rain Dance Poem, source accessed 19-04-20 : https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/rain_dance_poem_782877
Personification
Ascribing human qualities to an object.
It is sticking out of the ground with my well rounded head. I am crazy in love with the soil, but will be eager to be plucked For I know someone will exclaim with delight at my crooked prettiness.
(from Call Me Miss Carrot by Karen Krutsinger) Source: https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/call_me_miss_carrot_1252503
Simile
A figure of speech in which an image is evoked by likening one thing to another.
Here in the electric dusk your naked lover
tips the glass high and the ice cubes fall against her teeth.
It’s beautiful Susan, her hair sticky with gin,
(from Heat by Denis Johnson) Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/143780/heat-597917a1f0de8
Metaphor
To describe something by giving it the identity of something else.
A
i have found what you are like
the rain,
(Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields
(I have found what you are like – by e e cummings)
Imagery
Use of devices such as simile and metaphor to create images in the reader’s mind.
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
from Dream by Langston Hughes
Poetic devices found in chapter 1 of ‘Sputnic Sweetheart’ by Haruki Murakami ( first published by Kodansha Ltd, 1999 )
‘In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains – flattening everything its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds crushing them to bits.’
This is the very first paragraph in the novel. It includes sweeping combination of metaphor and simile, describing love as as a destructive tornado. This passionate metaphor in the very first sentence of the book, allows the reader to immediately emotionally connect with, and become intrigued / curious by the story and lead character.
‘Her resolve was a Regular Rock of Gibraltar’
This sentence utilities alliteration, which emphasizes the descriptive meaning.
‘It made her think of Laika, the dog. The man-made satellite, streaking soundlessly through space. The dark lustrous eyes of the dog gazing out of the tiny window. In the infinite loneliness of space, what could Laika possibly be looking at ?’
This paragraph utilizes imagery in order to send the readers on a sad contemplation of Laika the Soviet space dog.
Close Reading
exercise 3 Fern Hill
The poem shifts between poetic description of a joyful country childhood or youth, with dark metaphors on man’s fundamental enslavement to time. There’s a strong contrast between the light and dark moods. Here are some example line of the contradiction :
‘All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay youth, to dark Fields high as the house the tunes from the chimneys, it was air’ moods. And playing, lovely and watery’.
‘Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means’ ‘Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea’
I recognized several poetic devices, used in order to support line structure, harmony and general atmosphere. here are some examples devices with corresponding lines:
Rhythm: ‘With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all’, Alliteration: ‘And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves’ Assonance: ‘Time let me hail and climb’ Consonance: ‘About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green’ Simile: ‘And fire as green as grass’, Imagery and Metaphor: ‘As I rode off to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, And all the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars, Flying with the ricks, and the horses, Flashing into the dark’.
Personification is used as a way to support the theme of time – We can find personification of time itself in various lines throughout the poem: ‘Time let me hail and climb, Time let me play and be, I should hear him flying over the fields, time held me green and dying’,
The poem itself seems to focus on human relevance to time throughout different stages of human lives. How oblivious and ambivalent towards time we are throughout our youths, waking up to realize how precious our time was as our life extends and our time runs out. The farm, is a metaphor of a place we all long for in our past. Additional themes besides time and place are childhood and nostalgia.
There are several lines that particularly appeal to me, the following lines depict the banality of life swayed by the forces of time: In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
These lines remind me of my own childhood, looking back on how time seems different to the young, who only wish for it to pass quickly before realizing how precious time and vitality is, later on in life. The poem draws an image and memory of sunny childhood memories that only exist in each of our souls. A yearning for past places, warm and young.
The poem’s rhythm, flatmates between choppy to flowing, which goes back to the contrast between the light and dark moods. It seems choppy in parts, like the voice of an older person while flowing in the parts describing images from the farm, childhood and youth.
The speaker seems to be a person looking back on his life and examining his relation to time. View seem to be emotional yet inferred of opinion.
I noted the recurring reference to light and the sun. While the farm seems to be representing the theme of place. I cannot interoperate the exact meaning of light / sun.
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