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Poems (Cousin Kate (1860) (My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride, (an…
Poems
Cousin Kate (1860)
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O Cousin Kate, my love was true,
Your love was writ in sand
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My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,
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This son brought her shame in the eyes of society. And yet, as every mother can understand, the child was also her pride and joy. She does not consider him a curse but a gift.
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Context
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In conservative religious Victorian society there was a huge double standard surrounding ideas of female sexual purity.
The man could engage in a promiscuous lifestyle with relative impunity, whilst a woman would be judged and cast out of polite society if discovered to be pregnant with an illegitimate child.
Structure
Rhyme scheme makes it song like - where we might expect this to be joyful, has opposite effect
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Poppies
Structure
Different time phrases give it a sense of universality: “three days before”, “after you’d gone” – it ends with her suspended on the hill between past and present.
Balanced and regular stanzas are disrupted by caesura and enjambment: reflects the mother trying to control her emotion.
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Context
Jane Weir, born in 1963, grew up in Italy and Northern England, with an English mother and an Italian father.
She has continued to absorb different cultural experiences throughout her life, also living in Northern Ireland during the troubled 1980s.
She runs her own textile and design business. The influences of her broad cultural experiences as well as her knowledge of, and interest in, other art forms can be seen throughout her work:
'All my words flattened, rolled, turned to felt'
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Crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade
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After you’d gone I went into your bedroom, released a song bird from its cage
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The enjambment reflects the difficulty of this experience and the inner conflict between the powerful impulse to protect her son at all costs and the necessity of allowing him freedom.
I traced the inscriptions on the war memorial, leaned against it like a wish bone
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I listened, hoping to hear your playground voice catching on the wind.
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Half-Caste
Context
John Agard was born in Guyana in 1949, with a Caribbean father and a Portuguese mother (he is of mixed race)
In 1977, he moved to Britain, where he became angry with people who referred to him as ‘half-caste’.
He stated that ‘People feel comfortable with “purity”, but [racial mixing] should be seen not as something threatening but something enriching’.
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Structure
short lines and almost no punctuation (he uses ‘/’ instead of a full stop
to convey the direct and confrontational nature of the message.It makes the poem go quickly so it feels like someone ‘kicking off’ at you - pouring out his feelings at the reader.
The poem does not rhyme, but the words do have a rhythm which is reinforced by the
repetition of phrases like: ‘Wha yu mean’ and: ‘de whole of’
Language
Direct address, imperative: “Explain yuself” challenges the reader and their presumed prejudice
Extended metaphor of ‘half’ a person, Agard making a point about ideas of purity, equating mixed race with ‘less than whole’.
Continual repetition of the adverb ‘half’ insistently forces the reader to see the absurdity of the notion that a person is less than whole. These features combine to create an accusatory and confrontational, yet humorous tone.
relies on comparisons to make us see how illogical it is to judge things that are in contrasting colours as only 'half' worthy. Imagery of Picasso, Tchaikovsky, British weather – examples valued by white culture, mixing seen as positive and creating something beautiful.
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A Poison Tree (1794)
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow
Although anger is not necessarily wrong in itself, how we go about dealing with anger is extremely important.
The first stanza contrasts two different ways of dealing with anger and the two different outcomes that may occur as a result.
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'And I water'd it in fears'...
'And I sunned it with smiles,
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An extended metaphor of a tree growing in the speaker's garden demonstrates how the anger continues to grow
Didactic tone
Don’t repress your anger when conflict arises, don’t foster resentment.
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Context
Blake takes a moralistic tone, reflecting his deep yet unconventional spirituality.
As a Romantic poet, his use of naturalistic imagery is significant.
He believed that people should be free from oppression, including the oppression of their souls through anger and resentment.
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Structure
The rhythm and rhyme are straightforward and regular which makes it very easy to read, though not necessarily to understand.
the straightforward and seemingly simple way in which it is written contrasts with the very complex human emotions he is describing.
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Language
first stanza: monosyllables except for 'angry', repeated twice to emphasise emotion and to contrast with the two different ways the speaker deals with this emotion
1st stanza: repetition of 'I' showing he takes responsibility - shows he is not dealing with his anger
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Exposure (1917)
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Context
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writing to inform people back in Britain about the horrors of the war and in particular about life on the front line.
The picture they painted contradicted the scenes of glory portrayed in the British press.
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Language: Owen uses emotive language to draw the reader in and make them part of the experience. He wants the reader to be angry about what is happening. A personal poem demanding a personal response.
Structure
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last line: part of the more general disruption of the rhythmic structure which uses hexameters as its basis
first four lines: rhyming pattern of abba. regularity emphasises the unchanging nature of daily life in the trenches. Half rhyme helps to unsettle the reader and defy the expected outcome, something which again echoes the experience of war.
Catrin
Context
She wrote the poem to answer the question she once asked herself: ‘Why did my beautiful baby daughter have to become a teenager?’
Gillian Clarke (born 1937) was brought up in Wales speaking both English and Welsh. This poem is autobiographical, about the birth of her daughter, Catrin, and her relationship with her.
The challenges of parenting in and the paradoxical need to offer children both independence and firm boundaries is explored.
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Structure
Structural features such as 2 stanzas and use of enjambment and caesura – symbolise the fight for mother and daughter to become separate entities
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I wrote All over the walls with my
Words, coloured the clean squares
With the wild, tender circles of our struggle
The voice’s passionate cries in the throes of labour are juxtaposed with cold, clinical environment of the hospital. Synaesthesia blends and blurs the senses in the metaphor
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With your straight, strong, long
Brown hair and your rosy,
Defiant glare
The second stanza represents a shift in the time frame, from the daughter’s birth to the time of her pre-teen incipient rebellion. She directly addresses her child
Clarke clearly expresses the conflict with her daughter, and the list of adjectives and some assonance reveal her combined frustration with, and admiration of, her daughter.
As you ask may you skate
In the dark, for one more hour.
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'in the dark' is ambiguous - could mean literally or she could be keeping her mother out of the loop
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