Blessing
'Poem at 39'
Half-Past Two
Piano
Half-caste
Search for My Tongue
Do not go gentle into that good night
Remember
M - The poem is about someone who is remembering about when his mother used to play piano as a child. M2 the poem might want to show to the reader the emotional power of music and the nostalgic importance of a parental figure
Imagery
Language
Meaning
the helplessness of childhood
Meanings
About a municipal pipe bursting, and the locals rush to seize the water spilling out
themes
Universal Human Truths
Imagery
light and dark
Religious/godly imagery, “voice of a kindly god”, shows the worship of the lucky “blessings” that everyone rarely receives.
life and death
"
This poem can be about society breaking down, and them being desperate for a miracle, worshipping anyone that saves them.
Religious imagery "And you, my father" " Curse, bless, me" "I pray"
Semantic field of light and dark
Meaning
semantic field of suffering
Imagery
Very Wrong
escaped
scuttling
Repetition "rage, rage against the dying light"
"Do not go gentle into that good night"
Run
wicked
Structure
villanielle
enjambement, symbolising an incomplete life
too scared
Structure
cross
wicked
Onomatopoeias, “Imagine the drip of it…” “echo in a tin mug” and “screaming (in the liquid sun)”. Shows the contrasts in society with/without the “blessing”
11 Tercets , could reflect the fact that there are twelve numbers on a clock and he has no understanding of time
" Curse, bless, me" - is an Antithesis
(Antithesis, Greek for “setting opposite” means “a contrast or opposite.”)
shared human experience
life/death/existence
suffering/celebration
identitiy
identity
we are what we think?
the 8th stanza has no mention of time symbolising the absence of time in his imagination
Tone
comparing poems
structure
language
meaning
'remember' and 'do not go gentle into that good night'
enjambement
imagery
five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain
tone
Hope
fear
Anger
semantic field of light and dark
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repetition
" rage, rage against the dying of the light"
ironical mockery
'half past two' and 'poem at 39'
'blessing' and 'search for my tongue'
similarities
differences
4 stanzas
themes of childhood
M- questioning society and their racial standards (why are they discriminated when others aren't)
Death, fight against death, celebrating and cherishing life,
i
Tone
Influence of music in the poem: The writer uses appassionato which is a word in italian which is the language used for musical notation. The title 'Piano' isn't in a definite article, which could mean that the author wanted to refer to the meaning of the word piano in another language, which in italian means soft or little which could refer to how young the writer was when he the poem was happening and that the memory that the poem is talking about is a very pleasant memory. Each stanza is a quatrain which also could be a reference to the common time signature in music, which is 4 beats in a bar
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misspellings, little punctuation
Punctuation, highlighting contrast
scornful
bitter
'poem at 39' and 'piano'
identity
Language
Similies, “skin cracks like a pod” and “blessing sings over their small bones”. This can symbolise on how the children, who would understand the least, would also suffer unfairly.
In the first two stanzas, there is a tone of unfamiliarity. In the third stanza, the tone suddenly shifts to wealth and celebration. This can show how desperate or hopeless the people in “blessing” truly are. Due to the government property (or larger government as a whole) the people can prosper with “wealth” (water)
how loss shaped their identities
Half Caste and Search for My Tongue
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language
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structure
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Piano is focusing on one memory
in the poem 'piano' the poetic voice is using the memory of their parents to look back and not move forward
Poem at thirty nine
tone
happier
celebratory
loss
6 stanzas
Structure
All the stanzas are split up into different arcs or themes relating to the community featured in blessing. In the first and second stanza, it’s like a dream. It can symbolise the hopes that the community had for a “blessing”. In the third stanza it implies about the reality when the municipal pipe bursts. Finally, in the last stanza, it represents the result of the miracle that occured, with the children not understanding or caring, but prospering nonetheless