Sequence in Hospital. Pain.

Credit: Pixabay

At my wits’ end
And all resources gone, I lie here,

These lines show the inability of the persona to think clearly or to cope with reality. Her mental capability and her usual resources to handle everyday situations seem to have disappeared. As the persona is lying in a place which we assume to be a psychiatric hospital, we conclude she is suffering from some sort of mental illness. The immediacy of her situation is conveyed by the use of the present and by the deictic “here”.

Two Deaths

Credit: Devil's eye | by Il conte di Luna

The speaker sees two creatures who have died in a violent way, and reflects on the impression these shocking experiences have made on her.

It was only a film,
Perhaps I shall say later
Forgetting the story, left only
With bright images- the blazing dawn
Over the European ravaged plain,
And a white unsaddled horse, the only calm
Living creature. Will only such pictures remain?

The first lines of the poem show a speaker that appears to be reassuring herself after watching a film that was evidently shocking and made an impact on her feelings. She wonders if with time she will forget the story focusing on the fact that it was not real, and be only left  with “bright images”. The adjective “bright” seems to anticipate beautiful views, but there are many unsettling elements in the detailed description of the images that suggest that “bright” refers just to highly saturated colours: a white horse against the tones of red of a blazing dawn.  The word “ravaged” implies a war, and the phrase “(...) the only calm/ living creature” suggests that all the surroundings are full of destruction, pain, desperation, and death. The caesura after “living creature” seems to stress its isolation.

Remembering Fireworks

Credit: Pixabay

This poem focuses on the memory of an enjoyable experience that has just finished.

Always as if for the first time we watch

The fireworks as if no one had ever

Done this before, made shapes, signs,

Cut diamonds on air, sent up stars

Nameless, imperious. (...)

This first sentence is a description of the enthusiasm with which we watch fireworks.The first person plural seems to be a generalization which includes all human beings.  In the first line, there is a hyperbaton that  rearranges the order of the sentence to emphasise the first-time excitement people experience whenever they watch this spectacle. Even though we have seen fireworks before, we feel as if we are watching something completely new, “as if no had ever /done this before”.

In these lines, there are a number of caesuras at irregular intervals that create a staccato pace and reminds us of the explosions and different duration of the fireworks.

Warning to Parents

Credit: Christopher Combe photography

Save them from terror; do not let them see

The ghost behind the stairs, the hidden crime.

In the first lines, the speaker uses a list of imperatives to encourage parents to protect their children from childhood fears. The horrors from which they need to preserve their children belong both to the imaginary and to the real realms, as the second line illustrates.  

The Young Ones (Theme)

What is "The Young Ones" about?

Cross out the ones which don´t capture the essence of the poem:

-Travelling by bus
-commuters
-observing and being observed
-being young or old
-Youth today and in the past
-being bold or unsure

The Young Ones

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In this poem, the speaker watches some teenagers get on the bus where she is travelling. Some aspects of them catch her attention, because they contrast with her present self and also with the way she used to be when she was their age. By looking at them, she reflects on boldness and insecureness.

They slip on to the bus, hair piled up high.
New styles each month, it seems to me. (...)

In the first line, the persona describes the young ones succinctly. The words she uses suggest she admires them. Firstly,  she presents them by their smooth movements, evoked by the word “slip”. Secondly, she comments on their hairstyle, which, in her view, seem to be different every month.

Father to Son (Post Reading activity)

Imagine you are a family therapist and the persona of the poem has consulted you. Write a report summarising the reasons why his relationship with his son is not smooth. What piece of advice could you give him?

Father to son

This poem shows the estrangement between a father and his adolescent son. It seems to be a dramatic monologue, as the persona -the father- is addressing someone who is not present and his words reveal different aspects of his own personality.

I do not understand this child

Though we have lived together now

In the same house for years. I know

Nothing of him, so try to build

Up a relationship from how

He was when small. Yet have I killed

In the first stanza, the persona describes his relationship with his son: they are together and yet apart. The first line opens with the first person pronoun and finishes with the word “child”, which graphically shows the distance between them. Besides, the persona uses the phrase “this child” instead of “my son” to further emphasise their estrangement. It is as if the persona does not feel his son like his own but like someone else’s. In contrast, the words “together” and “same house” appear in the same stanza and suggest the opposite: their closeness. These set of words demonstrate that they are physically near but they cannot connect in an emotional way.

Father to Son (Pre-Reading Activity)

As a pre-reading activity, I asked my 16-year-old students: "What do adolescents expect from their parents so as to get on well with them?"

These were their answers: Privacy-independence-support-trust-money-freedom-understanding.

As we read the poem, we will ask ourselves if this is what the persona offers his son.

Samuel Palmer and Chagall

Samuel Palmer “Cornfield in the Mondenschein” Credit

Marc Chagall, Marie au Village
Credit

You would have understood each other well

And proved to us how periods of art

Are less important than the personal

Worlds that each painter makes from mind and heart.

The first stanza introduces the personal ideas of the speaker about the similarities between these two artists. The persona addresses the two painters, Samuel Palmer and Chagall, and considers an imaginary situation: what kind of relationship would they have had if they had met? She believes that they would have been good friends, in spite of the fact that they lived in different centuries (Palmer in the 19th Century, Chagall in the 20th.) and thus painted in different styles. They would have got on well because both seem to share common views. This would prove that the personal worlds artists create are more important than the way in which their works reflect the context of production. By using the words "mind" and "heart", the persona is highlighting the importance of combining imagination and thoughts with feelings in artistic creations.

Chinese Art

You said you did not care for Chinese art

Because you could not tell what dynasty

   A scroll or bowl came from. (...)

The speaker is reporting the words of the addressee, who apparently doesn’t appreciate Chinese Art. The reason why  the addressee doesn’t like Chinese art is related  to the fact that he cannot identify the period in which each work of art was produced as all artists seem to use the same traditional style. The persona uses  internal rhyme (scroll and bowl) to stress the fact that the addressee considers all Chinese productions are similar.

                         (...)  ´There is no heart’

You said, ‘Where time’s avoided consciously.’

The persona uses direct speech to introduce the voice of the addressee. In his view,

Reminiscence

In this poem, the speaker remembers a happy time in the past,  in which she was not suffering the anxieties brought about by turbulent romantic relationships.

The Four Leaf Clover by Winslow Homer

Wikimedia Commons

When I was happy alone, too young for love

Or to be loved in any but a way

Cloudless and gentle, I would find the day

Long as I wished its length or web to weave.

In the first stanza, the persona enlarges on the way in which she could enjoy her day when she was “alone”, (without a partner) and “happy”. The combination of the adjectives “happy” and “alone” may have two different implications about her present: either that she is not happy alone anymore (and she worries because she has ended a relationship or because she wants to start one) or that she is not alone anymore but  what makes her unhappy is the complexity of her present relationship.

The reason why she was “happy alone” in the past was that she was too young to know a love which was not ”cloudless and gentle”.  The word “cloudless” may mean that the love she had known up to that moment was clear, i.e. nothing obscured it, and nothing made her doubt about it, or that it didn´t present any danger or menace (“clouds”) for her, i.e. it was constant. The adjective “gentle” seems to suggest that it was a moderate and delicate love, far away from stormy outburst of passion. We wonder if this love could be the love of family and friends.

Visit to an Artist

This poem may be describing the speaker's actual visit to the artist´s house or it may be depicting a close observation of the artist´s pictures, and therefore a metaphorical visit to him through his paintings. In fact, the first stanza, may be read as the description of a real room or as the description of the picture “The Terrace” by David Jones, the artist to whom the poem is dedicated:

“The Terrace” by David Jones

Stanza 1

Window upon the wall, a balcony
With a light chair, the air and water so
Mingled you could not say which was the sun
And which the adamant yet tranquil spray.

The first phrase of the poem (“Window upon the wall”) can be read at three different levels. First, it may be describing the real window in the artist´s house if we consider the poem is retelling an actual visit. Secondly, it may be a reference to the window that appears in the picture “The Terrace”, if we think that the speaker is metaphorically visiting the artist through an  examination of his pictures,  or, thirdly,  it can also be a metaphor for the painting (“The Terrace”) on the wall. This last reading implies that, in the speaker´s view, the work of art is a window that enables to see a different point of view and opens to a new world: that of  the artist’s  perspective. In contrast, the word “wall” reminds us of the limits of the persona´s own views.  Besides, in the first line,  the word “balcony” also conveys the idea of openness. A balcony connects inner and outer spaces , and at a metaphorical level, it suggests the communion between the inner world of the speaker and the one created by the artist.

The Diamond Cutter

Note: As an introduction to our analysis on this poem, we recommend our post about Diamond Cutting

A diamond cutter.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons

At a literal level, this poem describes the distinctive features of diamond cutting. In our view, this delicate activity is a metaphor for creation.

Not what the light will do but how he shapes it
And what particular colours it will bear.

This first couplet addresses the fact that creation does not depend on how external elements will act on the final product but on how skilled the creator is in order to give form to the materials.  The pronoun ‘he’ is making reference to the diamond cutter- and therefore to the creator/artist- who makes a special piece out of rough elements.

Diamond Cutting

Before reading the poem "The Diamond Cutter", it is necessary to understand what diamond cutting is.

Diamond cutting consists in changing a rough stone into a polished gem.

                                               

Rough and cut diamond.

Diamonds are one of the hardest minerals, and they are thus very difficult to cut.

Identity

Identity

Identity, as conceived in this poem, is not something which is predetermined, fixed or objective. Each subject constructs his own identity and the identity of his fellow human beings in their interpersonal relationships.

Stanza 1

When I decide I shall assemble you

Or, more precisely, when I decide which thoughts

Of mine about you fit most easily together,

Then I can learn what I have loved, what lets

Light through the mind. (...)

In the first stanza, the word “assemble” suggests that building up identity consists in putting pieces together to make a whole. These pieces are “thoughts” that a person has about somebody else, which have to be selected to construct this person´s identity.