A Sphere Poem

In Seamus Heaney’s poetry, there is a recurring theme of his talking of the past, and more predominantly about significant moments in time, where he came to realisations that brought him to adulthood. In “Death of a Naturalist” Heaney describes a moment in his childhood where he learnt that nature was not as beautiful as seem to be when he was just a naive child. Heaney does this on a deeper level in “Midterm Break” describes his experience of his younger brothers funeral and the mixed, confusing feelings he encountered, consequently learning that he no longer was a child, and had no choice but to be exposed to reality. Robert Frost in one sense also describes particular moments in time, where his narrator comes to realisations. However,

Childhood is portrayed as a time of safety that is often looked back upon with nostalgia from an adult perspective. Monosyllabic words are used to show the simplicity of childhood life, for example in the line “the thing I could not grasp or name”. The ‘spring violets’ are ‘in their loamy bed’ and are no longer frail and melancholy, and the memory takes place on a ‘hot afternoon’ in contrast to the ‘cold dusk’ that represents the present. Childhood is represented as a joyful, vivacious time in one’s life, and the value of a stable family life is conveyed. The unexpected integration of Australian vernacular in the line ‘it will soon be night, you goose’, adds a sense of freedom and relaxation to the otherwise formal discourse and more rigid structure of the poem, once again reflects the simplicity and innocence that is associated with childhood. The use of

The poems ‘Limbo’ and ‘Bye Child’ by Seamus Heaney are poems that evoke the casualties of sexual and emotional repression in Ireland, as well as and the oppression of both women and un baptized children, in a time where religion was most prominent and people were confined to the guidelines of the church and it’s community, as it was the ruling power. Both poems present this idea through the use of a child, representative of innocence and vulnerability. Through his poetry, Heaney gives a voice to those who have been silenced by society. Heaney manages to create this extended voice and

Whether you realise it or not, the act of representation is a constant and significant aspect of our lives. It defines and influences our perceptions of things in either a positive or negative way. One poem that I particularly admire from Harwood’s collection is ‘The violets’ , as it recognises the inevitable act of evolving without our childhood memories. The art of growing up and moving forward is only fully accomplished when we recognise and accept the experiences and explorations of our childhood. Harwood’s poetic style reflects her conservative, traditional and religious upbringing, as well as her interests in literature, philosophy and music. As one of Australia’s finest poets, and it is an honour to introduce Harwood’s latest poem anthology.

The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the

Hirsch’s poem is not polluted by rhyme or punctuation, Hirsch’s lines manage to manifest Gabriel’s wild child energy; like a fading memory of a boy running. But the form, enacts a grieving father’s struggle at ordering the chaos that is now in his life. When he writes of “Time with its medieval chambers . . . jagged edges/ and blunt instruments,” he is also talking about how he is writing the stanzas, lines, and words and how sometimes the stanzas are short and to the point. Which being quick-tempered and resentful is an emotion that is common

To some, Billy Collins’ The Rain in Portugal may seem to be a collection of random poems that have no correlation. At first sight, an individual may be confused while skimming through this book as to what the poems mean and how they all piece together. The poems in The Rain in Portugal all have one aspect in common; there is no rhyme scheme. Not a single poem rhymes with the next, let alone within itself. By doing this, Collins breaks the normality of basic poem writing—lines having to rhyme with one another—and explores his own take on free verse writing, which leaves the audience to form their own interpretation of the work. Majority of the poems within the book correlate with the speaker either reminiscing back in time, getting lost in the thought of the present, or predicting events of the future, which somehow include his reoccurring feeling of loneliness. Though this book has three different sections, each with its own collection of poems, the theme of loneliness is inserted within each section with one or two poems solely focusing on this topic. As a whole, this book provokes the audience to think and examine more in depth what Collins is attempting to portray through his seemingly simplistic writing.

The Other is configured in the two writers’ works as victims of power play, their unjust mistreatment subsequently exposing underlying social inequalities. Through adopting the Gothic medium characteristic of Romanticism, the texts induce within the reader emotions of terror and pity towards the marginalised, leaving a profound effect which impactfully conveys the intended social criticism.

Good poets inspire and motivate us. Poetry seeks to express truths through its diversity and significance cultural ideologies. To all year 12 English teachers at Brisbane School of Distance Education, today I am here to discuss and illustrate to you the values of two poems that are worthy of study in the Senior English poetry course. While the 21st century is certainly challenging for the Youth of today, many remain sheltered from the hefty and challenging themes and ideologies that poets are more than willing to tackle. The destruction and futility of war and lost youth are ideologies present in the Modern Era and a study of these poems provides opportunities to promote understanding and empathy. The chosen poems expose students to a range

Memory is presented as either a way of life or a community of change, as demonstrated in ‘Aspens’, ‘Old Man’, ‘Aldestrop’. He does this through the variety of techniques such as change in form, use of imagery and alternations in the tone of each poem to explore memory. As well as this, Thomas explicates the devastation of emptiness due to the consequence of war, which is portrayed through the use of soft consonantal sounds or the use

I started the circle poem with the word memories because the entire chapter is about memories of Jenny’s grandma’s past life. Next, I put lane because of the saying, “a stroll down the memory lane.” Which leads to the word after, drive. I put drive instead of stroll even though that isn’t how the saying goes, since Jenny drove her grandma around San Diego. The next words, bus, Greyhound, redemption, and whirligig correspond with each other because Brent took the Greyhound bus around to get to the destinations where he would build the whirligigs for redemption on killing Lea. Whirligig connects to whale because one of the whirligigs that Brent built was a whale, and that whale happened to be built in San Diego, where Jenny lives. A couple of

In conclusion, Seamus Heaney used multiple sensory descriptions to display graphic representation of the poem. The portrayal of this poem exhibits what Heaney wrote about with his father and grandfather and how they

Several poems in the anthology explore the intensity of human emotion. Explore this theme, referring to these three poems in detail and by referencing at least three other poems from your wider reading.’

As opposed to the majority of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the series that are addressed to an unnamed young man, sonnet 60 deals largely with the relentless approach of time and its war against humanity rather than love. In this sonnet, the breaking of the poetic form expected of a sonnet is utilized to not only enhance the specific localized metaphors in the poem, but the overall thematic content as well. By taking the traditional iambic pentameter and presenting moments of disruption, this poem draws attention to the dramatization of Time’s march against humanity, and also to the ability of the writer of this poem who appears in the final couplet. In this paper, I intend to look specifically at the utilization of trochaic feet in order to examine the ways in which the manipulation of metrical devices can create meaning.

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) was an Irish poet and playwright. His poem “Punishment” was first published in 1975 in a collection of poems called “North.” Heaney wrote this poem and collection of poems after discovering several bog bodies which dated back to the 1500s. The particular women he is describing in the poem, Windeby, is thought to have died of unnatural causes. Heaney compares the circumstances to that of the IRA against the British in Ulster. Heaney talks about the injustice and brutality of the crimes committed to