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John Montague Expresses His Themes In A Clear And Precise Fashion Talk

Decent Essays

“John Montague expresses his themes in a clear and precise fashion”
You have been asked by your local radio station to give a talk on the poetry of John Montague. Write out the text of the talk you would deliver in response to the above title. You should refer to both style and subject matter. Support the points you make by reference to the poetry on your course.
Good evening listeners and welcome to our Friday night poetry segment, Poetry Aloud. Tonight we will explore the works of the famous northern Irish poet, John Montague. As anyone familiar with his work would know, Montague expresses his themes in a clear and precise fashion and that very notion is what we will be proving tonight. Montague’s poems include the themes of childhood, …show more content…

The poem highlights the beauty and sensuality of nature. He uses the theme of nature to explore the pleasure he feels whilst taking in the sights and smells of nature. Montague uses broad vowel sounds to create assonance in the first stanza. This creates euphony and a sort of verbal music, possibly representing the noise of the river and the theme of nature.
In The Locket, Montague expresses the theme of memory clearly and precisely, as it is written in memory of his recently deceased, estranged mother. It documents Montagues resentment of his mother 's rejection of him and the pain he felt at having to grow up without her love: “Sing a last song for the lady who has gone fertile source of guilt and pain”. The poet uses a rhyming couplet to begin the first stanza. This gives the stanza a song like style that is in juxtaposition with the sardonic, tongue-in-cheek tone. When he grew older he sought her out again and tried desperately to win her over but as she grows fond of him, she tells him not to come again. In the final stanza, there is a twist as, after her death, Montague discovers that she wore a locket containing a baby picture of him, beneath her clothes at all times. Although this does confuse him i.e. “mysterious blessing”, it does provide him with some closure as he realises she was guilty about her inability to love him. Similarly, ‘The Cage’ expresses the memory of

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