Literary Criticism (Approaching Unseen Poems) - English Advanced 1st year – Dr Elton Stivala –Hand Out no.9
1. Subject, Situation or ThemeWhat seems to be the point of the poem?What ideas are being communicated by the speaker?
2. Speaker / VoiceWho is speaking? Is the voice in the third or first person?How would you characterize the speaker?To whom is he or she speaking?What is the speaker's tone?Why is he or she speaking?
3. Structure / FormIs the poem in a closed or open form? Enjambment?Is the poem presented in a traditional form?Is there a pattern of end rhymes? a syllabic line count? a set metrical pattern?How are the stanzas arranged? the lines?How do these contribute to the subject of the poem?
4. Tone and AtmosphereHow would you describe the poet’s tone of voice? Give examplesIs there an atmosphere or feeling that pervades the poem such as gladness, doom or joy and if yes, what are the words that project this atmosphere (for example long sentences with repetitive use of ‘oo’ tend to create a sombre effect.
5. ImageryDid you note any descriptive passages? For each image, name the sense that is beingappealed to.What is the dominant impression being created?What is the relationship of the descriptive images to the speaker's state of mind?How do images create sense of time of day? season of year? atmosphere? mood?Do the images progress? (day to night, hot to cold, soft to loud, color to color, etc)How does the writer use simile and metaphor.How do these contribute to the subject of the poem?
6. Word Choice, Word OrderWhat type of diction is the poet employing?How does the poet's word choice affect the meaning of the poem? Relate with the tone?Does the poet employ other figures of speech? (personification, hyperbole,understatement, etc.) Does the word order impact the reading of or the meaning of the poem?Are there any ideas hidden ‘below the surface of the text’? Irony?
7. Rhyme, Rhythm and Sound effectsDoes the poem contain an obvious meter or rhythm? (if not discussed in pt.3)What sounds are emphasized by the rhyme scheme?Are there eye rhymes, slant rhymes, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, etc?Does the rhythm change?What is the effect that they leave on the reading of the poem?
8. ConclusionReturn to an overview of the text. Sum, up how the effects of detail, language and style you have analysed come together to create one piece of writing. Go back to the theme and mention how your reading has developed the way the poem projects its theme. Feel free to provide a very brief personal response.
Literary Criticism (Approaching Unseen Poems) - English Advanced 1st year – Dr Elton Stivala –Hand Out no.9
The Letter by Miriam Lo (2004)
How it sits in his hands.
“Who’s it from?”Her son looks away.“Susan.”Su-san. A girl’s name.An Australian girl is writing to her son.The coffeeshop patrons grow quiet.Fat sizzles in the restaurant’s woks, upstairs.Traffic roars round the corner.
Questions,as if he is suddenly a stranger,as if he has come from a far-away place,sat down in strange clothes, demanding a coffee.
Someone strange has come in and sat down in their coffeeshop.There! Her breath in the words of the letter.A glimpse of the handwriting—round, neat letters.A faint outline of a person is starting to form.
His mother thinks of how wordsflow out of a body and carry the ghostof fingers, a face, a heart.She thinks of the words that have etched themselveson the walls of her life: I surrender,We are at war; the words that weigh heavilyon her tongue as she stands and watchesthe face of her son: I love you, Come home.Come Home.
But she cannot hold him, how quickly he slips from her gazeto those words on the pagethat are taking him away,to a place she has no name for.
Literary Criticism (Approaching Unseen Poems) - English Advanced 1st year – Dr Elton Stivala –Hand Out no.9
Literary Criticism (Approaching Unseen Poems) - English Advanced 1st year – Dr Elton Stivala –Hand Out no.9
Swifts by Ted Hughes
Fifteenth of May. Cherry blossom. The swiftsMaterialize at the tip of a long screamOf needle. ‘Look! They’re back! Look!’ And they’re goneOn a steep
Controlled scream of skidRound the house-end and away under the cherries. Gone.Suddenly flickering in sky summit, three or four together,Gnat-whisp frail, and hover-searching, and listening
For air-chills – are they too early? With a bowingPower-thrust to left, then to right, then a flicker theyTilt into a slide, a tremble for balance,Then a lashing down disappearance
Behind elms.They’ve made it again,Which means the globe’s still working, the Creation’sStill waking refreshed, our summer’sStill all to come --And here they are, here they are againErupting across yard stonesShrapnel-scatter terror. Frog-gapers,Speedway goggles, international mobsters --
A bolas of three or four wire screamsJockeying across each otherOn their switchback wheel of death.They swat past, hard-fletched
Veer on the hard air, toss up over the roof,And are gone again. Their mole-dark labouring,Their lunatic limber scramming frenzyAnd their whirling blades
Sparkle out into blue --Not ours any more.Rats ransacked their nests so now they shun us.Round luckier houses nowThey crowd their evening dirt-track meetings,
Racing their discords, screaming as if speed-burned,Head-height, clipping the doorwayWith their leaden velocity and their butterfly lightness,Their too much power, their arrow-thwack into the eaves.
Every year a first-fling, nearly flyingMisfit flopped in our yard,Groggily somersaulting to get airborne.He bat-crawled on his tiny useless feet, tangling his flails
Like a broken toy, and shrieking thinlyTill I tossed him up — then suddenly he flowed away underHis bowed shoulders of enormous swimming power,Slid away along levels wobbling
On the fine wire they have reduced life to,And crashed among the raspberries.Then followed fiery hospital hoursIn a kitchen. The moustached goblin savage
Nested in a scarf. The bright blankBlind, like an angel, to my meat-crumbs and flies.Then eyelids resting. Wasted clingers curled.The inevitable balsa death.Finally burialFor the huskOf my little Apollo --
The charred screamFolded in its huge power.
Literary Criticism (Approaching Unseen Poems) - English Advanced 1st year – Dr Elton Stivala –Hand Out no.9
Literary Criticism (Approaching Unseen Poems) - English Advanced 1st year – Dr Elton Stivala –Hand Out no.9
