Comment closely on the poem Rising Five, looking in particular at
how Nicholson uses imagery.
“Rising Five” is about how people want to grow up quickly, and
therefore how we want to rush through our lives and our youth. It is
also about how we do not appreciate our precious and present moments
in our lives, the fact that we are always looking forward into the
future and not focusing on what we have now. The imagery used in this
poem complements and emphasizes these messages to the reader, creating
a ‘rushed’ tone and effect. For example, we immediately get the
feeling of someone who is rushing in the first line of the poem “I’m
rising five”.
Stanza one is about a boy who is 4 years and 8 months – “He’d been
alive/Fifty-six months or perhaps a week more”. “Fifty-six months”
sounds like a much longer time than 4 years and 8 months. We also
know that he is counting the time as it passes “ perhaps a week more”,
this suggests that the boy wants to rush through life and grow up more
quickly, even being one week older counts. The imagery of the “little
coils of hair/ Un...
In the last stanza it is explained how, even when she was a child, she
The poem was set in the summer of 1943 and there were 5 boys and 2
Stanza one is set in the morning at breakfast time. It involves the mother and her child. Instead of the usual loving mother, we see a cold mother and one that is doubtful of her lover for her own child. Dawe uses cold language such as ‘beneficence’, ‘beamed’ and ‘laminex’ as well has the pause after ‘she loves him’ to signify this. The pair are also conveyed to be separate from each other, symbolised by them being on opposite sides of the breakfast table.
father’s childhood, and later in the poem we learn that this contemplation is more specifically
The sixth stanza is where the narrator is talking to her son. She tells him that his father would give lands for one. She is telling her son that if his father really wanted to, he would take him and would leave her (the narrator) with nothing.
Imagine yourself lying in the sun, feeling the warmth on your skin, when a cloud cover the sun and you feel the sudden coldness that you can seem to shake? The feeling is similar when you love someone very much but they don’t return the feeling. The band, 5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS), in their song, If You Don’t Know, sings about how a singer is in love with a person. The person seems to not be sure if they are in love with the singer, and the the singer wishes for the person to let them go. The couple that 5SOS wrote about was in love at one time, but the person is slowly falling out of love with the singer.
‘The Falling Soldier’ is one of many poems by Duffy which deals with the subject of human mortality. Duffy expresses what could have been over a harsh reality; this is characteristic of her as also seen in ‘Last Post’ and ‘Passing Bells’ which both seem to be largely influenced by poet peer Wilfred Owen’s personal experiences of war. In the ‘The Falling Soldier’ Duffy paradoxically captures the essence of Robert Capa’s famous photograph of a man falling after being shot during the Spanish Civil War (1936). She employs the form of an impersonal narrative voice, using second person to question the possibilities, to explore the tragic and cyclical nature of war. The futile reality of war contrasts to her central theme in ‘The Bees’ anthology of bees symbolising the grace left in humanity.
The use of Bishop's words at the beginning of the poem refers to her earlier years when she lost her father when she was eight months old, which was not so hard.
The title has one line, representing the son’s age as one and the first stanza has two lines, representing the son’s age as two – this continues until stanza five when the child is five. At the age of five, the son “waits in [his father’s] lap” (3) and awaits a new story; this is when the father realizes that he is unable to come up with a new story and begins to fear his son’s disappointment. The following stanza has four lines, representing how the father wishes to go back to a time where he was able to entertain the son with the “alligator story” or the “angel story” (13) without the sons desire for something new. The final stanza has five lines, this is because it is the reality which the father has to face because his son will not ‘become younger’ or interested again in the stories that he has heard before. The structure of the poem expresses the complexity of the internal struggle of the father to fill his son’s desire as he reaches an age in which stories that he has already heard do not entertain him through the purposefully structured stanzas that represent the son’s growth along with the father’s wish to go back rather than
At first glance Edna St. Vincent Millay's first recognized poem, Renascence, seems to be easy to understand and follow. However, as this sing-songy poem is dissected, the reader embarks upon a world full of emotion, religion, confusion, pain and sin. This poem is split up into six sections or stanzas which separate the action of the poem into easy to understand parts. I have chosen to discuss the first section of the poem for my close reading.
Another example is when he describes him sleeping as Wendy 'holds him as he drifts to dreamland' like a Christmas angel guiding him through troubled times. Once he meets Wendy, everything seems to turn into fantasy, 'Fairies, pinewood elf and larch tree gnome', which shows his childlike mind. However, the whole poem changes its feel after you read the last phrase, 'slumber-wear'. This gives the poem a very strange quality, knowing that the boy is still very young and already up to no good.
Stanza one is a ballad that uses symbolism as a technique, ‘grinned at life in empty joy’, this symbolises the boys’ youth when he was pleased by anything, and life was easy, he had no worries, as he would grin at anything. This phrase gives an outlook at life before joining the war, it is demonstrating the boys’ life when he was contented with anything. Another symbol is found in the first stanza, ‘whistled early with the lark’. The phrase suggests the boys’ youth in the early days, oblivious to the future laying ahead oh him. The lark symbolises cheerfulness and the beginning of the day. The boy whistling with the lark shows how he is excited for every new
This is the first stanza it is very short just as the water is only
The third stanza is a second and different refrain. This refrain occurs in every other stanza. It acts as a divider between the stanzas dealing with a specific character. In the fourth stanza, Father McKenzie is introduced to the reader. He is described as a materialistic man whose life has no meaning.
In relation to structure and style, the poem contains six stanzas of varying lengths. The first, second, and fourth stanzas