Genre Essays

The British poet Wilfred Owen has implemented down the sonnet, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth.’ This poem got its title from another poet. This poem was set during the First World War and describes the conditions of the millions of soldiers who died fighting for their countries. Mr. Owen himself was a soldier who fought for […]

The poem Farmhand by James K. Baxter is about a self-conscious male who is only at easewhen working on the land. In contrast, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways by William Wordsworth focuses on a girl called Lucy who has just died; she is described using natural metaphors. Baxter wrote his poem in the 20th […]

In ‘Night of the scorpion’ it is about a place where the poet’s mother was stung by mother. Nissim Ezekeil describes what happened to his mother on that night and what the reactions of people were. This all creates an image of a place in the reader’s mind. Similarly, in ‘Blessing’ the poet creates an […]

In the society I live in – in the UK – everyone has freedom of speech. In the past there used to be a lot of countries in which your feelings towards something were only to be known by you. Dictatorships do not allow freedom of speech nor even a freedom to be in certain […]

Isobel Dixon’s poem ‘Plenty’ explores childhood memories using various forms of language. This theme of childhood memories is also evident in other poems from the collection ‘Songs of Ourselves’. A connection can be made between ‘Plenty’ and “Little Boy Crying”, as both poems showcase the contrasting perceptions of children and adults. In ‘Plenty’, the children […]

Both poets are showing their identity across to the reader. However they are doing it in different ways. The layout for The Class Game- Mary Casey is a monologue. A monologue is a short, alone speech. This makes it easier for the reader to understand the point of the poem and it makes it more […]

‘Search For My Tongue’ (‘SFMT’) and ‘Hurricanes Hit England’ (‘HHE’) both share a common theme of identity and how it influences our day-to-day life. ‘SFMT’ and ‘HHE’ together show show your cultural identity is within you; it’s not constricted to a certain place. However, the two poets show this in different ways. In SFMT, Bhatt’s […]

Throughout these three poems a sense of conflict, inequality and difference is created. All three represent one form of these emotions in ways that are similar to each other and others that are different to each other. The first poem, Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes’ is about the social […]

The poem ‘The Charge of the light brigade’ is written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His inspiration for writing the poem came after he read a article in The Times newspaper, but he was not actually in this battle. I think the poem is about the war with lots of men taking place in fighting. For […]

I believe that poets struggle to find their true identity as they might have an ongoing battle between two, as in ‘search for my tongue’, it is about the poet who has ‘two tongues in her mouth’ which symbolizes her two cultures, which displays her two identities. In the poem, there is an ongoing battle […]

‘Hurricane hits England’ by Grace Nichols centres around the ‘Great Storm’ that hit England in the 1980s. It revives memories of a difficult transition from her Caribbean home to Sussex on the coast of England. ‘Hurricane’ by James Berry also concerns a hurricane, however it is set in the Caribbean where such events are more […]

The romantic era rose out of and in response to the logical, more retrained forms of literature composed in the age of reason. It promoted the exploration of creativity in thinking, the joys of discovery and the enthusiasm and wonder evoked by mans complex relationship with nature. John Keats “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” […]

Maya Angelou and John Agard’s poems are both responses to someone or some people who have wronged them. John Agard sounds as though he is correcting a stranger on their use of the term “Half-Caste” and telling them exactly what he thinks is implied by these words and Maya Angelou seems to be addressing her […]

There are lots of different methods used in the poems “Limbo” and “Island Man” which make these poems so amazing. I have collected together a few of them in order to understand the meaning in depth of the poems.The most obvious similarity of this poem is that they are both about the Caribbean and they […]

Carol Ann Duffy has done several poems including Mrs Midas, others include Havisham and Education for Leisure. These three are distrubing poems, she uses images in the poems to help convey what she wants us to see and imagine is happening. In the case of Havisham she use a distrubing character from the Charles Dickens […]

In this piece, I will explore the similarities and differences between two main poems: “My Grandmother” by Elizabeth Jennings, which has a darker mood, and “In Mrs Tilcher’s class” by Carol Anne Duffy, which is brighter. Both poems reflect on the past, recounting memories of both positive and negative experiences of betrayal and innocence that […]

The poem ‘Salome’, by Carol Ann Duffy, is written in the first person, seemingly from the perspective of a woman given indicators such as the fact that the person has been involved intimately with a man; ‘the reddish beard’. The first three lines of the poem, all of which use enjambment, only come to make […]

The first thing I noticed about Stealing was the question on the first line, this immediately tells us that he/she is talking to someone (or is perhaps being interviewed), however, because the poem is a monologue, we never know who. Neither are we told the gender or age of the thief, which I think all […]

Upon first reading ‘Before You Were Mine,’ its meaning proved difficult to comprehend. However, upon several further recitations, it became evident that the poem centers around Duffy standing in Georges Square and endeavoring to envision her mother’s activities and whereabouts ten years prior to her own birth. Not until the third stanza does any indication […]

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, the movie Donnie Darko follows a high school student with a mental disability who refuses medication. During the 1988 presidential election, he is visited by a demonic giant rabbit called “Frank,” predicting the end of the world in exactly 28 days, six hours, forty-two minutes and twelve seconds. Frank also discloses that […]

One thing Duffy does very well is to write her first and last sentences carefully. These relate to violence very well. The first sentence “Today I am going to kill something”, this is a very strong start and very different. Usually the first sentences of poems are happy and then they might gradually turn into […]

‘Valentine’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a poem that creates a contradiction by contrasting the romantic poem style of the title, ‘Valentine,’ with a negative in the opening line, canceling out any traditional thoughts of valentines, ‘Not a red rose or a satin heart.’ In this first line, Duffy is stating a matter of fact; […]