IB English Poetry by Derek Walcott – Flashcards

-Imagery
-Cacophony (“Kikuyu quick”)
-Harsh Sounds: reflect the beat of a drum
-Alliteration (“Batten upon the bloodstreams”, “colonel of carrion cries”)
-Sibilance reflects sarcasm (“Statistics justify and scholars seize”)
-Violent diction (“hacked”)
-Double entendre (“beast-teeming plain”, “contracted”)
-Animalism (“violence of best on beast”, “gorilla wrestles with…superman”)
-Use of legal terms (“natural law”, “peace”, “contracted”)
-Rhyming Couplets (“dread…dead)
-Play on Words (“brutish”=British, or Brutus)
-Anaphora (“How can I… How can I”)
-Metaphor/Analogy: Africa is compared to a lion

-Poem written in 1962
-“FAR” in the title reflects distance
-1st person
-Three stanzas of increasing length–>symbolizes increasing confusion
-Scattered Rhyme: ABABBC…
-Forced Rhyme (“again…Spain”)
-Shift (Between “superman” and “I who am poisoned”)

-“Jews”- Holocaust
-“worm”- British colonizers
-“napkin of a dirty cause”- British Mannerisms
-“Spain”- Spanish Civil War- 1930s- Resistance fought against fascists
-“ibises”- long billed wading birds
-“Kikuyu”- In the early 20th century, British forced Kikuyu people off their tribal lands & took control. Violent Kikuyu created a terrorist organziation.
-Mau Mau uprising- 1950s Kenya

-Identity
-Violence & Cruelty
-Cultural Clash/Ethnic Conflict

-Cacophony (“bullet-ridden body)- emulates sound of gunshots
-Irony (“freeborn citizen’s ballot in the head”, “assassin in his furnished room”)
-Play on Words, Ambiguous (“ballot”=bullet)
-Euphemism (“wants to go to bed”)
-Asyndeton (“running, howling, wounded”)
-Alliteration (“wounded wolf-deep…woods while the white”, “public private pain”)
-Animal imagery(“bear trap”)
-Juxtaposition (“shines young eyes …tires the old”)
-Extended Metaphor: Liberty

-Title: mournful song for death of Liberty
-1st person
-4 stanzas of varying length
-Enjambment
-Tone: Sarcastic (“And if there’s no bread… cherry pie”)
-Tone: Depressed (“ghosts of the Cheyennes…”)

-1960s- Turbulent Decade
-“hammock”- Caribbean
-“Liberty”- Statue of Liberty
-“Che”- revolutionary figure of unity of Caribbean and South America
-“Republic must first die”- Caesar, Lincoln, Kennedy assassination
-“Miss America”- Marilyn Monroe
-“And if there’s no bread”- Marie Antoinette
-“cherry pie”- George Washington, symbol of honesty
-“running, howling, wounded”- American Indians
-“white paper”- breach of treaties made with the Native Americans
-“statued”- Lady Liberty
-“yearly lilacs in the dooryards bloom”- When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom by Walt Whitman
-“cherry orchard’s surf” Japanese trees of alliance
-“ghosts of Cheyennes”- Trail of Tears
-“farm couple…Gothic door”-American Gothic by Grant Wood
-“devil’s pitchfork”- witch hunt

Motifs:
-Entrapment, Oppression
Themes: Loss of Paradise, Disillusionment

-Metaphor (“thunder”-criticism)
-Anaphora (“glow of…glow of”, “So many” 3x)
-Tone: Nostalgic
-Irony (“ironic)- all of the characters in the “Victory” die
-Ambiguous (“indolence”)- disrespect of work, or refuse to read
-Play on Words (“derricks”- oil cranes or Derek)

-One Elongated Stanza
-Free verse
-Stream of Consciousness
-First person (last line)
-Enjambment
-Questions: emphasize his lapses in memory

-“Joyce”- James Joyce (1882-1941), author of Ulysses
-“thunder”- actually afraid of thunder
-“lions roared at his funeral…Zurich zoo”-Joyce buried next to a Zoo
-“Trieste”- Joyce taught English in Trieste
-“Conrad”- Joseph Conrad-author of the Victory & Heart of Darkness
-“Victory”- Novel written by Conrad
-“Two glares…sea derricks”- Chapter 9 Victory
-“Cigar”- motif in the Victory
-“everything”- plots, media, movies
-“lightning”- media
-“lost the leviathans”- Biblical- giants

Motifs- cigar, thunder, greats
Themes- We should appreciate literature more often

-Anaphora (“or”)- lack of memory or repression of memory
-Prosopopoeia (“summer night whistled me over”)
-Anaphora (“my”)
-Irony (“Nice and friendly”)
-Light vs. Dark Dichotomy (“not too bright, not too dark”)- conveys mediocrity
-Alliteration (“black and blue”, “four flights”)
-Colloquial Diction (Yeah)- Language minimalizes situation
-Parallelism (“my face smashed in, my bloody mug”)
-Dual Meaning: “I crawled four flights”
-Synesthesia, Auditory Imagery (“watchers waved loudly”)
-Understatement (“It’s nothing really.”)
-Personification (“like young America will”)

-Written between 1963-69
-Telegraphic Phrases
-5 Stanzas
-Intermittent Rhyme
-Shift, Epiphany (“Still it has taught me something…”)
-Tone: Sarcasm- (“They don’t get enough love”)
-Overall Tone: Sorrowful, Insulting
Mood- Melancholic

-“stoop”- porch stairs in NY
-“MacDougal”- son of a dark man, revolutionary figure
-“Christopher”- Christbearer, foreshadows his sacrifice
-“Central Park”- 1960s- Civil Rights Demonstrations
-“Yellow ******”- hybridity
-“Olive green”- peace, acceptance, life
-“fire plug”-extension of safety, or violent
-“spades, the spicks”- Blacks and Hispanics
-“Jackie”- Jackie Robinson
-“Terry”- Terry Sanford

Motifs- Entrapment, light vs. dark, Color
Themes- Hopelessness, Identity, Racism, Close-mindedness of individuals

-Black vs. White Dichotomy (“black corpses wrapped in sunlight”)
-Juxtaposition
-Caesura (whats its name—)
-Alliteration (“perhaps pity”)
-Homioteleuton (“guttering…stuttering”)
-Ambiguous (“and yours”)- black on black conflict
-Elipses (“… the tribes”) symbolizes lapse in memory
-Conceit- Negatives
-Anaphora (“the tribes, the tribes”)

-Title: Part of the picture that is overlooked
-Written in 1967- Time of Cold War and Civil Rights
-4 Stanzas
-Ends with rhyming couplet- represents sense of completion
-Scattered Rhyme
-Telegraphic Statements
-Exaggerated Indentation
-Tone: Lost (whats-its-name, lapses in memory), disappointed
-Shift: (between the first tribes and second mention of tribes)

-“invasion of Biafra”- 3.5 million died in ethnic cleansing event in Nigeria, oil was the motivation
-“white glare”-photographic negative
-“behind the news”- negatives are also behind the scenes
-“Ibos”- Ethnic people being killed
-“Jews…Hitler’s Germany”- Holocaust genocide
-“Hausas”- doing the ethnic cleansing
“Christopher Okigbo”- poet, teacher, librarian, died fighting for independence, refused Negro award
-“white road’- remnants of colonial influence

Motifs-Entrapment, photography, white vs. black (glare, sunlight, illuminate, flare-lit, black, shadows)
Themes- Ignorance/Apathy of the West, Post-Colonial Struggles, Western Influence, History is written by the victors

-Cacophony (“Schizophreni..wrenched…hack”)
-Diction emulates his movement (“trudge, slough”)
-Pathetic Fallacy (“Waves tire of horizon and return”)
-Auditory imagery (“screech”)
-Cyclic (“Sickle”, “again”)
-Antithesis (“All its indifference is a different rage”)

-Telegraphic Statements
-Scattered Rhyme
-Internal Rhyme (“screeched…. beached”)
-Eye Rhyme- (“enough… trough”)
-Shift (“favour/I am nearing middle–gap– age”)

– Title: “Codicil”- legal instrument made to modify an earlier will
-written in 1965- time of his midlife crisis
-“hack”- pejorative term for journalist- Walcott worked for newspaper
-“beach”- Pirate’s beach in Charlotteville
-“pirogues”- canoes made in Caribbean
-“Charlotteville”- in St. Lucia named after Queen Charlotte
-“Trough”- other writers are starting to emergy
-“dogs” mediocrity
-“Peer Gynt’s riddle”- onion thin, To be one’s self is to deny one’s self- enigma of existence

-Hell Motif (fire, flesh, furnace, kiln, or ashpit)
-Beach Motif (beach, ocean, waves, gulls, pirogues)
-Celestial Motif (moonlit, moon, whitening, clouds)
– Internal Conflict (“To change your language you must change your life”)
-Themes: Age, Identity Crisis, Disillusionment

-Juxtaposition (Morning vs Moon- Day vs. Night)
-Juxtaposition (“winter vs. spring)
-Antithesis (crouched-age, whale- spirituality & strength)
-Visual Imagery (“blue plunge of shadows down Morne …”)- description of setting
-Anaphora (“Morne Coco Mountain”)
-Personification (“goose-skin of water”)
– Light vs. dark dichotomy (brightness, shadows)
-Seasonal diction (December, cycle, sundial, springing)

– Telegraphic Statements
-Pause after Morne Coco Mountain – emphasizes moment of realization
-Shift- (“moon” to “full moon”, night to morning)- speaker is happy
-Shift (“sundail, …..happy”)
-14 lines of varying length
-short & simple stanzas
-Introspective
-Tone: Optimistic, Hopeful

-Written in 1976- Walcott is in his 40’s
– Morne Coco Mountain- Mountain in the Carribean, personal connection
-“Morne”- head of a tilting lance
-“moon” symbol of hope
-“December”- Hurricane season ends

– Ocean Motif (sail, water, blue plunge)
– Nature Motif (mountain, earth, water)
-Water Motif
-Celestial motif (moon, brightness, goose-skin)
-Themes: Reflection, Hope, Acceptance of Age & Mortality, Renewal, Cyclic

-Ambiguous- “broken”- thoughts, memory, words
-Alliteration (“buttoned boots”, “paint pictures”)
-Homioteleuton (“dutiful, honest, faithful, and useful”)
-Rhetorical Question (“For …recompense”)
—Ambiguous (what is fame compared to humble things? or maybe being critical
-Metaphor (“home”=heaven)
-Juxtaposition (“strength vs. frail”)
-Anadiplosis- (“I believe, I believe”)

– Stanzas of Varying length
-Rhyming Couplets (at end symbolize completeness)
-Apostrophe
-Analepsis
-Panegyric- Oral composition lauding someone

-“Mable”- loveable
-“wooden church on those Sundays”- antiquated idea- Churches were spread across the South in the old days
-“buttoned boots”- antiquated idea
-“paint”- Walcott’s father was a painter
-“Word”- Bible, poetry, his chosen art form
-“lux mundi”- Light of the world

– Old Motif (veined, trembling, pellucid, frail, grey, darkening, aging, grey)
-Web Motif (skein, veined, spidery, spins, filament)
-Religion Motif (church, perpetually bowed, God, bless, home, sacred duty, Word, Heaven)
-Themes: Art is a divine gift, inescapable memory, Life after death, Renewal of Faith, Spiritual Strength
-Microcosm- Connection between speaker and his father
-Macrocosm- Art is a divine gift

– Alliteration (“proclaims perfected”, “such strange”, “cyclic chemistry”)
– Cacophony (“bends overburdened bough”)
-Cacophony (“Can quail the comprehending heart”)- conveys reality
– Personification/Metaphor (Tree is personified as a woman)
-Wet vs Dry Dichotomy (“dew and dust”)
-Juxtaposition (“green yet aging”- young yet old)
-Irony (“dooms and glorifies”)
-Anaphora
-Ambiguous (“loud”)
-Auditory Detail (“loud with citron leaves”)
-Parallelism (“overburdened bough” first and last stanzas)
-Negative Diction: blight, grieves, darkening, creed, moult, rage

– 8 Quatrains, Iambic Tetrameter
-7 complete, 8- new beginning
-Forced Rhyme (“now” and “bough”, “fall” and tropical”)
-Shift (perfected fable- fable perfect now)

– “In a green night” -(Bermuda- line 18 “He brings in shades the orange bright/ like a green night”)– Walcott’s response- Nature is cyclic
– Written in 1963
-“moult”- shedding
-“overburdened”- weight of realization
-“comfortable creed” – cold gives oranges sweetness
-“citron leaves”- leaves that heal
-“crystal falls” – Fountain of Youth
-Tone: Idealistic to increasingly realistic

-Color Motif: Orange- brass, citron, splendours, enspheres
-Circle Motif- orbs, sun, orange
-Themes: Illusion vs Reality, Loss of Youth, Inevitability, Passing of Time, Acceptance of Reality, Nature is Cyclic
Fable- Forever young and beautiful

-Rhetorical Question – “one surprise?”, “The snake?”
-Homioteleuton- “yellowing, everything, turning”
-Paraprosdokian- (“there for good fellowship also”)
– Ironic (“share the loss of Eden”)- Walcott is making profit by writing this
-Cacophony (coined snake, coiled there for good)
-Extended Metaphor (Snake- European colonization)
-Anaphora- snake

– Apostrophe
-Written in 1976
-parody of Garden of Eden

– “after Eden”- Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Garden of Eden
-“sweat”- Adam is working
-“sown with salt”- Romans sowed the ground with salt so nothing would grow when they conquered Carthage
-“snake”- tempter from Genesis
-“forked tree” devil’s pitchfork
-“labour”- slaveholder, capitalism
-“both”- snake and Adam
-“alder”- type of tree
-“October”- edge of season- summer to fall
-“New Eden”- New world
-“ark’s gut”- Noah’s ark, Middle passage
-“share the profit”- colonial exploitation
“And it looked good”- last line of Genesis “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”

-Themes: Evil Nature of Colonization, acceptance of sin, Profit through Destruction of Paradise

-Parallelism- (“with faults and all” first and last stanzas)
-Visual Imagery (“white road alone”- reflection of moon)
– Juxtaposition- “green and silver”
-Alliteration “something stronger”, “rational radiance”
-Sibilance
-Diction reflects tone (“snatch” frustration)
-Celestial vs Terrestial Dichotomy

-7 stanzas completion
-decreasing lines as epiphany is reached
-scattered rhyme
-Enjambment
-Eye rhyme
– Forced Rhyme- “ocean” and “motion”, “just there” and “were”
– Shift in rhyme- “load”, “keep”, “loved”- lamentable
– Fading Rhyme reflects transformation
-Pronoun shift- I to us
-Tone: Hopeless to No longer in denial to acceptance

-“Sea Canes”- to actual canes, waves, or plant
-“owls” reference to spirits
-“flash” quickness
-“seraph”- angelic blades
-“lances” jousting- reflects inner conflict
-“stone” refers to happiness for eternity
-“rational” -coping mechanism
-“further than sorrow”- out of reach from sorrow
-Romantic elements- compares nature to inner self, owls soaring to dreaming motions, further than despair

– Ocean Motif (surf, ocean, float)- ocean carries memories of past back to shore
-Nature Motif
-Earth as a symbol of creation of life
-Themes: reflection, loss, loneliness, Inescapable memories, acceptance

– Cacophony: “Chaos clouds the globe”
-Alliteration “bulk, buries her bosom”, “bull’s bulk”, “beat, bellowing, black bull”
-Light vs. Dark Dichotomy- “shadow vs God’s light”
-Chiasmus: “Put out the light” and “God’s light is put out”
-Irony- acceptance of evil
-Anaphora: “moon”, “bull”, “bulk”
-Sibilance: “saffron-sunset, shaped-sword”
-Antithesis: Virgin and ape, Maid and Malevolent Moor
-Dichotomy: corruption of white fruit
-Contradictory: barren innocence whimpers for pardon
-Paraprosdokian: “no more monstrous for being black”
-Olfactory Imagery
-Celestial Diction (moon, eclipse, bodiless, night, dream)
-Metaphor- light
-Extended Metaphor- Desdemona & Othello

-Epigraph- Iago warns Desdemona’s father that Othello has seduced her
-augury- omen
-Africa- depicted as a shadow- evil
-Light- woman, Desdemona
-Cyprus- Othello defended Cyprus
-Pasiphae- Daughter of Helios, Moon god, conceived a hybrid child- Minotaurus- bull
-Euryidice/she climbs secure- Orpheus looked back because of distrust
-saffron-sunset turban- symbol of martyrdom and sacrifice
-panther- black– violent organization- Black Panthers
-comic agony, blackamoor- blackface
-sibyl- woman who tells prophecies

– 7 stanzas- completion, levels of hell
-Scattered Rhyme
-Tone shift- “pulsing her chamber”
-Shift (“She climbs secure/Virgin and ape”)

-Motif- Celestial Motif
-Themes:- Race, Revenge, Distrust, Lust, Sexuality, Separation

-Metonomy- Adam to humanity
-Sibilance-“still sing the song that Adam sang”
-Enjambment
-Double entendre- horned- betrayed, or like the devil
-Ambiguous- heart- god or Eve
-Repetition/Parallelism- “Heart you are in my heart”
-Juxtaposition (“peaceable kingdom…death coming out”)
-Alliteration “panthers…peaceable
-Anaphora: coming out
-Ambigous- song- Adam’s love for Eve or for God

-7 stanzas- completion
-single extraneous line

-adulteress stoned to death- infidelity
-whispers- gossip, slander
-coming on- God comes looking for them after their transgression
-rain, dew- renewal

-Motifs:
-Themes: Betrayal, Regret, Lack of Redemption, Loss of Paradise, Humanity

-Light vs Dark Dichotomy: (“dark as a prison…sunbeam dances”)
-Nature Imagery “firefly…guerrilla”
-Anaphora “like…like”
-Word Play “guerrilla” and gorilla
-Alliteration “guerrilla…gouged”– creates cacophonous sound
-Simile “sweat glued to his face like a hot cloth under the barber’s hand”
-Vernacular diction “Adios, then”– broken English
-Cacophony “bawl…mudder”
-Declaratory speech: “I, Sonoa”
-Listing: of revoluntionaires
-Sibilance
-Cyclic
-Consonance”b” emmulates gun fire

-Enjambment
-Short Telegraphic statements juxtapose this
– One Elongated Stanza
-Stream of Consciousness
-prepositions depict movement
-Pronoun shift:to I

– The Liberator– Simon Boliva- attempted to merge previous colonies into Gran Columbia
-Walcott’s response to the February Revolution
-crossroads- freedom of oppression
-sunbeams- hope
-“under the barber’s hand”- vulnerability
-“range”- mountains
-Estenzia- exist
-mango- fertility
-Sonora- snakes, clandestine revolutionaries
-dance- mock
-List of Fighters
-“loss of heredity”- loss of identity

-Color Motif, Nature (Jungle) Motif
-Themes: Preserving Identity, Futility of Revolution

-Alliteration: w
-Negatively connoted words: grey, low, stale, encumbrances, trash
-Rhythm- we suffer, the years pass, we shed frieght but not our need (emulates washing of waves)
-Paradox- we are what we have made
-Asyndeton: “no pity, no fame, no healing”
-Ambiguity: rock-like- stagnation or determination
-Homioteleuton: greater and harder
-Anaphora: unlearn, we
-Metaphor: Silent Wife- poetry
-Antithesis: “rock-like”

-Telegraphic Statements (reflect stagnation)
-Eye Rhyme: awash and trash
-7 stanzas- completeness
-Tone: Somber, Maudlin
-Pronoun shift- we to I
-Enjambment
-Pauses give impact
-Shift- “nothing….from poetry”

-Winding up- end result
-Written in year 1976
-circled- I have though about it over and over again
-freight- extra weight
-encumbrances- responsibilities
-Silent Wife: poetry
-mediocrity: other writers?
-trash: meaningless things
-Walcott was married three times

-Water Motif (rhythm, freight (ship), water, sea, seabed, awash)
-Themes: Entrapment, Isolation, Denial of Happiness, Loss of Hope, Existence, Elusivity of Love

-Alliteration “Like Leonardo”
-Euphonious “where landscapes open on a waterdrop”
-Cacophonous- “dragons crouch in stains”, “gilded gleams”, “rocky hermitage” (Euphonious vs . Cacophonous was Da Vinci’s style)
-Synesthesia “bright air”
-Paraprosdokian “a beer can’s…”
-Assonance (it’s limned window)

– 4 stanzas of varying length
-Repetitive “l” sound
-Some Enjambment
-Telegraphic sentences

-Leonardo’s idea: Da Vinci
-veins- rivers, bloodlines, borders
-limned- painted
-Canaletto- Italian painter of landscapes
-Hermitage: Jerome spent time as a hermit
-haggard: suffering
-kingdom- heaven
-far city- St. Augustine– Earthly & Heavenly cities
-stillness-conveying reverence
-IS: existence (metaphysical idea)
-Chardin- French Painter of Domestic live
-Vermeen- Dutch Painter (of middle class)
-lacrimae rerum- tears of things
-darkness- flaws and imperfections are a part of art

Themes: Existence, Nature of Art, Conflict, Ordinary vs. Grand

-Juxtaposition “Derisive & avuncular”
-Anaphora: too many, too many
-Paradox: fury of indifference, frenzy and despair
-Analepsis
-Paraprosdokian
-Sibilance: Sunday sprawled sent states
-Olfactory Imagery: dry smell of money…
-Alliteration (“money mingled with man’s sweat”)
-Cacophonous- gut bucket blues
-3 syllables- turned his back- with purpose

-4 stanzas of varying length
–

-“river lights”- New Orleans
-“Mississippi Man’s” Medger Evans- denied entrance to Mississippi College because he was black
-Cathouse- brothel
-knee cradled horn- French horn or Saxophone
-Georgia on my mind- official song of Georgia
-Jesus Saves– written by Methodist minister
despair– loss of African dream
-flash- epiphany
-jesus ragtime- deemphasize glory (Jesus is not capitalized)
-gut bucket blues- song by Louis Armstrong
-“Joshua’s ram’s horn…” Lord told Joshua to march around the city of Jericho every day;7th day walls will collapse
-Mobile and Galveston- Slave cities
-OLD NOAH- Noah Howard born in 1943 in New orleans

-Crisis of Identity
-Dual Citizenship
-Loss of African American Dream
-Racism
-Betrayal

-Sibilance “idleness of summer grass”
-Personification (butterflies, lemonade)
-Assonance “I lie idling”
-Caesura
-Paraprosdokian- small children hunting yellow wings
-Word Play- mantis prays- preys
-Ambiguous- scream, she (butterfly or girl)
-Animalistic diction “maimed”
-Cyclic- summer grass (first and last line)
-Ambiguous- is the speaker a mere spectator?

3 stanzas
-shift “cannot speak./The mind swings”
-Scattered Rhyme
-monosyllabic (I hear the cries)

-a lesson for THIS Sunday- sense of immediacy
-black maid- marginalization
-hosanna- praise
-Sabbath-religious observance
-lepidopterists- study and collect butterflies
-haunches- legs
-eviscerate- remove

Color Motif (yellow, lemonade)
Religion Motif
Themes-Innate Evil of Man, destruction, human cruelty, science vs. religion