How Does the Poet Use Language and Form to Give Readers an Insight Into the Thoughts and Feelings of the Speaker?
How does the poet use language and form to give readers an insight into the thoughts and feelings of the speaker?
Poems are a way of expressing yourself. To some people poems may seem like a bunch of meaning less words, however if you analyze each line you will find a great story behind it. In this essay I will be writing about two initially diverse poems, ‘Flag’ by John Agard and ‘Out of the Blue’ written by Simon Armitage. Agard is originally from Guyana in the Caribbean and is known for his personal voice seeping out of his poems and writings like “Checking Out Me History”. On reading and considering “Flag” it seems as if his individual feelings about flags have been portrayed. Whereas Armitage’s poem, which has been taken out from his 2008 anthology, is about three different conflicts that have taken place and have changed the world we live in. “Out of the Blue” was broadcasted 5 years after the 9/11 and won the Royal Television Society Documentary Awards in 2006. Agards’s poem consists of 5 stanzas and each stanza has an 8-6-8-syllable count making it very structured. The first 4 stanzas start off with a question about something the speaker sees or envisions and is followed by an answer, therefore there are two voices. As everybody is aware flags are very symbolic objects, however in this poem Agard juxtaposes a flag as a “piece of cloth” continuously. This imposes that maybe the speaker believes that a flag is not important. In the third line of every verse up until the last one Agard states what a flag makes people do. For example in the first stanza Agard says that a simple flag “brings a nation to its knees.” This is an idiom that suggests defeat or surrender, and Agard is introducing the theme of war and conflict that runs throughout the poem. The way in which Agard has written this makes the reader think that the speaker doesn’t believe that a flag should have such a big impact on people. In the second stanza, the person asking the
Poems are a way of expressing yourself. To some people poems may seem like a bunch of meaning less words, however if you analyze each line you will find a great story behind it. In this essay I will be writing about two initially diverse poems, ‘Flag’ by John Agard and ‘Out of the Blue’ written by Simon Armitage. Agard is originally from Guyana in the Caribbean and is known for his personal voice seeping out of his poems and writings like “Checking Out Me History”. On reading and considering “Flag” it seems as if his individual feelings about flags have been portrayed. Whereas Armitage’s poem, which has been taken out from his 2008 anthology, is about three different conflicts that have taken place and have changed the world we live in. “Out of the Blue” was broadcasted 5 years after the 9/11 and won the Royal Television Society Documentary Awards in 2006. Agards’s poem consists of 5 stanzas and each stanza has an 8-6-8-syllable count making it very structured. The first 4 stanzas start off with a question about something the speaker sees or envisions and is followed by an answer, therefore there are two voices. As everybody is aware flags are very symbolic objects, however in this poem Agard juxtaposes a flag as a “piece of cloth” continuously. This imposes that maybe the speaker believes that a flag is not important. In the third line of every verse up until the last one Agard states what a flag makes people do. For example in the first stanza Agard says that a simple flag “brings a nation to its knees.” This is an idiom that suggests defeat or surrender, and Agard is introducing the theme of war and conflict that runs throughout the poem. The way in which Agard has written this makes the reader think that the speaker doesn’t believe that a flag should have such a big impact on people. In the second stanza, the person asking the