English Prose (Seen Passages)

Notes:

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Poetry Anthology - Cape Town Morning

Poetry Anthology - Cape Town Morning

Text:

Winter has passed. The wind is back.                       - seasons are clearing+moving: -> change

Window panes rattle old rust,                                   - spring = regeneration/rebirth

summer rising.

Street children sleep, shaven mummies in sacks,   - poverty+street children -> malnourished

eyelids weighted by the dreams of coins,               - mummies = death*

beneath them treasure of small knives.                   - desire to be rich

Flower sellers add fresh blossoms                          - adding new life in dead/sour buckets**

to yesterday's blooms, sour buckets                             - this creates juxtaposition & contrast: life/death

filled and spilling.

And trucks digest the city's sediment                    - enjambment

men gloved and silent                                           - ambiguous: men helping? or sinister?***

in the municipal jaws.

Notes:

Title: 'morning' = pun: 'mourning' -> sorrow for Cape Town?

Themes: apartheid, poverty, deterioration of Cape Town

Freeform = economic state of Cape Town

Winter = death; Spring = life. --> as Spring rises, the city gets rid of old death. (Rubbish, flowers, sediment, poor people)

*mummies = death. This contrasts with the youth of the children

** 'fresh blossoms' = hope, but it has been ruined by...

***... the city. The city = a great beast, which consumes all life it withholds.

Poetry Anthology - City Blues

Poetry Anthology - City Blues

Text (NB: the bits in brackets represents the pairings of words in the original poem):

Sunday dawn in a November city

the bully (light)(sun) wades in

set glass aflame

(slams)(puts) (dark)(hard) shadows on anything

not big enough to take it.

The wind (strips)(unzips) trees

makes them tittle-tattle

harsh small talk

(puts)(drives) their leaves into a lurch

somewhere.

A sheet of paper

(followed)(chased) by a coke can

takes ridiculously to the air

(floats)(flaps) into the sunlight

is a (swan)(bird)

tumbles

knows its place

as the less fortunate should.

In the (shadow)(shade)

this (minuscule)(small) steeple

somes to the point

which is more than can be said

for the big-time (corporations)(companies)

and their (skyscrapers)(sky-spoilers)

(napalmed)(lit up) by that

lousy sun.

Notes:

Title: City Blues: urban landscape; 'blue' - melancholic, depressed, sad; 'Blues' - music? 'City' - depressed city, going through recession?

Themes: Conflict: between nature and (the lack of) humans? Between rich and poor?

Structure/Form: free verse; poet gives reader choice: you can choose a synonym or antonym. Good/Bad word in each pair

There is a clear juxtaposition between poverty (here, being the coke can and paper) with the rich (big, commercial buildings).

There is contrast between the weather (wind, sun) and man made things, such as the coke can, paper, big buildings

The reader is allowed to choose his own path, like he would do in life, by given a choice of words to choose. Usually, one word is significantly more powerful and destructive than the other. This perhaps indicates that the author's message is trying to tell us that you have to act powerfully and destructively in the city in order to succeed. If you don't force your way into the city, then you splutter and grind to a halt, much like the coke can and paper.

There are four sections (as represented by the four chunks of text written above):

1) Sunrise

2) The Wind, Trees

3) The Wind, Litter

4) Church, Sky Scrapers

Section 1 - Sunrise:

Streets are deserted

Religious day ('Sunday Dawn')

The sunlight is being personified

Section 2 - The Wind, Trees:

Wind is destructive: 'strips', 'drives', 'lurch'

Section 3 - The Wind, Litter:

Rubbish = symbolic of people

        paper -> elegant/transformed 'bird/swan'

'tumbles / knows its place' -> failure + representing dreams/hopes

Section 4 - Church, Sky Scrapers:

Sun: 'napalmed', 'lousy', 'bully', 'sets glad aflame' --> Sun = bully

Poetry Anthology - City Jungle

GCSE Poetry Anthology - City Jungle

Text:

Rain splinters town.                                       - 'splinters' = metaphor: town = ripped apart

Lizard cars cruise by;
Their radiators grin.

Thin headlights stare -                                  - sibilance - snake-like, hostile, threatening, sinister
shop doorways keep their mouths shut.    -'mouths shut' - is there a terrible secret which can't be said?

At the roadside                                             - town = sick, run down, flat.
Hunched houses cough.                            

Newspapers shuffle by,                   - personification: substitute for humans; humans = not safe outside
hands in their pockets.                  -'shuffle' = passive + cautious. newspapers = subject to propaganda?
The gutter gargles.

A motorbike snarls;                                       - More personification
Dustbins flinch.

Streetlights bare
Their yellow teeth.                       - 'bare their yellow teeth' = aggressive, predatory
The motorway's
cat-black tongue
lashes across                                - sibilance + assonance
the glistening back                      - colour has lost vibrance and is decaying, like city
of the tarmac night.

Notes:

Title: 'Jungle' represents lawless/anarchic/claustrophobic area

Themes: Dystopian world; plenty of hostility and aggression; Predators (vehicles) Vs Prey (Houses and other objects)

Appearance: The flow is disjointed, making it awkward to read -> symbolises struggle and discomfort

This poem represents an apartheid: vehicles Vs houses, and other inanimate objects

There is a lack of humans, which suggests that the surroundings are far too hostile for anyone to be caught outside