Writing to Describe: Places
1 Starting with this image, write a description titled: ‘the City’.
2 Starting with this image, write a description titled ‘the junkyard’.
3 Starting with this image, write a description of a forest, or a journey.
Writing to Describe: Places
1 Starting with this image, write a description titled: ‘the City’.
2 Starting with this image, write a description titled ‘the junkyard’.
3 Starting with this image, write a description of a forest, or a journey.
We=inclusive, community
Sink= sense of being buried, hiding
wizened=ancient, dried up
stooks= Colloquial, farming jargon, connection to the land
Tragic chorus = METAPHOR set of voices in classical tragedy (pitiful suffering on a grand scale)
Exploding comfortably OXYMORON = live happily in conflict/danger
Sinister, hissing sibilants (s)
Sit tight=colloquial, comfortable, everyday
Wind strafes = METAPHOR of wind as bombers (planes)
LINK to bombarded
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We are prepared: we build our houses squat,
Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.
This wizened earth has never troubled us
With hay, so, as you see, there are no stacks
Or stooks that can be lost. Nor are there trees
Which might prove company when it blows full
Blast: you know what I mean – leaves and branches
Can raise a tragic chorus in a gale
So that you listen to the thing you fear
Forgetting that it pummels your house too.
But there are no trees, no natural shelter.
You might think that the sea is company,
Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs
But no: when it begins, the flung spray hits
The very windows, spits like a tame cat
Turned savage. We just sit tight while wind dives
And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo,
We are bombarded with the empty air.
Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.
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troubled=ironic (hay is a gift, but he finds the positive side of the lack - they have nothing to lose)
nor/never=negatives, emphasises the sense of having nothing
prove company= colloq. suggests friends, so is ironic (can’t do damage by falling on them - see the REPETITION below)
too=community (affects all of them)
No natural shelter=Nature won’t protect them
tame/savage ANTITHESIS nature dramatically reverses (savage=against civilization)
invisibly/empty=nothingness, unreal danger
Huge nothing = seems a PARADOX - evokes we have nothing to fear but fear itself
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=hope, promise
Symbolises journey/the poet as a vessel on a journey
Troubled pleasure > oxymoron=conflicted emotions
=moon is mystic, symbolises change
=one track - as if it is showing him the way, things are coming together
proud=boy’s power, sure of direction (unswerving line) also symbolises poet’s journey
Horizon =symbolises ultimate destination as a poet
Swan = vessel transformed by the boy’s power (swan=symbol of beauty and grace in classical literature)
voluntary=living, thinking
instinct=emotional reaction
Towered up = Mystical transformation - a linking or blocking him to/from the divine (stars)
trembling=fear
bark= the boat, but seems more fragile now, changed
spectacle=mystical but he cannot interpret it yet (dim)
unknown=mystical, new ways of being, dimly understood (as a child)
No familiar=old simple view of nature is destroyed
mighty=a sense of a greater power (nature/mystic)
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One summer evening (led by her) I found
A little boat tied to a willow tree
Within a rocky cove, its usual home.
Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in
Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;
Leaving behind her still, on either side,
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,
Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point
With an unswerving line, I fixed my view
Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
The horizon’s utmost boundary; far above
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin pinnace [peak]; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark, –
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams..
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her=Nature (see notes above)
Unloosed =symbolises boy’s power, setting imagination free
Voice =power of nature personified - as if nature is calling to him
=pure beauty, wonder: liquid sounds (l) create a fluid effect, while the sibilance (s) creates softness.
Light symbolises revelation, hope
fixed=his original fixed purpose, which will later be changed by his experience
Stars = celestial beauty
elfin=mystical
=pure beauty (liquid sounds)
Sinister plosives (p, b), threatening power, repetition
Struck (repetition) = Boy’s power or panic
purpose=personification of nature as a force, bringing a message - or intention towards him
silent/willow=repeats, a circular journey, but the poet is changed (seeing the same thing, but not with the same eyes)
darkness=contrasts with the earlier images of light (peaceful and simple), but ironically, this darkness represents growth - sensing a larger power behind the simple beauty of nature, though he cannot understand it yet
Do not live like=i.e. immortal
dreams=imagination, emotion and to his future as a poet
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