Term 3 Blog post 2 - Poem Analysis

Firstly, I would like to say, THANK YOU MR. LUNDBERG, for providing us students with such a detailed step-by-step basis note on how to analyse a poem. And of course all the other notes and that toolkit that would REALLY help in my preparation for the examination.

I decided that I should type out the poem first so that any of you viewers out that get a better understanding and can easily relate to it here with the answers:

In Snapshotland everyone is happy all the time.
It is the promised land where people sit with flasks of tea
on smooth sand by a flat sea and smile and smile and smile.

The sun shines all day long and everyday in Kodachrome
or sepia on sandboys and sandgirls who never
stop smiling from the time they first appear, with buckets,
in crisp, gingham pinafores and bonnets on the sea-shore.

Lovers stay in love forever, married couples never
grow tired of each other; everything is always just right.
The dolphines know exactly when to leap into the air
and stay there for the permanent delight of passengers
aboard the pleasure-boat which never passes out of sight.

Nobody in Snapshotland grows old unless they want to,
judging by the way they go on smiling so, in deck-chairs,
on the beach, or in old-fashioned gardens with lavender
and grandchildren here and there-and no one dies, ever.

Even if they don't appear later, the people are still
always there, smiling through the lavender and dolphines
and the buckets full of pebbles on the same sea-shore.

So here are my answers for the poem, Snapshotland:

Step 1 - Really all I needed to do here was to erase any expectations I have of the poem, piece of cake.

Step 2 - Thoughts of the title:
a)A land of cameras.
b)A surreal land that was photoshopped.
c)A land where photography is a very respected skill.
d)A land where everybody carries a gun.
e)A dream Island; like a paradise.
f)A land made up of photographs.

Step 3 - Read fast, Read slow, Read slow again and again.

Step 4 - Things that caught my attention:
a)The sun shines all day long and every day in Kodachrome.
b)"stay there for the permanent delight of passengers".
c)Nobody in Snapshotland grows old unless they want to.
d)Pleasure-boat which never passes out of sight.
e)never stop smiling.
f)stay in love forever.
g)no one dies, ever.

Step 5- Features of Language:
a)"It is the promised land" - Metaphor
b)"smooth sand by a flat sea and smile and smile and smile" - Alliteration
c)"sepia on sandboys and sandgirls" - Alliteration

Step 6 - Thematic Boxes:
a) "Happy, Smile, Delight, Pleasure" - Joy
b) "Sea, Buckets, Bonnets, Sandboys, Sandgirls, Deck-chairs, Pebbles" - Beach
c) "Forever, Permanent, Ever" - Eternity

Step 7 - Patterns:
The most obvious pattern about this poem is that everything in it is describing something positive, something perfect. It goes about saying that good things last forever and the bad things never existed; everybody's happy, not a single one is upset, even the dolphins.

Step 8 - What the poem might mean:
I truly feel, that when the poet wrote this poem, he was in high spirits. The only other possibility is that the poet was describing a place where he longed to be. So with that, this poem probably is describing about pictures, where people would pose and smile, and stay that way forever. And that pictures are always happy.

Step 9 - Questions:
a) Unidentified Speaker
b)To the pubic in general
c)Optimistic
d)Optimistic
e)It is arranged in such a way that the audience can feel the flawless place - Snapshotland.
f)I have managed to understand the poem better and to read between the lines of the poem.

Step 10 - Critical Appreciation:
I think what the poet is trying to bring out in this poem is to show how photographs and pictures always seem to be perfect; where everybody is happy and everything else stays the same. It is as if he has managed to assemble all the photographs in the world and put them together to form an island, Snapshotland. He has described impossible things that happen in Snapshotland that would never have happened in real life and made fantasy seem like it was actually true. He managed to capture the small little details like "where people sit with flaks of tea" and also managed to contain the bigger issues, like "Lovers stay in love forever, married couples never grow tired of each other," and " no one dies, ever." This poem is just like a compilation of life's pleasures and things to be happy about, but in fact, it is all just memories.

Term 3 Blog Post 1 - Extended Life Metaphors

Time really flies, doesn't it? Once again I begin another chapter in my blog for this term. So After reading some examples given to us in a worksheet, I decided to pick the fourth phrase as my starting of my extended life metaphor:

Life is a gift certificate,
Our presence, God's advocate.
Die when you lose it,
a pity, if you never had it.

"Each day's a gift and not a given right,"
I must stress with all my might.
For every second you have, treasured or not,
just like your body, certificates rot.

So now I will just explain the above two stanzas, as usual. The main point of this entire extended metaphor is that life is something that is very fragile, as easy as it was presented as a gift to you, it can be lost anytime. What I mean in the first half is that this gift, our life - our presence, is God allowing us to live and if you mess up your life - "you lose it", and you die. What I also mean by "a pity, if you never had it", is that life is a wonderful thing and if you have been deprived of that opportunity of experiencing it, it is a very sad thing. (Abortions etc.)

The second half is really quite simple, do not take life for granted. Everyone was given a chance, its all up to that person to decide to treasure it, or not.