Themes In Poetry In Edwin Brock's Five Ways To Kill A Man

Decent Essays
Good morning/afternoon, I’m Coran McNamara from Carmel College here at the Celebrating Poetry festival to present a seminar on ‘Themes in Poetry’ and today I will be talking about the poem “Five Ways to Kill a Man” by Edwin Brock, the theme and subject matter as well as the poetic techniques and a defence of poetry. First, I would like to talk about the poet, Edwin Brock. Edwin Brock was born on the 19th of October 1927 and died on the 7th of September 1997. Edwin was a police officer when his poems started to be published but had left the force to become an advertising copywriter while still creating poems. Edwin had hated being an advertising copywriter as it distracted him from his real creative life in poetry.
“Five Ways to Kill a Man”
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There are many descriptive words used in the poem and the effect they all have on the reader is that in puts an image in the readers mind so they can really visualise what the poet is writing. An example of this is “a plague of rats”, this makes the reader imagine a plague of rats and the horrible living conditions in the First World War.
One sound poetic technique that was used in the poem is alliteration. An example of this is “not to mention black boots, bomb craters” the letter b is repeated. The effect this has on the reader is that it creates an image in the readers mind what World War one must have been like and the terrible living conditions. Another sound technique used was rhyme in the fourth stanza of the poem. The rhyme was “In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly miles above your victim and dispose of him by…” The rhyming words were ‘fly’ and ‘by’ which shows how quickly and effective people can kill each other just in a fly
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Toddlers love the rhythm and the humour poems can contain, and children skip and jump to rhymes and songs and memorise rules through rhymes and play games with words. Poetry also can develop thinking, as the language in poetry is upside-down, inside-out and in arrangements that people don’t expect. This makes us aware of how language can be used and students realise that there are different ways of saying and that meaning can be conveyed in different ways.
The poem “Five Ways to Kill a Man” is a meaningful poem that reflects on the many ways man has used to kill other men and it also mocks these ways as they have accomplished nothing throughout time. This poem is an example of how poetry presents important ideas to society as people killing other people has and still is an issue in society.
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