This is a 3 page document that acts as a thorough essay plan and revision resource, produced by a student who achieved all A* at A level. It is split into an analysis of the poem itself, context, form, structure, language and ideas. (Hence touching upon all A0s assessed in the A level poetry exam.)
Making reference to the way
time is categorized into three:
the past, present and future.
Triple Time
This is a poem about neglect, which describes the poet’s perspective on the past, present, and future
and lost opportunity. There is a sense of hopelessness of this poem, as the speaker sees no end to
the disappointment of life as humans are going to continue to ignore chances to gain progress.
Larkin uses 3 separate landscapes to encapsulate the past, present, and future- something that is
also re-enforced through the 3 distinct stanzas.
Different themes:
Passage of time.
Place.
Youth and memory.
Perspective.
Key poems to link to and why:
Poetry of departures- idea of lost opportunity.
Arrivals, departures- preoccupation on the future.
Contextual links:
Written in 1953- a time where hopes for the future would have been disrupted by war. The
legacy of war likely had an impact on Larkin’s, and many others, perception of the future at
this time.
Key aspects of form and structure:
Three-stanza poem that is separated into sets of five lines (quintains.) These quintains follow
a specific and consistent rhyme scheme. Rigidity and regularity of form could be suggestive
of the nature of time, but also feeling of hopelessness and no escape for the speaker?
Separation of the three stanzas to reflect the past, present, and future.
Enjambment used at moments to reflect the fleeting movement of time.
Key methods and arguments of the poem:
In the first stanza the present is depicted as bland, without detail or joy. Imagery is used to convey
this idea, as the present is compared to a deadening landscape, re-enforced with the anaphora used:
Present is like an “empty street.” Everything has been purged from it, there is no trace of
civilization, people, or life itself. The scene is expanded with the description of the sky as
having been “scoured” or scrubbed harshly, to “blandness.” Perhaps these images are to
convey the speakers lack of excitement or zest for life and the present- no longer sees the
beauty in the world.
Reference to ‘autumn’- transitional period connoting to decay.
He goes on to say that the air is like a “reflection.” It isn’t anything in and of itself.
Most importantly, sense of emptiness in first stanza.
Anaphora creates sense of monotony, and end-stopped line further reiterates how the
present is finite.
In the second stanza, the speaker conveys childhood innocence in its hope for the future. Again,
figurative language and landscapes used in order to illuminate this…
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