Poem Assignment

This is the poem that I chose. It is entitled Snapshotland.

Snapshotland

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 every day in Kodachrome
or sepia on sandboys and sandgirls who never
stop smiling from the time they first appear, with buckets,
in crisp, gingham pinfores and nonnets on the sea-shore.

Lovers stay in love forever, married couples never
grow tired of each other; everything is always just right.
The dolphins 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.

Noboday in Snapshotland grows old unless they want to,
juding 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 dolphins
and the buckets full of pebbles on the same sea-shore.

Sylvia Kantaris


Step 1 : Forget what the poem may or may not mean, or what it may be about.☑
Step 2 : Look at the title and jot down about half a dozen things that it suggests to you. Give literal meanings as well as other associations.
- Photographs
- Still
- Frozen
- Land of guns
- Dangerous land
Step 3 : Read the poem onc quickly and then several times more slowly. Try to hear the poem aloud in your head.☑
Step 4 : Make a list if all those things which force their attention on you or which catch your interest for one reason or another. You might jot down unusual/odd/striking words, rhymes or repetitions/patterns/contrasts ,etc.
- 'and smile and smile and smile' repetition
- 'Kodachrome' striking and unusual name
- 'sandboys and sandgirls' striking phrase
- 'Lovers stay in love forever; married couples never grow tired of each other' contrasts
- 'Nobody in Snapshotland grow old' Striking phrase
- 'and no one dies - ever.' striking phrase.
Step 5 : Look at and list any features of lanugage used in the poem, eg.
No captital letters; no full stops at all line-end; presence/absence of adverbs/adjectives; all verbs are either active/passive; tenses - all past except in the last line - ,etc.
- No structure in the poem
- No all stanzas have rhyming lines
- Poem in present tense
Step 6 : Try to find groups of words (thematic boxes),eg.
(a) All similes make reference to animals/death/plants, etc.
(b) All the first words of lines are conjuctions, etc.
*Don't worry if your groups of words seem silly or improbable. Look at what you have observed and ask yourself what is its significance.
- Every first lines of its stanzas are made up of captial letters.
Step 7 : Look at your lists, notes and groups. Do you see any patterntaking shape?
- The first and last stanzas have 3 lines each while the 2nd, 4th stanzas have 4 lines each and the 3rd stanza has 5 lines
Step 8 : Read the poem again and try to make intelligent guessesof what the poem may mean.
The poem is about a photograph, in which everything is inside is still. Every thing that happened when the photograph was taken remains that way forever.
Step 9: Answer the following questions:
Who is "speaking" in the poem? Is it the POET or a PERSONA?
It is the poet who is speaking.
Who is the poem "spoken" to? In other words, who is the audience for this poem? Is it to a particular person, to the poet himself (reflective) or to the public in general?
It is to the the public.
What is the speaker's attitude to this audience? Is it angry, sincere, joking, teasing, etc.?
He is more of sincere, explaining to the audience the definition and happenings of Snapshotland.
What is the POET's attitude to this audience? (This may be different from the speaker.)
He is sincere, explaining to the audience the definition and happenings of Snapshotland.
Why is the poem organized in the way that it is?
It is to attract readers attention to the interesting subject Snapshotland.
What is the EFFECT of all the things you have written down in Steps 2-8?
It helps me to understand and comprehend the poem better.