Poetry 101:2 – Emphasise

Welcome to Poetry 101! The revision podcast that teaches you how, why, and where you already know it from. Every episode we are take a poem your teacher might give you and a song you probably know and investigate a literary technique, so that next time you have an exam or an essay you’re prepared. Let’s dive into the texts!

EPISODE 2: EMPHASIS

Last week we looked at the power of simply summarising a poem. This week, we’re going to look at how you know which words and ideas the author is emphasising and how you can use that knowledge in your work. We’re going to be comparing Lianne La Havas’ song ‘Is Your Love Big Enough’ with Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ to show you that you already know which bits of the poem to focus in on.

Listen to the way La Havas has written the verses on ‘Is Your Love Big Enough’: first here then here. The difference between verse one and verse two perfectly shows different techniques writers use to emphasise bits of their songs. Let’s go back to that first phrase… “Found myself in a second” In this line, La Havas stops, but when she repeats it she adds more information: “I found myself in a second-hand guitar”. This shows two techniques for emphasis. The first is repetition – she says the same thing twice, which shows her listener that it’s important. You might have heard your teacher say things like ‘topic sentence’, ways which you can telegraph to your reader what the core parts of your argument are. What’s interesting, though, is that in addition to calling attention to the line with repetition, the first time La Havas uses the line she stops at ‘second’, but when it’s repeated she lengthens the word to ‘second-hand’. This changes the meaning of the phrase: finding yourself ‘in a second’ means quickly, finding yourself ‘in a second-hand guitar’ means you’re using art and composition to self-identify. La Havas is giving her reader two different ways of looking at the same line by repeating it. In the second verse, La Havas uses the same rhythm, but doesn’t repeat any words. The effect of this is that no part of that stands out or is emphasised like it is in the first verse, and the listener hears that part of the story with equal weight.

Throughout her song, La Havas uses rhyme, rhythm changes, and a lot of repetition to emphasise aspects within her writing. So, let’s listen to this week’s poem and see where we hear similar techniques. We’re going to read the whole thing, but you could break it up into verses to analyse if you’d prefer. Whilst you’re listening, ask yourself questions like “Is there anything that doesn’t fit – does the rhythm or the mood change? Is there an unusual line break? Is something repeated? Does something rhyme?”

Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

If you need to rewind then the poem is 107 seconds long, but I’ve also included the whole thing in a link here for those who would prefer to read it.

So, we can hear Tennyson repeating a lot of words and phrases. It makes the poem faster, adding rhythm, but it also emphasises certain words. Not only does Tennyson repeat all those words at the beginning, but he uses some of the same words in every verse: death, cannons, six hundred. We as the reader, therefore, know that these are the important words, even without reading the rest of the poem, and we’re right: the poem is about 600 soldiers being killed by cannons in a famous battle that happened in the Crimean war. Even without that background, Tennyson is letting his reader know that death, cannons and six hundred are the core parts of the poem to pay attention to. We see Tennyson showing us this in other ways, too: the poem ends with the words ‘six hundred’, meaning that’s the last idea he wants to leave his reader with. He also, like La Havas, uses rhyme – we have ‘blundered’, ‘thundered’, ‘wondered’ which all, again, accentuate his use of ‘six hundred’.

In addition to the repeated words, La Havas and Tennyson are both using a technique called ‘enjambement’, which is when you put a phrase over multiple lines. Let’s listen to La Havas using it again now. Earlier we established that she was telling us two things at once – it’s possible that Tennyson is doing that too, perhaps that at first the soldiers think they are only travelling ‘half a league’ (which is a unit of measurement), but by repeating it and adding ‘onwards’ the reader can understand it as a repeated command and they are travelling further than they first thought. It’s also a technique of emphasis, because it sounds quite jarring compared to normal speech, so if you are faced with a poem where the line breaks in the middle of a sentence (especially when it seems unnatural), you have an easy in for your analysis – just ask ‘why’ or ‘what is the effect’. If you look up rhetorical techniques you’re confronted with a big, long list with a lot of Greek-derived words that, even at degree level, nobody uses. Often English departments or teachers will have posters or lists explaining a few of them that are useful, so try and learn a few, but even without knowing the name you can know the effect and use it to analyse – just think about how your favourite songs create their effects.

To test yourself a little further, try this technique on another poem. All you have to do is pick out the words or phrases you think are emphasised and write about why you think they might be important. You can use a random poem from your anthology, or you could try to get ahead by looking at next week’s poem. In the next episode, we’ll be discussing Philip Larkin’s This Be The Verse.

Good luck decoding!

Poetry 101 was written, edited and produced by me. My name is Kitty Shaw – I’m studying for my PhD in literature and have worked for over five years in schools, so this podcast is the marriage of my two worlds. You can contact the podcast on kitty@lateromantic.com.

Charge of the Light Brigade was first published in 1854 in The Examiner. It was read here by Hollie McNish. ‘Is Your Love Big Enough’ was written by Lianne La Havas and Willy Mason, and performed by Lianne La Havas. It was produced by Matt Hales, and released on Warner Brothers in 2012.

Thank you so much for listening!

Artworks are reproduced in part under Section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.