Answers: Well, if you really insist... - Kevin Ireland
1. One of the following points is required:
2. The following ideas are required:
3. The following ideas are required:
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- It suggests that the poet is reluctant and doesn't really want to give his honest opinion because he hated it so much;
- That the other poet has pressured him into giving a response and asked him more than once for it.
2. The following ideas are required:
- This sentence follows an accusation that the poet worked up a 'sweat of fake sincerity.' An 'illiteracy of the heart' means that the poet does not have a deep emotional understanding. This would explain his 'fake sincerity'. 'Clammy' implies cold and moist which he evoked by 'sweat';
- The author is saying that the poet's lack of understanding is so unsettling that it gives him a 'cold sweat';
- 'Drooling from every word' is a metaphor which evoked the image of drool coming from the poet. It adds to the sickening feeling evoked by 'clammy'.
3. The following ideas are required:
- In the final stanza the author introduces the idea that the poem was so bad he will find it hard to forget. He says 'it was hard to separate the appalling taint' (line 25-26);
- He cannot meet the poet again until 'my skin stops crawling'. This stanza is effective because it evoked the image of a poetry reading through the lines 'there were drinks/and things to eat.' The author seems to be mocking these events;
- The negative feelings towards the performance are reinforced int he last stanza and link back to "worse than a mere item to be clean forgotten" in the first stanza. he would love to be able to forget the performance, but it was so bad that he cannot;
- The reference to 'skin crawling' in the final stanza is linked to the horror film reference in stanza two. he makes it sound like the performance was something really horrific;
- The 'unction' in the final stanza again reinforces the narrator's negativity towards the performance; the poet is so slick and greasy, he has left an oily taste in the wine.
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