Poetry

• Poem

  • Written in colloquial, modern language
  • Has a stream of consciousness style with lack of full stops and many commas
  • Rhyme scheme is ABAB CDE dce, mirroring Keats' poem
• Comparisons


  • Compares to Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
  • Compares to "Look We Have Coming to Dover" by Daljit Nagra
• Grayson Perry


  A modern British artist who makes ceramics and decorates them with modern sensibilities, appropriating Greek historical culture
• Grayson Perry's art


  Compared to the poet's act of appropriating an old poetic form to express modern sensibilities
• The poem starts with the exclamative "Hello"
• "Shirley Temple monkey"


  A reference to Grayson Perry's blonde, curly hair and the idea of him lacking the innocent purity associated with the stereotypical "cute" child actor Shirley Temple
• Grayson Perry's persona


  Contrasted with the idea of the "Shirley Temple" innocent child, potentially also poking fun at his cross-dressing alter ego "Claire"
• The poem compares Grayson Perry's art to the "classic urns" that have been made with "Decades of hard and difficult labor"
• Grayson Perry's art


  Portrayed as being quickly "knocked out" without the same level of effort and care as traditional art
• Imagery in the poem


  • Cars with kids on "crap Estates"
  • Kids "clad in Burberry"
  • Creating "Bedlam on the Queen's Highway"
• The poem uses harsh, unpleasant sounds and imagery to depict the "uncultured youth"
• The "Queen's Highway"


  Contrasted with the youth's defiance of societal expectations and creation of "Bedlam"
• The urn's depiction of the modern youth culture


  Glorifies the scenes without truly expressing the "fright" and "reality" of the situation
• The poem explores themes of alienation and the generational divide between older and younger people
• The urn is not a Stillness, it's not a piece, it's not a quiet object you view in a museum, it's a throaty turbo Roar
• Onomatopoeia


  A word that phonetically imitates or resembles the sound it describes
• Gertro


  Refers to the genre of music known as UK garage
• The onomatopoeia gives this wild energy to the youth with their cars and their loud music
• Words like 'a juice' are quite difficult to pronounce, they're polysyllabic words
• When we have words like 'educe' alongside words like 'kichi' and 'Kari', the impression is not of unity but of separate parts thrown into one existence
• The young girls are too young to appreciate their Peril and this undermines the romanticized Scene
• The poem pokes fun at the assumption that the scene on the bus is perfect
• The poem says that you don't see the millions of things going on behind the scenes, you only see the snapshot of this perfect life
• You don't see the slaves who probably contributed in bringing the materials to make this urn, you don't see the fact that this woman portrayed happily couldn't do anything without the guy's approval
• The majority of men probably led poor lives unless they were very wealthy and like Emperors
• The poem explores the gap between the perceived reality and the actual reality
• The supposed sense of peace is undermined by juxtaposing it to the Grim reality
• As attractive as this lifestyle seems, it's very dangerous
• They will stay out late forever, pumped on Youth and ecstasy on alloy base and arrogance and speed
• They never have need to race back home for work next day to bed
• Each girl is buff, each geese are toned and strong, charged with spousing juice which even yet fills every pair of calvins and each thong
• They are happy to indulge in crude games of chlamydia roulette
• It's ironic to expect modern culture to last if the youth themselves do not appear to think of getting older
• The youth are toasted in buckfast and diamond white, cheap alcoholic drinks
• Rat boys and cornrow cheerleaders urge them on to pull more burnouts or to write their donut holes as signature upon the bleached star Mech of dead Suburban streets
• The calm Suburban life is contrasted to the wild passion of youth
• The Tranquility is for the rich, the middle class and working class are stuck in the noisy atmosphere created by the different values of The Young and the old
• When all context is lost and galleries are raised to level dust, future poets will speculate how children might have lived when the urn was fired, and declare that the truth was all negotiable and Beauty in the gifts of the beholder