John Cornford: Poems Literary Elements

The poem “Sergei Mironovitch Kirov” is told from the perspective of a third person objective point of view.

The poem “Full Moon At Tierz: Before The Storming Of Huesca” is written in an iambic pentameter.

In the first stanza of “Full Moon At Tierz: Before The Storming Of Huesca” the past is compared with a mountain which cannot be destroyed. This comparison transmits the idea that humanity has no power over the past and as a result, all they can do is try to understand it and analyze it.

We find an alliteration in the poem “A Letter from Aragon” in the lines “This is a quiet sector of a quiet front/ There is no poison gas and no H. E”.

An ironic element appears in the poem “A Letter from Aragon” in which he narrator describes the burial of a fellow soldier. What is ironic is the frequent description of the area as being a “quiet” area, thus making the death of the soldier an unusual event.

The poem “Sergei Mironovitch Kirov” is a meditative poem.

The action described in the poem “Full Moon At Tierz: Before The Storming Of Huesca” takes place in the distant past near an imposing mountain.

The tone in the poem “Sergei Mironovitch Kirov” is a violent and tragic one.

The protagonist in “to Margot Heinemann” is the narrator and the antagonist is the distance separating the two lovers.

The major conflict in the poem “Full Moon At Tierz: Before The Storming Of Huesca” is between the past and the present.

The poem “A Letter from Aragon” reaches its climax when the village where the narrator is situated is bombed and almost completely destroyed.

We find a foreshadowing element in “to Margot Heinemann” a poem in which the narrator describes the dangers he encounters while on the battlefield. This is used to foreshadow the narrator’s death which will occur not long after the letter was written.

In the second stanza of the poem “Full Moon At Tierz: Before The Storming Of Huesca”, the narrator claims the present is just the future which we form with our own hands. This line transmits the idea that humans are in charge when it comes to their future. This is however an understatement as in the fourth stanza the narrator describes the future as something we have no control over.

In the poem “Sergei Mironovitch Kirov”, the narrator describes the presence of a long shadow which, despite time passing by, does not disappear but rather grows more prominent. The shadow is an allusion made here to the way in which the violent events which took place under Stalin’s rule will never be forgotten. In fact, as the narrator points out, these events will only be revealed more and more as time goes by, thus making the shadow appear even more accentuated and imposing.

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We find a personification in the poem “A Letter from Aragon” in the line “in the unfriendly earth”.

We find a hyperbole in the poem “Sergei Mironovitch Kirov” in the line “nothing is ever certain, nothing is ever safe”.

We find an onomatopoeia in the poem “Full Moon At Tierz: Before The Storming Of Huesca” in the line “a glacier gripped the mountain wall”.