Notesale: Turn your study into money

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War photographer
● Context: this poem is, unsurprisingly, about a war
photographer who has returned from foreign war
zones and is finally able to experience a moment
of peace, alone in his darkroom
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● “A hundred agonies in black and white/from
which his editor will pick out five or six/for
Sunday’s supplement” - the phrase “hundred
agonies” suggests the horrific and visceral pain felt
by the people the war photographer has met, and
the large scale suffering he has witnessed
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“Agonies” suggests
the worst pain possible, so by his “editor” selecting only a few, it makes the
editor seem almost ruthless and entirely focused on money, and which will
look the best in the newspaper
...

Additionally, the plosive sounds portray the speaker’s frustration at the photos
not being “good enough” to feature in the main newspaper
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Additionally, this makes the readers seem fickle as the duration of
their pain is short, and nothing compared to that of people suffering in war
zones
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Indeed his final (if a
bit ambiguous) line states that “they do not care”
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Key themes, form and structure
● The poem’s regular rhyme scheme and unbroken structure could mirror the
“ordered rows” of the war photographer’s careful work
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This gives the poem a solemn and reflective
tone and makes the war photographer seem like a priest carrying out a
service or, more fittingly, a funeral
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● The key feelings and attitudes in this poem are pain, detachment (the
photographer does not experience emotions, and the only symbol of them is
the “tremble” in his hands, which might suggest the trauma he has
witnessed) and anger
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