Edwin Brock: Five Ways to Kill a Man – Reading & Analysis (Playlist)

Edwin Brock, "Five ways to kill a man" #1 Imagery. How to "picture" a poem.

Edwin Brock's "Five Ways to Kill a Man" is one of the most quietly devastating poems of the twentieth century. Written in five stanzas, each describing a different method of ...killing — from the Crucifixion to medieval jousting, from the trenches of World War One to nuclear warfare — it builds to a final stanza that is perhaps the most unsettling of all.

This video offers a reading of the poem stanza by stanza, with an invitation to visualise each method before seeing the image suggested here. How much depends on cultural context? And what does the fifth way — the simplest and most direct — actually mean?

Part 1 of 3. Follow the playlist for the complete analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1n47WIf3aY&list=PLzVb6yL_jY69qiktTvsu2sOfQXtfFL6eo

0:00 Intro
0:10 Let's visualize the five ways to kill a man!
0:25 First stanza: A reading
0:55 How I picture it
1:21 Second stanza: A reading
1:53 How I picture it
2:06 Third stanza
2:32 How I picture it
2:43 Fourth stanza: A reading
3:20 How I picture it
3:32 Fifth stanza: A reading
3:56 How I picture it

Very often, the first step towards getting a handle on a poem is to visualize the imagery. This poem by Edwin Brock presents us with five clear scenes, which are visualized in this preliminary analysis. Don't forget to subscribe to the "Ano sensei!" channel to follow all my videos!

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There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man...
... Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see
that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.Show More