Discovery 2024 by Edco Ireland

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Kevin McDermott Simon Coury Ellen O’Reilly Consultant reviewer: Patrick Murray

Discovery

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Leaving Certificate Poetry Anthology for Higher and Ordinary Level 2024

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Edco The Educational Company of Ireland

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First published 2022

The paper used in this book comes from Managed Forests in Northern Europe. For every tree felled, at least one new tree is planted

The Educational Company of Ireland

Ballymount Road

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Walkinstown

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Dublin 12

www.edco.ie

A member of the Smurfit Kappa Group plc

ISBN 978-1-80230-001-7

Editor: Jennifer Armstrong Layout: Graftrónaic

Cover: Slick Fish Cover Photography: Adobe Stock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior permission of the

publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in Ireland issued by the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency, 63 Patrick

Street, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.

Any links to external websites should not be construed as an endorsement by Edco of the content or view of the linked

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material.

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Foreword

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This anthology, which includes all the poems prescribed for the Higher and Ordinary Level English Leaving Certificate Examinations of 2024, has been prepared by experienced teachers of English. Each of the contributors has been able to concentrate on a limited number of the prescribed poets and their work, thus facilitating a high standard of research and presentation.

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Guidelines are given which set each poem in context. In addition, each poem is accompanied by a glossary and appropriate explorations, designed to allow the student to find his/her authentic response to the material.

Relevant biographical details are provided for each poet. A list of examination-style questions is provided for each prescribed poet at Higher Level, along with a snapshot of the poet’s work and a sample examinationstyle essay to aid revision. Revision charts provide an overview of the work of each of the poets prescribed for Higher Level. A snapshot is provided for all Ordinary Level poems.

Guidelines are included for students on approaching the Unseen Poetry section of the course. There is also advice on approaching the prescribed question in the examination. Students will find the glossary of poetic terms a valuable resource in reading and responding to poetry.

The poetry course for Leaving Certificate English demands a personal and active engagement from the student reader. We hope that this anthology makes that engagement possible and encourages students to explore the wider world of poetry for themselves.

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Teachers can access the Discovery for Leaving Certificate Higher and Ordinary Level e-book by registering on www.edcolearning.ie.

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Contents * Denotes a poem included for Ordinary Level English Leaving Certificate

Discovery Student CD

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Seamus Heaney

104

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Foreword

3 7 10 11 14 18 23 26 30 34 38 42 45 48 49

Sample Essay

Emily Dickinson

io at

John Donne

Acknowledgements

Gerard Manley Hopkins

125 129 134 138 142 147

169

151 155 159 163 167 168

172

54 55 60 61 65 69 73 77 80 85 89 93 96 99 100

Biography Social and Cultural Context Timeline God’s Grandeur Spring* As kingfishers catch fire The Windhover Pied Beauty Felix Randal Inversnaid* No worst, there is none I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day Thou art indeed just, Lord Snapshot Exam-Preparation Questions

173 175 177 178 182 187 192 197 201 205 210 214 218 221 222

Sample Essay

101

Sample Essay

223

Biography Social and Cultural Context Timeline The Sunne Rising Song: Goe, and catche a falling starre* The Anniversarie Song: Sweetest love, I do not goe The Dreame A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning The Flea* Batter my heart At the round earths imagin’d corners Thou hast made me Snapshot Exam-Preparation Questions

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105 108 111 112 116 120

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Biography Social and Cultural Context Timeline ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers There’s a certain Slant of light I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain* A Bird came down the Walk I heard a Fly buzz – when I died* The Soul has Bandaged moments I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to A narrow Fellow in the Grass I taste a liquor never brewed After great pain, a formal feeling comes Exam-Preparation Questions Snapshot

Biography Social and Cultural Context Timeline The Forge Bogland The Tollund Man Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication (1) Sunlight A Constable Calls* The Skunk The Harvest Bow The Underground* The Pitchfork Lightenings viii ‘The annals say’ A Call* Postscript Tate’s Avenue Exam-Preparation Questions Snapshot

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227 229 233 234 239

Sample Essay

290

Biography 295 Social and Cultural Context 296 Timeline 298 Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht 299 The Second Voyage 303 Deaths and Engines 308 Street* 312 Fireman’s Lift 316 All for You 321 Following 325 Kilcash 329 Translation 335 The Bend in the Road 340 On Lacking the Killer Instinct 344 To Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia, married in Dublin on 9 September 2009*349 Exam-Preparation Questions 354 Snapshot 354 Sample Essay 355

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415

W. B. Yeats

418

294

360 364 366 367 372 375 379 384 389 393 400 405 410 414 414

Sample Essay

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Biography Social and Cultural Context Timeline Black Rook in Rainy Weather The Times Are Tidy Morning Song Finisterre Mirror Pheasant Elm Poppies in July* The Arrival of the Bee Box* Child* Exam-Preparation Questions Snapshot

247 255 261 264 269 274 279 284 289 289

359

Biography Social and Cultural Context Timeline Buying Winkles* The Pattern The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks Cora, Auntie The Exact Moment I Became a Poet My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis Hearth Lesson* Prayer for the Children of Longing* Death of a Field Them Ducks Died for Ireland Exam-Preparation Questions Snapshot

Sylvia Plath

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226

Paula Meehan

Biography Social and Cultural Context Timeline The Lake Isle of Innisfree* September 1913 The Wild Swans at Coole* Easter 1916 An Irish Airman Foresees His Death* The Second Coming Sailing to Byzantium from Meditations in Time of Civil War: VI The Stare’s Nest by My Window In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz Swift’s Epitaph An Acre of Grass Politics from Under Ben Bulben: V and VI Snapshot Exam-Preparation Questions Sample Essay

419 421 424 425 429 433 437 444 448 453 459 463 468 471 474 476 479 480 481

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Ted Hughes

488

Maya Angelou

490

Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield (When Great Trees Fall)

491

Exam-style Questions

497

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 499 How Do I Love Thee?

500

Exam-style Questions

504

Raymond Carver

505 506

Exam-style Questions

511

513

New Liberty Hall

514 519

Exam-style Questions

Rita Dove

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Exam-style Questions

522 528

529

Exam-style Questions

533

530

535 536 538

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Night Drive

Exam-style Questions

Nikki Giovanni

521

Summit Beach, 1921

Tom French

558

559

Exam-style Questions

Elizabeth Smither

563

On the euthanasia of a pet dog Exam-style Questions

Wisława Szymborska

564 565 568

569

In Praise of My Sister

570

Exam-style Questions

573

William Carlos Williams

574

This is Just to Say

575

Exam-style Questions

578

Benjamin Zephaniah

580

The SUN

581

Exam-style Questions

585

Reading unseen poetry Reading the Unseen Poem

586

Possible Ways into a Poem

587

Sample Unseen Poems

590

Guidelines for Answering Questions on Poetry

596

Glossary of Terms

600

Poets Examined at Higher Level

604

At a Glance Poet Revision Charts

605

540

They Clapped

541

Exam-style Questions

544

Vona Groarke

Ter Conatus

Austin Clarke

Kubla Khan

Bernard O’Donoghue

The Juggler at Heaven’s Gate

556

Exam-style Questions

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485

552

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Advice to a Discarded Lover

The Thought-Fox

484

Fleur Adcock

551

Ordinary Level poems

546

Away

547

Exam-style Questions

550

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Discovery Student app and Teacher CD

Listening to poetry

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Discovery is accompanied by a student app that includes 35 poetry tracks. Each track is read with expression and feeling, which brings the poems on the page to life.

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A selection of these poems has been read by the poets, which gives an even greater insight into our understanding of the poems.

The poetry tracks are also available through the Discovery interactive e-book on www.edcolearning.ie. Click on the beside relevant poems throughout the book to hear poems being read aloud.

Track listing Title

Poet

I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain

Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died

Song: Goe, and catche a falling starre

The Flea

A Constable Calls

The Underground

A Call

Spring

Inversnaid

Buying Winkles

11 12

18 26

John Donne

Seamus Heaney

129

Seamus Heaney

142

Seamus Heaney

155

Gerard Manley Hopkins

182

Gerard Manley Hopkins

205

Paula Meehan

234

Hearth Lesson

Paula Meehan

269

Prayer for the Children of Longing

Paula Meehan

274

Emily Dickinson

Street (read by the poet)

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

312

To Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia, married in Dublin on 9 September 2009 (read by the poet)

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

349

Poppies in July

Sylvia Plath

400

The Arrival of the Bee Box

Sylvia Plath

405

Child

Sylvia Plath

410

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

William Butler Yeats

425

The Wild Swans at Coole

William Butler Yeats

433

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

William Butler Yeats

444

Advice to a Discarded Lover

Fleur Adcock

485

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Page reference

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Page reference

Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield (When Great Trees Fall)

Maya Angelou

491

How Do I Love Thee?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

500

The Juggler at Heaven’s Gate

Raymond Carver

506

New Liberty Hall

Austin Clarke

Kubla Khan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Summit Beach, 1921

Rita Dove

Night Drive

Tom French

They Clapped

Nikki Giovanni

Away

Vona Groarke

The Thought-Fox

Ted Hughes

552

Ter Conatus

Bernard O’Donoghue

559

On the euthanasia of a pet dog

Elizabeth Smither

565

In Praise of My Sister

Wisława Szymborska

570

This is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams

575

514

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522

530

536

541 547

‘Night Drive’ by Tom French with permission Gallery Press.

The following permissions and acknowledgements refer to the audio materials included in the compact disc and audio app accompanying printed copies of this book:

Poet

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Title

‘Buying Winkles’, by Paula Meehan reproduced with the permission of Dedalus Press.

‘Hearth Lessons’ and ‘Prayer for the Children of Longing’ by Paula Meehan with the permission of Carcanet Press.

‘Street’, ‘To Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia, married in Dublin on 9 September 2009’ by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin with permission of the author and The Gallery Press.

‘Away’ by Vona Groarke with permission The Gallery Press. ‘Ter Conatus’ by Bernard O’Donoghue with kind permission of the author. ‘On the euthanasia of a pet dog’ by Elizabeth Smither with permission Auckland University Press. ‘In Praise of My Sister’ by Wislawa Szymborska © 1995 by HarperCollins Publishers. © 1976 Czytwlnik, Warszawa.

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‘Advice to Discarded Lover’ by Fleur Adcock with permission Bloodaxe Books.

‘They Clapped’ by Nikki Giovanni with permission HarperCollins Publishers.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The poems in this book have been reproduced with the kind permission of the publishers, agents, authors or their estates as follows:

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‘The Forge’ and ‘Bogland’ from Door into the Dark (1969); ‘The Tollund Man’ from Wintering Out (1972); ‘Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication (1) Sunlight’ and ‘A Constable Calls’ from North (1975); ‘The Skunk’ and ‘The Harvest Bow’ from Field Work (1979); ‘The Underground’ and ‘Lightenings viii “The annals say…”’ from Station Island (1984); ‘The Pitchfork’ from Seeing Things (1991); ‘Postscript’ and ‘A Call’ from Opened Ground, Poems 1966-1996 (1996); ‘Tate’s Avenue’ from District and Circle (2006) all by Seamus Heaney, published by Faber & Faber Ltd.

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‘Buying Winkles’, ‘The Pattern’, ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’ and ‘My Father Perceived as a Vision of St. Francis’ by Paula Meehan reproduced with the permission of Dedalus Press. ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’ by Paula Meehan from Dharmakaya, with the permission of Carcanet Press. ‘Cora, Auntie’, ‘Hearth Lessons’, ‘Prayer for the Children of Longing, ‘Death of a Field’ and ‘Them Ducks Died for Ireland’ by Paula Meehan from Painting Rain, with the permission of Carcanet Press.

‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’, ‘The Second Voyage’, ‘Deaths and Engines’, ‘Street’, ‘Fireman’s Lift’, ‘All for You’, ‘Following’, ‘Kilcash’, ‘Translation’, ‘The Bend in the Road’ from Selected Poems (2008); ‘On Lacking the Killer Instinct’, ‘To Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia, married in Dublin on 9 September 2009’ from The Sun-Fish (2009) by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. Reprinted with permission of the author and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, Co. Meath, Ireland.

‘Pheasant’, ‘Finisterre’, ‘Mirror’, ‘Child’, ‘Morning Song’, ‘Elm’, ‘The Arrival of the Bee-box’, ‘Poppies in July’, ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, ‘The Times are Tidy’ by Sylvia Plath from Collected Poems (1981) published by Faber & Faber Ltd. ‘Advice to Discarded Lover’ by Fleur Adcock from Poems 1960-2000 permission Bloodaxe Books.

‘When Great Trees Fall’ from I Shall Not Be Moved by Maya Angelou with permission of Little Brown Book group Ltd. 'The Juggler at Heaven's Gate' from All of Us by Raymond Carver published by Harvill Press. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

‘New Liberty Hall’ by Austin Clarke from Collected Poems permission Carcanet Press.

‘Summit Beach, 1921’ by Rita Dove from Collected Poems 1974-2004 used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. ‘Night Drive’ by Tom French permission Gallery Press.

‘They Clapped’ by Nikki Giovanni by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. TBC more info to come in with contract/invoice.

‘Away’ by Vona Groarke by permission of The Gallery Press.

‘The Thought Fox’ by Ted Hughes from The Hawk in the Rain permission Faber & Faber. ‘Ter Conatus’ by Bernard O’Donoghue by kind permission of the author. ‘On the euthanasia of a pet dog’ by Elizabeth Smither from The Lark Quartet (1999), permission Auckland University Press.

‘In Praise of My Sister’ by Wislawa Szymborska from View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems by Wislawa Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. © 1995 by HarperCollins Publishers. © 1976 Czytwlnik, Warszawa, Reprinted by permission of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

‘This Is Just To Say’ by William Carlos Williams from Collected Poems Volume 1 1909-1939 with the permission of Carcanet Press. Audio rights by permissions of New Directions Publishing Corporation. ‘The Sun’ by Benjamin Zephaniah from City Psalms (1992), Bloodaxe Books. By permission of the publisher. ‘Blessing’ by Imtiaz Dharker from Postcards from God (1997), Bloodaxe Books. By permission of the publisher.

‘The Envoy’ by Jane Hirschfield from Each Happiness Ringed by Lions (2005), Bloodaxe Books. By permission of the publisher. ‘Darling’ by Jackie Kay from Darling: New & Selected Poems (2007), Bloodaxe Books. By permission of the publisher. ‘For a Five Year Old’ by Fleur Adcock, Bloodaxe Books. By permission of the publisher.

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‘Saint Francis and the Sow’ from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words by Galway Kinnell. Copyright © 1980, and renewed 2008 by Galway Kinnell. Reprinted with permission of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

The photographs in this book come from the following sources: p2 Bettmann/Getty, p53 Topfoto, p58 Angelo Hornack/Alamy, p66 Paul D Stewart/Nature Picture Library, p83 istockphoto, p87 World History Archive/Alamy, p98 Paul Risdale/Alamy, p104 Topfoto, p107 Olivier Wullen/Alamy, p172 The Granger Collection/ Topfoto, p175 Loop Images Ltd/Alamy, p226 Stephanie Joy, p287 Design Pics Inc/Alamy, p294 Ursula Burke, p297 Pat Boran, p318 Alinari/Topfoto, p359 The Granger Collection/Topfoto, p362 Science History Images/Alamy, p418 Topfoto, p419 Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy, p461 Heritage Images/Topfoto, p467 Hulton Archive/Getty, p484 courtesy of Bloodaxe Books, p490 Photoshot/Topfoto, p495 Bettmann/Getty, p499 Pictures from History/Topfoto, p505 Reg Innell/Toronto Star via Getty, p509 Underwood Archives/Getty, p513 Jack McManus for the Irish Times, p521 Pictures From History/Topfoto, p529 Topfoto, p532 State Library and Archives of Florida, p535 Suella Holland for the Gallery Press, p540 Michael McKenzie/Avalon/Topfoto, p546 Russell Hart/Alamy, p549 Art Collection 4/Alamy, p551 Photoshot/Topfoto, p558 Photoshot/Topfoto, p564 Jane Dove Juneau for Auckland Press, p569 Topfoto, p574 Topfoto, p580 Topfoto.

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1830–1886

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Emily Dickinson

HIGHER LEVEL

There’s a certain Slant of light

I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain*

A Bird came down the Walk

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died*

The Soul has Bandaged moments

I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to

A narrow Fellow in the Grass

I taste a liquor never brewed

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

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‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers

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Emily Dickinson

Biography

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Emily Dickinson’s life reads like a detective mystery. Until the age of thirty she lived a social life, meeting up with friends, attending parties in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts, USA and attracting the attention of several young men. By all accounts she was high-spirited and witty. In her early teens she wrote, ‘I am growing handsome very fast indeed!’ – so fast that she expected to become ‘the belle of Amherst when I reach my seventeenth year’. From about the age of thirty, however, she increasingly withdrew from society, choosing to live most of her life as a recluse in her father’s house and to communicate with the outside world through a voluminous correspondence. After her death, in accordance with her wishes, her sister and sister-inlaw destroyed all the letters she had received. Fortunately, the thousand or so poems her sister found hidden in Emily’s writing desk were saved.

Family life

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, a Calvinist town in Massachusetts. Apart from a brief period at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, a trip to Washington and Philadelphia and a stay in Boston to receive treatment for an eye problem, all her life was spent there. She was the second child of Emily Norcross and Edward Dickinson. Her mother came from a prosperous family, and her father was a lawyer, a politician and, later, the treasurer of Amherst College. In a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dickinson was less than flattering about her parents: ‘My Mother does not care for thought – and, Father, too busy with his Briefs – to notice what we do – He buys me many Books – but begs me not to read them – because he fears they joggle the Mind.’ However, as an older woman, Dickinson was greatly distressed by the death of both her parents. Emily had an older brother, Austin, and a younger sister, Lavinia. All three children were very close throughout their lives and all attended school in the one-room local primary school.

Education

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Dickinson received a sound education at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke Seminary. Edward Dickinson encouraged his children in their education. In a letter, written when Emily was seven, he exhorted them to ‘Keep school, and learn, so as to tell me when I come home, how many new things you have learned, since I came away.’ Amherst Academy was a progressive school. It had a broad curriculum and the teachers were well qualified and motivated. The school was connected to Amherst College and students could attend college lectures in astronomy, botany, chemistry, geology, natural history and zoology. This scientific emphasis is reflected in Dickinson’s poetry in her fascination with naming, her detailed descriptions, her choice of words and the range of her imagery.

Religious belief

Dickinson entered Mount Holyoke Female Seminary when she was seventeen. The boarding school was run by a devout Christian headmistress called Mary Lyon and many of its graduates became evangelical missionaries. Evangelical fervour swept through the college and the students were invited to publicly declare their faith in God. Dickinson refused to do so and was put into a category of students who were ‘without hope’. Unhappy and homesick, she returned to Amherst. Thereafter her attitude to Christian belief was one of positive doubt. In

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HIGHER LEVEL

Dickinson

family

belonged

the

First Congregational Church. As the name suggests, the congregation ran its own affairs and was not ruled by a bishop or other leader. For Congregationalists, God is head of the Church and no other leader is needed. Visiting

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preachers were invited to give sermons.

The

1850, when Amherst was infected with a bout of revivalist fervour, the nineteen-year-old Dickinson wrote: ‘I am standing alone in rebellion’. Her rebellion, such as it was, was more private and interior than public in nature and found expression in her poetry. Although she never declared herself a Christian, Dickinson spent a lifetime exploring the nature of the soul and the spiritual life, her poems are influenced by the rhythms of Protestant hymns and the Bible is a major source of her diction and imagery.

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Congregationalism

Domestic life

As was the case with many unmarried daughters after the completion of their formal education, the future for Dickinson was one of domestic work. Her family was a prominent one in Amherst, so there were many visitors to the house. Not only were visitors to be received and entertained, there was also an obligation to return social visits. In a letter written in 1850 Dickinson exclaimed: ‘God keep me from what they call households.’ Although she baked bread and worked in the garden, she refused to clean and dust the house or make social calls (although she did maintain an active social life with her siblings and friends). When their mother’s health began to decline in 1855, Emily and Lavinia took over the running of the house.

Dickinson’s Irish maid

In 1850 Dickinson befriended Susan Gilbert, whose family also came from Amherst. Susan became her closest friend and then her sister-in-law in 1856 when she married Austin Dickinson. Austin and Susan set up home in an adjoining house and Emily spent many evenings in their company and in the company of their friends. One of these friends was Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican – an influential newspaper in Massachusetts, who published some of her poems. Dickinson maintained a correspondence with Bowles and his wife over the course of twenty-five years.

Margaret Maher, from a Tipperary family

Dickinson also read widely. Among the novels that had an electric effect upon her was Jane Eyre, and she may well have identified herself with the novel’s heroine.

who emigrated to Amherst after the Famine, was a maid in the Dickinson household.

Dickinson described her in several letters

as ‘courageous’, ‘warm and wild and mighty’

and ‘good and noisy, the North Wind of the Family’. She stored bundles of her poems in Margaret’s trunk. It is thought that Margaret

had been instructed to destroy them after the

poet’s death, but she kept them safe.

Secret love

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Dickinson travelled to Washington in 1855 to visit her father, who had been elected to the US House of Representatives. She went on to Philadelphia to visit a friend from school. There, it seems, she met Charles Wadsworth, a Presbyterian preacher. There is much speculation that Wadsworth was the great secret love of her life. Some critics, however, argue that she was in love with her married friend Samuel Bowles. An early biographer of Dickinson suggests that she formed ‘extravagant attachments’ and gave her love and devotion to a succession of friends, both male and female. More recent biographers speculate that Susan Gilbert may well have been the real love of her life.

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Emily Dickinson

Withdraws from society

Writing habits

Dickinson mostly wrote in her bedroom at a small cherrywood table that measured 18 inches by 18 inches. She had a corner room

with four windows. At some point, she began to rise at three a.m. and wrote until midday. Her only task in these hours was to wake the household. In a dedication to a poem, she

There has been much speculation on the cause of her seclusion. Many early biographers favoured the explanation of disappointment in love. Charles Wadsworth visited her in 1860 and some biographers see a connection between this visit and her decision to withdraw from the world. The truth may have been more prosaic. Her brother, for example, thought that her seclusion was simply a pose. One commentator suggests that Dickinson suffered from epilepsy and this was the cause of her seclusion.

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While still in her twenties, Dickinson began to withdraw from society. Gradually she became a recluse, rarely if ever leaving her home. The myth of the mysterious woman dressed in white, glimpsed in her garden, was formed during her lifetime. Mabel Loomis Todd, who came to live in Amherst in 1881 and became the lover of Austin Dickinson, wrote to her parents about the ‘lady whom the people call the Myth’: ‘She has not been outside of her own house in fifteen years … she dresses wholly in white, and her mind is said to be perfectly wonderful. She writes finely, but no one ever sees her.’

thanked her father for her morning hours. Her niece recalled her aunt sometimes working at a table in the dining room, where she could

Relieved of the necessity of visiting and entertaining, Dickinson see the plants in the conservatory. pursued her interest in writing. She wrote poems and she wrote letters to friends. Indeed, she regarded letter writing as a form of visiting, although more focused and intense than the polite social visits that were common in Amherst at that time. Some of the recipients of Dickinson’s letters found them too intense and overwhelming in their expression of feeling. From an early age, her letters revealed a sharp wit and a grim sense of humour.

Although Dickinson withdrew from society, she did have friends. Apart from her sister and brother, Susan Gilbert was a trusted friend and one of her most important readers. Indeed, Susan may well have read all of Dickinson’s poems, many of which were written for her. (Despite living in neighbouring houses, Dickinson often preferred to write to Susan rather than meet her face to face.) Helen Hunt Jackson was another literary friend who encouraged Dickinson to publish her work. Dickinson was romantically involved with Otis Lord, a family friend, to whom she wrote ardent letters, but whose proposal of marriage she declined in 1880.

An audience for her poetry

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In 1862 the thirty-two-year-old Dickinson wrote to writer and editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson enclosing four of her poems. She wanted to know if her verse was alive and if it breathed. Higginson was widely known as a man of letters and a prolific essayist and an essay of his in the Atlantic Monthly had prompted her to write to him. He was also a radical theologian, an outspoken supporter of women’s rights and an advocate for the abolition of slavery. Although he had a reputation for encouraging young writers, Higginson did not really understand the nature of Dickinson’s talent or the scope of her achievement.

Letter to Higginson Dickinson sent the following note with her poems: ‘Mr Higginson, Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive? The Mind is so near itself – it cannot see, distinctly – and I have none to ask – Should you think it breathed – and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick gratitude – I enclose my name – asking you, if you please – Sir – to tell me what is true?’

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HIGHER LEVEL

Faced with her epigrammatical style, he tried to regularise and smooth her poems. Determined and certain, Dickinson refused to compromise. Despite not fully appreciating her peculiar genius, Higginson mentored and encouraged Dickinson for many decades and her correspondence with him was immensely important to her.

From 1858 Dickinson kept handwritten copies of her poems on folded sheets of paper. Each folded sheet created four pages. She placed several of them on top of each other,

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Interestingly, fewer than twenty of Dickinson’s poems were published during her lifetime. However, she sent poems to nearly all her correspondents and, in this way, her poems circulated among her circle of friends. So, although little of her work was printed, she did have an audience for her poetry.

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Fascicles

then punched two holes either side of the

After Dickinson’s death, her sister, Lavinia, found a box containing 900 poems ‘tied together with twine’ in ‘sixty volumes’ or booklets ‘fascicles’. fascicles. A hundred poems were published in 1890, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, with ‘corrections’ made by Higginson to rhymes, punctuation, rhythms and, in some cases, imagery. Because of copyright problems and family feuds over the ownership of the poems, it was not until 1955 that her collected poems were published in the way that she had written them.

centrefold and tied them together with string.

Mabel Loomis Todd called these homemade

Difficult years Mabel was the young wife of a lecturer in astronomy appointed to Amherst College in

1881. She was vivacious and a talented singer

It is evident from the number of poems that she wrote in 1862 that Dickinson was undergoing some kind of personal crisis. Speculation suggests that this crisis was related to the failure of a love affair. Many of the poems written in this period explore despair and a depressed state of mind.

Mabel Loomis Todd

and pianist. Very quickly she befriended Austin and Susan Dickinson and their family,

The three years between 1882 and 1885 were also particularly difficult for Dickinson. She lost her mother, Charles Wadsworth, Otis Lord, Helen Hunt Jackson and her young nephew, Gilbert. Her brother, Austin, began an affair with the writer Mabel Loomis Todd, a family friend, and Emily was torn between her brother and her sister-in-law, Susan. Austin’s relationship with Mabel led to a split in the family and a feud that survived well into the twentieth century.

and she and Austin became lovers. Their affair

continued until Austin’s death in 1885.

The real Emily

After Dickinson’s death, Mabel Loomis Todd edited a selection of her letters, omitting

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nearly all references to Susan Gilbert. Later,

Todd claimed it was Austin, Susan’s husband,

who insisted on this. Susan’s daughter and Emily’s niece, Mattie, then published a memoir

that painted a different picture from the one

given in the edited letters. There followed a series of rival publications and disputes over Dickinson’s unpublished papers. The family

Death In 1884 Dickinson suffered the first attack of the kidney disease that eventually caused her death in 1886, at the age of fiftyfive. She left precise instructions for her funeral, specifying the white dress she was to be buried in and the route to be taken from her house to the churchyard. At her funeral service Thomas Wentworth Higginson read a line from her favourite Emily Brontë poem as her epitaph: ‘No coward soul is mine.’

feud continued through second and third generations, as each side sought to present the ‘real’ Emily Dickinson.

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Emily Dickinson

Social and Cultural Context

American Civil War Although she did not write about the Civil

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War (1861–1865), Dickinson’s family and

friends were affected by it. In 1862, after the introduction of conscription, the family paid

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an Irish labourer $500 to fight in Austin’s place.

Austin’s close friend Frazar Stearns was killed in the war. Her cousins from Georgia fought on the Confederate side. Her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson became a colonel in the

Although her father was a politician and she lived during the period of the American Civil War, there is little indication that the war had any significant influence on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Nor do the poems give much indication that the era in which she lived was one in which the campaign for the rights of women began or that the campaign for the abolition of slavery, which led to the Civil War, dominated national politics. Dickinson’s poetry does, of course, speak to the cultural and literary context of her day.

Union Army and led a regiment of 900 former

slaves into battle.

Status of women

The position of women in society in nineteenth-century New England is important to an understanding of Dickinson’s poetry. Women were subservient to men. They were not expected to be full-time writers or intellectuals, nor to be involved in public affairs. Their place was at home, living pious, domestic lives. While the bare facts of Dickinson’s life suggest that she was content with a domestic role, her poetry speaks of extreme states of mind, hints at suppressed emotions and feelings, challenges religious orthodoxy and reveals an individual deeply at odds with the social and religious values of her day and who stood alone in rebellion.

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Dickinson came from a well-off and respected family. The family Abolitionist movement hosted important visitors and was the centre of intellectual life A social and political movement whose aim in Amherst. However, the community in which she lived was was to abolish the institution of slavery in conservative and, despite her privileged life, there were few America. Slavery was a feature of the economy opportunities for a woman of her talent to take part in the cultural of the southern states and many southerners and artistic life of the nation. With her father’s consent, she resented the interference of ‘Yankees’ in their devoted long hours each day to writing. She circulated her poems affairs. Dickinson’s father was an abolitionist. to friends and literary acquaintances, but she never published a collection. Publication carried risks. The acclaimed poet Julia Ward Howe was effectively censored by her husband, the politician and abolitionist Samuel Howe, after she published her collection Passion Flowers in 1854. He threatened to end the marriage and take their children because, in his view, the book was too passionate and personal. In an early poem Dickinson imagined marriage as an obligatory martyrdom. She chose to avoid this fate. By not marrying, Dickinson retained a modicum of personal freedom, although she was financially dependent on her father and, later, her brother. Dickinson’s closest friend, Susan Gilbert, tried to live an independent life by teaching but found that she could not survive on her salary. Marriage to Dickinson’s brother, Austin, offered financial security; however, Susan was reluctant to marry. Her older sister, Mary, had died a few days after giving birth, ten months after her wedding, and so Susan feared childbirth.

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book

club,

reading

the

century: Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens. They also read the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as the leading American poets of the day. Their letters show that they read with insight and intellectual vigour. Emily had such regard for Susan that she told her, ‘With the exception of Shakespeare, you have told me more of knowledge than any one living.’ Dickinson’s letters have numerous references to Shakespeare’s plays, including Macbeth, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Henry VI. She was drawn to the characters of Lady Macbeth

Calvinism

The Calvinist tradition of her family and the writings of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were important influences on Dickinson. Calvinism was brought to New England by the Pilgrim Fathers who settled there in the seventeenth century. It emphasised sin and damnation and promoted a strict moral code. All life, it seemed, was directed at preparing for the Day of Judgement. For this reason, individuals were encouraged to constantly examine their conscience. Calvinism created an atmosphere in which individualism was curtailed and in which artistic expression was viewed as, potentially, proud and sinful.

and Cleopatra and to the outsider Othello.

exclusive

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own

leading English novelists of the nineteenth

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as her sister. Together they formed their

Emily often refered to Susan Gilbert Dickinson

Dickinson had the constant support of Susan Gilbert, her friend, adviser, reader and, on occasions, muse. Dickinson sent hundreds of letters to her and was in daily communication with her. They shared their reading, their writing and their concerns. Their friendship was close and loving, literary and intellectual.

Sisters’ book club

Although Calvinism was on the wane in the nineteenth century, its influence remained strong in Amherst. Indeed, when Dickinson was a student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, the headmistress instigated a series of Calvinist revivals, during which students were encouraged to declare their faith as Christians. Beset by doubts, Dickinson refused to do so and remained unconverted. Despite this, the language of Calvinism and of the Bible is evident in her poetry and provides a rich source of imagery, and the question of everlasting life was one to which she returned, again and again, in her poetry. A more playful use of imagery drawn from popular sermons on temperance is found in ‘I taste a liquor never brewed’.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Revivalism

In the 1840s a wave of preachers caused a

religious awakening among the Calvinist

community in Amherst. They called upon

members of the congregation to make a public profession of their belief in God and become

a full member of the Church. Dickinson’s father and her friend Susan Gilbert were among those who did so. Emily did not. In a letter she wrote, ‘I feel that the world holds a

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predominant place in my affections. I do not feel that I could give up all for Christ, were I called to die.’ For the last twenty years of her life, Dickinson stopped attending church

services altogether.

Dickinson was certainly influenced by the group of writers known as Transcendentalists, the most famous of whom was Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Transcendentalists believed that God dwelt or was immanent in nature and in humanity. This outlook led to a celebration of the natural world as a sign of God’s creative energy. Dickinson did not convert to Transcendentalism, but she did admire Emerson’s emphasis on self-reliance, the primacy of individual experience over tradition and the importance of the interior life. Indeed, Dickinson’s reclusive lifestyle and her exploration of what she referred to as ‘the undiscovered continent’ echo some of the themes she found in Emerson’s writing.

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Emily Dickinson

Themes

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Dickinson’s poetry addresses big themes: nature; life, death and eternity; religious belief and doubt; love, absence and loss; mental anguish and the workings of the mind. The poems are wide-ranging in tone and mood and address the reader in ways that can be humorous, provocative, blasphemous or tragic. They are frequently surprising, riddling and abrupt. Although they often contain direct statements, ‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died’, their meaning is rarely direct.

Faith and science

‘“Faith” is a fine invention For Gentlemen who see! But Microscopes are prudent

Dickinson was raised in a religious family but as an adult stopped attending church with them. She was drawn to the idea of immortality and the promise of the Resurrection, when she would be reunited with her loved ones. However, when she uses Christian imagery, she often reworks it to her own purpose. Her imagination was engaged by death, although she never solved the riddle of mortality. For her, death remained disturbing and incomprehensible. Not for her the Christian consolation of viewing death as the soul’s transition into eternal life with God.

Dickinson’s poetry is emotionally and intellectually engaged, but it is neither confessional nor autobiographical. She told her first editor that when she used ‘I’ in her poetry, she meant ‘a supposed person’.

While the young Emily attended services with her family at the local First Congregational Church, and her father gave her a gift of a Bible when she was thirteen, she also lived in an age when science was starting to challenge some Christian beliefs.

Her love poetry is equally unconventional, as much about love lost as love gained, with the critic Helen Vendler referring to Dickinson’s ‘stern poetry of heartbreak’.

In an Emergency!’

Form

The majority of Dickinson’s poems are written in hymn metre, i.e. four-line stanzas with four beats in the first line, three in the second, four in the third and three in the fourth, with a rhyme or part-rhyme between lines 2 and 4. What is astonishing is that Dickinson writes poems of such arresting power within what appears to be a simple form.

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Dickinson was very eccentric in her usage of punctuation and capital letters. Generally, her odd use has the purpose of emphasis. She used the dash as a device to indicate her own sense of rhythm, which she felt was not adequately served by regular punctuation such as the semicolon and colon. However, it is more than a question of rhythm. The dash pushes phrases apart from each other and creates spaces for the reader to fill. It can create moments of suspense or dramatic pauses in the poems. It can also signal a break in the line of thought. When they occur at the end of a poem, they invite the reader to tease out the meaning of what is not said but is implied beyond the dash.

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Timeline Born 10 December in Amherst, Massachusetts

1835

Attends local primary school with her brother, Austin

1840

Attends Amherst Academy

1847

Attends Mount Holyoke Female Seminary as a boarder; declines to profess herself a Christian

1848

Withdraws from Mount Holyoke due to ill health and homesickness

1850

Back in Amherst: ‘I am standing alone in rebellion’

1855

Travels to Washington to visit her father and then to Philadelphia; probable meeting with

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Charles Wadsworth. Her mother’s health begins to decline

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1830

Austin marries Susan Gilbert and the couple live in an adjoining house

1858

Writing begins in earnest; assembles her poems into bound packets or fascicles

1860

Visit of Charles Wadsworth

1861

1856

Suggestion of a personal ‘major crisis’; withdraws more and more from the world. American

Civil War begins

Writes to Thomas Wentworth Higginson and encloses some poems. Writes 366 poems

1863

Writes 141 poems

1864

Writes 174 poems. Visits Boston for treatment for her eyes. May have met Judge Otis Lord,

who later proposes to her

1862

Thomas Wentworth Higginson visits

1874

Her father, Edward, dies on 16 June

1875

Her mother, Emily, now bedridden and paralysed

1878

Her friend Samuel Bowles dies

1880

Charles Wadsworth visits for a second time. Judge Otis Lord proposes marriage but

1870

is turned down 1881

Austin and Susan befriend Mabel Loomis Todd

1882

Friendship with Susan strained by Austin’s love affair with Mabel Loomis Todd. Mother dies.

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Charles Wadsworth dies

1883

Eight-year-old nephew, Gilbert, dies; she is heart-broken

1885

Bedridden with Bright’s disease

1886

14 May writes what is thought to be her last letter, reading simply ‘Little Cousins, Called Back’.

15 May dies 1890

First selection of her poems published

1955

First edition of her poems published as she wrote them

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Emily Dickinson Before you read G

How important is hope in your ro r upwo life? Share your thoughts with a fellow student. Revisit your discussion after you have read the poem.

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‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –

Glossary

abash: destroy the confidence of

the thing: although she gives ‘Hope’ some of the characteristics of a bird, Dickinson also wishes to be true to the abstract nature of ‘hope’ as a quality or disposition

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm –

Guidelines

I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet, never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of Me.

Dickinson wrote a number of ‘definition poems’ in which she used physical details to define what an abstract experience is or is not. Often her definitions consist of a series of comparisons. However, she does not use the word ‘like’. Hope is not like a thing with feathers, it is the thing with feathers. The directness and confidence of the statement makes her definition vivid and immediate. As in religious symbolism, Hope is imagined as having some of the characteristics of a bird – it is ‘the thing with feathers’. Although Hope may seem something slight (it is only a ‘little Bird’), it is in fact something immensely powerful, persistent and comforting. The poem, written in 1861, during what was a difficult period for Dickinson, has an optimistic, buoyant mood.

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Commentary

Stanza 1

In the first stanza Dickinson introduces the metaphor, ‘Hope’ is a ‘thing with feathers’ (i.e. something that can fly and that can lift the spirit), and begins to develop it by telling us that Hope sings. The use of the word ‘feathers’ suggests the warm, comforting nature of Hope. Hope, the poem asserts, resides in the soul. By describing the song of Hope as ‘the tune without the words’, Dickinson suggests that Hope goes beyond logic and reason and their limitations. Hope is resilient and unceasing. It never stops at all’.

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Stanza 2

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The warm comfort that Hope gives in times of distress and uncertainty – emotional, spiritual, psychological – is recorded in stanza 2. Its comfort is known to many. The phrase ‘the little Bird’ suggests the poet’s affection and admiration for Hope. The stanza also conveys the courage and resilience of Hope, which is not abashed by gales and storms.

Stanza 3

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The third stanza records the poet’s personal experience of Hope in times of personal anguish. Hope has come to her in the ‘chillest land’ and on the ‘strangest Sea’. It is found in all places. The physical landscape and seascape suggest psychological or spiritual terrain. In these periods of crisis, Hope offered comfort, without seeking anything in return. Hope, in other words, is generous, asking nothing for itself. This final stanza strikes a solemn note, as if the poet wants to give Hope the dignified celebration she believes it deserves.

Themes and imagery

Form and language

The theme of hope and its persistence is common in religious writing and sermons; however, in Dickinson’s poem, God is not mentioned. The idea that hope ‘never stops – at all’ (line 4) is one that cannot be proven and is itself an expression of hope. The poem works on a series of comparisons. The voice of hope is ‘sweetest’ (line 5) in those situations that are the most extreme. Compare ‘sweetest’ with ‘chillest’ and ‘strangest’; the phrases, ‘chillest land’ (line 9) and ‘strangest Sea’ (line 10) suggest psychological and spiritual states of anguish, including, perhaps, loneliness and depression.

The poem is written in four-line stanzas. The opening statement of line 1 is dramatic. After that the poem settles into an even rhythm, which suggests the steadfastness of hope. The repeated use of ‘And’ gives a sense of strength and conviction to the statements made by the poet.

Definition poems

Dickinson wrote a number of definition poems in the manner of ‘Hope’. They include: —

piercing

‘Renunciation

Virtue’;

‘Remorse — is Memory — awake’; and ‘Eden

By using the word ‘thing’ in the first line, Dickinson establishes an emotional distance, so that this ‘thing’ can be classified using a series of inner questions. What is it like? Where does it reside? How does it express itself? In what circumstances does it express itself?

is that old-fashioned House’. In all cases she makes definite statements though she is, in

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fact, making a comparison. In another poem

Dickinson wrote, ‘We see — Comparatively’. These

definition

poems

are

linked

Dickinson’s fascination with naming plants

and flowers and her close observation of the natural world.

The second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme. The metre is based on the common metre of hymns and ballads, with fourbeat and three-beat lines. Dickinson’s punctuation, her use of slant rhymes and enjambment (run-on lines), and her skilled use of repetition and alliteration work to eliminate the sing-song effect of this metre.

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Emily Dickinson

Questions

How does the poet visualise hope?

What kinds of seascape and landscape are mentioned in the poem?

What is the most important quality of ‘Hope’, as suggested by stanza 1? What words or phrases capture this?

Why might a ‘tune without the words’ (line 3) be appropriate to ‘Hope’? Explain your answer.

How is the strength and courage of ‘Hope’ suggested in stanza 2?

What is the effect of the adjective ‘little’ in line 7?

The poem becomes more personal in stanza 3. What has been the poet’s experience of hope?

What is the effect of the words ‘chillest’ (line 9) and ‘strangest’ (line 10)? Explain your answer.

What, do you think, has the poet in mind in her reference to ‘Extremity’ in line 11?

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Do you agree that this poem may offer consolation to a reader in some kind of distress? Give reasons for your answer.

Does the poem reveal anything of Dickinson’s personality? Explain your answer.

Using this poem as a model, write your own definition poem on either ‘Love’ or ‘Despair’.

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Working in pairs, create a multimedia interpretation of the poem, using text, images and sound.

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Before you read

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Think of an adjective to ro r upwo describe the quality of sunlight in each of the four seasons. In your view, does the quality of sunlight affect our physical and mental wellbeing? Share your thoughts with your class.

There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes –

There’s a certain Slant of light

None may teach it – Any – ’Tis the Seal Despair – An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air –

Seal: mark or sign, as in the wax seal placed on a letter (the slant of light is the mark or sign of despair)

Heft: weight

When it comes, the Landscape listens – Shadows – hold their breath – When it goes, ’tis like the Distance On the look of Death –

Glossary 3

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – We can find no scar, But internal difference, Where the Meanings, are –

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Guidelines ‘There’s a certain Slant of light’ explores a state of mind in which the comfort of hope is absent. In its place there is the despair associated with a particular kind of winter light falling on the landscape. The speaker in the poem sees the light, coming from heaven, as an affliction, affecting the inner landscape of the soul. The poem was probably written in 1861, during the period when it is believed Dickinson suffered a major personal crisis.

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Emily Dickinson

Commentary Stanza 1

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The fall of a certain kind of winter light is oppressive, according to the first stanza of the poem, as oppressive as the ‘Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes’. This is a striking simile. It links winter light and church music with a heaviness of the soul. What starts off as a visual image is now described in terms of music, and the music is, in turn, described in terms of weight. This blurring of the distinction between the senses (synaesthesia) creates a feeling of disturbance. What is also interesting is that hymns are described as having an oppressive effect.

Stanzas 2 and 3

Dickinson states that the slant of winter light gives ‘Heavenly Hurt’. This hurt leaves no physical wounds or scars but affects the inner life or soul of the person and brings despair. One can interpret this stanza as suggesting that the relationship between humanity and heaven is marked by a certain cruelty on the part of heaven. It is suggested that this Winter ‘Heavenly Hurt’ cannot be understood, taught or explained away. While Dickinson wrote over 200 poems on It is without remedy. summer, she wrote only 30 mentioning winter. For Dickinson, winter is the season of grim death. Much of her own writing was completed in spring and summer, when sunlight gave the writer feelings of optimism and hope. A summer’s noon represents for Dickinson the highest point of hope and possibility. In periods of optimism, Dickinson imagined eternity as an unending summer’s day. In periods of depression, eternity was imagined as a frozen winter.

Stanza 4

reality. It is associated with depression and

The winter light is the ‘Seal Despair’. In the Calvinist tradition, the sacraments are seals of God’s promise of salvation. Here, ‘Seal’ indicates the sign or symbol of despair and the hope of salvation is noticeably absent. ‘Seal’ also suggests the message of a royal personage, a closed communication, something beyond contradiction. This meaning is reinforced by the phrase ‘imperial affliction’, which implies that the hurt associated with the winter light is sent by a sovereign authority. Is the message of the winter light the message of human mortality that is beyond contradiction?

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The winter light causes the world to be still and hushed, as if nature itself is in awe of heaven’s light, and passive in the face of it. In other words, the light impresses as much as it oppresses. Note how the poem moves back from the inner landscape to an external one in this stanza. The passing of the light does not lift the feeling of despair. On the contrary, the passing of the light leaves a chill, as if we had looked on the distance between the present and our death. It is only when the light disappears that its full meaning becomes clear. The final dash in the poem suggests the unknown into which we all face.

Themes and imagery The theme of despair contrasts with the hopefulness of ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’. Despair is both a psychological and a spiritual condition. In the Christian tradition, despair is a grave sin that prevents the salvation of the soul. Light is often associated with renewal, hope and truth, but in this poem the truth of the light is a despairing one. The poem moves constantly from the outside world to the inner world; from the external light to the inner hurt; from shadows to death. The critic Helen Vendler suggests that the impossibility of separating HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 15

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the sense of experience of landscape from the spiritual experience of despair is a central point of the poem.

The poem’s imagery and diction are diverse, coming from religion (‘Cathedral Tunes’, ‘Heavenly Hurt’) and from nature (‘Slant of light’, ‘Winter Afternoons’, ‘Landscape’, ‘Shadows’). Another set of words suggests physical injury (‘Hurt’, ‘scar’, ‘affliction’).

Form and language

Metre

The metre of Dickinson’s poems is based on that of the hymn. She writes in short lines, alternating 4-beat and 3-beat lines. However,

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the poems rarely sound monotonous or predictable. This is because of her use of

The poem is written in four-line stanzas with a regular rhyming scheme. The sounds and rhymes of the poem add considerably to the feeling of seriousness and weighty matters. Note the use of final ‘t’ sounds, which slow the rhythm and give a sense of definition and precision to the poem. The poem itself works as a seal – it is written in an authoritative style that brooks no contradiction.

punctuation; changes in word order; and her choice of unusual or ambiguous words, such as ‘Heft’ (line 3) or ‘scar’ (line 6) in ‘There’s a

certain Slant of light’.

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Emily Dickinson

Questions What kind of sunlight is described in the poem?

On first reading, what kind of mood is captured in the poem?

What is the effect of a certain kind of winter light, according to the first stanza of the poem?

What state of mind might regard ‘Cathedral Tunes’ (line 4) as heavy or oppressive? Explain your answer.

What, according to stanza 2, is the effect of the light? Where is the difference made by the light noticed or felt?

In stanza 2, the words ‘We’ and ‘us’ are used by the poet. Might ‘I’ and ‘me’ have been more appropriate? Explain your answer.

What words or phrases in the third stanza suggest the powerlessness of those afflicted by despair? What, in particular, is the effect of the word ‘Seal’ in relation to despair?

Consider the phrase ‘imperial affliction’ (line 11). Does it suggest that the affliction is sent by a higher authority (God) or is the idea that affliction is itself majestic? Explain your answer.

What, according to the speaker, is the feeling or situation when the light goes?

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Examine the rhymes and the rhythm of the poem. In your view, how important are they in expressing the poet’s concerns?

Consider the three phrases ‘Heavenly Hurt’ (line 5), ‘the Seal Despair’ (line 10) and ‘An imperial affliction’ (line 11). What view of God emerges from them?

Discuss the poem as an expression of a religious crisis, in which the speaker feels betrayed by God.

What does this poem have in common with ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’?

‘internal difference, / Where the Meanings, are – ’ (lines 7–8). What, do you think, does this statement suggest about Emily Dickinson?

Working with images, sound and written text, create a multimedia text that captures the mood of the poem and the light that provokes it.

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Before you read

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Working in pairs, think about the kind of poem you expect to follow from the ro r upwo first line, ‘I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain’. Consider the possible circumstances in which you might use these words to describe an experience.

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I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain

ny pa

And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum – Kept beating – beating – till I thought My Mind was going numb –

I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading – treading – till it seemed That Sense was breaking through –

And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down – And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing – then –

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Glossary 1

Felt: what the poet imagines is so vivid that it feels like a physical experience

Sense: waking consciousness; common sense

Service: church funeral service or ceremony

Box: coffin

Boots of Lead: the heavy tread of the mourners

Space: the outside world into which the imagined funeral cortège moves

Heavens: the sky; the firmament

World: place the poet imagines her soul passing through on its way to its destination

Finished knowing: the poet’s knowledge of the beyond is finished at this point; or, the poet has finished her imagined funeral with the knowledge of something that she cannot express; or, knowledge itself finishes

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Emily Dickinson

Guidelines

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This celebrated poem gives an account of the progress of a funeral from the startling perspective of the person lying in the coffin. It was written during a difficult period in Dickinson’s personal life, when she was beset by both religious and artistic doubts. In addition, there were also her complicated and disappointed feelings for Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican. Some critics see the funeral described in the poem as a metaphor for the breakdown of consciousness, and relate the poem to Dickinson’s personal crisis. They read the poem as one of Dickinson’s definition poems, where the progress of a funeral is used to capture the process of falling into despair or undergoing a mental breakdown. Others take the poem at face value, regarding it as an unusual exploration of one of Dickinson’s favourite themes: the transition between life and death, which she also explores in ‘I heard a Fly buzz’. Some readers regard the poem as charting the failure of her poetic imagination during a period when she was unable to write. More recently it has been suggested that the poem may describe: the experience of a bad migraine; the onset of a seizure associated with epilepsy; or an attempt to ‘bury’ a bad experience. Whichever interpretation is given, the poem sees Dickinson straining her imagination to the limits of its power. Most critics give 1861 as the likely year in which the poem was composed.

Commentary Stanza 1

The speaker declares ‘I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain’. The verb ‘Felt’ and the noun ‘Brain’ suggest an experience that is intense and physical. By using these words, Dickinson abolishes the traditional boundary between experiences of the mind and those of the body.

Stanza 2

The first-person narrative account of the progress of the funeral continues. When the mourners were seated, the service began. The stanza emphasises how hearing became the sense through which the ‘I’ received the world, encased as she is in a dark coffin. The transition from the noun ‘Brain’ in line 1 to ‘Mind’ in line 8 suggests, perhaps, that the physical intensity lessened and the experience became more psychological in character. However, Dickinson understood that there can be no absolute distinction between mind and body.

Stanzas 3 and 4

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The word ‘Soul’ is introduced in stanza 3, indicating that the experience, which began as a physical one and then became more psychological in character, developed a spiritual quality as it proceeded. This development did not make the experience any clearer. In fact, the descriptions in stanzas 3 and 4 suggest that the ‘I’ became increasingly disoriented and the boundary between external and internal collapsed. Furthermore, the experience was increasingly defined by a sense of contraction. Space was filled with the tolling of a bell and being was reduced to hearing. Just as bells mark time and differentiate one moment from another, so the tolling in the poem marks a decisive moment. The sense of contraction experienced by the ‘I’ was accompanied by an overwhelming sense of isolation. The ‘I’ is described as shipwrecked from life, cut off, along with silence, and left alone ‘here’. The use of ‘here’ gives a startling immediacy to the experience.

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Stanza 5

Before the ‘I’ and the reader can take stock of the situation and grasp the nature of the ‘here’ at the end of stanza 4, the poem is on the move again. ‘Reason’, the faculty that could help to make sense of the experience, did not hold up (‘And then a Plank in Reason, broke’) and the ‘I’ underwent a new sensation, that of falling, plunging deeper into the experience, plunging to new levels or worlds. And at the end of this plunging, we are told that the ‘I’ ‘Finished knowing – then – ’. Interestingly, the verb ‘Finished’ might suggest that the speaker chose to stop trying to make sense of her experience.

Themes and imagery

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Death, madness and uncertainty are key themes in the poem, although critics do not agree on the exact relationship between all three.

Some critics read the ‘plunge’ in line 19 as the coffin’s descent into the grave and the ‘here’ of line 16 as death. (The word ‘Plank’ in line 17 may suggest the planks placed across the opened grave before the interment.) They see stanzas 4 and 5 as describing the experience of entering into death. Others interpret the final stanza as describing a mental breakdown, a descent into madness or despair; while yet more read the ‘plunge’ as a description of the loss of consciousness. For the critic Helen Vendler, the poem is an account of a mental breakdown that is indistinguishable from death.

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Emily Dickinson

Dickinson’s funeral

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Dickinson left precise instructions for her funeral. Her coffin was white, with white lining, ribbons and handles. She was laid out in a

robe of white flannel. Two sets of pallbearers

carried the coffin. The first set took it out of the back door of the house and the second, made up of six Irishmen who had worked for the

family, carried it to the graveyard. The funeral party circled her garden, walked through the barn and crossed the fields of buttercups to

The imagery has the eerie, disturbing quality of Gothic horror: the altered consciousness of the speaker; the sense of entrapment in a coffin; the after-death experience; the speaker’s loss of understanding; the terrifying plunge into the unknown. The speaker seems to be under attack in each stanza: from the treading of the mourners (stanza 1), from the beating of the service (stanza 2), from the boots of lead (stanza 3), from the threat of a shipwreck (stanza 4) and from the terrible plunge into unconsciousness in the final stanza.

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The final line is highly regarded by critics, even as they disagree on its meaning. Some interpret it as a declaration that the plunge beyond reason yielded a new and deeper knowledge, although this knowledge is not expressed. At the end or finish of the fall, the ‘I’ had learned something, but this something is not revealed. Others read the final line as suggesting that thought and knowledge are lost in the fall. Another reading suggests that the poet, on the verge of gaining an imaginative insight into the nature of death, fails. However much she might desire to experience death, imaginatively, it is beyond the imagination’s capacity to do so.

Form and language

the cemetery.

SNAPSHOT

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Again, Dickinson uses the four-line stanza of the ballad or the hymn in this poem. The rhythm is regular and insistent throughout, and reinforced by the repeated use of ‘And’, especially in stanzas 4 and 5. This style creates a sense of terrifying forward motion, as if the ‘I’ was powerless before the experience. Another notable effect is the repetition of the words ‘treading’ (line 3) and ‘beating’ (line 7) and the use of the dash after each, which emphasises the insistent nature of the noise and creates the feeling of someone being driven mad by the incessant, beating sounds. Just as there are several ways of interpreting the poem, there are a number of possibilities for reading it aloud. For example, it can be read as a narrative of a terrifying, nightmarish experience. In this reading, the dashes and punctuation may suggest the fragmented comprehension of the ‘I’. In contrast, the fact that the poem is narrated in the past tense may suggest that a tone of calm, puzzled wonder might be appropriate.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Startling perspective Description of funeral Imagery of heaviness and contraction Imagery of falling Terrifying, isolating experience Experience is physical, psychological and spiritual Use of ‘And’ and other repetitions create sense of being overwhelmed Theme of death and dying Theme of breakdown Ends on a note of uncertainty

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem What is the story that the poem tells?

Who tells the story?

What do you find most striking about the poem on first reading?

What, according to the speaker, happens in the opening two stanzas of the poem?

In the third stanza, the speaker says that the mourners creaked across her soul with ‘Boots of Lead’. What feeling is created by this description?

Who, according to the speaker, is her companion in stanza 4?

The most dramatic moment of the poem occurs in stanza 5. Explain in your own words what happens.

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Thinking about the poem

The poet uses the words ‘Brain’ in line 1, ‘Mind’ in line 8 and ‘Soul’ in line 10. How do these changes contribute to the meaning of the poem? Explain your answer.

Comment on the effectiveness of the following words in the poem: ‘Felt’ (line 1); ‘creak’ (line 10); ‘Wrecked’ (line 16).

What is the effect of the repetition of ‘treading’ in line 3 and ‘beating’ in line 7? What, in your view, is the effect of the repeated use of the word ‘And’ in the poem? Give other examples of the effective use of repetition in the poem.

Consider two examples of the use of the dash in the poem and comment on their effectiveness.

‘And Finished knowing – then –’ (line 20). What is your understanding of the final line of the poem?

In terms of a person in a coffin, does it make sense to suggest that the whole of one’s being might be reduced to the sensation of hearing, as one moves from life into death (lines 13–14)? Explain your answer.

Which of the following statements is closest to your own interpretation of the poem? ■ It is a poem about a funeral. ■ It is a poem about a nervous breakdown. ■ It is a poem about the limits of the imagination. You may choose more than one and you must explain your choice.

Prepare a reading of the poem that is calm and reflective. Prepare another that is panic-stricken. Which reading, in your view, best captures the spirit of the poem?

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Imagining 1

You have been asked to make a short film based on the poem. Write a note on the character of the speaker of the poem and how you visualise her (or him).

Suggest an alternative title for the poem. Explain your suggestion.

‘I have lost the ability to understand anything.’ Using this as a first line, write a short piece (poetry or prose) inspired by the poem.

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Emily Dickinson Before you read

A Bird came down the Walk

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Have you ever watched ro r upwo a bird in a park or garden? What did you notice? How did the presence of the bird make you feel? Share your experience with another student.

And then he drank a Dew From a convenient Grass – And then hopped sidewise to the Wall To let a Beetle pass –

A Bird came down the Walk – He did not know I saw – He bit an Angleworm in halves And ate the fellow, raw.

He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all around – They looked like frightened beads, I thought – He stirred his Velvet Head

Too silver for a seam: the ocean’s surface is so silvery that no division (such as may be made by oars) can be seen

plashless: making no disturbance

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Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam – Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon Leap, plashless as they swim.

Angleworm: worm used as fish bait in angling

Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer home –

Glossary

Guidelines

The poet observes a bird. She offers him a crumb. The bird flies away. In her poetry, Dickinson describes many small moments in life, especially in meetings of the human and the animal world, which have a feeling of accident, surprise and favour about them.

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Commentary Stanzas 1 and 2

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In the first stanza the narrator tells us about a bird straying into the human realm by coming down ‘the Walk’. The narrator is unobserved by the bird and registers an amused surprise at the bird eating a ‘raw’ worm. As presented by Dickinson, the narrator expresses mock-horror at the ungentlemanly behaviour of the bird.

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The narrator continues to observe the bird in stanza 2. Having dined, the bird quenches its thirst by drinking from the dewy grass. By referring to ‘a Dew’, Dickinson particularises the image and creates the impression of observing the event through a microscope, as a scientist might do. Having eaten and drunk his fill, the bird courteously steps aside to ‘let a Beetle pass’. The bird’s behaviour towards the beetle is in marked contrast to his actions with the angleworm. This image captures the essence of Dickinson’s technique in the poem. On the one hand, she observes the bird with a scientist’s eye, and on the other she treats the events in a humorous, whimsical manner by attributing human qualities and motives to the action of the bird.

Stanza 3

The third stanza brings a change in perspective. The bird is no longer the gentleman diner. The description here emphasises the non-human eyes and movement of the bird’s head. The bird’s actions suggest the nervousness of a creature who might itself fall prey to a predator. The phrase ‘Velvet Head’ accurately captures the texture and appearance of the head feathers and also suggests the beauty of the bird.

Stanzas 4 and 5

Sympathetic to the bird’s fears, the observer moves to allay them by offering him a crumb. By using the word ‘Cautious’ to refer to both the bird and the observer, Dickinson creates a sense of identification between them. Despite this, the proffered gift is not taken and the bird flies away.

The flight is not undertaken in panic. The sense of grace and ease in the flight of the bird is mirrored in the language of lines 15–20, which create an impression of gentle motion. Although the bird flies away, there is little sense of disappointment in the poem’s conclusion. The observer takes pleasure in their accidental encounter. The vocabulary of the final stanza (‘Ocean’, ‘silver’, ‘Butterflies’, ‘Noon’, ‘Leap’, ‘swim’) suggests a life of innocent, carefree pleasure. Like an impressionist painting, there is a harmony of air, water and light.

Themes and imagery

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The poem expresses a delight and relish in the natural world. In describing the bird, Dickinson mixes accurate and poetic description. The accurate description captures the bird on the ground: a predator, who bites a worm in two and eats it ‘raw’ (line 4) and who is constantly on the alert for danger. The description of the bird’s eyes as ‘frightened beads’ (line 11) is particularly effective. The poetic description is reserved for the bird in the air, taking flight. The imagery of the last six lines is complex as the poet strives to convey the silent grace of the bird as it glides into the air. First the narrator suggests that the bird unrolls his feathers. Then the feathers are compared to oars dividing a silver ocean. However, she wants another comparison to capture the silent, graceful movement of the bird. In the last two lines the movement of the bird is compared to the ‘swimming’ of butterflies in the air, as they jump off ‘Banks of Noon’ (line 19). Now the bird, taking flight into the air, has become a symbol of the poet’s delight in nature.

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Emily Dickinson

Form and language

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The poem is written in four-line, rhyming stanzas. The dash is used to create pauses, but it does not have the jarring effect here that is evident in other poems. The complex imagery of the last six lines is supported by the richness of the language. The succession of ‘o’ sounds (‘unrolled … rowed … home … Oars … Ocean’) in lines 15–17 is followed by the light-sounding, alliterative ‘silver for a seam’ (line 18) and what Helen Vendler calls Dickinson’s buoyant ‘Butterflies, off Banks of Noon’ (line 19). The effect, as with the onomatopoeic ‘plashless’, is joyful and good-humoured.

Questions The narrator observes a bird. What does the bird do?

How does the narrator move from being an observer to being a participant?

What is the reaction of the bird to the narrator?

What words and phrases in the poem convey the bird as: a) a predator, b) a gentleman, c) prey? What is the poet’s attitude to the bird in each of these guises?

The use and placing of the word ‘Cautious’ in line 13 is often admired by critics. Why, do you think, is this so?

The poem concludes with images of rowing and swimming. What do they suggest about the flight of the bird? What do they tell us about Dickinson? Explain your answers.

Where, in your view, is the humour and amusement of the poet most evident in this poem?

What, do you think, do rhyme and punctuation contribute to the effectiveness of the poem?

‘In the poem, we see how Dickinson views the world with the eye of a scientist and the eye of an artist.’ Give your response to this assessment of the poem.

What impression of Dickinson do you form from reading the poem? Explain your answer.

Does the poem offer any interesting insights into the natural world? Explain your answer.

What, in your view, is the theme of this poem?

Follow Dickinson’s example and write a short poem based on your close observation of a bird in nature.

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Before you read

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I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air – Between the Heaves of Storm –

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died

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Think about a deathbed scene that you have seen in a film. Working with a partner, describe ro r upwo how the characters in the scene related to each other. Describe the atmosphere of the scene. Keep that scene in mind as you read Dickinson’s poem.

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry – And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset – when the King Be witnessed – in the Room –

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away What portion of me be Assignable – and then it was There interposed a Fly –

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With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz – Between the light – and me – And then the Windows failed – and then I could not see to see –

Glossary 4

Heaves: wind surges

Eyes around: bedside mourners keeping watch

last Onset: final assault of death

the King: God

witnessed: inspired by their religious faith, all waited for the moment of death when, they believed, God would be present in the room. In the Calvinist tradition, the moment of death is the moment the soul faces the judgement of God

Keepsakes: mementoes; souvenirs

Assignable: could be left or bequeathed

Blue: there is no noun to follow the adjective ‘Blue’ so it carries over to ‘Buzz’ at the end of the line and suggests a confused or disturbed apprehension of the world

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Emily Dickinson

Guidelines

Grim humour In 1851 Austin Dickinson was working as a

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teacher in a school in a poor area of Boston. The school had many poor Irish children,

whose parents had fled the famine. Austin had little time for his students. To entertain

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Dickinson’s fascination with death provides the subject matter of this poem. The poem is written in the past tense, in the voice of a dead person, and describes the moment of death. This moment is dominated by the buzzing of a fly in the death-room. As the last act in the drama of life, the buzzing fly causes the moment of death to be grimly comic rather than spiritually uplifting.

her brother, Emily wrote what she considered

Commentary

amusing letters. In one she urged her brother ‘to kill some [Irish boys] … there are so many

now, there is no room for the Americans … I don’t think deaths or murders can ever come

Stanza 1

amiss in a young woman’s journal.’

The startling perspective in the poem is announced in the first line: ‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – ’. The poem is spoken by someone who has died and it explores the moment of death. The ‘Room’ is the death-room, where the dying person and the mourners await death. The repetition of ‘Stillness’ suggests the sense of waiting and expectation in the room. The ‘Heaves of Storm’ are the bouts of laboured breathing of the dying person. Between these ‘Heaves’, the dying person and the very air in the room are still.

Stanza 2

Stanza 3

We are told that, as the moment of death approached, the mourners gathered themselves for ‘that last Onset’. They had shed their tears of grief (‘The Eyes around – had wrung them dry – ‘) and now waited for the moment of death. Inspired by their religious faith, they believed that ‘the King’, their God, would ‘Be witnessed – in the Room – ’ at the moment of death, when the dying person drew her last breath. The phrase ‘Be witnessed’ suggests the solemnity of a court. In the Calvinist tradition, the moment of death is the moment when the soul faces God’s judgement.

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The speaker tells us that she has tidied up her legal affairs and thus prepared and waited for the moment of death. The ‘portion’ of her that was not ‘Assignable’ is her soul, the spiritual self, which awaited the arrival of God. However, it was not the presence of God, coming to claim her soul, that filled her consciousness, but a fly that ‘interposed’ between her and her expected salvation. The word ‘interposed’ suggests that the fly got between the dying person and the solemn moment of death.

Stanza 4

In the final stanza, as the moment of death is described, the phrasing is fractured, suggesting the failure of consciousness, as sight, movement and sound blur and become one. As a result, the fly is described as coming ‘With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz – ’. Like a drunkard disturbing the solemnity of an important occasion, the stumbling, buzzing, blue-black fly comes between the dying person’s consciousness and the expected light. And then, as suggested by the imagery of light and darkness, the dying person was plunged into the darkness of death, and sight failed. The final line, ‘I could not see to see’ suggests that, at the moment of death, both the physical sight of the dying person and her understanding of what is happening failed. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 27

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It is not clear from the final stanza whether the ‘Windows’ mentioned in the second last line of the poem refer to the windows in the room, or to the dying person’s eyes.

Themes and imagery

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The poem seems to suggest that death, which many believe will be the moment when the soul is united with God, is not a momentous occasion.

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The arrival of the fly, symbol of human decay and corruption, suggests that death is something ordinary and insignificant, and something that cannot be managed, arranged or ordered. The dying person had high expectations of death as a moment of spiritual enlightenment. Instead, the buzzing of a fly filled her last moments of consciousness. In this instance, the speaker did not find what she expected or hoped to find.

The ending of the poem, and the anti-climax it describes, suggests that humans have no way of knowing if the immortal life with God that their faith professes actually exists. It may even suggest that immortal life with God does not exist. The final line implies that the dying person is robbed of both sight and understanding, a finality emphasised by the rhyme of ‘me’ and ‘see’. Is this the message of the voice from the dead – after dying, all is darkness and emptiness? Is that the significance of the dash that ends the poem?

As a symbol of death, the fly represents human decay and the corruption of the body. The poem has no symbol of the soul rising to heaven, or of divine light flooding the death-room. As such, the poem would have seemed blasphemous to the members of Dickinson’s Calvinist community as she has replaced the arrival of Christ the King with the arrival of a buzzing fly. There is also no sense of heaven in the poem, and the voice speaking the poem does so from nowhere. For these reasons, some readers believe that the poem offers evidence of Dickinson’s lack of faith in an afterlife with God.

Form and language

As befits a poem on a religious theme, ‘I heard a Fly buzz’ is written in the metre of a hymn: a four-beat line followed by a three-beat line in a four-line stanza with a regular rhyming scheme. However, the use of halfrhymes (‘Room’ and ‘Storm’), the dashes (with their effect of breaking up the phrasing) and run-on lines takes away the sing-song effect of the form.

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The language captures the speaking voice, while the successive use of ‘and then’ (lines 11 and 15) creates a mounting sense of drama.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT

Written in the voice of a dead person Describes the moment of death Solemnity of death disturbed by the fly Ending almost comic Themes of death and faith Ambiguous on the issue of eternal life Written in four-line stanzas Use of dashes, run-on lines and ‘and then’ for dramatic effect

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Emily Dickinson

Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem What is the story that the poem tells?

Who tells the story?

In the second stanza, which of the following words best describes the attitude of the mourners as they wait for the death of the dying person: upset; excited; frightened; resigned? Explain your answer.

Who is the ‘King’ referred to in the second stanza?

What words or phrases in stanza 3 suggest that the speaker has prepared carefully for her death?

What happens at the end of the poem?

Given the ending, how would you describe the tone of the poem: amused; irritated; fearful; puzzled; disappointed? Explain your choice.

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Thinking about the poem

‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – ’ (line 1). In your view, is this an effective opening to the poem? Explain your answer.

Pick two examples of words chosen by the poet that you think are particularly effective. Explain your choice.

Do you find any humour in the poem? Explain your answer.

Consider each of these readings of the poem. Which of them, if any, corresponds with your own? ■ The fly cheats the dying person of a glimpse of God before the moment of death. ■ The appearance of the fly is a reminder that death is about the decay of the body. ■ The buzzing of the fly suggests that death is not an important event. ■ The poem calls into question faith in God and an eternal life. Explain your choice.

The critic Helen Vendler suggests that the dying speaker realises that the insignificant fly is herself. Discuss this interpretation.

On the evidence of this poem, what kind of person do you imagine Emily Dickinson to have been? Explain your answer.

Which of Dickinson’s other poems on your course bears the closest resemblance to this one? Explain your answer.

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Imagining 1

Imagine you are one of the mourners in the room. Write a letter to a friend in which you describe the moment of death and the feeling in the room afterwards.

You are asked to make a video version of the poem. Describe as clearly as you can what your finished video will look and sound like.

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The soul has moments of Escape – When bursting all the doors – She dances like a Bomb, abroad, And swings upon the Hours,

Salute her – with long fingers – Caress her freezing hair – Sip, Goblin, from the very lips The Lover – hovered – o’er – Unworthy, that a thought so mean Accost a Theme – so – fair –

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The Soul has Bandaged moments – When too appalled to stir – She feels some ghastly Fright come up And stop to look at her –

Think of a song that you ro r upwo feel deals in a vivid way with depression, joy and anguish. Share your choice with a fellow student. Discuss what makes the song so memorable. Then read the poem and compare it with your song choice.

The Soul has Bandaged moments

Before you read

As do the Bee – delirious borne – Long Dungeoned from his Rose – Touch Liberty – then know no more, But Noon, and Paradise –

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The Soul’s retaken moments – When, Felon led along, With shackles on the plumed feet, And staples, in the Song, The Horror welcomes her, again, These, are not brayed of Tongue –

Glossary 7

Goblin: an ugly demon

Accost: approach and speak to someone; also, solicit sexually

abroad: in different directions; also, out of doors

Dungeoned: imprisoned

Soul’s: Soul has

Felon: convict, prisoner

shackles: rings fixed round a prisoner’s ankles and joined by a chain

plumed: feathered; the image calls to mind the messenger of the Gods, Mercury, who had winged sandals

These: refers back to the ‘retaken moments’ of line 19

not brayed of Tongue: not spoken about or publicised

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Emily Dickinson

Guidelines

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The poem explores depression and the contrasting highs and lows of the inner life. Images of horror and fright are contrasted with images of fulfilled happiness. Images of imprisonment are contrasted with those of freedom. The poem begins with the figure of Fright and ends with the figure of Horror, suggesting that the soul experiences more anguish than joy.

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The poem may be read in a number of different, if related, ways: in psychological terms, as an exploration of depression and elation; in spiritual terms, as an exploration of despair and hope; in sexual terms, as an exploration of oppression and freedom; or in artistic terms, as an exploration of the absence and presence of inspiration.

Commentary Stanzas 1 and 2

The opening line suggests that the Soul has moments of hurt when she hides her wounds beneath bandages, but the reader is given no idea what causes these ‘Bandaged moments’. In these times of vulnerability the Soul is paralysed and subjected to unwelcome attention. Many critics interpret the ‘Fright’ of stanza 1 as death or death’s servant. In stanza 2 the Fright is described as saluting and caressing the Soul’s freezing hair. The ‘freezing hair’ indicates the chill of fear and the coldness of death experienced by the Soul as the Fright pays her unwanted attention. The wounded soul is portrayed as a terrified woman, helpless before the attention of a predatory male. The verbs describing the action of the Fright create a mounting sense of dread: ‘stop’, ‘look’, ‘Salute’, ‘Caress’, ‘Sip’. The dashes of line 5 capture the increasing fear of the Soul.

Stanzas 3 and 4

Lines 9–10 have an apologetic air, as though the speaker is ashamed at the image of the Fright sipping from the lips that ‘The Lover’ kissed. However, the placing of the word ‘Unworthy’ makes the subject uncertain. Does it refer to the Lover; the Fright; the Soul herself? Does the word refer to the erotic turn the poem takes at this point?

These two stanzas suggest an intense period of psychological elation and, perhaps, artistic energy. The poem breaks free of the atmosphere of threat, dread, claustrophobia and death that dominates the first two stanzas. Now the images suggest sensuous pleasure, freedom, warmth and fulfilment. The verbs hint at a manic energy: ‘bursting’, ‘dances’, ‘swings’. The nouns ‘Noon’ and ‘Paradise’ suggest perfect happiness.

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The memorable simile ‘like a Bomb’ strikes a note of caution. The Soul’s escape is too exuberant, too ecstatic, too public. Like a bomb, it will explode and leave a sense of desolation. (In other poems, Dickinson used images of a volcano and of a loaded gun to suggest the dangerous potential she saw in herself.) Interestingly, the word ‘Bomb’ was used in the nineteenth century to describe the act of striking a bell. This meaning may link to the idea of the Soul swinging upon the rope of a church bell to mark the ‘Hours’.

Stanzas 5 and 6

The moments of escape come to an end and, like a prisoner, the Soul is welcomed again by ‘The Horror’. The imagery of shackles and staples is striking and contrasts with the imagery of flight often used by Dickinson to denote joy and happiness. The final two stanzas express the poem’s despairing point of view that the

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interior life – psychological, spiritual, artistic, erotic – is characterised by feelings of oppression and despair, punctuated by periods of respite.

The final line states that these, the ‘Soul’s retaken moments’, ‘are not brayed of Tongue’. This may suggest that depression and despair are not spoken of in public, and to do so would be to ‘bray’, to speak in a way that might be considered rough and uncouth. Thus, the experience of depression is, essentially, a lonely and an isolating one. However, the tone of the final line can also be read as a proud declaration of strength and pride. Despite the brave ending, the reader realises that the torments of the Soul will never end.

Themes and imagery

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The central theme is one of depression, of the fragile nature of the soul and the suffering and torment to which the soul is subject. In the poem the soul fluctuates between hurt and ecstasy. The soul is like a convicted prisoner who experiences a brief moment of escape before being returned to confinement. The soul, the innermost identity of the person, is kept in oppression. The imagery works by means of contrast as images of wounding, fright and imprisonment oppose those of joy and freedom. The Gothic

The taste for the Gothic in both popular and

literary culture in nineteenth-century America

is reflected in Dickinson’s ‘Goblin poems’. Dickinson evokes the figure of the beautiful

woman, vulnerable in both body and soul, who

is held captive by the terrifying goblin. Her

The personification of the soul as a woman and of the fright as a seductive goblin lends a Gothic feel to the imagery of the opening two stanzas. The imagery is erotic and frightening. It is intended to inspire a feeling of dread in the reader. Equally appalling is the imagery of captivity in the final two stanzas, where the soul is held captive by ‘The Horror’ (line 23) and treated as a criminal.

poems mirror the uncanny and supernatural qualities of Gothic fiction.

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Emily Dickinson

Form and language

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The poem departs from Dickinson’s usual four-line stanzas with one verse of six lines and a concluding couplet. Structurally, it can be divided into three sections, each containing two stanzas. Each section describes a different condition of the soul. The first (stanzas 1 and 2) suggests constraint and violation; the second (stanzas 3 and 4) celebrates the delirium of freedom; the third (stanzas 5 and 6) describes the soul’s recapture.

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In the second stanza, the repetition of ‘her’, the alliteration and the hissing ‘s’ sounds combine to create a feeling of dread. The dashes in the opening stanzas and the final dash of the poem also contribute to this sense of dread, of things that cannot be spoken.

The third-person narrative creates a distance between the narrator and the experiences she describes, although the imagery still has the power to shock and disturb.

Questions

Consider the possible meanings of ‘Bandaged’ (line 1). What does the word suggest about the condition of the soul?

The figure of ‘Fright’ is introduced in line 3. How is he portrayed (lines 3–6)? What words capture the soul’s terror before him?

The image of ‘Fright’, the cold stranger menacing the ‘Soul’, portrayed as a vulnerable young girl, is taken from the tradition of Gothic romance. Does the word ‘Goblin’ (line 7) add or take away from the atmosphere of horror do you think?

Who, do you think, is ‘The Lover’ referred to in line 8? Who or what is ‘Unworthy’ (line 9)? Explain your answers.

In your view, what does the word ‘Bomb’ (line 13) suggest about the nature of the soul’s escape as described in stanza 3?

‘Noon’ and ‘Paradise’ are used as shorthand for happiness and fulfilment in stanza 4. Do you think they are effective? Explain your answer.

Explain, as clearly as you can, what Dickinson means by the ‘retaken moments’ of the soul (line 19)?

What, in your view, does Dickinson have in mind in her reference to ‘The Horror’ in the second last line of the poem? Does the verb ‘welcomes’ work in this line? Explain your answer.

In your view, what does the final line suggest about the sufferer’s experience of depression? Give reasons for your answer.

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Some critics read this poem as expressing the poet’s depression at the loss of her creativity. What parts of the poem most support this reading?

Read the poem aloud. Does the rhythm suit the mood of the poem? Explain your answer.

There is no first-person pronoun in the poem and, in the eyes of some critics, this lessens the poem’s impact. Do you agree with their point of view? Give reasons for your answer.

‘With shackles on the plumed feet, / And staples, in the Song’ (lines 21–22). Write a short piece (poetry or prose) or create an image that conveys the idea of restriction suggested in these lines. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 33

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Before you read

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Berries of the Bahamas – have I – But this little Blaze Flickering to itself – in the Meadow – Suits me – more than those –

I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to – But You have enough – of those – I could bring You Odors from St. Domingo – Colors – from Vera Cruz –

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I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to

With a partner, discuss a gift you ro r upwo received that had little monetary value but still meant a great deal to you. What was it that made that gift special?

Never a Fellow matched this Topaz – And his Emerald Swing – Dower itself – for Bobadilo – Better – Could I bring?

Glossary

St. Domingo: San (or Santo) Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic, a city given its name by Christopher Columbus

Vera Cruz: port in Mexico, founded by Hernán Cortés and known for its colourful houses and its tropical plants and flowers

Bahamas: islands in the West Indies, one of which (San Salvador) is where Columbus first landed in 1492

this little Blaze: jewelweed, a green plant with tiny trumpet-shaped yellow and orange flowers, which are dusted with red speckles; also called touchme-not

Topaz: a gem famous for its lustre and beautiful colours

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Emerald: a precious stone, green in colour

Dower: gift, often used to describe the wealth brought to a man by a woman on their marriage

Bobadilo: Francisco de Bobadilla was sent by Isabella and Ferdinand, the Spanish monarchs, to St Domingo to take over from Columbus as governor of the Indies. He ordered Columbus to be returned to Spain in shackles and he seized his gold and treasures, giving himself enormous wealth

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Emily Dickinson

Guidelines

Writing to Susan Dickinson sent an astonishing range of writing

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to Susan Gilbert, from jokes and comments

about mutual acquaintances to poems on the

theme of romantic love in the lives of women.

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She sent her letter-poems on faith and doubt; notes on the books they were reading (they both read widely); reflections on her father’s rules; and a letter-poem of comfort and grief

on the death of Susan’s son, Gib, at the age of eight. In this correspondence, Dickinson experimented with punctuation, layout and

illustrations, and both her humour and intellect are evident.

Although Dickinson is often described as a recluse, she had a wide circle of friends and corresponded with many of them throughout her life. Her letters often took the form of poems, and she enclosed poems with small gifts. These poems, many of them written as riddles, show the playful and humorous sides of Dickinson’s personality. Some of the letters/poems were clearly intended as tokens of her love, although she took considerable pains to disguise the identity of her beloved. ‘I could bring You Jewels’ is a good example of her letter-poems. It was sent to Susan Gilbert in 1863, seven years after Susan’s marriage to Austin Dickinson. Susan was Emily’s closest friend and this is one of over 300 poems she wrote to her, even though the two lived next door to each other. Enclosed with the poem was a gift of the meadow flower jewelweed.

The opening line of the poem strikes a note of confidence and playfulness, a note that is sustained to the end of the poem, making this the most joyful of the Dickinson poems on your course. The poem is also different in that it focuses on a relationship, rather than on the individual consciousness of the speaker.

Commentary

Stanzas 1 and 2

The speaker considers the gift she could offer her beloved, the ‘You’ of the poem. Different gifts are considered: jewels, perfumes, exotic colours and fruits. The place names mentioned are associated with the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean and South America and are intended to suggest somewhere exotic. She settles on a small meadow flower, ‘this little Blaze’, itself a jewel. The chosen gift is a mark of the speaker’s freedom and uniqueness, and a reflection, perhaps, of her unshowy personality. The note of confidence and self-ease is striking in this choice. The luxury of considering exotic gifts is reflected in the long lines that Dickinson employs in stanza 1. As she settles on her gift, the lines get shorter, the tone more decisive.

Stanza 3

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A jaunty, confident tone is evident in the use of the word ‘Fellow’ (line 9). The concluding rhetorical question suggests that the flower is the best gift she could offer, as valuable and priceless as the dowry a bride might bring to marry the extremely wealthy ‘Bobadilo’. Notice how in this final stanza the assured, confident tone is emphasised in the use of the word ‘Never’ and in the rhyming of ‘Swing’ and ‘bring’, which closes her argument with a ring of authority. In its playful, assured way, the poem establishes that the true value of gifts and the true nature of riches cannot be measured in material terms.

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Themes and imagery

Domingo This island in the Caribbean (modern-day Haiti

The central theme is one of love and friendship and the best gift to celebrate it. The poem is a study in contrasts production, slave revolution and butterflies. It between goods considered valuable (jewels), rare (perfumes was often invoked during the American Civil and spices from St Domingo) and exotic (colours and fruits from War by those opposed to the emancipation of slaves as evidence that black people were the Caribbean) and goods that are simple, natural and homely, primitive and ungovernable. To their way of with no material value, such as a common meadow flower. The thinking, the slave revolution of 1791 led to gift that the speaker chooses suggests that the friendship is as a descent into lawlessness and the killing of beautiful and natural as the little flower. It is typical of Dickinson’s white settlers. wit that she substitutes a flower called jewelweed for the jewels mentioned in line 1. Here, as elsewhere in her poetry, Dickinson uses images from the Caribbean and South America to suggest the bright and pleasurable aspects of life. Domingo, in particular, seemed to inspire her imagination.

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and the Dominican Republic) was a site of rum

Form and language

Dickinson employs the four-line stanza with the rhyme occurring between lines 2 and 4. Unlike other of her poems, there is a conversational feel to the opening lines, achieved by the length of the line and the phrase ‘had I a mind to’ (line 1). This is Dickinson at her most relaxed. As the poem proceeds, the tone becomes less conversational and concludes with the magisterial four-word last line, which is confident and joyous.

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Emily Dickinson

Questions What do we learn about the central characters, the ‘You’ and ‘I’ of the poem, and their lives and circumstances, from ‘I could bring You jewels – had I a mind to’? Explain your answer.

What, in your view, is the effect of the place names used in lines 3–5?

In the first five lines, a number of potential gifts are rejected. How does the gift that is eventually selected differ from them?

What does the choice of gift tell you about the ‘I’ of the poem? What does it suggest about the nature of the relationship between the giver and the receiver?

What view of riches is suggested by the poem? Explain your answer.

‘The voice of the poem shows an absolute certainty and confidence in herself, in her choice of gift and in her beloved.’ Give your response to this assessment of the poem.

Which of the following words best captures the tone of the poem: playful; joyous; romantic; serious? Explain your choice.

How would you feel if you received this poem and a gift of a meadow flower, such as a snowdrop or a bluebell, to go with it? Give reasons for your answer.

‘The poem conjures up a vivid picture of an exotic world but settles for a homely pleasure.’ Give your response to this view of the poem.

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Using ‘I could bring You Jewels’ as a model, write your own love poem.

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Before you read

The Grass divides as with a Comb – A spotted shaft is seen – And then it closes at your feet And opens further on –

A narrow Fellow in the Grass Occasionally rides – You may have met Him – did you not His notice sudden is –

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A narrow Fellow in the Grass

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Have a class discussion on ro r upwo the animals that cause feelings of fear or terror and try to identify the source of these feelings.

He likes a Boggy Acre A Floor too cool for Corn – Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot – I more than once at Noon Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash Unbraiding in the Sun When stooping to secure it It wrinkled, and was gone –

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Several of Nature’s People I know, and they know me – I feel for them a transport Of cordiality –

But never met this Fellow Attended, or alone Without a tighter breathing And Zero at the Bone –

Glossary 6

spotted shaft: the long, thin, mottled body of the snake

Whip lash: the part of the whip used for striking or lashing

Unbraiding: untwining like the leather thongs of a lash

transport: strong emotion

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Emily Dickinson

Guidelines

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This was one of the few poems published during Dickinson’s life. It was published under the title ‘Snake’, although the word is not used in the poem. (In a letter discussing the poem, written in 1866, Dickinson did, however, refer to ‘my Snake’.) Dickinson wrote many poems on small creatures that she observed in her garden. Her attitude to birds and animals is often one of amused fascination. However, the snake arouses a terrified response. The poem has the riddling quality that characterises many of Dickinson’s poems.

Commentary

Stanza 1

The opening two lines of the poem strike an off-hand note, as if the reader has joined a casual conversation. The word ‘Fellow’, for example, creates a sense of easy familiarity, as though the speaker is referring to a neighbour. The tone alters with the abrupt fourth line, ‘His notice sudden is’, and the menacing ‘s’ sounds it contains indicate an absence of fellow-feeling in the speaker for the snake. On second reading, it may well be the figure of the Devil on horseback that is brought to mind by the imagery.

Stanza 2

Stanza 2 hints at the secrecy, danger and unpredictability of the snake. The effect of the snake’s movement, ‘The Grass divides’, can be seen but not the snake itself. The word ‘shaft’ suggests the danger and speed of an arrow-shaft.

Stanza 3

The third, eight-line, central stanza returns to the casual-seeming air of the opening line and describes the favoured habitat of the snake, ‘He likes a Boggy Acre’. The use of the personal pronoun ‘He’ suggests a fellow human. The poem changes direction in this stanza. There is a switch to the past tense as the narrator recalls an unsettling boyhood memory. The word ‘Barefoot’ suggests the vulnerability and simplicity of the boy, who is no match for the crafty snake. The snake’s ability to transform from what seems an inanimate piece of leather, ‘a Whip lash’, into a living, writhing animal is recalled. The use of ‘wrinkled’ as a verb is noteworthy.

Stanzas 4 and 5

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There is a definite change of tone and voice in the final stanzas. The speaker now sounds like the adult poet. He (she?) states that he knows ‘Several of Nature’s People’ and they know him, and he professes for them ‘a transport / Of cordiality’. This delightful phrase captures the whimsical air of the fourth stanza. However, the snake stands apart from the ‘Several of Nature’s People’ and the speaker’s attitude to the snake is caught in the celebrated final stanza. Here the speaker relates that whether alone or with others, any encounter with a snake is terrifying. The final line of the poem, ‘And Zero at the Bone’, evokes the inner terror caused in the speaker by this animal. The combination of the abstract ‘Zero’, with its association of the void and emptiness, and the concrete ‘Bone’ captures the physical sensation of a terror that is almost beyond words. The use of the word ‘Fellow’ in the final stanza reads as a measured irony.

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Themes and imagery

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The poem explores the relationship between humans and the natural world. Elsewhere in her poetry, Dickinson describes chance encounters with birds and other creatures in her garden. These encounters evoke delight. In the case of the snake, the encounter is unnerving and evokes terror. The image of the grass dividing, ‘as with a Comb’ (line 5) to represent the movement of the snake, is an example of Dickinson’s powers of observation.

Interestingly, the poet represents herself as a boy in the poem. In doing so, the poem hints at what Helen Vendler calls ‘the freedom granted to boys and denied to girls’.

In responding to a poem about a snake, it is almost impossible to ignore the figure of the snake in the story of Adam and Eve. There, the serpent, the Devil in disguise, deceived Adam and Eve into acting against God’s command. This story predisposes us to view the snake as an evil deceiver.

Form and language

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Dickinson rarely strayed from the four-line stanza of the ballad or the hymn. When she does, as in the third stanza of this poem, there is very little innovation in the stanza form. Her success as a poet comes in the dramatic use of the dash, the changes in tone she achieves through the sound of words and her startling imagery, as evident in the final line of the poem.

Cutting across the stanzas, the poem has three distinct sections. The first (lines 1–10) paints a general picture of the snake. The second (lines 11–16) recalls boyhood encounters with the snake. The third (lines 17–24) makes a distinction between the snake (and the feeling it evokes) and other creatures in nature.

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Emily Dickinson

Questions The word ‘Fellow’ in line 1 has a feeling of familiarity about it. Does it capture the speaker’s attitude to the snake? Explain your answer.

In six lines (lines 3–8), Dickinson succeeds in suggesting the danger, unpredictability and secrecy of the snake. How, in your opinion, does she do this?

What, in your view, does the snake’s habitat (lines 9–10) tell us about him?

In your view, which of the following are associated with the adjective ‘Barefoot’ in line 11: hardiness; innocence; vulnerability; foolishness? Explain your choice(s).

What do the words ‘Whip lash’ (line 13) suggest about the snake? Explain your answer.

What is the speaker’s relationship with ‘Nature’s People’, as described in stanza 4? In your view, is there anything contradictory in the idea of ‘a transport / Of cordiality’?

What, do you think, is the effect of the ‘But’ placed at the opening of the fifth stanza?

Dickinson substitutes her phrase ‘Zero at the Bone’ in the final line for the more usual ‘chilled to the bone’. In your view, what does she gain by doing so?

Show how Dickinson uses rhythm and sound to capture the movements of the snake.

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‘In the poem, the representation of the snake moves from a familiar neighbour to a deeply disturbing, hidden presence.’ Discuss this statement.

What, if anything, does the snake symbolise in the poem? Explain your answer.

Re-read the poem. Note any places where the voice of the speaker changes, and comment on the change.

‘And Zero at the Bone – ’ (line 24). Suggest a piece of music that you think resonates with this powerful phrase.

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Before you read

ny 5

Inebriate of Air – am I – And Debauchee of Dew – Reeling – thro endless summer days – From inns of Molten Blue –

I taste a liquor never brewed – From Tankards scooped in Pearl – Not all the Vats upon the Rhine Yield such an Alcohol!

I taste a liquor never brewed

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Think of experiences that are accompanied by a natural high and that might be described as exhilarating and intoxicating.

When ‘Landlords’ turn the drunken Bee Out of the Foxglove’s door – When Butterflies – renounce their ‘drams’ – I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats – And Saints – to windows run – To see the little Tippler Leaning against the – Sun –

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Glossary 3

Vats: vessels for storing liquid such as wine

Rhine: a wine region of Germany. There is another draft of this poem in which line 3 reads, ‘Not all the Frankfort berries’

Inebriate: intoxicated

Debauchee: person who pursues pleasure in a reckless way

Molten: melted; presumably, the shimmering effect on the blue sky caused by the heat of the sun

Foxglove: tall purple- or white-flowered plant

drams: small measures of alcohol

Seraphs: angels who guard God’s throne

Tippler: frequent drinker of alcohol

In the other draft of the poem, the final line reads ‘From Manzanilla come.’

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Emily Dickinson

Guidelines

Temperance movement A social, religious and political movement that

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encouraged people to abstain from drinking alcohol. In the period before the American

Civil War many temperance reformers were

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progressive and liberal and were involved

in the movement to emancipate slaves and promote equality. For these reformers, every citizen had the right to control over their own body.

Commentary

This poem was first published anonymously on 4 May 1861 in the Springfield Republican, under the title ‘The May Wine’. Two lines were altered by the editor to achieve an exact rhyme, and another line was changed to make the meaning clearer. The central metaphor of intoxication is ironic, given that Dickinson grew up in a Puritan household and her father was a supporter of the Temperance League. A further irony is that the poem was written in the common rhythm of hymns.

Interestingly, in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dickinson said she had tasted rum

from Domingo and it could not be equalled.

Stanza 1

The poem describes the speaker’s sense of delight in the beauty of the world in summer. Dickinson strikes an exaggerated, playful tone, established from the first line, ‘I taste a liquor never brewed’. The riddling quality of this line and the extravagance of the imagery capture the mood of dizzy happiness that infuses the poem. The ‘Pearl’ of line 2 refers to the frothy bubbles in the vats of alcohol. The speaker says that her non-drunken intoxication could not be equalled by drinking wine from the Rhine.

Stanzas 2 and 3

The idea of intoxication continues. The imagery in stanza 2 suggests a drunken person (‘Inebriate’) behaving without any restraint (‘Debauchee’) as he or she reels from pub to pub. The humour is that the speaker drinks in nothing more than the air, the dew from the grass, and the shimmering blue of the sky.

Stanza 4

The imagery of flowers as inns or taverns and bees as drunkards in the third stanza maintains the vein of cartoon humour evident throughout the poem. The final line of the third stanza, ‘I shall but drink the more!’, appears as the comic rebellious declaration of a drunkard.

Dickinson does not present the world’s beauty as a sign of God’s creativity. The inhabitants of heaven are presented as faintly ridiculous, enclosed and perhaps envious of the freedom of ‘the little Tippler’, whose pose, leaning against the sun, strikes a note of comic rebelliousness, applauded by the angels, as they swing their hats to honour her.

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Some critics do not read this stanza as a celebration of excess and rebelliousness. Instead, they view the ‘Sun’ of line 16 as a symbol of Christ and consider that the speaker is announcing her intention to enjoy the beauty of the world until she comes into the company of Christ, where her arrival will be greeted by the watching angels and saints.

Themes and imagery Richard Sewell, Dickinson’s biographer, describes this poem as ‘a rapturous poem about summer’. In many of Dickinson’s poems, the ‘I’ persona is shown as starving or thirsting. This poem is a rarity in her work in that HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 43

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it celebrates the joy of excess; a reckless, indulgent joy captured in the word ‘Debauchee’ (line 6). The sense of happiness, excess and rebelliousness of the poem is expressed through images of drunken intoxication and indulgence. A woman of Dickinson’s class would have been expected to act in a restrained way and to exhibit exemplary behaviour in public. Dickinson clearly relishes portraying the speaker as someone who is drunk and unrestrained.

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The imagery of the poem has a childlike, cartoonish quality. The poem is topsy-turvy in its celebration of intoxication over sobriety, with the ‘little Tippler’ (line 15) being envied by the angels and saints in heaven.

Form and language

The poem is written in the common metre of hymns and flows along without any of the dramatic pauses or changes of tone evident in many of her other poems. The use of alliteration, as in ‘Debauchee of Dew’ (line 6), has a comic effect.

Questions What kind of liquor is not brewed?

How can tankards be scooped in pearl?

What creature might be a ‘Debauchee of Dew’ (line 6)?

Is the association of drunkenness with bees apt (lines 9–10)? Explain your answer.

Identify the words and phrases that are associated with intoxication in the poem.

‘The three most important words in the poem are “endless summer days”’ (line 7). Do you agree? Give reasons for your answer.

‘I shall but drink the more!’ (line 12). What, in your view, is the tone of this declaration?

What image of heaven is presented in stanza 4? In your view, is it an effective image?

One critic remarked that the sun, in stanza 4, is treated as a celestial lamppost. Would you agree that the entire poem is marked by a similar spirit of whimsy and joy? Explain your answer.

Comment on the use of comic exaggeration in the poem. What phrases strike you as being particularly humorous?

What view of Emily Dickinson emerges from this poem? Compare the celebration of the summer sun in this poem with the meditation on winter light in ‘There’s a certain Slant of light’.

Emily Dickinson’s father, Edward, was stern in character, disciplined in his behaviour and a supporter of the Temperance League. Imagine a scene between father and daughter in which he speaks to Emily after reading this poem. Describe the setting and write a short dialogue.

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Emily Dickinson Before you read

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

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Think of a book, play or film that portrays a character numbed by grief or pain. How did the text represent or convey the suffering of the character? When you have read the poem, compare Dickinson’s account of the aftermath of great suffering with the depiction in the text you chose.

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After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

Glossary 3

bore: could refer to bearing suffering, or to accepting the blame

Ought: anything

Stupor: state of near unconsciousness

This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Guidelines

The Feet, mechanical, go round – Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This poem was written in 1862, a year in which Dickinson wrote 366 poems. Many commentators believe that she was on the edge of madness during this time. The poem explores the effects of anguish upon the individual. The source of the ‘great pain’ is not disclosed. It may be the result of loneliness, separation or bereavement, all of which Dickinson experienced. There is an absence of personal statement in the poem, which gives it a universal quality, as if the poet is speaking on behalf of all who have suffered great pain, distress and loss.

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Commentary

Stanza 1

The opening line strikes a note of dignified solemnity. The nature of the ‘great pain’ is not described. It suggests that such pain leads not to a loss of control but to the constraint of formality. As with mourners at a funeral, the nerves and feelings are deadened, and ceremony and stiffness replace spontaneity. The victim’s confusion is captured in lines 3–4. ‘He’ could refer to the ‘stiff Heart’, or to Christ, whose suffering is brought to mind by the experience of great pain. Feeling disoriented, her (or his) heart wonders when the suffering took place, unable to distinguish between recent time (‘Yesterday’) and past time (‘Centuries before’), and whether it was she who endured it. The victim has no way of answering these questions.

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Stanza 2

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The sense of control is lost in the second stanza with its fragmented phrases and incomplete meanings. The stanza suggests that the sufferer is walking around. The use of the definite article in the phrase ‘The Feet’ suggests that the sufferer feels disconnected from her body, and the body moves in a mechanical, stumbling way, with little sense of where she is or what surrounds her: ‘Of Ground, or Air, or Ought’. The three words of line 7, ‘A Wooden way’, may suggest the unnatural movements of a puppet, the mechanical movement of the sufferer, and the way in which suffering can dull our senses and make us insensible. The line may also refer to the suffering of Christ on the Way of the Cross.

The phrasing and punctuation of this second stanza suggest a series of unconnected sensations and thoughts, and reflect the way in which pain interrupts the mind’s ability to make sense of experience and derive meaning from it. The final line of the stanza suggests that great pain results in a stone-like insensitivity, which brings its own kind of contentment, ‘A Quartz contentment, like a stone’. The word ‘contentment’ is almost ironic.

Stanza 3

Themes and imagery

The opening line of the third stanza defines the nature of this ‘contentment’ – it is the ‘Hour of Lead’, a period of heavy and deadening oppression when all human sensations become frozen. This period is not forgotten, even if the sufferer survives it. The memory of this oppression is likened to ‘Freezing persons’ recollecting ‘the Snow’. The continuous present of the final line means that the reader cannot determine if the freezing person has survived the ordeal, or if it continues. Here, as in the rest of the poem, the thought is incomplete.

In this poem Dickinson again explores the effects of anguish and pain upon the individual. It describes the psychological and spiritual numbness that follows intense pain. To the sufferer, the experience will be remembered, if he or she survives it, as a deathlike experience.

The poem captures the way victims of suffering cope by burying their feelings and acting in a formal and mechanical way. The imagery suggests the behaviour of mourners at a funeral, who have been numbed by their grief. The brilliant simile used in line 2, ‘The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – ’, merits close attention. It suggests that sufferers are so stunned by pain that their nervous system, the means by which thoughts and feelings move between the brain and the body, comes to a standstill, to the extent that they resemble a statue on a tomb more than a living person. Through this image, the poet establishes a chilling relationship between suffering and the death of the inner life.

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This idea carries over to the concluding image of the poem (line 13), which suggests that sufferers, if they survive, when they recall their deathlike paralysis will, in the words of Helen Vendler, ‘Enact, in sequence, the stages of trauma.’ These stages are: the ‘Chill’, as the body temperature drops; then the ‘Stupor’, as the cold causes the sufferer to fall into a state of near unconsciousness and to lose the sense of feeling; and then the ‘letting go’, as the sufferer surrenders to the snow and loses the will to live. What is remarkable is the logical exactness of this simile. Even in confronting the most difficult of human experiences, Dickinson’s intellect is fully engaged. As with the simile of line 2, the effect is chilling.

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Emily Dickinson

Form and language

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In keeping with the theme it explores, the poem moves away from the regularity of the ballad and hymn form. The opening stanza is composed of two rhyming couplets with ten-syllable lines. The long lines of the opening stanza, with their steady stoicism and harmonious sounds, are in contrast to the staccato movement of stanza 2, where the syntax (arrangement of words) and the use of the dash suggest a series of broken, jagged thoughts. Interestingly, even in these fragmented lines, Dickinson closes the stanza with a full rhyme (‘grown’ and ‘stone’), which leads to the controlled thought of the final stanza. The final two lines of the poem form a rhyming couplet with ten syllables in each line. This form mirrors the opening lines of the poem and gives a sense of formal completion, even if the meaning of the final line is uncertain.

The poem is remarkable for its compression of thought, for the way in which Dickinson fits thoughts and ideas into the fewest possible words, no more so than in line 11, ‘Remembered, if outlived’.

Questions

‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’ (line 1). Explain, as clearly as you can, what is meant by ‘formal’ in this context.

What, in your view, is the effect of comparing the nerves, which convey feelings and sensations from the body to the brain, to ‘Tombs’ (line 2)?

The meaning of lines 3–4 is hard to unravel, due to the conciseness of the language. Give careful consideration to each of the following questions: a) What does the adjective ‘stiff’ suggest about the heart? b) If ‘He’ does not refer to the heart, does it refer to Christ? Could it refer to both? c) Does ‘bore’ suggest suffering or blame? Might it suggest both? d) Does the line ‘And Yesterday, or Centuries before’ suggest the heart’s confusion, or the fact that Christ’s suffering is both past and present?

How, in stanza 2, is the dazed condition of the victim of great pain suggested? What words are particularly effective?

In each case, explain your answer.

Comment on the use of the word ‘mechanical’ (line 5).

In your view, what kind of contentment is a ‘Quartz contentment’ (line 9)?

How well, do you think, does the phrase ‘Hour of Lead’ (line 10) sum up the mental and physical condition of the sufferer? Give reasons for your answer.

The final image of the poem ‘Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go – ’ is much admired. Do you read it as a pessimistic or an optimistic ending? Explain your answer.

Read the poem aloud. What sounds contribute to the mood of the poem?

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‘What Dickinson describes in “After great pain” is the numbed feeling that is caused by emotional or spiritual pain.’ Give your response to this statement.

Write a short piece (poetry or prose) inspired by the title ‘Formal Feeling’.

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Exam-Preparation Questions ‘Emily Dickinson’s poetry explores extreme states of mind and emotion in an unusual way.’ Discuss this statement.

Discuss the view that Emily Dickinson’s fascination with death leads to some of her best writing.

‘It is less what Emily Dickinson has to say than her manner of saying it that is interesting.’ Give your view of this statement.

From your reading of her poetry, do you agree that Emily Dickinson’s poems offer us a glimpse into a fascinating mind and a fascinating writer? Explain your answer.

‘The loss of love and the loss of faith are dominant themes in Emily Dickinson’s poetry.’ Discuss this view.

‘Even when she is dealing with serious themes, Dickinson’s poetry is marked by a sense of wit and a sense of humour.’ Discuss this view.

‘In Dickinson’s poetry we see the world through the eye of an artist and the eye of a scientist.’ Discuss this view.

‘Emily Dickinson’s poetry is not hard to understand. It is, however, complex.’ Give your response to this statement.

What, in your experience, is the effect of reading Emily Dickinson’s poetry?

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‘Emily Dickinson’s poetry is the poetry of small details and large ideas.’ Discuss this view.

Write an introduction to the poetry of Emily Dickinson for readers new to her poetry. Your introduction should cover the themes and preoccupations of her poetry, and how you responded to Dickinson’s use of language and imagery in the poems that you have studied. Some of the following areas might be covered in your introduction:

■ Exploring extreme states of mind ■ Exploring death and dying

■ The importance of the soul ■ A fondness for definition

■ Observations of nature

■ The power and freshness of her language

■ Her epigrammatical style ■ Her creative use of the dash and capitalised nouns.

‘What Emily Dickinson’s poetry means to me.’ Write an essay in response to this title. Your essay should include a discussion of her themes and the way she expresses them. Support the points you make by reference to the poetry on your course. Some of the following topics might be included:

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■ Her treatment of hope and despair

■ The lack of firm conclusions

■ Her search for definition

■ Her sense of nature

■ Her attitude to death and mortality

■ The craft of her poetry.

■ The psychological drama of her poems

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Emily Dickinson 13

■ Her family and religious background

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■ The contrast between her sedate life and the drama of her poetry ■ Her tone and style ■ Her interest in extreme emotions and psychological states

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■ Her preoccupation with death ■ Her painter’s eye for the details of nature ■ The lines and images that stay with you.

Write an essay in which you outline your reasons for liking or not liking the poetry of Emily Dickinson. You must refer to the poems by Dickinson on your course.

Some possible reasons for liking the poetry: ■ Unique poetic voice

■ Striking perspective of many poems ■ Vitality and energy of the writing

■ Exploration of emotions and extreme states of mind

■ Exploration of the experience of death

■ The impact of the poetry upon the reader ■ Dickinson’s skill as a poet.

■ Dickinson’s wit and intelligence

Some possible reasons for not liking the poetry:

■ Themes of death, isolation and despair ■ Absence of happiness in many poems

■ Sense of annihilation in many poems ■ The obsession with her own mind

■ Effect of the poems upon the reader.

SNAPSHOT EMILY DICKINSON

■

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■

Sets herself the task of definition (hope, despair, pain, joy) Sees the world in terms of comparisons and metaphors Mixes abstract concepts and concrete details Tone is confident and authoritative Centrality of the soul and of personal experience Exploration of death, mortality and immortality Travels in the mind and the imagination

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Delights in observing nature Describes private, psychological dramas Interest in extreme emotions and sharp contrasts (intoxication, despair) Endings of poems are often open Style is epigrammatical Meanings are compressed Unconventional use of capital letters and the dash to highlight words and ideas Language is fresh and original Rhythm based on the metre of hymns

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Sample Essay

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Write a letter to a friend outlining your experience of studying the poetry of Emily Dickinson. In your letter you should refer to her themes and the way she expresses them. Support the points you make by reference to the poetry on your course. Dear Jane, We have just finished reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson in class. What an Expressive use of amazing experience it has been. I feel I have been on an exhilarating but exhausting language rollercoaster. What a fascinating poet and woman. I think Emily Dickinson proves the old saying true: never judge a book by its cover. Uses appropriate

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Viewing her life from the outside, who could have guessed at the tumultuous seas of her mind? She came from a well-respected family in Amherst in New England. Her family were Selective use of relevant biographical Calvinists, which makes me imagine a strict upbringing with a great deal of attention on saving your soul, but maybe our ideas of other religious traditions are never really information accurate. It seems Emily enjoyed parties and visiting and dancing, and several young men were interested in her. That does not seem too strict. In the school she attended, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, she was a bit of a rebel, refusing to declare publicly her faith in God. That must have taken some courage. And, if her poetry is anything to go by, I do not think Discussion of biography has to be she ever really settled the questions of belief in God and belief in the afterlife in her relevant to the poetry lifetime. She was a rebel in other ways, too. After she came home from boarding school, she opted out of some of the duties of someone in her position: receiving visitors and making endless social calls and doing mindless household chores. I like the sound of her – Personal response quietly determined and not bound by other people’s rules. (She reminds me of you.) And then when she was about thirty, something significant happened to her, because she more or less withdrew into her own room and began writing in a furious kind of way, communicating with most of the outside world through letters. I know I’ve often wanted to lock myself in my room, but that impulse does not last more than a few hours! And when I’m in a black mood it helps if I scribble in my diary, but she wrote 366 poems in 1862 alone. What could have happened to her? We do not know and that adds to the fascination. I read her poems looking for clues, Writing as a reader of but there are no definitive answers. Her sister destroyed all her correspondence after the poetry her death, as she had requested. I wish she hadn’t! Luckily, she kept the thousand or more poems (a thousand poems!) they found in her writing desk. And what poems they are – short, sharp meditations on the world around her and the places she travelled to in her imagination. Those journeys were to the ‘chillest’ lands and the ‘strangest’ seas and she made them bravely and in solitude. I think I understand why hope was so important to her. If you undertake the kind of dangerous psychological journeys she did, you need to have something to fall back on, something that ‘never stops – at all – ’. You Shows knowledge want everything to turn out well for her. I almost cheered when I read ‘I taste a liquor of the poetry and a never brewed’, how she drank in the happiness of summer days. Those moments personal response of happiness are rare enough in her poetry. And you hope that when she sent her

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Good use of quotation in this paragraph

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Emily Dickinson beloved the little meadow flower, described in ‘I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to’, her beloved sent her something equally charming back. Because, more often than not, the emotions in the poems are fearful and despairing. Even her little poem on the snake ends with Good sprinkling of the terrifying ‘Zero at the Bone’.

quotations throughout the answer

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The poems that have the greatest impact on me are the darker poems. ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’ is icy in its depiction of what I think was probably a broken heart and the numb feeling that comes with intense pain, so that you no longer want to cling to life: ‘First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go – ’. It is such a precise poem that you Offers both never doubt that Dickinson is writing about herself and her own experience, even if interpretation and she writes in an impersonal way. I think the impersonal style is a way of dealing with response what would otherwise be too difficult to write about. There is a similar feeling of chill in ‘The Soul has Bandaged moments’. (Isn’t that the best title ever?!) I love the image of the ‘freezing hair’ and the dread caused by the unwanted advances of the ghostly ‘Fright’. Likewise the images of the ‘shackles on the plumed feet’ and the ‘staples, in the Song.’ It is as if Hope Good cross-reference has been imprisoned and ‘the little Bird that kept so many warm’ is now abashed. Is it strange to say ‘I love’ such imagery? That is the funny thing about a poem – even when it deals with psychological pain, you can admire the mind and the skill of the poet who created it. Good choice of I feel a similar kind of admiration for the stately, stoical tone in which Emily describes adjectives to describe the ‘Heavenly Hurt’ that comes with ‘a certain Slant of light’. The light carrying the the tone ‘Seal Despair’ cannot be countered or stopped and so must be endured. Interesting comment – could be developed But she writes with such certainty and force that the poem carries her own seal of authority. Her unusual punctuation adds to the sense that she will not be contradicted. She knows what she is talking about. It’s as if she masters negative experiences by defining them so clearly.

Of course, Emily Dickinson does not always know what she is talking about. In her two great poems on death, she ends with the shuddering dash of ‘I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ and the darkness of ‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died’. That Comment and interpretation final dash is like a barrier that stops her and us from falling over a cliff. Somewhere beyond that dash is the place ‘Where the Meanings, are’, but despite her brave, maybe even her mad, efforts, she cannot get there. When she pushes her imagination to ‘Extremity’, she still comes up short, at the end of knowing, facing the blank space beyond the dash. Or a fly gets between her and the revelation she is waiting for! ‘I heard a Fly buzz’ is grimly comic, but I wonder how Emily felt when she finished ‘I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain’. I think she must have felt as ‘Wrecked’ and ‘solitary’ as the persona of the poem. To put all that effort into imagining and understanding something and then to finish with that emptiness, that ‘Zero at the Bone’. I wonder did she take consolation from creating what I think Not afraid to is her finest poem? I hope she did. It’s not the easiest poem to read or interpret. acknowledge difficulty of interpretation I think it is definitely an attempt to imagine a funeral from the perspective of the person in the coffin, before the moment when you are buried and lose the connection from the life you are departing. All your experiences contract and you can only hear the world (‘And then I heard them lift a Box’, ‘Then Space – began to toll,’/‘As all the Heavens were a Bell,/And

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Paragraph well set up

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Being, but an Ear’) and then you lose even that connection and plunge into death. But it is also a description of Dickinson the poet undergoing the experience of imagining the funeral in her brain and persisting and succeeding, even if it is a terrifying and disturbing experience, until the point when the connection with life is severed and her imagination cannot travel any further:

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I’m not sure I’d have the courage to make that kind of psychological and imaginative journey and record it as carefully as she has done. How it must have exhausted her and left her depleted.

Empathetic

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And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down – And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing – then –

concluding the issue

Your friend, Sarah

ESSAY CHECKLIST Purpose

Keeps tasks in mind in

Please read these poems, Jane, and write back and let me know that you love them as much as I do! Having encountered them, ‘I feel for them a transport / Of cordiality’. I hope you will, too.

Yes 4

No 8

Has the candidate understood the task?

Has the candidate responded to it in a thoughtful manner? Has the candidate answered the question?

Has the candidate made convincing arguments?

Coherence

Comment:

Has the candidate linked ideas? Does the essay have a sense of unity?

Comment: Language

Is the essay written in an appropriate register?

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Are ideas expressed in a clear way? Is the writing fluent?

Comment:

Mechanics

Is the use of language accurate? Are all words spelled correctly? Does the punctuation help the reader?

Comment:

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1572–1631

John Donne

Song: Goe, and catche a falling starre*

The Anniversarie

Song: Sweetest love, I do not goe

The Dreame

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

The Flea*

Batter my heart

At the round earths imagin’d corners

Thou hast made me

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The Sunne Rising

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Biography

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Early life

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John Donne (pronounced ‘done’) was born in London in 1572. He was only four years old when his father, a prosperous businessman, died. His mother was soon remarried, to John Syminges, a prominent doctor. It was a family of some wealth and considerable learning, and Donne was given a good education, which took him to Oxford and Cambridge universities and Lincoln’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court for lawyers in London.

treasurer, secretary and adviser. A devout Catholic, he could not support Henry’s decision to break with Rome and establish the Anglican Church and he was beheaded for treason as a

result. More was made a saint in 1935.

A writer, lawyer, politician and philosopher, More (1478–1535) served as Henry VIII’s

Donne’s family was Catholic, at a time when to be Catholic in England was difficult and frequently dangerous. Donne’s mother came from a celebrated Catholic family and was related to the famous intellectual and statesman Sir Thomas More. Donne was proud of his heritage, but being a Catholic in England meant that, although he could prosper, there was always the possibility that another round of Catholic persecution would put him in serious danger. Donne’s younger brother was imprisoned for harbouring a priest in 1594 and died of the plague while in prison.

Thomas More

We do not know exactly when Donne renounced his Catholic faith, nor exactly why, but it is likely that his desire to make his ‘On a huge hill, way in the world played a part in the decision. Donne was a very Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will ambitious young man and a career in public life was impossible Reach her, about must and about must go’ for a Catholic. It was a decision he would not have taken lightly. ‘Satire III’ (not included in this selection of his poems), possibly written around 1595, shows him struggling to come to terms with the Anglican faith to which he eventually committed himself. To renounce his Catholic faith – the act of apostasy – meant not just rejecting the beliefs that he had been brought up with and those who had nurtured and taught him; but also, according to Catholic belief, that he would go to hell. There is no doubt that the idea of hell was very real to Donne, as it was to almost all his contemporaries, and it is easy to suppose that much of the guilt and fear that he expresses in his Holy Sonnets has its source in his apostasy.

from Satire III: ‘On Religion’

Scholar and libertine

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As an older man, Donne thought of his life as falling into two parts. As a young man, he was Jack Donne, scholar and libertine, full of ambition and wit. He wrote love poems and led a life of adventure, joining two naval expeditions against the Spanish in 1596 and 1597. His plan was to make useful connections to advance his career, and in this he succeeded, as after the second expedition he was appointed secretary to the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton. Everything seemed to be going well. In 1601 he became a member of parliament. Then he fell in love with and was secretly married to Ann More, who was the niece of Egerton’s second wife and lived in the Egerton household.

When news of the marriage came out, Donne was sacked and briefly imprisoned, much to his surprise and indignation. His reputation as a ladies’ man did not help his cause. With his public career over, he summed

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John Donne

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up the situation in a bitter, pithy, witty rhyme: ‘John Donne – Ann Donne – Undone’. There followed many difficult years, when John and Ann lived in relative poverty. Donne did whatever he could to find patrons to help him, scraping a living with their support. The Donnes’ marriage seems to have been a good one, and when Ann died in 1617, soon after giving birth to their twelfth child, Donne was heartbroken, as is clear from a sonnet he wrote at the time.

Anglican cleric

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With all other paths to advancement closed to him, Donne eventually followed the advice of the king, James I, and was ordained into the Anglican Church in 1615. The king made sure that he was well provided for. Donne was made Doctor of Divinity of Cambridge University, and in 1621 he became Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Now he was no longer Jack Donne, but ‘Doctor Donne’, his second and final persona, and as Dr Donne he became famous for the powerful and eloquent sermons he preached in the cathedral.

Memorable lines

Whereas he had not taken care to preserve the poems he wrote Parts of Donne’s sermons are still remembered as a younger man, Donne made sure that his sermons were and repeated today. Well-known lines include: prepared for publication. They can be intensely personal and ‘no man is an island’ and ‘never send to know often reflect his obsessions with sin and death, which we also find for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee’. in his poetry. His final sermon was preached before Charles I in 1631. Donne rose from his sickbed, with what Izaak Walton, his friend and first biographer, called ‘a decayed body and a dying face’, to preach a sermon about his own death, which duly took place a few weeks later.

Reputation

When Donne’s poems were published after his death, some of the principal writers of his time composed impressive tributes to his originality and inventiveness. Walton’s biography was published in 1640. Then, for over two centuries, Donne’s poetry was not highly regarded. In the eighteenth century, when elegance and grace were among the desirable features of poetry, Donne’s verse was seen as awkward, primitive and inelegant.

Following the publication of the poet T. S. Eliot’s celebrated essay ‘The Metaphysical Poets’ in 1921, Donne’s reputation was restored. He came to be regarded as a major poet, admired above all for his unique blending of thought with feeling, his exciting use of argument and analogy, and his mastery of a lively, colloquial idiom.

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Social and Cultural Context

Religion

As noted above, Donne was born a Catholic at a time when religion was both divisive and central to the social and political life of England. Henry VIII had taken England out of the Catholic Church and established the Anglican Church, with himself as its head. The power struggle between the two churches continued throughout Henry’s lifetime and after his death. His daughter Mary returned England briefly to Catholicism when she became queen. She was known as Bloody Mary for her ruthlessness in doing so. His daughter

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Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 and did much to consolidate and stabilise the Anglican Church. She aimed to steer a middle path, and although the Church under Elizabeth was clearly Protestant, it was not radical, and the extreme Puritans were rejected as well as Catholics. Nevertheless, it remained a crime to practise Catholicism, and by the end of her reign in 1603, as many Catholics had been executed under Elizabeth as Protestants under Mary.

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Being a Catholic during Donne’s lifetime was difficult and could be dangerous. All public officials were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as head of the Church, which made it effectively impossible for practising Catholics to take any office because they could not swear such an oath. Attendance at Anglican churches was made compulsory, and many Catholics paid fines rather than attend. At times, international politics led to Catholics being regarded as domestic enemies, especially when England was at war with Catholic Spain, as it was for much of the 1580s and 1590s.

Literary and intellectual life

Donne was a young man at a time when the arts and literature were flourishing in England as never before. The poetry of Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser set a standard that could be admired but also mocked by the young wits like Donne who came after them. Donne also witnessed the great age of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, including William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

The influence of the theatre can be felt in Donne’s poetry. Much of it is dramatic, dealing vividly and directly with actual or imaginary experiences, situations and attitudes. His arresting, often startling, openings are one aspect of his theatrical manner. Another dramatic feature is the reader’s sense of a situation, a speaker and someone being spoken to. In Donne’s love poems and many of his sonnets, we sense, more distinctly than in the case of almost any other poet, a living voice speaking from the page. The rhythms of Donne’s verse are close to those of colloquial speech and many of his poems are like performances by an actor enormously enjoying his brilliant displays of showmanship and virtuosity.

Donne spent some years in the 1590s at Lincoln’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court that trained young men in the law and which operated like a university. The companionship of other educated, intelligent young men was a great stimulus to a lively mind, and many prominent writers and thinkers of the age spent time at the Inns of Court, including Francis Bacon, Philip Sidney, and the playwrights Francis Beaumont and John Marston. Donne’s clever young friends would have provided a natural (and competitive) audience for the witty love poems he wrote at that time.

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Donne made use of the legal training he received by reshaping courtroom pleading into poetry. Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about his poems is the extent to which they are taken up with arguments or attempts to persuade. Many of them are exercises in the use and abuse of logic. An astonishing example is ‘The Flea’, which consists of twenty-seven lines of witty, close-knit argument on the significance for two lovers of a fleabite. In Donne’s love poems, the speaker argues constantly with the woman he is addressing, trying to persuade her to share a point of view. In the Holy Sonnets, he cannot refrain from arguing with God.

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John Donne

Metaphysical poetry

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It was Samuel Johnson, in Lives of the Poets (1779–1781), who coined the term ‘metaphysical poets’ to describe certain English poets of the seventeenth century, including Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and Andrew Marvell. He did not mean it as a compliment. In describing their use of wit and metaphor, he notes that ‘the most heterogeneous [unlike each other] ideas are yoked by violence together’. The term stuck, even though the reputation of the poets to whom it was applied languished until Herbert Grierson published an edition of their poems in 1921.

Conceits

A conceit is a comparison, often extended,

Metaphysical poetry often pushes its images as far as they can go; in Eliot’s words, they show ‘the elaboration … of a figure of speech to the furthest stages to which ingenuity can carry it’. This is known as the metaphysical conceit. A famous example is the comparison between lovers and compasses in ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’. Those who do not like Donne’s conceits tend to describe the comparisons they involve as far-fetched. Those who admire them stress the ingenuity, boldness and originality of the best examples.

T. S. Eliot’s long and considered review of Grierson’s edition made people reassess the metaphysical poets and helped establish Donne’s reputation as the greatest of them. Eliot found in these poets a blend of thought and feeling that he believed had been lost in the English poetry that followed it. He noted the way they used metaphors drawn from all spheres of life – science, theology, medicine, geography, philosophy, as well as the domestic and everyday – to respond to and understand the world.

between things that at first sight seem to have little or nothing in common.

Paradoxes A paradox is a statement that on the surface seems to be a contradiction but turns out, on closer examination, to have a valid meaning that goes beyond the bounds of common sense and logic.

Themes

Another characteristic of metaphysical poetry is wit. Being witty is not a matter of being humorous but of being inventive, bold and surprising in thought. Donne is consistently witty, even in his serious poems. His quick wit finds an outlet in outrageous arguments, paradoxes and puns, as well as conceits.

Love

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Donne is best known for his love poems, which were very unlike the conventional love poetry of his time. The Elizabethan love poet tended to idealise the beloved, presenting her as a paragon of beauty and virtue to be thought of and spoken about with reverence. Donne introduced a new tone into English love poetry. His poems can be impudent and insolent, sceptical and mocking, cynical and flippant. They are seldom idealistic or reverential but can be tender. His speakers address women as people who can respond to witty arguments and who might enjoy elaborate fooling or outrageous paradoxes. The poet and critic John Dryden declared that Donne ‘perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love’. This comment suggests that Donne had a higher opinion of the intellectual capacities of women than Dryden did. It also indicates that these two great poets held widely differing views on the nature of love poetry. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 57

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Death

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Donne was obsessed by death and appalled by the prospect of his body’s decay. He often dwelt, as in the Holy Sonnet ‘At the round earths imagin’d corners’, on the fate of those who would still be alive at the time of the Last Judgement, and who would therefore be spared the horrors of physical death. According to Izaak Walton, after Donne had preached his final sermon, he prepared himself for death by dressing in his shroud and standing on a plank placed on a wooden urn. He then had an artist make a drawing of him in this awkward position and hung the picture by his bed to remind him of what the future held. The memorial to him in St Paul’s Cathedral in London is based on this image.

Death haunts Donne’s love poetry. Both ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ and ‘Sweetest love’ play on the comparison between parting and death. Donne often wants love to be an escape from death and time. In ‘The Anniversarie’, for example, the couple’s love is set against the passing of time and the certainty of death, and Donne finds a way to argue that their love can transcend death.

If heaven and hell are never far away in the love poems, the Holy Sonnets are overwhelmed by their presence. The prospect of death is more immediate in these poems as Donne’s mind concentrated on the eternal fate of his soul. Consequently, the fear of death is accompanied by the profound and agonised consciousness of sin, and the knowledge that, to escape hell and eternal damnation, his sins need to be forgiven. Again and again, he calls on God to save him – to draw him up to heaven, even though the weight of sin and guilt, personified by the devil, is pulling him down towards hell.

The shifting universe

Donne’s poetry is full of unexpected conjunctions, paradoxes, opposites reconciled, apparent impossibilities, shifts in scale, and logic turned on its head. It often seems as if he delights in creating an unstable universe, where what we thought we knew is challenged, and what we thought was solid and certain is dissolved and reconstructed.

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The conceit (see ‘Metaphysical poetry’ above) is the primary tool Donne uses to destabilise and reimagine the world. In a conceit, very different things are joined together in ways that can be disconcerting but also satisfying. Pushed to its limits, this can become the joining of opposites, such as the ‘sweet salt teares’ in ‘The Anniversarie’ or the thoughts that ‘make dreames truths; and fables histories’ in ‘The Dreame’. Paradox is the most concise way of forcing apparently opposing concepts together to produce a new meaning. The sonnet ‘Batter my heart’ is built around a series of powerful and daring paradoxes, but this paradoxical way of thinking is found throughout Donne’s poetry. In ‘The Sunne Rising’, for example, the idea

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John Donne of the sun blinding someone with its bright light is reversed and the possibility raised that a lover’s eyes may have blinded the sun. In fact, the whole poem turns expectations upside down, so that the sun is treated as an old busybody and the lovers as princes.

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Donne likes to change the reader’s perspective by playing with scale. In ‘The Sunne Rising’, a bedroom becomes the whole world and the sun’s orbit is contained within it: ‘This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare’. In ‘The Flea’, by contrast, the tiny insect is given such close and imaginative attention that everything appears to depend upon it: it is ‘Our mariage bed, and mariage temple’; to kill it would be murder, suicide and sacrilege.

The abrupt change of direction at the end of ‘The Flea’ is also typical of Donne. With the flea now killed, the speaker reverses his argument and points to the flea’s insignificance. All his preceding logic is discarded and a new contention proposed. Such reversals happen again and again in Donne’s poems. Logic is there to be used and abused as the situation – or the poem – requires. The end of a poem frequently contradicts or ignores the argument of its beginning. It is another way in which the world of Donne’s poems is so often changing or inverting.

It is possible that this sense of a shifting universe tells us something significant about the man who wrote the poems. The rejection of the Catholicism that underpinned his upbringing, not to mention the thwarted ambition of a hugely talented man that left him for several years scrabbling for a living and having to flatter wealthy patrons to keep his family in reasonable comfort, may have made it seem to Donne as though the world was an unstable place. If you would like to read more about Donne’s life to see what you think, perhaps look in a library for the biographies of Donne by John Carey and John Stubbs.

A note on the text

The text of Donne’s poems in this book is based on the version edited by Herbert Grierson and published in 1912. Grierson’s edition uses the spelling and punctuation of the early printed and manuscript versions of Donne’s poems, which can give us useful information about issues such as the intended pronunciation of words. For example, the parallel spellings of ‘finde’, ‘winde’ and ‘minde’ in the first stanza of ‘Goe, and catche a falling starre’ indicate clearly that ‘winde’ was a full rhyme for the other two words, pronounced with a long ‘i’ vowel (as it is indeed in W. B. Yeats’s poems). In the same poem, the commas in the final line are interesting: ‘False, ere I come, to two, or three.’ The comma after ‘two’ subtly alters the tone of the line.

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In reading the poems you will find some apostrophes that may seem odd. These are signals to the reader, indicating how words need to be pronounced to suit the rhythm of the poem. In the song ‘Sweetest love’, for example, the apostrophes in ‘fain’d’, ‘o’er’, ‘weep’st’, etc. tell us that a letter has been omitted and the word should be pronounced as one syllable rather than two. Sometimes an apostrophe is placed between two words, as in ‘to’advance’, to tell us to slur the two adjoining vowels together so that they are pronounced almost as one syllable. This can feel natural, as in ‘we’are’ in ‘The Anniversarie’, which is the equivalent of ‘we’re’ in modern written English. At other times it can feel awkward, suggesting the force of the emotion straining against the formal constraints of the poem, as it often is in the Holy Sonnets. For comparison, modern-spelling versions of Donne’s poems can be found at: www.poetryfoundation.org/ poets/john-donne.

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Timeline

1572 Born in London, son of a rich merchant

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1584–94 Studies languages, law and theology at Oxford, Cambridge and Lincoln’s Inn 1594–7 Leaves the Catholic Church

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1596–7 Takes part in naval expeditions against the Spanish 1597 Appointed secretary to the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton

1601 Becomes a member of parliament

1602–14 Makes a meagre living with the help of wealthy patrons

1610

1609–10 Spiritual crisis: writes most of the Holy Sonnets

1601 Secretly marries Ann More, and is dismissed

Publishes the anti-Catholic prose work Pseudo-Martyr

1615 Becomes a clergyman of the Church of England

1615–31 Becomes a famous preacher, and a chaplain to the king

1617 His wife dies

1619–20 Travels in Germany as a chaplain

1621 Appointed Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral

1631 Having preached his own funeral sermon, dies in London

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1633 First collected edition of his poems published

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John Donne Before you read

What sort of poem do you ro r upwo anticipate from seeing the title ‘The Sunne Rising’? With a partner, make a list of the things you expect to read about. Now read the poem and compare it to your list.

Glossary

Thy beames, so reverend, and strong Why shouldst thou thinke? I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke, But that I would not lose her sight so long: If her eyes have not blinded thine, Looke, and to morrow late, tell mee, Whether both the’India’s of spice and Myne Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee. Aske for those Kings whom thou saw’st yesterday, And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.

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She’is all States, and all Princes, I, Nothing else is. Princes doe but play us; compar’d to this, All honor’s mimique; All wealth alchimie. Thou sunne art halfe as happy’as wee, In that the world’s contracted thus; Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee To warme the world, that’s done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art every where; This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.

Busie old foole, unruly Sunne, Why dost thou thus, Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run? Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide Late schoole boyes and sowre prentices, Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride, Call countrey ants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clyme, Nor houres, dayes, moneths, which are the rags of time.

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The Sunne Rising

unruly: disorderly

Sawcy: (saucy), rude

pedantique: (pedantic), insisting too much on rules and timetables

sowre prentices: (sour apprentices), bad-tempered young workers

offices: duties

clyme: climate

reverend: holy; impressive

the’India’s … Myne: the East Indies, famous for their spices, and the West Indies, famous for gold mines

mimique: (mimic), artificial

alchimie: (alchemy), here, false gold

contracted: shrunk (to the size of a room) and also joined in a contract (between the lovers)

spheare: (sphere), the sun’s orbit

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Guidelines

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This love poem stands conventions on their head. The setting is that of a traditional aubade – a poem at dawn where the lovers have to face the prospect of parting now that their night together is over, like Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare’s play. Here, however, the rising sun is happily dismissed: these lovers are going nowhere. Also contrary to convention, the poem is addressed not to the lover or mistress but to the sun, who is pictured as a fussy, interfering old man.

As with all Donne’s love lyrics in this selection, we do not know exactly when this poem was written. It is tempting to think of it as a product of Donne’s wayward youth, but the reference to the king going hunting suggests it was written during the reign of James I, a keen huntsman, which began in 1603. Donne was married by then, so it may be apt to think of this poem as being for and about his wife, Ann. The fact that this period in Donne’s life was a difficult one, when his worldly ambitions had been thwarted, makes the speaker’s rejection of the busy world outside their bedroom and his vision of himself as ‘all Princes’ especially poignant.

Commentary

Stanza 1

As so often with Donne, the poem’s opening is surprising, arresting, and brings a delightful thrill of irreverence. The sun is given none of the respect we might expect. It is lightly and contemptuously dismissed as a ‘Busie old foole’ and a ‘Sawcy pedantique wretch’ for attempting to disturb the lovers. It is told to go away and to bother those people who have to get up early instead, such as schoolboys, farm workers (‘countrey ants’) and the huntsmen who accompany the king when he goes out riding in the morning. Love is above all those activities. It does not have to obey ordinary rules or concern itself with fragments of time. Love is constant everywhere (‘all alike’) and is indifferent to the time of day or year – or even the weather.

Stanza 2

Donne’s cosmology

In this poem, Donne makes use of the old

cosmology (theory of the universe) of Ptolemy, dating back to the second century CE. It saw the Earth as the centre of the universe,

and imagined the sun, moon, planets and stars as attached to transparent, concentric spheres moving around the Earth. However, Copernicus’s theory of a heliocentric (sun-

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centred) universe was more than fifty years old when Donne was writing, and other poems show that he was aware of it. It would seem that he used whichever cosmology suited the

The speaker continues to treat the sun as a pompous old man, asking why it believes its beams are ‘so reverend, and strong’ when he could ‘eclipse’ them ‘with a winke’ – except that shutting his eyes for a brief moment would mean losing sight of his beloved for too long. The thought of eyes and seeing gives him a fresh idea: his lover‘s eyes are so beautiful that they could blind the sun. He instructs the sun to check the next time it passes whether the East Indies and the West Indies, with their riches of spices and gold, and the ‘Kings whom thou saw’st yesterday’, are still there, or are they now ‘here’ in his bed?

argument in the poem he was writing.

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John Donne Stanza 3

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The start of the third stanza explains the last rather enigmatic question with an extraordinary and extravagant claim: all the world is here in the lovers’ bed because ‘She’is all States, and all Princes, I’. He expresses the feeling of content absorption of happy lovers in the simplest but most extreme terms: ‘Nothing else is’. This simple statement is perhaps the emotional heart of the poem. He then elaborates on his claim: compared with their love, everything else is imitation (‘mimique’); princes pretend to be (‘play’) them, but they are the real thing. More than that, the sun can be only ‘halfe as happy’as wee’, presumably because there are two of them and the sun is on its own.

Themes and imagery

Finally, apparently taking pity on the poor old sun (‘Thine age askes ease’), the speaker says that since he and his lover are all the world, all the sun needs to do is shine on them and its job (‘duties’) will be done. Instead of shooing the sun away, the speaker is now inviting the sun in, making the lovers’ bedroom the whole world: ‘This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare’. It is as if the sun belongs to them.

Although the poem takes the form of an argument (albeit a one-sided one) with the sun, there is no doubting that it is a love poem. What is at stake in the argument is the status of love and the lovers. The speaker sets out to prove that love rises above the petty concerns of everyday life, and that the lovers therefore are better than royalty in their private world, where ‘Nothing else is’ (line 22).

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The sun is the central image of the poem, but it is worth noticing that the sun is not used primarily as a visual image. Although the second stanza plays with the imagery of eyesight, in the idea of the speaker eclipsing the sun by shutting his eyes and of the lover blinding the sun with the beauty of her eyes, we do not hear of the sun’s beauty or radiance or splendour, except to dismiss them. Instead, it is the sun’s functions that are significant – its ‘motions’ (line 4) around the Earth, its ‘duties’ (line 27) in warming the Earth. The sun is personified as a fussy old man – ‘Busie old foole’ (line 1) – while paradoxically by the end of the poem the lovers and their bedroom are treated as a heavenly body, a planet around which the sun orbits. Another area of imagery that colours the poem is to do with power and royalty. We hear in stanza 1 about the king going hunting and in stanza 2 about the kings the sun sees as it orbits the Earth. The third stanza starts with the bold declaration: ‘She’is all States, and all Princes, I’ (line 21). This imagery is used to increase the status of the lovers by comparing them to royalty. The comparison is all to the lovers’ advantage: ‘Princes doe but play us’ (line 23).

Alchemy Alchemy is an ancient branch of learning, halfscience and half-magic, and often associated with astrology. One of its main aims was to turn base metals, such as lead or copper, into silver or gold. Although many took alchemy seriously, alchemists were widely seen as frauds, which is what Donne’s reference to ‘alchimie’ in line 24 implies.

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The high-handed treatment of the sun, so often regarded as a god or god-like, sets the irreverent, playful tone for the poem. There is joyful outrageousness to the speaker’s argument, all the more delightful because it is always shifting its ground and is not consistent. But there is also real emotion there in the simple assertions of love’s power – ‘Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clyme’ (line 9) – and in the relish with which the poet celebrates it. Many readers see this as Donne’s most joyous love poem. Some, however, point to the imagery of kings and princes as indicating the concerns of a young man whose worldly ambitions had been thwarted. As the critic John Carey puts it, ‘If lovers can be supreme only by being called kings, then kings are still supreme. The private world is valued only as it apes the public.’ In your reading of the poem, do you sense an insecurity lurking beneath the bravado?

Form and language

‘The Sunne Rising’ is written in ten-line stanzas of varying line lengths but with a regular rhyming pattern: abbacdcdee. The tight rhymes give a sense of structure to the argument of the poem, and the couplet at the end of each stanza provides a neat conclusion, as if clinching the argument.

The language is informal and colloquial. There is a strong sense of living speech, reinforced by the free way Donne treats the basically iambic metre. A feel for the natural, irregular rhythms of speech is more important than harmonious smoothness. Notice, for example, the way he grabs the reader’s attention in the first line with the strong stress and bold consonant of the first syllable: ‘Búsie old fóole’. Elsewhere in the poem, the plain language and strong initial stress give a powerful emotional sincerity to the boldest statement of the lovers’ self-sufficiency: ‘Nothing else is’ (line 22).

Questions

Describe the speaker’s attitude to the sun in the first stanza.

In your own words, what is the speaker saying in the first stanza?

How (if at all) does the speaker’s attitude to the sun change in the second stanza?

What, in your own words, is the speaker’s argument in lines 11–13?

Why, in your opinion, does the speaker refer to the woman as ‘all States’ and himself as ‘all Princes’ (line 21)?

‘Nothing else is’ (line 22). What impression is created by this statement?

How (if at all) does the speaker’s attitude to the sun change in the third stanza?

Describe the mood of this poem.

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Comment on Donne’s use of questions in this poem.

What (if anything) do we learn about the woman in the poem?

One critic commented of this poem, ‘It has the instability of a living thing.’ Give your response to this comment.

Although the poem is addressed to the sun, who, do you think, did Donne really write it for? The woman? A group of friends? Himself? Give reasons for your answer.

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John Donne Before you read

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This poem mentions a ro r upwo mandrake. Do you know what that is, and why so many myths grew up around them? Share any information you have, and then do some research to find out more about the mandrake.

pa om 10

If thou beest borne to strange sights, Things invisible to see, Ride ten thousand daies and nights, Till age snow white haires on thee, Thou, when thou retorn’st, wilt tell mee All strange wonders that befell thee, And sweare No where Lives a woman true, and faire.

Goe, and catche a falling starre, Get with child a mandrake roote, Tell me, where all past yeares are, Or who cleft the Divels foot, Teach me to heare Mermaides singing, Or to keep off envies stinging, And finde What winde Serves to advance an honest minde.

Song: Goe, and catche a falling starre

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If thou findst one, let mee know, Such a Pilgrimage were sweet; Yet doe not, I would not goe, Though at next doore wee might meet, Though shee were true, when you met her, And last, till you write your letter, Yet shee Will bee False, ere I come, to two, or three.

Glossary 2

mandrake: plant with forked roots thought to resemble a human body

cleft: split in two (the devil was often depicted as having cloven hoofs)

retorn’st: return

true, and faire: faithful and beautiful

Pilgrimage: journey to a holy place, such as a saint’s shrine

False: unfaithful

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Guidelines

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Although we have no firm evidence for dating this poem, it is generally assumed that it belongs to the 1590s, when Donne was an ambitious young man in London. This poem gives a new slant to a conventional theme or cliché: the idea that it is impossible to find a woman who is both beautiful and faithful.

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Commentary Stanza 1

The poem starts abruptly with the first of a series of terse instructions: ‘Goe, and catche … Get … Tell … Teach … finde’. Catching a falling (shooting) star, getting a plant pregnant and the rest of these tasks are, of course, impossible. The final two impossibilities are worth highlighting: envy is a notoriously unavoidable emotion, and together with the bitter notion that honest people never succeed (‘advance’), may point to a deeper feeling underlying the offhand cynicism of the poem.

Stanza 2

The second stanza gets to the point. The speaker presents the final impossibility, apparently even more unlikely than any of the impossible tasks that have gone before. If you can see invisible things – and, by implication, accomplish all these impossible tasks – then ride out on a quest for ‘ten thousand daies and nights’ (which would be more than twenty-seven years), until you are old. When you come back you can report all the ‘strange wonders’ you encountered and confirm that ‘No where / Lives a woman true, and faire’.

Woodblock illustration of a female and male mandrake, 1491. Mandrake

Stanza 3

The speaker briefly seems to admit another possibility – ‘If thou findst one, let mee know’ – and the thought of going on a ‘sweet’ was often thought to look like a human body. pilgrimage to see her brings a little tenderness to the poem. Mandrakes were believed to have magical Perhaps there is even the possibility of real spiritual yearning qualities, although not the capacity to become pregnant (‘with childe’). They were said to grow behind the cynical mask; the idea of a pilgrimage to a holy under gallows where people were hanged, and shrine would have been a very real and important one in Donne’s to scream when they were pulled up. Donne Catholic boyhood. But he immediately reverses his stance. There often mentions mandrakes in his poems. would be no point even going next door to find her, he says, as by the time he got there she would have been unfaithful ‘to two, or three’. It is a sour, downbeat end to the poem.

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The mandrake is a plant with a forked root that

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John Donne

Theme and tone

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The poem’s primary theme – a critique of women’s constancy – provokes different reactions among readers. Some commentators – and many modern readers – have been disappointed by its misogyny, particularly in its downbeat, cynical ending. Others have pointed to the essential playfulness in the way the poem treats a well-worn subject. To some extent, it is a question of tone – how it says what it says. The poem lays no claim to serious argument and can be read as a bit of light-hearted banter. It is not addressed to a particular person, but the ‘thou’ in the poem is presumably male and young (his hair is not yet grey), like the speaker. You might imagine it being spoken to a friend in the pub. It is ‘Mermaides’ a piece of bravado, exuberant with images from the speaker’s As well as mermaids as we now think of rich imagination. Is he merely striking an attitude, showing off his them, Donne may have had in mind the Sirens cynicism and having a bit of fun? Or is the poem fuelled by an of Greek mythology, half-human female emotional scar that the cynicism masks and protects? creatures whose songs lured sailors to their

deaths. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus has himself tied to his ship’s mast and the ears of all the sailors plugged with wax so that he can listen to the Sirens’ song without being lured

The poem has also been read as making fun of the admired ‘Petrarchan’ poetry that was being published in England in the 1590s – poems by Sidney and Spenser in particular. An idealised, beautiful, distant but virtuous woman is central to such poems, so Donne may be making fun of those poets and their old-fashioned ideals (their model, Petrarch, was a fourteenth-century Italian poet).

regarded as unlucky omens and stories about them may have been influenced by the Sirens.

Imagery

by them. In British folklore, mermaids are

The imagery of the poem does not involve the sort of daring metaphysical conceit for which Donne’s poetry is known, but it does have a great deal of variety. The first stanza relishes in playing with all sorts of unlikelihoods and impossibilities drawn from astronomy, botany, theology, myth and philosophy. Stanzas 2 and 3 are united by the image of a quest to find ‘strange wonders’ (line 15) and the pilgrimage to the holy shrine that might come of it.

A vivid and delicate metaphor in line 13 describes growing old in terms of white hairs falling like snow: ‘Till age snow white haires on thee’.

Form and language

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Although this poem is called ‘Song’, its rhythms are abrupt and hard-edged; it is not obviously musical, and it is not in fact an easy poem to set to music. The language is colloquial, everyday speech, with a strong sense of a person speaking. It has been said that it sounds like ‘a man talking excitedly’. This is particularly true of the first stanza, with its list of instructions and a strong stress falling on the first and last syllable of most lines.

The poem’s metre The somewhat insistent rhythm of this poem owes much to the fact that the first four lines of each stanza tend to have seven syllables, with stresses on the first, third, fifth and last syllable – although some variation ensures that this does not become monotonous. The first line is a good example: ‘Góe, ănd cátche ă fállĭng stárre’. This can be analysed in terms of traditional metrics as three trochees (dumdi or ´ ˘ ) followed by a final stressed syllable.

Musical or not, the verse form gives each stanza – and so the poem as a whole – a distinct rhythmic shape. Each stanza is nine

The fifth and sixth lines of each stanza have an extra unstressed syllable at the end.

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lines long, with the rhyme scheme ababccddd. The short seventh and eighth lines, with their long rhyming vowels (‘finde’ and ‘winde’; ‘sweare’ and ‘where’; ‘shee’ and ‘bee’) slow down the headlong pace of the first six lines, and together with the third rhyme in the ninth line they give an emphatic, conclusive but rather downbeat ending to each stanza.

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Exam-Style Questions

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Understanding the poem

Stanza 1 presents a series of apparent impossibilities. How do those mentioned in the last four lines differ from those in the first five?

How do the first two lines of stanza 2 relate to what is said in stanza 1?

What ‘strange wonder’ does the speaker say his friend will not find on his quest?

What is the significance of the reference to ‘a Pilgrimage’ in line 20?

Thinking about the poem

In your opinion, does the speaker really believe the argument he is advancing in this poem?

What is the mood of this poem? In your opinion, is the speaker being, for example, cynical, sad, pessimistic, light-hearted or satirical? Or might he be serious?

What does the poem suggest about the person to whom it is addressed?

‘Yet shee / Will bee / False, ere I come, to two, or three’ (lines 25–27). How do these final lines affect your reading of the poem?

Comment on the language used in this poem, giving examples.

Imagine you are a woman living next door to the speaker. Write a letter to him, setting out what you like or dislike about this poem.

Imagining

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With a partner, decide how you would stage this poem. What sort of people are the speaker and the listener? Where are they? How are they feeling? Take it in turns to play the speaker and listener. Perhaps you could improvise the listener’s response to the speaker’s words.

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■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT A witty, playful exercise Speaker showing off his ingenuity Cynical view of the world Cynical view of women in particular Intricate and distinctive form Strong sense of the speaking voice

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John Donne Before you read

What does the title ‘The ro r upwo Anniversarie’ suggest about the kind of poem it will be? What sort of anniversary? What mood do you expect the poem to have? Discuss the possibilities in pairs.

All Kings, and all their favorites, All glory of honors, beauties, wits, The Sun it selfe, which makes times, as they passe, Is elder by a yeare, now, than it was When thou and I first one another saw: All other things, to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay; This, no to morrow hath, nor yesterday, Running it never runs from us away, But truly keepes his first, last, everlasting day.

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The Anniversarie

Two graves must hide thine and my coarse, If one might, death were no divorce. Alas, as well as other Princes, wee, (Who Prince enough in one another bee,) Must leave at last in death, these eyes and eares, Oft fed with true oathes, and with sweet salt teares; But soules where nothing dwells but love (All other thoughts being inmates) then shall prove This, or a love increased there above, When bodies to their graves, soules from their graves remove.

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And then wee shall be throughly blest, But wee no more, than all the rest; Here upon earth, we’are Kings, and none but wee Can be such Kings, nor of such subjects bee; Who is so safe as wee? where none can doe Treason to us, except one of us two. True and false feares let us refraine, Let us love nobly, and live, and adde againe Yeares and yeares unto yeares, till we attaine To write threescore: this is the second of our raigne.

Glossary 3

times: the divisions of time (days, years, etc.)

draw: approach

coarse: corpse

were: would be

divorce: separation

inmates: lodgers; temporary residents

prove: confirm through experience

This: the love they now enjoy

there above: in heaven

soules … remove: souls leave their graves (i.e. the body)

throughly: thoroughly; absolutely

nor … bee: nor can we be subjects of such kings (as ourselves)

refraine: refuse to give way to; avoid

threescore: sixty

second: beginning of the second year

raigne: reign (as kings of each other)

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Guidelines

Stanza 1

Commentary

This poem takes the form of an anniversary gift to the speaker’s beloved, marking one year since they first met. One year is a modest enough anniversary, but what Donne makes of the occasion is far from modest. As in ‘The Sunne Rising’, Donne uses the imagery of kings and princes to insist on the supreme value of the love the couple share.

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The poem opens by evoking worldly majesty – kings and their ‘favorites’ (favoured friends), and the glory that comes from possessing honour, beauty or wit. It then moves on to celestial majesty, ‘The Sun it selfe’. But far from celebrating all this majesty, lines 4–6 make it clear that it is all transient and doomed. The first anniversary of the lovers’ first meeting brings the thought that all these glories are ‘elder by a yeare, now’. Everything in the universe is heading towards its ‘destruction’ except their love, which ‘hath no decay’ and is depicted as being above time: ‘This, no to morrow hath, nor yesterday’. Their love exists in an eternal present, as the strong stresses and long vowels of the stanza’s end declare: a ‘first, last, everlasting day’.

Stanza 2

The second stanza complicates and to some extent undermines the apparent triumphant and transcendent certainty of stanza 1. It contemplates the bodily death that the lovers, like everyone else (even princes), must eventually undergo. This involves two sorts of separation: the lovers from each other and their souls from their

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John Donne

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bodies. Line 12 can be read with both sorts of ‘divorce’ in mind, but what the speaker is contemplating is the certainty of a separation. Like ‘other Princes’, the lovers, who are themselves princes of each other – both rulers and territories – must be separated from their bodies and the senses that exist only in them: ‘these eyes and eares’. The last four lines of the stanza, however, insist that their souls will be freed from the ‘graves’ of their bodies and that their love, because it is so pure, will continue to grow in heaven.

Stanza 3

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The speaker is not satisfied with this vision of a blissful afterlife. The lovers may be absolutely blessed but ‘no more, than all the rest’ of the souls in heaven, all of whom will be equally happy. In contrast, here on Earth they are supreme kings. Their earthly love makes them stronger and more glorious than all the world. Death threatens their supremacy rather than their happiness, and the speaker uses this fact to argue for enjoying what they have now, refusing to be afraid, loving ‘nobly’ for as long as possible – perhaps sixty (‘threescore’) years. This is a quite different and more modest wish than the bold assertions of the opening stanza. Instead of claiming timelessness, the speaker settles for time to live. The closing declaration that they are just starting the second year of their reign, while still laying claim to kingship, suggests a vulnerability that is touching and very human.

Themes and imagery

‘The Anniversarie’ proclaims the triumph of love and, like ‘The Sunne Rising’, it uses the earthly power of royalty as its organising metaphor. This theme is announced in the mention of ‘Kings’ in the first line and runs throughout the poem. The speaker measures himself and his beloved against royalty and portrays the couple as kings and princes. The final word of the poem extends this metaphor: as the lovers became kings at their first meeting, this anniversary initiates the second year of their ‘raigne’ (line 30). As always with Donne, the thoughts are dynamic: the speaker’s argument shifts its ground in the course of the poem. He is not arguing from a fixed, assured position but following his ideas and impulses, even when he appears to be making a logical argument.

It is instructive to compare the mood of this poem with that of ‘The Sunne Rising’. ‘The Anniversarie’ lacks the confident bravado of that poem, and it is noticeable how the metaphor of royalty contains its own inherent vulnerabilities. The mere mention of ‘Treason’ (line 26) raises the possibility even as it dismisses it: might one of them betray the other? There are true fears as well as false ones (see line 27). And the slight tentativeness of the ending is reinforced by its awkward rhythm, where ‘this is the second of our raigne’ lacks the iambic pulse of the rest of the poem.

Th e

As well as its central metaphor of kings and princes, there are other incidental conceits, such as the soul being a house where love lives and where ‘other thoughts’ are merely lodgers or ‘inmates’ (lines 17–18).

Form and language ‘The Anniversarie’ is written in ten-line stanzas rhyming aabbccdddd. The metre is iambic (di-dum), with lines of eight or ten syllables until the longer final line of each stanza. The four rhyming lines that end each stanza, together with the additional weight of the final line, give each stanza a strong sense of conclusion, particularly with the multiple stressed syllables at the end of the first stanza. This is part of the rhetorical structure of the

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poem. Even while talking passionately of the most personal things, the poem is presented as an argument. The speaker is proving a point, using (or abusing) logic and wit in order to do so, and the poem’s form reinforces the sense of an argument being clinched.

Ire

la n

Word play, especially paradox, is used as part of the witty argument. For example, line 3 states that the sun does not just mark time but actually ‘makes times’ in doing so. In line 9, the idea that their love is flowing but not changing hinges on Donne’s play on the verb ‘run’: their love is ‘Running’ but ‘never runs from us away’. In line 16, the tears that the lovers will no longer be able to shed are described as both ‘sweet’ and its opposite, ‘salt’. And line 20 plays with the different sense of ‘graves’ as, literally, a body’s final resting place and, metaphorically, the body itself as the burial place of a soul.

As ever with Donne, there is a great deal of variety in the metre – a strong sense of an impassioned voice is more important to him than smoothness and harmony. Donne uses enjambment to suggest the urgency of what is being said, notably in ‘shall prove / This’ (lines 18–19) and ‘where none can doe / Treason to us’ (lines 25–26); in both cases, the stress on the first syllable of the second line reinforces the sense of urgency. There are other particular rhythmic effects worth noting. The multiple stresses of line 10 have already been mentioned, but you might also notice the three stressed monosyllables of ‘sweet salt teares’ (line 16), and the repetition of the long vowel in ‘Yeares and yeares unto yeares’, which slows down the verse in line 29 and suggests the length of the years passing.

Questions

What, in your own words, is the speaker saying in lines 1–5? What does it have to do with the title of the poem?

In your own words, explain the poet’s meaning in line 9: ‘Running it never runs from us away’.

Explain in your own words what is meant by line 14: ‘Who Prince enough in one another bee’.

Why are the tears in line 16 both ‘salt’ and ‘sweet’? Do you think these adjectives are well chosen?

Why is the speaker not content with the notion that the lovers will be ‘throughly blest’ (line 21) in heaven?

‘Who is so safe as wee?’ (line 25). According to the speaker, why are the lovers safe?

What impression is left by the final line of the poem?

Is there evidence in the poem that the speaker does not really believe what he says at the beginning: that the love he is celebrating is independent of time? Does his attitude to this change in the poem?

Th e

Compare ‘The Anniversarie’ with ‘The Sunne Rising’. What are the similarities and the differences in theme, imagery and mood?

What impression do you get of the speaker in ‘The Anniversarie’?

Imagine you received this poem as a first anniversary gift. Write a letter (or a poem) expressing your response to it.

How would it feel to be a king or a queen? Imagine you were Elizabeth I or James I, the monarchs who reigned for most of Donne’s life. Describe the best thing about being a monarch.

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Song: Sweetest love, I do not goe

la n

Glossary

fitter: more suitable

use … jest: mock myself; act playfully

fain’d: pretend

hence: away from here

way: journey

feare not mee: do not worry about me

wings and spurres: reference to Helios, Greek god of the sun, who drove a chariot pulled by winged horses

recall: bring back

chance: luck; fortune

art: skill

divining: foreseeing (the worst)

Forethinke: predict

ill: misfortune

Th e ©

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When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not winde, But sigh’st my soule away, When thou weep’st, unkindly kinde, My lifes blood doth decay. It cannot bee That thou lov’st mee, as thou say’st, If in thine my life thou waste, That art the best of mee. Let not thy divining heart Forethinke me any ill, Destiny may take thy part, And may thy feares fulfill; But thinke that wee Are but turn’d aside to sleepe; They who one another keepe Alive, ne’r parted bee.

Ire

Yesternight the Sunne went hence, And yet is here to day, He hath no desire nor sense, Nor halfe so short a way: Then feare not mee, But believe that I shall make Speedier journeyes, since I take More wings and spurres than hee. O how feeble is mans power, That if good fortune fall, Cannot adde another houre, Nor a lost houre recall! But come bad chance, And wee joyne to’it our strength, And wee teach it art and length, It selfe o’er us to’advance.

Find a copy of Donne’s poems or a list of them on the internet. See how many have the word ‘valediction’ in their title. What is a valediction? Look it up if you cannot find someone who knows.

Sweetest love, I do not goe, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter Love for mee; But since that I Must dye at last, ’tis best, To use my selfe in jest Thus by fain’d deaths to dye;

Before you read

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Guidelines

la n

Although it does not have ‘valediction’ in the title, this is a valedictory poem – a poem written to say farewell. Donne was drawn to this traditional subject and wrote several poems about lovers parting, usually, as here, because the speaker has a journey to go on that will take him away for a while.

Ire

Commentary Stanza 1

The first lines bring us straight into the dramatic situation: the speaker is saying farewell to his beloved, and she is not happy about him going. His first attempts at reassurance are familiar ones: he is not tired of her; he is not looking for anyone else. What he says in the second half of the stanza is more surprising: since death will eventually part the pair forever, this is a good opportunity for them to practise being apart through the ‘fain’d deaths’ of separation. Is he being serious here, do you think, or is he teasing her?

Stanza 2

The second stanza shifts to firmer ground, using an extended analogy with the sun as reassurance. Since the sun returns every day unthinkingly (‘He hath no desire nor sense’), even though it undertakes a much longer journey, then she has no need to worry about (‘feare’) him. He will come back quickly because he has much better reasons to return to her than the sun has.

Stanza 3

Th e

Now the speaker attempts to be philosophical. He observes that if you have good luck you cannot make it last (‘adde another houre’) or bring it back when it is gone (‘a lost houre recall’). But, being human, when bad luck comes we make it worse by the way we react to it; we ‘joyne to’it our strength’ and teach it to be clever and prolong its effect on us. Is the speaker, perhaps, getting a little frustrated at the woman’s distress?

Stanza 4

The lady is clearly sighing and weeping, and the speaker responds in terms that mix real tenderness with continued frustration and a gentle effort to get her to see how her response is affecting him. Her grief is hurting him: her sighs are sighing his soul away, her tears ‘decay’ his life’s blood. Though she is trying to be

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John Donne

‘kinde’, the effect on him is cruel (‘unkindly’). He confronts her with a thought designed to make her think about her behaviour: she is ruining his life by wasting hers, so can she really love him? These days, we might call this guilt-tripping, but there is a gentleness to what he says: it hurts so much because she is ‘the best of mee’.

la n

Stanza 5

Ire

Perhaps she is talking about what might happen while he is away, as he warns her not to imagine or predict any misfortune in case fate decides to fulfil her prophecy. If that was a way of shocking her out of her negative thoughts, the ending of the poem brings a different, very tender and loving approach. Instead of worrying, the speaker tells her, she should imagine that their time apart is just like sleeping in the same bed, facing away from each other (‘turn’d aside’) but still in essence together. His final statement is perhaps the simplest and most reassuring he has come up with: ‘They who one another keepe / Alive, ne’r parted bee’. In other words, they are too important to each other spiritually for their physical separation to matter.

Themes and imagery

As with many of Donne’s earlier poems, the main thrust of this poem is to affirm the transcendence of love: the lovers’ spiritual love will survive their physical separation. This affirmation is all the more poignant because it is haunted by death and threatened by disaster. The speaker’s journey and the lovers’ separation raise all sorts of fears that the speaker must quell. While there are some inventive images (such as the comparison with the sun in stanza 2 and the idea of sighing his soul away in stanza 4), there is none of the outrageous wit that we find in some of Donne’s other love poems. Instead, there is evident concern and tenderness, culminating in the image of the lovers turned aside in sleep in the final lines.

It is possible to read the poem as exploring love as holy and parting as a spiritual exercise. The idea that separation can be a pretend death to prepare the lovers for their final parting in actual death is raised in the poem’s first stanza, and although it is not mentioned again its influence is felt through the poem, especially in the fears of the woman’s ‘divining heart’ in the final stanza.

The preparation for dying The

preparation

for

death

actively

contemplating it has been an important spiritual exercise in many religions and cultures for thousands of years. It was an element of the Stoic philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome, which was familiar to Donne and his contemporaries through the writings of Seneca, the philosopher and playwright.

Th e

On the other hand, considering the dramatic situation in the Seneca advised people to rehearse their own poem, with the speaker trying all sorts of ways to reassure his deaths, and wrote: ‘A person who has learned distressed lover, should we see the comparison of parting to death how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.’ as an attempt to lighten the mood, albeit perhaps a misplaced one? Certainly, the reader is always conscious of the woman’s presence and her reactions.

It is also worth thinking about another presence – that of the first readers of Donne’s love poems. They must have been an audience who appreciated the wit and art in the poems, and who enjoyed the games Donne was playing as well as the emotions he was expressing. Although Donne does not seem to have been interested in publishing his love poems, and indeed was embarrassed by them in later life, we know that he did share them with friends.

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Form and language

la n

This poem is written in eight-line stanzas rhyming ababcddc. The metre is largely iambic, but the longer lines (1, 3, 6 and 7, except in stanza 1) have stressed first syllables, like those in ‘Goe, and catche a falling starre’. The shorter fifth lines act as a sort of pivot at the midpoint of each stanza, where the argument turns; three of the five begin with ‘But’.

Ire

The language is that of the speaking voice, plain but flexible and personal, full of ‘I’ and ‘my’, ‘thou’ and ‘thy’. But although the underlying emotion is plain, what is said takes the form of a series of arguments, which the rhyme scheme and verse form help to structure. There is little enjambment, apart from one very striking instance between the final two lines (‘keepe / Alive’), which throws a lot of emphasis onto ‘Alive’, and thus highlights one of the poem’s key dynamics: life and death, with love on the side of life.

Questions

Explain what the speaker is saying in lines 5–8. Is he being serious, do you think?

Why, according to the speaker in stanza 2, is he more likely to return than the sun?

According to the speaker in stanza 3, how do people react to ‘bad chance’ (line 21)?

Explain what the speaker means by calling his beloved ‘unkindly kinde’ (line 27).

Why does the speaker say ‘It cannot bee / That thou lov’st mee’ (lines 29–30)?

Describe the mood at the very end of the poem.

What do we learn about the unspeaking listener in the poem?

Describe the state of mind of the speaker. How does it change in the course of the poem?

Select your favourite image, line or phrase in the poem and say why you have chosen it.

What, do you think, is the point of this poem? Analyse the speaker’s arguments. Are they convincing?

Imagine you are the wife of the speaker. It is the day after his departure and you are recording your thoughts in your diary. Write a diary entry in which you respond to his advice.

Th e

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John Donne

The Dreame

Before you read G

This poem is called ‘The ro r upwo Dreame’. In pairs, discuss what you think a poem with this title might be about. What sort of dream? Then read the poem and see whether you can find any of the things you expected in it.

Glossary 3

theame: (theme), subject matter

reason: discussion; logic

phantasie: (fantasy), imagination

suffice: are enough

histories: true stories

a Tapers light: light from a candle

art: skill

Prophane: (profane), improper; heretical

doubt: fear; suspect

Perchance: perhaps

kindle: start a fire; arouse passion

Th e

la n

Coming and staying show’d thee, thee, But rising makes me doubt, that now, Thou art not thou. That love is weake, where feare’s as strong as hee; ’Tis not all spirit, pure, and brave, If mixture it of Feare, Shame, Honor, have. Perchance as torches which must ready bee, Men light and put out, so thou deal’st with mee, Thou cam’st to kindle, goest to come; Then I Will dreame that hope againe, but else would die.

Ire

As lightning, or a Tapers light, Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak’d mee; Yet I thought thee (For thou lovest truth) an Angell, at first sight, But when I saw thou sawest my heart, And knew’st my thoughts, beyond an Angels art, When thou knew’st what I dreamt, when thou knew’st when Excesse of joy would wake me, and cam’st then, I must confess, it could not chuse but bee Prophane, to thinke thee any thing but thee.

Deare love, for nothing lesse than thee Would I have broke this happy dreame, It was a theame For reason, much too strong for phantasie, Therefore thou wakd’st me wisely; yet My Dreame thou brok’st not, but continued’st it, Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice, To make dreames truths; and fables histories; Enter these armes, for since thou thoughtst it best, Not to dreame all my dreame, let’s act the rest.

Guidelines

The setting for this poem – the poet’s beloved appearing to him while he is dreaming – goes back to classical times. In Donne’s poem, she is more than a vision. The speaker wakes to find her at his bedside and invites her to join him in enacting what he had been dreaming about.

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Commentary

la n

‘The Dreame’ is one of Donne’s most dense, most playful and most erotic poems. It is about a dream continued into waking life, and the poem itself seems caught up in a dream: elusive, changeable, sometimes confusing. The line-by-line meaning has to be dug out carefully.

Stanza 1

Ire

The first five lines present the dramatic situation: the speaker has been dreaming and he addresses the woman – his lover – who has woken him. It was a ‘happy dreame’, undoubtedly sexual, as the rest of the poem makes clear. It was a ‘theame / For reason, much too strong for phantasie’, suggesting that it was too powerful to be confined to the speaker’s imagination, so it was good – wise, even – that she woke him. Yet her presence, he says, was not breaking the dream but continuing it: in other words, he was dreaming about her. She is ‘so truth’ (so real and true) that thinking about her can make dreams come true by summoning her to his presence. He now invites her to join him (‘Enter these armes’) and help him make his dream a reality. Since she would not let him stay asleep to finish his dream, they can ‘act the rest’.

Stanza 2

The speaker continues to dwell on the apparent miraculous nature of the woman’s appearance. He says it was the light of her eyes, not any noise she made, that woke him, and he thought at first that she was an angel. But, he says, she is more marvellous than that: the fact that she came when she did proves that she knew his thoughts, a talent that is ‘beyond an Angels art’. There is a loving flattery in what he tells her: she knew what he was dreaming and exactly when ‘Excesse of joy would wake me’, and she arrived at just that moment, so it would be irreverent (‘Prophane’) to think her a mere angel. She is better than that: she is her human self.

Stanza 3

The first line of the third stanza reiterates what has been said in stanza 2: the speaker tells her that coming to him and staying to act out the dream ‘show’d thee, thee’ – that she was being herself. But something has happened: she has risen from the bed and left the room and the speaker says that he now suspects ‘Thou art not thou’. He is clearly frustrated and accuses her of being afraid or ashamed, showing that her ‘love is weake’, ‘not all spirit, pure, and brave’. But he reassures himself with the thought that she is only teasing him – that just as torches are lit and put out so that they will light more easily next time, she has simply gone away in order to come back and carry on: ‘Thou cam’st to kindle, goest to come’. So, he ‘Will dreame that hope againe’, presumably by going back to sleep in the hope that she will interrupt his dream in the same way as before. Or else he will die. But given that ‘die’ commonly had the secondary meaning of ‘orgasm’, perhaps another outcome is possible.

Th e

Themes and imagery The idea of the dream runs through the poem, and not just because it is central to the narrative element of the poem. The beloved is a dream woman in that his dream seems to summon her presence and also because she is idealised as ‘truth’ (line 7) and better than an angel because she can read the man’s thoughts. There is even a lingering doubt as to whether she is real or an illusion. Just as she appears almost miraculously, she disappears again without apparent reason. Dreaming and waking merge in the poem as they sometimes do in life when we are coming out of a vivid, involving dream. Things are fluid and confused: dreams and truths, woman and angel, even the identity of the lovers. He believes she saw his heart and knew his thoughts, and the wording of lines 9–10 implies that she even dreams his dream: ‘thou thoughtst it best, / Not to dreame all my dreame’.

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Ire

la n

The woman’s identity is in question throughout the poem. Is she real or in his imagination? Is she an angel or human? And in the third stanza, is she herself or not? These are all the speaker’s questions of course, and it is instructive to note how his attitude to her changes in the course of the poem. There is a sort of loving flattery in how he sees her for most of the poem, and some critics consider this one of Donne’s most tender poems. Other critics find an element of misogyny in his attitude to her: when she goes away and no longer plays her part in his fantasy, he says he fears ‘Thou art not thou’ (line 23), accusing her of falling short of pure love. Certainly, there is no simple, clear-cut answer to anything in this dream-saturated, shape-shifting poem; its playful eroticism teases the reader.

‘The Dreame’, for all its sensuality, deals in concepts – truth, dreams, fables, thoughts, knowledge, identity, fear, shame, honour – more than images. Nevertheless, the imagery of light, sight and fire runs through it: lightning, tapers and eyes in the second stanza, and the image of lighting a torch (with its phallic suggestion) in the third.

Form and language

‘The Dreame’ is written in ten-line stanzas rhyming abbaccddee. The metre is fundamentally iambic but never strictly so, always allowing for the natural variation that gives the sense of a person speaking. The language too, as ever with Donne, is rooted in natural speech and responsive to the shifting thoughts of the speaker. At the same time, it is full of doublings and paradoxes – even impossibilities – that reflect the unstable realities of the dream and identities within it. For example, the idea that the dream ‘was a theame / For reason, much too strong for phantasie’ (lines 3–4) turns the concepts of reason and imagination on their head: his dream was a rational one, apparently, not a fantasy. In a more compact way, phrases like ‘show’d thee, thee’ and ‘Thou art not thou’ (lines 21 and 23) or ‘goest to come’ (line 29) play with doubled or shifting meanings.

Questions

What does the speaker mean by ‘My Dreame thou brok’st not, but continued’st it’ (line 5)?

Why, in your own words, did the speaker think the woman was an angel when she woke him?

How would you describe the speaker’s state of mind in stanza 3 after the woman has gone?

‘To make dreames truths’ (line 8) is a key phrase in the poem. What is its significance? What is the relationship in the poem between dreams and truths (or reality)?

What exactly is happening in this poem? Can its details be interpreted in more than one way?

On the evidence in the poem, how would you say the speaker regards his ‘Deare love’ of line 1?

Donne is celebrated as a witty poet. How does this poem illustrate the nature of his wit?

Th e

Do you find ‘The Dreame’ a happy poem? Give reasons for your answer.

Comment on any aspect of the language of this poem that interests you.

Do you think that the person addressed in this poem is likely to be pleased by what the speaker is saying? Explain your answer.

Dreams are not easy to describe. Try keeping a dream diary for a few days and writing down what you remember of your dreams as soon as you wake up. Is it hard to find the words to describe what you remember?

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Before you read

Ire

la n

Donne is often described as a metaphysical poet, and ‘A Valediction: ro r upwo Forbidding Mourning’ is often cited as one of his most metaphysical poems. What do you understand by the term ‘metaphysical’? Discuss this as a class or in pairs. Then read the poem to see how it fits (or does not fit) into that category.

So let us melt, and make no noise, No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move, T’were prophanation of our joyes To tell the layetie our love.

As virtuous men passe mildly away, And whisper to their soules, to goe, Whilst some of their sad friends doe say, The breath goes now, and some say, no:

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Moving of th’earth brings harmes and feares, Men reckon what it did and meant, But trepidation of the spheares, Though greater farre, is innocent.

Th e

Dull sublunary lovers love (Whose soule is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love, so much refin’d, That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assurèd of the mind, Care lesse, eyes, lips, and hands to misse.

Our two soules therefore, which are one, Though I must goe, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.

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John Donne

Such wilt thou be to mee, who must Like th’other foot, obliquely runne; Thy firmnes makes my circle just And makes me end, where I begunne.

prophanation: (profanation), betrayal of something sacred

layetie: (laity), the ordinary, uneducated people, as opposed to the educated clergy (priests, etc.)

melt: disappear; separate from each other

reckon: judge; count the cost of

trepidation of the spheares: irregularity in the movement of the stars

sublunary: earthly (beneath the moon)

sense: the senses; sensuality

elemented: constituted (the elements of which it is made); formed

Inter-assurèd of the mind: trusting in each other’s minds

breach: separation

ayery: (airy), delicate; light

twin compasses: pair of compasses used for drawing circles

la n

And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth rome, It leanes, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home.

Glossary

Ire

If they be two, they are two so As stiffe twin compasses are two, Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the’other doe.

hearkens: listens; pays attention

obliquely: at an angle

firmnes: (firmness), constancy

just: true; perfect

Guidelines

Like the song ‘Sweetest love’, this is a valedictory poem, as its title tells us. According to Donne’s first biographer, Izaak Walton, this poem was written in 1611 when Donne was about to set off on a journey to Europe with his patron, Sir Robert Drury. According to that story, Donne’s wife, Ann, was upset at the thought of his going and Donne gave her this poem to console and reassure her. However, recent scholars have doubted Walton’s account and suggested that the poem may be from around 1600, when his relationship with Ann More was a secret and their future together uncertain.

Commentary

Th e

This is one of Donne’s best-known and best-loved poems. It uses a variety of analogies, or conceits, drawn from science and technology, to construct a lucid and tender argument that the couple’s love is stronger than any temporary separation, and so there is no reason for the woman to mourn the man’s departure.

Stanzas 1–3

The opening compares parting and death. The image is of a death so gentle and tranquil that nobody can be sure exactly when ‘The breath goes’. That, says the speaker in stanza 2, should be the model for the lovers’ parting. They should ‘melt’ (disappear from each other) quietly without demonstrations of grief (‘teare-floods’ and ‘sigh-tempests’). There is also the implication that their love is a secret that would be betrayed by being told to ‘the layetie’ – the common people.

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la n

Stanza 3 uses an image drawn from astronomy/astrology to reinforce the plea to part without loud expressions of grief. Whereas an earthquake (‘Moving of th’earth’), brings harmes and feares’ and makes people try to understand its meaning, much greater movements in the heavens (‘trepidation of the spheares’) are ‘innocent’ because they cause no damage. The implication is that the lovers’ parting is on an elevated, cosmic scale, because of the deep love they have for one another, and should be correspondingly serene.

Stanzas 4–6

Ire

Stanzas 4 and 5 take up the distinction between the earthly and the heavenly, the body and the spirit. Ordinary, ‘sublunary’, sensual love cannot endure parting (‘admit / Absence’) because that deprives it of the physical body that is its basis (‘Those things which elemented it’). Their love, however, is ‘refin’d’, not merely physical; it is a meeting of minds, so they will not miss the bodily contact of ‘eyes, lips, and hands’ so much.

Stanza 6 uses a fresh image to picture a parting that is not a parting. Their conjoined souls are like gold that, as well as being associated with beauty and nobility, can be beaten to the thinnest translucent sheets (gold leaf) without breaking. Thus, their single soul will stretch to fill the gap between their bodies while they are apart. They will endure not ‘A breach, but an expansion’. It is an unexpected and delightful image.

Stanzas 7–9

Donne moves on swiftly to another conceit in the final stanzas – another way of picturing a separation that is not a separation and A hidden message so does not need to be mourned. If the lovers do have separate Critics have pointed out that there may be a souls, they can be imagined as the legs of a pair of compasses. hidden message in this poem. Donne puns on the name of his wife, Ann More, in a number (Think of old-fashioned compasses with a point at each end, as in of his poems, and here the word ‘rome’ is an the photo opposite, rather than a modern school compass with a anagram of her surname. The fact that this pencil inserted.) Her soul is the ‘fixt foot’ that stays in the centre, spelling of the word was not usual even at that unmoving. His soul is the other foot that makes a circle as it moves time adds weight to the idea that it was chosen around the first. As with a pair of compasses, their souls (the legs) deliberately. It also suits the context: if Ann are distinct but linked. They will always lean towards each other. Her More is the ‘fixt foot’, then he, John Donne, is the one that ‘far doth rome’. He is unfixed, just ‘firmnes’ will ensure that he makes a true (‘just’) circle and comes like the letters in her name. back to where he started. ‘Firmnes’ implies faithfulness as well as fixity, which adds a moral dimension to the image: her fidelity, he says, is a guarantee of his fidelity in coming back to her. At the same time, the sexual connotations of some of the language remind us that, however spiritual their love, the physical element is not entirely absent.

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Themes and imagery This poem is full of bold conceits of the kind that have often been called ‘metaphysical’. Those images drawn from science and practical craftsmanship (such as beating gold and technical drawing with compasses) are discussed in the Commentary above. There are others, such as the deathbed scene in stanza 1 or the stormy weather (‘teare-floods … sigh-tempests’) in stanza 2. As part of the declared subject of the poem – the proper way to react to a separation between two lovers – there is a consideration of the true nature of love. Throughout, there is a contrast between the physical and earthly on the one hand and the spiritual and heavenly on the other. It is, the speaker argues,

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because their love is ‘refin’d’ (line 17), a perfect union of souls, that they should think of their parting as less than a complete separation. The circle that the compass makes, as well as being a promise of a future reunion, is an image of that perfection.

Form and language

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The poem is written in a simple quatrain form, rhyming abab, and has a loosely iambic metre with four stresses to the line. Although the language is at times technical (‘trepidation of the spheares’, line 11; ‘elemented’, line 16), it is not obscure and condensed, as it sometimes is in, for example, ‘The Dreame’, but clear and precise. It seems designed to calm his lover’s emotional distress by demonstrating a quiet assurance. The poem has a purpose – ‘Forbidding Mourning’ – and is structured as an argument, or series of connected arguments, as to why she should not be too upset that he is going. Notice how words appropriate to setting out an argument are used to give shape to the poem: ‘As … So … But … therefore … If … Such …’. At the same time, the words chosen give colour and texture to the poem’s themes. The word ‘soule’ or ‘soules’ is used four times, and the spiritual dimension associated with the word is subtly reinforced, for example, in the words ‘prophanation’ and ‘layetie’ in stanza 2, both of which have primary meanings to do with religion and sacredness.

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Questions The poem’s title tells us the purpose of the poem. In your own words, and as simply as possible, summarise the different arguments the speaker uses to persuade the woman that there is no need to mourn.

Donne uses metaphors to express much of his meaning in this poem. These metaphors are drawn from a wide variety of human activities. Examine each metaphor in turn, showing how it contributes to the speaker’s argument.

Comment on Donne’s use of the word ‘melt’ (line 5). What does it contribute to the argument and/ or mood of the poem?

In what ways, according to the speaker, are the couple different from ‘Dull sublunary lovers’ (line 13)?

Comment on the image Donne uses at line 24: ‘Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate’. What does it contribute to the argument and/or mood of the poem?

Some critics have objected to the poem’s analogy of the lovers as a pair of compasses as far-fetched and inconsistent. Do you agree? Can this comparison be justified?

Donne was fond of reconciling opposites in his poetry: absence and presence, material and immaterial, for example. Show how ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ illustrates this impulse.

Describe the speaker’s attitude to the woman in this poem. Is it loving? Bullying? Protective? What word would you use? Give reasons for your answer.

Imagine you are the woman to whom this poem is addressed. Write a brief dialogue, involving you and the speaker, in which you respond to his argument.

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In prose or verse, write your own valediction, either defending or forbidding mourning.

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John Donne Before you read G

What do you expect a poem ro r upwo with the title ‘The Flea’ to be about? Why might a poet write about a flea? Share your ideas with a partner before reading this poem.

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Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where wee almost, yea more than maryed are. This flea is you and I, and this Our mariage bed, and mariage temple is; Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met, And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet. Though use make you apt to kill mee, Let not to that, selfe murder added bee, And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.

Cruell and sodaine, hast thou since Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty bee, Except in that drop which it suckt from thee? Yet thou triumph’st, and saist that thou Find’st not thy selfe, nor mee the weaker now; ’Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee; Just so much honor, when thou yeeld’st to mee, Will wast, as this flea’s death tooke life from thee.

Marke but: just look at; observe

said: called

maidenhead: virginity

stay: wait; stop

maryed: i.e. (married)

grudge: begrudge; disapprove

cloysterd: enclosed (as in the cloisters of a monastery)

Jet: black gemstone

use: habit

apt: likely; ready

sacrilege: disrespecting a holy place or object

sodaine: (sudden), impulsive

since: already

Wherein: in what way

yeeld’st: yield; surrender

wast: (waste), be used up

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Marke but this flea, and marke in this, How little that which thou deny’st me is; It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee; Thou know’st that this cannot be said A sinne, nor shame, nor losse of maidenhead, Yet this enjoyes before it wooe, And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.

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The Flea

Guidelines

Poems about fleas were surprisingly common in Renaissance love poetry. They were usually concerned with imagining where on the woman’s body the flea might be crawling and how pleasant it would be to take that flea’s place. The speaker in Donne’s poem, however, focuses firmly on the flea itself and uses it to weave an ingenious web of arguments aimed at breaking down the woman’s resistance to his advances.

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Commentary

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As so often in Donne’s love lyrics, this poem dramatises a situation – here, a seduction. The scene is particularly vivid as although there is only one speaker, the second character, the woman, is very present and her responses to what he says are integral to the poem. The start of each stanza adds to the narrative and moves the scene on.

Stanza 1

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The poem starts with the speaker drawing attention to the flea that bit him and is now biting the woman as they (presumably) sit together. He seizes on an idea – that the mingling of their bloods inside the flea is an equivalent to the sexual union he desires. This claim rests on the understanding of the sexual act as the mingling of bloods, which was commonplace in Donne’s day. For all the ingenious logic of his argument, there is a sense that he is improvising, taking it further with each new thought. The flea has mingled their bloods by biting them both, and if a fleabite is such a trivial and innocent thing (no ‘sinne, nor shame, nor losse of maidenhead’), he is saying, so would their lovemaking be. He treats the flea as a rival lover who ‘enjoyes’ her without ever having to win her over (‘wooe’) and who is indulged and satisfied (‘pamper’d’) by the experience. The final line of the stanza betrays his exasperation: ‘And this, alas, is more than wee would doe’.

Stanza 2

The second stanza is a plea for the flea’s life (‘Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare’), as her response to the previous logical nonsense was clearly to try to kill the flea. He doubles down on his argument that the two of them are united in the flea: they are not just ‘maryed’ in it, it is them, the symbol of their union and its consecration as something holy (‘Our marriage bed, and marriage temple’). So not only are there ‘three lives’ in this one flea, but it would be ‘three sinnes’ to kill it: murder (of the flea and the speaker), ‘selfe murder’ (the woman’s suicide) and ‘sacrilege’ (because the flea is a ‘temple’).

Stanza 3

At the same time, we get a sense of the speaker’s sorry situation: not only do her (or their) parents disapprove of their relationship, but so, he says in a brief, bitter throwaway phrase, does she (‘and you’) – although perhaps what she grudges is something slightly different. There is a similar tone in line 16: ‘Though use make you apt to kill mee’. Some commentators think that here ‘mee’ refers to the flea, but it is more likely that he is thinking of himself in the flea, unable to resist a little dig at her cruel attitude to him.

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His plea for the flea’s life has failed. She has ‘Purpled [her] naile’ with the ‘blood of innocence’ in killing the flea. Her action was a simple way to refute his argument, as her reported reaction indicates: ‘thou triumph’st, and saist that thou / Find’st not thy selfe, nor mee the weaker now’. Ignoring everything he has said before, he turns this argument on its head as proof of ‘how false, feares bee’. It was a small thing, it did no damage, and he now uses the fact as an argument that giving way to his desires would be equally trivial: she would lose only ‘so much honor’ by it ‘as this flea’s death tooke life from thee’. What, do you imagine, would her reply be to that?

Theme and tone Does this poem have any sincere intent? Should we take it seriously at all? Should we be offended by the attitude it takes to women, to love, to sex? In answering those questions – and all readers will have to answer them for themselves – it is worth considering the original context and audience of the poem. Unlike, say, ‘A

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John Donne

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Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’, it would be difficult to imagine this poem being presented to the woman to whom it is addressed. ‘The Flea’ was probably written when Donne was a scholar in Lincoln’s Inn, a talented young man looking to make his way in the world, and would have been shared with like-minded friends: educated, well read, ambitious and male. It was meant to make them laugh and provoke their admiration. They would have appreciated the wit and invention in the poem. They would have recognised how it builds on and plays games with the conventions of love poetry at the time.

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Does the fact that it is a poem about seduction and was written for an audience that was primarily male make it misogynistic? Certainly, the speaker’s open intent is to get the woman into bed, and he is prepared to use any outrageous argument to do so. On the other hand, the woman is given agency; she refutes his arguments by squashing the flea. And she has power: she has what he wants. How do you imagine her responding at the end? Storming away in indignation? Laughing at him or yielding, or both?

How you respond to the poem will depend on how you judge its tone, which in turn depends on how you respond to the speaker. Are you charmed or repelled by his inventive and outrageous logic? Do you admire or deplore his shameless persistence? In your opinion, how seriously does he take himself or his arguments? He knows he is in a weak position, and there is a self-deprecating humour mixed in with his bravado: ‘And this, alas, is more than wee would doe’ (line 9); ‘Though use make you apt to kill mee’ (line 16). Is there also a self-dramatising overstatement in his wordy response to her killing the flea: ‘Cruell and sodaine, hast thou since / Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence’ (lines 19–20)? Perhaps he is mocking himself.

Imagery

The primary image of the poem is, of course, the flea itself. As well as being used rather like an exhibit in a courtroom argument, it has a presence in the poem as a living creature, sucking blood and finally being squashed. Its body is beautifully imagined as ‘these living walls of Jet’ (line 15), but it is also given an almost sacred significance as a ‘mariage temple’ (line 13) and its death is deemed a ‘sacrilege’ (line 18). Indeed, the way the poem plays with religious imagery is one of its most daring aspects: the idea of ‘three lives in one flea’ (line 10) deliberately calls to mind the Christian mystery of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

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Form and language

‘The Flea’ is written in rhyming couplets of alternating lengths – a tetrameter (four stresses) followed by a pentameter (five stresses). The form underlines the force of an argument with its insistent rhymes. However, each stanza has an extra pentameter line at the end, rhyming with the two previous lines, which gives the poem its character. In stanza 1, Donne uses the extra line to comic effect to add a throwaway afterthought: ‘And this, alas, is more than wee would doe’. In stanza 2, he uses it to help drive home the point the speaker is making, and the third rhyme also reinforces the idea of trinities: ‘three sinnes in killing three’.

As always in Donne’s love lyrics, there is a strong sense of a speaking voice, persuading, cajoling, goading. The language is colloquial and functional. Where it is ‘poetic’, it is a ploy of the speaker embellishing his subject (‘cloysterd in these living walls of Jet’, line 15) or striking an attitude, as in lines 19–20. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 87

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem In your own words, what is the speaker’s argument in the first stanza?

The speaker claims that they are ‘more than maryed’ in the flea (line 11). In your own words, how does he justify this claim?

What does the woman do and say in the interval between the second and third stanzas?

In your own words, what is the speaker’s final argument (lines 25–27) in response to what she says?

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Thinking about the poem

‘The Flea’ is generally regarded as an extremely clever and entertaining poem. Explain why you agree or disagree with this view of the poem.

How would you describe the attitude of the speaker in this poem to: a) the woman; b) himself; c) the flea?

Discuss ‘The Flea’ as an example of Donne’s astonishing ingenuity and verbal dexterity.

Is the flea the central character of this poem? Give reasons for your answer.

The arguments the speaker uses in this poem have been described as ‘outrageous’. Do you agree? Is this a positive or a negative for the poem? Give reasons for your answers.

Discuss the use of religious imagery in ‘The Flea’.

Imagine you are the woman. Write your own account of the scene that occurs in this poem. You might like to include some background about your relationship with, and your attitude to, the man, and to carry on the scene after the poem ends.

In pairs, try ‘performing’ this poem, using only the words of the poem. Think about how you would stage it, what actions are needed, and how the speaker can use words, expressions and gestures to affect the listener. The performance can be gender-blind. Take it in turns to perform the two roles.

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Imagining

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT

Poem of seduction Series of daring, witty arguments Logic used to attain a goal Dramatic structure Brilliant exercise in inventiveness Written to entertain and impress Misogynistic or not? Rhyming couplets with extra final line

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John Donne Before you read Before you try to understand the poem, read it through line by line and make a list of all the verbs that are used in it.

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Glossary

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due, Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end, Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue. Yet dearely’I love you,’and would be loved faine, But am betroth’d unto your enemie: Divorce mee,’untie, or breake that knot againe, Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free, Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

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Batter my heart

three person’d God: the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost usurpt: captured by force

Labour: work; strain

to no end: to no purpose; without success

viceroy: a monarch’s representative or deputy captiv’d: held captive; captured be loved faine: dearly wish to be loved

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betroth’d: engaged to be married

enthrall: make a slave of

chast: i.e. (chaste)

ravish: seize by force; rape

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Guidelines The final three poems come from a group of sonnets known as the Holy Sonnets, most of which (including this one) Donne probably wrote in 1609 or 1610. This was a time when Donne was striving to find his way in the world after the setbacks that followed his marriage in 1601. It was also a time when he was clearly struggling to define his religious faith, and particularly Protestant beliefs about faith and grace, prior to his ordination in 1615. The Holy Sonnets are intensely personal and, although they often rely on paradox and daring metaphor, lack the playfulness of the love poems. It has been suggested that these sonnets were written as spiritual exercises, following the pattern laid down by the founder of the Jesuits, St Ignatius Loyola.

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Commentary Lines 1–4

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The poem opens with a plea for violence: ‘Batter my heart’. God is being too gentle, merely knocking on his heart, trying to ‘mend’ it. The speaker wants to be overwhelmed, destroyed and made ‘new’. He is asking for a spiritual assault, but the language is that of a physical one: ‘bend … breake, blowe, burn’. The insistent alliteration on the strong, plosive ‘b’ consonant, carried over from the sonnet’s first word, creates a vocal equivalent of this violence. Line 3 contains the first of the paradoxes that are at the core of this poem: ‘That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee’. In order to rise up, he must first be knocked down.

Lines 5–8

The second quatrain introduces a new image, but one that is also related to violent conflict. It is a military image: he is ‘an usurpt towne’ – one that belongs to God but has been captured (by the devil) – and he desperately wants to let the rightful ruler in. His reason, God’s ‘viceroy’ or deputy, has been captured (‘captiv’d’). His mind is ‘weake or untrue’ and so unable to defend against the devil’s attacks.

Lines 9–14

The mood and the metaphor change at the start of the sestet. Donne takes on the role of a frustrated lover who wants to escape the relationship he is in. Despite loving God ‘dearely’, he is engaged to God’s enemy, the devil. But it seems he cannot do anything about it by himself; he needs God to act and ‘breake that knot againe’. In order to be released from his relationship with the devil, he wants God to imprison him. The sonnet’s final couplet develops and extends this paradox in language so stark it is shocking: he cannot be free until God has made him a slave, nor chaste unless God ravishes him.

Themes and imagery

The poem’s imagery, as discussed above, dwells first on physical violence and then on passionate love. In both cases it culminates in the paradoxes of the final couplet: the expression of violent desires that we might think of as doubly transgressive because they are applied to God. What, however, is the poem about?

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On the emotional level, Donne’s anguish and his desperate cry for help are unmistakeable, but it is important to be clear about the nature of his anguish. Is it spiritual agony? Certainly, guilt for his sinful life underlies the image of his soul as a town invaded by the devil, but the overwhelming feeling is not pain. Rather it is the desire for pain – what the critic John Carey calls ‘the pain of painlessness’. He wants to feel overwhelmed by God, torn apart by him, and his anguish comes from not feeling that. His heart is too hard. He wants to feel the pain of God’s power because that would also be his salvation. That is what he prays for in this poem, and his desperation arises because that prayer has not been answered. There is a theological dimension to this anguish. Donne was brought up a Catholic but converted – we do not know exactly when – to the Protestant Church of England. According to the Catholic Church, salvation could be earned, with the help of the Church, through good works and the sacraments of baptism, communion and so on. According to early seventeenth-century Protestantism, however, salvation could not be earned or granted by the Church: only true faith could save you, and faith could not be willed but had to be given by

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John Donne God. A consequence of this belief was that individuals were ultimately powerless over their own destiny. It is this powerlessness that rings through ‘Batter my heart’. The speaker cannot act; he needs God to take the initiative and take possession of him – and he is waiting in anguish for that to happen.

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Form and language

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The urgency of the speaker’s passion is shaped by, but always straining against, the strict form and metre, giving the sense of a force barely contained. The violence of the first four lines, for example, as well as the alliteration noted above, the triple stressed verbs (‘knocke, breathe, shine’ and ‘breake, blowe, burn’) and the enjambment between lines 1 and 2, and lines 3 and 4, help to create this sense of straining force.

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‘Batter my heart’ is a sonnet written in a form that is somewhere between a Petrarchan and an Elizabethan one. It has the Petrarchan mirrored double quatrain of the octave rhyming abbaabba and then a sestet rhyming cdcdee, ending in a rhyming couplet like those Shakespeare used in his sonnets. The couplet tends to create a neat, clinching ending, which in this poem summarises the argument in two compact paradoxes.

The second quatrain (lines 5–8) is descriptive rather than imperative, and plaintive and apologetic in tone. The long vowel sounds, especially the long ‘u’ in ‘usurpt’, ‘due’, ‘you’, ‘proves’, ‘untrue’, and the long ‘o’ in ‘Oh, to no end’, evoke the mournful mood.

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After a moment of gentle wistfulness in line 9 (‘Yet dearely’I love you,’and would be loved faine’), the final four lines return to the violent passions and violent language of the poem’s opening. As at the start, the verbs carry the force of that violence: ‘Divorce’, ‘breake’, imprison’, ‘enthrall’, ‘ravish’.

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Questions What do the verbs used in the first four lines tell you about the poem’s opening?

Examine the verbs used in lines 5–8 and compare them with those in lines 1–4. What does the contrast between the two lists tell you about the difference between these two quatrains?

By line 9, the mood and tone of the poem, as well as the key metaphors, have changed. Comment on these changes.

How does the speaker treat God in this poem? What kind of relationship does he imagine he has with God?

The poem is densely metaphorical. Examine Donne’s use of metaphor as an expression of meaning. Why are metaphors more effective here than literal expression might have been?

Paradox is a key figure in ‘Batter my heart’. Analyse its use. What does it achieve?

‘Reading this sonnet makes us feel that both God and the devil are familiar acquaintances, close at hand.’ Comment on this observation, with reference to the poem.

‘This sonnet is not merely an exercise in powerful rhetoric, or a showing-off of Donne’s talent for paradox, it is also an impressive testimony of the poet’s deep religious conviction, his fear of losing God’s friendship.’ Do you think both parts of this statement represent the truth about ‘Batter my heart’? Refer to the poem in support of your response.

Comment on the use of rhythm, rhyme and sound in this poem, including alliteration, assonance and enjambment. Use quotation to illustrate your points.

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Try to write a sonnet using the structure, rhythm and rhyming scheme of ‘Batter my heart’.

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In pairs or small groups, select music, sounds and images to accompany a reading of this poem. Plan what you would use and where.

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John Donne Before you read

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This poem imagines the end of the world, known as the Last Judgement in several religions – when all the people who have ever lived will be judged and given their reward or punishment. Search online or in a library for images of how artists have imagined the event through the centuries.

At the round earths imagin’d corners, blow Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise From death, you numberlesse infinities Of soules, and to your scattred bodies goe, All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow, All whom warre, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despaire, law, chance, hath slaine, and you whose eyes, Shall behold God, and never tast deaths woe. But let them sleepe, Lord, and mee mourne a space, For, if above all these, my sinnes abound, ’Tis late to aske abundance of thy grace, When wee are there; here on this lowly ground, Teach mee how to repent; for that’s as good As if thou’hadst seal’d my pardon, with thy blood.

At the round earths imagin’d corners

Glossary 6

dearth: famine; hunger

agues: fevers; sickness

a space: for a while

abound: are more numerous

seal’d: guaranteed; a wax seal was used as an official imprint on documents

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Guidelines

This sonnet is concerned with the Last Judgement – when, according to Christian belief, the dead will be brought back to life and separated into the saved and the damned. Donne was not alone in thinking that this day might be coming very soon. In a sermon written some years after this poem, he talked about the possibility of being one of the fortunate people who are alive at the end of the world and so will never really die: ‘We shall die, and be alive again, before another could consider we were dead.’ It was a prospect he welcomed. In this sonnet, he is not ready to welcome it so wholeheartedly.

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Commentary Lines 1–4

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The first quatrain invites, even seems to command, the Last Judgement. Imperatives are used to direct what will happen: ‘blow / Your trumpets’, ‘arise / From death’, ‘to your scattred bodies goe’. The imagery is taken from the Book of Revelation in the Bible, which refers to the angels at the four corners of the Earth and to seven angels blowing trumpets to announce the end of the world. This time will also mean the resurrection of all the dead, whose souls will be reunited with their ‘scattred’ bodies.

Lines 5–8

The next four lines are a checklist of the ‘numberlesse infinities’ of the dead. First are those who died in the flood (Noah’s flood from the Book of Genesis) as punishment for their sins, and those sinners who will die in the fires that end the world. Then lines 6–7 add all others who have been killed by everything from war to sickness (‘agues’) to pure chance. Finally, lines 7–8 deal with a very special category – those who will be alive at the world’s end and never have to experience the sorrow and suffering (‘woe’) of death.

Lines 9–14

The second part of the sonnet, the sestet, changes the poem’s direction completely. It starts with ‘But’, indicating that change of direction and also a change of mind. Instead of demanding that the Last Judgement happen immediately, the speaker asks God (‘Lord’) to let the dead ‘sleepe’ a while longer, without resurrection, so he can ‘mourne’ for a while. The reason he gives is that if, as he fears, his sins ‘abound’ above ‘all these’ (presumably meaning all the dead and their sins), then it would be too late to ask for mercy (‘abundance of thy grace’) when ‘wee are there’ at the Last Judgement. So, while he is still on Earth (‘this lowly ground’), he asks God to teach him ‘how to repent’ so that he will deserve forgiveness for his sins. That, he says, would be ‘as good / As if thou’hadst seal’d my pardon, with thy blood’. This is a reference to the crucifixion, in which, according to Christian belief, Jesus won forgiveness for mankind through his death on the cross. It is a somewhat puzzling ending, because if the speaker believes that Christ’s death has already sealed his pardon then there should be no need to worry about his sins.

Themes and imagery

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The primary image in the first part of the poem is the Last Judgement, as pictured in the Book of Revelation, with angels blowing trumpets and the dead arising. The speaker seems to be relishing the prospect of the end of the world. Why? Is it a death wish? Perhaps it makes sense if you think of the Holy Sonnets as spiritual exercises. By imagining the end of the world, and the possibility that it could happen any time, the speaker is concentrating his mind on the need to prepare for it by repenting of his sins. After the apocalyptic vision of the octave, the sestet concentrates on sins, repentance and the need for grace. Where the octave was addressed to the angels and to the dead, the sestet is addressed intimately to God, as ‘Lord’ (line 9) and ‘thou’ (line 14). The speaker shows humility by saying ‘my sinnes abound’ (line 10) and asking to be taught ‘how to repent’ (line 13). Having frightened himself in the octave, he reassures himself, at least in the final line and a half, where the fact that Christ has already, according to Christian theology, given his blood to pay for mankind’s sins underpins the possibility that he will be able to repent.

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John Donne

Form and language

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Like the other Holy Sonnets, this poem follows the pattern we saw in ‘Batter my heart’, with a clear divide – indeed, a change of direction – between octave and sestet.

The first quatrain has huge energy. The imperative verbs held back until the ends of the lines, the enjambment between the lines and the repetition of ‘arise, arise’ (line 2) make the words sound like a call to battle. The second quatrain carries through and builds up that energy through accumulation and repetition. There are parallel structures – ‘All whom … / All whom …’ (lines 5–6); ‘flood did … fire shall’ (line 5) – and then the list of causes of death, whose strongly stressed terms slow down the lines with a harsh, insistent beat.

The basic metre of the sonnet is the iambic pentameter, but it is treated very freely, especially in the octave. Notice, for example, the effect of the doubled stresses on ‘róund eárths’ (line 1) and ‘flóod díd, and fíre sháll’ (line 5). The sestet is calmer and more regular, the rhythm less complex.

Questions

‘At the round earths imagin’d corners’ (line 1). Comment on the impact of this opening phrase.

What does Donne’s listing of the different ways in which the dead have died (lines 5–7) add to the poem?

Consider the contrast between the first eight lines of the sonnet and the final six. What changes at line 9? Answer with detailed reference to the text.

What, in your own words, is the speaker saying in lines 10–12 (‘For, if above … wee are there’)?

Comment on the final line and a half of the poem. How does it affect what has gone before? Is it a good ending to the poem?

Describe the state of mind emerging from the sonnet. What, do you think, is the speaker’s primary emotion?

How does Donne use the sonnet form to organise or give structure to his thoughts in this poem?

In what ways might this sonnet be regarded as an extremely self-centred poem?

Imagine you are publishing this poem on a website and have been asked to create or find one or more suitable photographs or pictures to accompany it. Describe the image(s) you would use.

What would you do today if you knew the world was going to end tomorrow? How would that knowledge affect how you see your life? Write a poem or piece of prose in response. You can take this exercise as seriously or light-heartedly as you like.

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Before you read

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This poem mentions hell, and the idea of hell and the devil loom large in it. Search online or in a library for images of artworks from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that depict hell or the devil.

Thou hast made me, And shall thy worke decay? Repaire me now, for now mine end doth haste, I runne to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday; I dare not move my dimme eyes any way, Despaire behind, and death before doth cast Such terrour, and my feeble flesh doth waste By sinne in it, which it t’wards hell doth weigh; Onely thou art above, and when towards thee By thy leave I can looke, I rise againe; But our old subtle foe so tempteth me, That not one houre my selfe I can sustaine; Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art, And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.

Thou hast made me

Glossary 2

mine … haste: my death approaches fast

weigh: weigh down; drag down By thy leave: with your permission

subtle foe: cunning enemy; here, the devil

wing me: give me wings to fly

art: here, crafty tricks

Adamant: a magnetic rock; a magnet

draw: pull as a magnet does

Th e

Guidelines Scholars believe that this poem was written during the same period as the two other Holy Sonnets in this selection. Like all the Holy Sonnets, this one deals with a spiritual struggle; the hope of heaven and the prospect of hell are both very real and powerful presences in Donne’s imagination.

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John Donne

Commentary Lines 1–4

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The sonnet starts with an intimate address to God, and a plea for him to ‘Repaire’ the speaker. His argument comes close to emotional blackmail: you have made me, so surely you will not want your own creation to waste away. Death looms large: ‘mine end doth haste’. The approach of death means that the past is a phantom (‘all my pleasures are like yesterday’) and the need for a solution is urgent.

Lines 5–8

The second quatrain uses compact and powerful images to describe the fear and anguish that overwhelm and paralyse the speaker. His eyes are ‘dimme’, presumably through age, and he is so trapped between hopelessness ‘behind’ and death ‘before’ that he cannot bear to look, never mind act. He feels his ‘feeble flesh’ wasting away because of the ‘sinne in it’, which is dragging it down towards hell.

Lines 9–14

After the vivid and terrifying picture painted in the octave, the sestet offers some hope of salvation, of a movement upwards towards heaven instead of downwards towards hell. God is ‘above’, and if the speaker can only turn his eyes towards him, he will ‘rise againe’. But even looking at God can be only ‘By thy leave’ – with God’s permission. On his own he is utterly powerless, tempted by the devil (‘our old subtle foe’), so that he cannot ‘sustaine’ himself even for an hour without help. Help can come only from God. God’s grace can lift him upwards (‘wing me’), out of the clutches of the devil, like a magnet (‘Adamant’) pulling up a piece of iron. But the ending is left open. God is capable of doing this, and the speaker wants him to do it, but there is no certainty that it will happen; it all hinges on ‘may’ in line 13.

Themes and imagery

As with the other Holy Sonnets in this selection, this poem records an inner struggle to come to terms with guilt and sinfulness in the face of death, and, like ‘Batter my heart’ in particular, the speaker calls on God’s help to save him. On one level, it is a prayer.

Th e

It has often been suggested that many of the Holy Sonnets were written around the time that Donne was converting to Anglicanism and preparing himself inwardly for his ordination as a priest in the Protestant Anglican Church, which happened in 1615. Like ‘Batter my heart’, this sonnet confronts the stark reality, according to Protestant theology, that grace or salvation cannot be earned or willed but must be given by God (see discussion on pages 90–91), and so Donne is powerless to save himself and can only surrender to God’s will and pray. The critic John Carey likened the speaker’s position in this poem to that of a drowning man who sees a mysterious stranger on the bank with a lifebelt in his hands. If the stranger throws the belt, the speaker can be saved from drowning, but no lifebelt appears. Worse still, the drowning man knows that he does not deserve to be saved.

Two interlinked strains of imagery run through the poem. There is the decaying body, with its ‘dimme eyes’ (line 5) that cannot move and ‘feeble flesh’ (line 7) that is being destroyed by the sin that is in it. The corrupted body can be seen as an image of the soul’s sinfulness. That sin is dragging the body down, towards hell, while the speaker is calling on God ‘above’ (line 9) to help him to rise to heaven. That tension between

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the downwards pull towards hell and the upwards urge towards heaven is the second strain of imagery. The devil is working in one direction. God may work in the other.

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The final image of God drawing up the speaker’s ‘iron heart’ (line 14) is particularly rich. The word ‘Adamant’, as well as referring to magnetic rock, has moral overtones; it can mean righteous, strong and unshakeable. And the idea of the speaker’s heart being ‘iron’ also has significant implications for how he thinks of his inner self – as hard and resistant. It calls to mind ‘Batter my heart’ and its plea for all resistance to be overwhelmed.

Form and language

‘Thou hast made me’ uses the same rhyme scheme as the other two Holy Sonnets in this selection. The thought process of the poem fits neatly into the sonnet form. In the punctuation of the early editions, followed in this version, the sonnet comprises one sentence, with semi colons at the end of each of the first two quatrains (lines 4 and 8). The start of the sestet at line 9 marks a change in the direction of the poem’s argument and the first glimpse of possible hope. The sestet is divided into three equal two-line sections by semi colons, with the powerful closing image presented in the final rhyming couplet.

Th e

For all the fear and despair, and hope, that underlie this poem, the language has a simple clarity and precision that matches the sonnet’s clear structure. It is less dramatic than the language of some of Donne’s other sonnets, but the repetitions (‘now’ in line 2; ‘death’ in line 3) and parallel phrases (‘Despaire behind … death before’, line 6) seem to be keeping powerful emotions in check.

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John Donne

Questions What, in your own words, is the appeal that the speaker is making in the first four lines of the poem?

What does the second quatrain (lines 5–8) add to what the speaker has said in the first four lines?

What are the speaker’s main fears? In your opinion, are these fears justified?

Describe the mood of the poem.

Are the speaker’s problems solved at the end of the poem? Give reasons for your answer.

The speaker declares that ‘death before doth cast / Such terrour’ (lines 6–7). In your opinion, why does death hold such terror for him? Support your comments with evidence from the poem.

What image of God emerges from this sonnet?

Comment on the use of ‘our’ in line 11.

Compare this poem with the other two Holy Sonnets in this selection. Do you find this poem more or less moving/convincing/enjoyable? Give reasons for your answer.

Look again at the images of hell or the devil that you found before reading the poem. Write a poem, a story or an essay, paint a picture or make a video inspired by one or all of those images.

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Inventive use of metaphor: conceits Strong sense of a speaking voice Great variety of stanza forms Use of dramatic situations Obsessed with death Blends wit with seriousness Love of paradox Poems often built around argument

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Imagery from sciences, crafts and theology Uses and abuses logic Love poems can be mocking and cynical as well as tender Balances reason and emotion Questionable attitude to women Strong influence of Catholic upbringing

Th e

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT JOHN DONNE

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Exam-Preparation Questions ‘Donne’s Holy Sonnets, like his love poems, are torn by conflicts. They are full of sound and fury, and hang together by the makeshift expedients of passionate argument.’ Discuss this statement with detailed reference to examples of both the Holy Sonnets and the love poems by John Donne on your course.

‘He wanted, and invented, a universe as changeable as himself, in which all things were continuously on the edge of nothingness.’ Discuss this statement with detailed reference to the poems by John Donne on your course.

‘Donne’s poems are filled with mixed emotions, ranging from playful irreverence and cynicism to profound reverence and sincerity.’ Examine the variety of moods displayed in the poems by John Donne on your course.

Consider the proposition that John Donne’s love poems are composed exclusively from the viewpoint of the man, and that whatever the woman does is in response to him – to his urging, pleading, arguing, bullying, weeping.

‘Donne’s scale of vision is cosmic.’ Discuss this statement with detailed reference to the poems by John Donne on your course.

Explore the idea that John Donne’s religious poetry reveals an insecure temperament and a profound sense of fear.

‘John Donne was obsessed by death.’ Discuss Donne’s treatment of death with detailed reference to his poems on your course.

What appeal might John Donne’s poems have for a young, modern reader? Discuss this question with detailed reference to his poems on your course.

In many of John Donne’s poems we can detect a strong impulse to bind opposites together. This impulse can be found in single images or in whole poems. Use some of his poems on your course to demonstrate this impulse at work.

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‘The most impressive feature of Donne’s poetry is the manner in which he uses all kinds of learned ideas in support of his arguments.’ Discuss this comment with reference to some of the poems by John Donne on your course.

‘Donne’s poetry can be simultaneously playful and challenging both in style and content.’ To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? Support your answer with reference to the poetry of John Donne on your course.

In your opinion, what sort of audience or audiences did John Donne address his poems to and how did this affect his approach to the poems he wrote?

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John Donne

Sample Essay

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‘What is odd about his poems is that they retain a relentless passion for arguing, yet treat argument with patent disrespect.’ Discuss this statement with detailed reference to the poems by John Donne on your course. Uses relevant

Addresses the terms

biographical Donne’s passion for arguing may well have had its origin in his training as information immediately a lawyer at Lincoln’s Inn in London in the 1590s. Lawyers argue their cases, and they succeed according to how their arguments affect a jury rather than the absolute truth of what they say. Nevertheless, their arguments need to be consistent in order to be persuasive. But Donne was a poet as well as a lawyer and the arguments in his poems, although they are always aimed at persuading, do not pretend to be coherent legal arguments. Poetry Sets terms for the discussion that and the law work according to different sets of rules.

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of the question

follows

In his poems, Donne argues variously with the woman to whom his love poem is addressed, with a friend, with the sun, with himself, even with God. The dramatic openings of his poems often address the person or being that he is arguing with, grabbing their attention with a strong initial stress and often a command: ‘Góe, and catche a falling starre’; ‘Búsie old foole’; Addresses poetic technique ‘Márk but this flea’; ‘Bátter my heart’. Donne sets up a confrontation at the start, and pursues it energetically through the poem in a voice that is always recognisably that Keeps terms of the of a man speaking – and often arguing – passionately. question in mind

Introduces first poem Donne’s arguments, although inventive, are often inconsistent, and sometimes they for detailed discussion are very far-fetched indeed. Perhaps the most outrageous example is ‘The Flea’. The first two stanzas of the poem build up witty but preposterous, almost blasphemous, arguments to ‘prove’ that the flea that has bitten the speaker and is now biting the Integrates short woman is a sacred creature and therefore killing it would be ‘three sinnes in killing quotations throughout three’. However, the third stanza makes the exact opposite argument. Seizing on the woman’s claim that her killing of the flea proved he was wrong to say it was a great crime, he now emphasises the insignificance of the flea and uses it against her:

Just so much honor, when thou yeeld’st to mee, Will wast, as this flea’s death tooke life from thee.

Addresses precise

terms of the question

Th e

You could certainly call this treatment of the rules of logic disrespectful, but even though the argument may be inconsistent, there is a greater underlying consistency. Every argument the speaker makes is to one purpose: to get the woman to yield to his desires. About that he is entirely shameless, and it is clear he does not take either his arguments or himself too seriously. A large part of the pleasure of reading this poem is the enjoyment of the Does the student need to offer a more speaker’s witty, outrageous arguments and the way in which he plays with them and personal response? pushes them to extremes. Introduces second

Whereas the preposterousness of the argument is a great part of the fun of ‘The poem through a link to the first Flea’, the inconsistency is stealthier in ‘The Sunne Rising’, even if no less stark. Here, he picks an argument with the sun itself, dismissing it as a ‘Busie old foole’ and a ‘pedantique HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 101

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wretch’. He sets out to prove that the sun has no power over him and his lover: they do not have to get out of bed just because the sun is shining; they can order it around (‘goe chide / Late schoole boyes and sowre prentices’); they can even ‘eclipse’ its beams ‘with a winke’. And yet, whereas at the start of the poem the speaker told the sun to go away and stop bothering them, he ends up inviting the sun into their bedroom, arguing that, since they are the whole world (‘Nothing else is’), all the sun needs to do is warm them: Shine here to us, and thou art every where; This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.

Uses longer quotation

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to illustrate a point

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Addresses terms

of question while qualifying them

Pithy summing up

The thrust of the argument has been reversed, and yet, once again, the poem has an emotional consistency. Logic may be treated with disrespect, but this is a love poem and the strategy of belittling the sun and exalting the love that the couple shares runs through it. The argument may be addressed to the sun, but it is the speaker’s love for the woman that is the subject of the poem.

of the point to end

discussion of second poem

Another poem that pursues a line of argument concerning the supreme value of a couple’s love, similar to that in ‘The Sunne Rising’, is ‘The Anniversarie’. Here, however, the inconsistencies in the argument are very revealing. After the bold assertions of the first stanza – ‘Only our love hath no decay’ – the second stanza concedes that the lovers ‘Must leave at last in death, Uses tags to signal these eyes and eares’, and yet the speaker reassures himself that their souls are so qualifications and distinctions pure that their love will be the same after death or even ‘increased there above’.

Th e

But in the third stanza, following his own logic, he is forced to admit that although they will be ‘throughly blest’ in heaven, they will not be exceptional there: ‘wee no more, than all the rest’. Thus, the poem ends by celebrating not the timelessness of their love as asserted Uses short quotations at the start, but its existence in time, ‘Here upon earth’, with the thought of adding throughout to illustrate poem’s ‘Yeares and yeares unto yeares’ to achieve the comparatively modest ambition ‘To argument write threescore’. It is this very inconsistency, the realisation that seems to dawn in the process of pursuing the poem’s argument, that makes ‘The Anniversarie’ such a touching poem. The realities of death seep into the poem to reveal an insecurity behind his bold claims of immortality and a vulnerability underlying his insistence on the lovers’ royal supremacy. The speaker may envision the lovers as ‘Kings’, but the poem acknowledges the reality of ‘feares’ and the possibility of ‘Treason’ even while wishing to deny them. Rather Analysis of the effects than diminishing the poem, this makes their love feel human and real rather than of the argument’s inconsistency idealised and grandiose: this anniversary marks the beginning of only the Personal response to and judgement of the second year of their ‘raigne’. It is a relatively low-key ending, and I think the poem is poem all the better for it. Sometimes, however, the inconsistency of the argument weakens the poem. In the sonnet ‘At the round earths imagin’d corners’, the grim scenes of the Last Judgement previous argument that Donne conjures in the octave are left behind by the sestet. Although the poem seems poised in the penultimate line for a resolution to match the drama of the opening, with ‘Teach mee how to repent’, all the tension that has been built up dissipates in the rather bland statement that ‘that’s as good / As if thou’hadst seal’d my pardon, with thy blood’. While the rest of the poem seems to be an agonised cry that it is too late for him to be saved, this ending offers an easy way out by disregarding all that has gone before. Introduces a

qualification to

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John Donne By contrast, in another Holy Sonnet, ‘Batter my heart’, the inherent contradictions in the speaker’s argument are the core of the poem. Here, the argument with God is intense and passionate. It is a matter not of logic but of pleading. The speaker asks to be knocked down in order to stand up, to be imprisoned in order to be released, because, as he says in the poem’s final lines: I Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free, Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

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with another

Contrasts one poem

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This poem takes the love of contradiction and contention found in the love poems I have looked at and compresses it into the startling paradoxes on which this sonnet is constructed. Here, the urge to argue and contradict becomes an expression of the speaker’s deepest Is the student going spiritual longings. off the point here? Conclusion returns

In conclusion, although it is certainly true that Donne’s poems show a relentless passion for arguing and often treat argument with disrespect, this fact can often be at the heart of the pleasure they give, especially in the love poems. Donne circulated his love poems among friends, who would have been educated and cultured, like him, and who would no doubt have appreciated the witty and sometimes outrageous ways in which they play with logic as they proclaim a couple’s love, try to seduce a woman or persuade her not to get too upset. Donne’s poetry is rooted in recognisable human situations – lying in bed together in the morning, saying goodbye, flirting, even praying in spiritual agony – and the arguments that spring from his inventive and supple mind are suited to those situations, not to Returns to point raised in opening paragraph courts of law or academic lectures.

question

to the terms of the

Purpose

Yes 4

No 8

ESSAY CHECKLIST

Has the candidate understood the task?

Has the candidate responded to it in a thoughtful manner?

Comment:

Has the candidate made convincing arguments?

Coherence

Has the candidate answered the question?

Has the candidate linked ideas?

Does the essay have a sense of unity?

Comment:

Th e

Language

Is the essay written in an appropriate register? Are ideas expressed in a clear way? Is the writing fluent?

Comment: Mechanics

Is the use of language accurate? Are all words spelled correctly? Does the punctuation help the reader?

Comment:

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1939–2013

Seamus Heaney

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112

Bogland

116

The Tollund Man

120

The Forge

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Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication 1 Sunlight

125

A Constable Calls*

129

The Skunk

134

The Harvest Bow

138

The Underground*

142

The Pitchfork

147

Lightenings, viii: ‘The Annals Say’

151

A Call*

155

Postscript

159

Tate’s Avenue

163

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Seamus Heaney

Biography

Home and school

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Seamus Heaney was born on 13 April 1939, on a farm called Mossbawn in south Co. Derry. Heaney was the eldest of the nine children (two girls and seven boys) born to Margaret and Patrick Heaney. Patrick Heaney farmed fifty acres and also worked as a cattle dealer. When Heaney was fourteen, the family moved from Mossbawn to a nearby farm that his father inherited from an uncle. The death of Christopher Heaney, the poet’s young brother, was a factor in this move.

The Heaneys were a close and loving family. The poems Heaney wrote about his aunt (‘Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication: 1 Sunlight’) and parents (‘The Harvest Bow’, ‘The Pitchfork’) reflect the quality of family life. He was raised as a Catholic and steeped in the traditions and rituals of his religion. The family was nationalist in outlook. Heaney was educated at the local primary school in Anahorish, attended by both Catholic and Protestant children. In 1951, he won a scholarship to St Columb’s College in Derry, about forty miles from his home. St Columb’s was a Catholic college, with a distinguished roll of past pupils including John Hume, joint winner of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, and the writers Seamus Deane and Brian Friel. Heaney’s early years at St Columb’s were marked by homesickness, but as he moved up the college his talent was recognised and nurtured by a number of teachers, particularly Sean O’Kelly, who shared his enthusiasm for the poetry of Thomas Hardy, William Wordsworth and Gerard Manley Hopkins. A summer spent in the Gaeltacht deepened Heaney’s interest in, and love of, the Irish language.

University and early influences

Heaney won a scholarship to Queen’s University, Belfast, where he studied English Literature and Language, graduating with a first class honours degree in 1961. During his time in St Columb’s and Queen’s, Heaney remained deeply attached to his home place, and to the values and traditions of his parents. This attachment is evident in his first collection of poems, the much-acclaimed Death of a Naturalist (1966). Heaney had read the poetry of Robert Frost while a student at Queen’s, and Frost’s autobiographical poems about life in a farming community pointed the way forward for Heaney’s own writing.

Th e

Although he was offered the chance to do further study at Oxford Education Act University, Heaney decided to train as a teacher, demonstrating The system of scholarships, introduced by the the influence of his rural ancestors who, in Heaney’s words, were Education Act of 1947, allowed the children of small farmers and the urban working class, not illiterate but not literary. Moreover, Heaney’s sense of duty like Seamus Heaney, to attend university for dictated he should pay back his parents for the support they had the first time. The influence of these students given him throughout his education, so he took a job teaching in was particularly noticeable in the civil rights a secondary school in Ballymurphy, Belfast. The principal teacher movement of the late 1960s. was Michael McLaverty, the short-story writer, who introduced Heaney to the work of Patrick Kavanagh. At about this time, 1962, Heaney began to write poems in a serious way, and the poetry of Kavanagh, like that of Frost, influenced the direction and style of his work. Heaney wrote, ‘Kavanagh gave you permission to dwell without cultural anxiety among the usual landmarks of your life.’

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Early success

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In August 1965, Heaney married Marie Devlin, a teacher and writer. In the following year, the London publishers Faber & Faber published his first collection of poems, Death of a Naturalist. The book was acclaimed by reviewers, and Heaney was awarded a number of prestigious literary awards. These awards, and the favourable reaction to Death of a Naturalist, contributed to Heaney being appointed lecturer in English at Queen’s University, Belfast in 1966. He also began to write for magazines in England, and make broadcasts for the BBC. And, in July, the Heaneys’ first child, Michael, was born.

Situation in Northern Ireland

At the time Seamus Heaney became a public figure, the situation in Northern Ireland was growing tense and dangerous. The civil rights movement, campaigning for equality of treatment for Catholics, met with fierce resistance from extreme Protestant loyalist groups and from the police force (RUC). In October 1968, the year in which the Heaneys’ second son, Christopher, was born, the first major violent clash occurred in Derry. Heaney wrote about rural life. Television coverage of the incident, in which the RUC baton-charged peaceful marchers, was greeted with shock and outrage. The following months were marked by periodic violence and sectarian clashes. In August 1969, there were clashes between Catholics and Protestants in what became known as ‘The Battle of the Bogside’. Many Catholics feared that they would be driven out of their homes. When the British Army entered Derry, they were welcomed as protectors by the Catholic community of the city. However, relations between the Catholic community and the army quickly deteriorated and five months later the Provisional IRA was formed in Dublin and soon began a bombing campaign, which intensified throughout 1971. As a Catholic nationalist, Heaney was affected by the violence and the events in Northern Ireland. He had taken an active part in the civil rights movement, and wrote about the fears of Catholic nationalists living in a state dominated by Protestant loyalists.

Th e

America In the early 1970s, Heaney taught at the University of California for a year. There, he read the poetry of Robert Lowell, William Carlos Williams and Gary Snyder. These writers opened his mind to the possibility of a looser form of poetry than the kind he had been reading and writing. Heaney’s time in America coincided with student protests against American government policies in Vietnam, and he saw how poetry could become ‘a force, almost a mode of power, certainly a mode of resistance’. This insight shaped the direction of his future writing.

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Seamus Heaney Bloody Sunday

Move south

On Sunday 30 January 1972, thirteen unarmed men were shot dead and seventeen were

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wounded by the Parachute Regiment of the Heaney returned to Northern Ireland in September 1971, during British Army, following a march organised by the week in which internment without trial was introduced. the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association The situation depressed him; there was fear in the air and the against internment without trial. army was on the streets: to Heaney it felt like martial law was in place. January 1972 saw the ‘Bloody Sunday’ killing of thirteen civil rights protesters by the British Army. Not surprisingly, Heaney resigned from his job at Queen’s University and moved south to Glanmore, a secluded spot in Co. Wicklow. Threats from loyalist extremists played some part in his decision. However, it was the general feeling of oppression within Northern Ireland that he sought to escape. The period in Glanmore was one of domestic happiness. In 1973, the Heaneys’ daughter, Catherine, was born. Many of the poems written during this period, including a sequence of sonnets, are love poems, which celebrate Heaney’s marriage to Marie Devlin (‘The Skunk’). Heaney, with the encouragement of the poet Ted Hughes, began work on ‘The Tollund Man’ and related bog poems. Archaeological work on the Viking settlement in Dublin fuelled Heaney’s interest in the culture of Northern Europe, first stirred by P. V. Glob’s book The Bog People. This book offered Heaney ideas on how his poetry might address the historical situation in Northern Ireland. The result was the collection North, published in 1975, in which Heaney wrote about the division between the nationalist and unionist communities, and the pressure of history upon the present (‘A Constable Calls’, ‘The Tollund Man’). This book earned lavish praise from reviewers in Ireland, England and America.

In the same year as North was published, Heaney was appointed to the English department of Carysfort Teacher Training College, where he worked for a number of years until he gave up his post to become a visiting professor at Harvard University in Boston. (He Mural commemorating Bloody Sunday, Derry, 30 January 1972. replaced the poet Elizabeth Bishop. The two became friends in the short time they knew each other.) This full-time employment gave him the financial security to buy a house and, in 1976, he and his family moved to Sandymount in Dublin. For the rest of his life, he divided his time between living in Dublin and living in America and England, where he taught and lectured at Harvard and Oxford.

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In 1980, Heaney became a director of Field Day. Field Day began as a theatre company, but it soon expanded to become a forum for vigorous debate on cultural and political issues in Ireland. Heaney’s writing contributed to that debate from a mainly nationalist, Catholic perspective. Hunger strikes The years 1980 and 1981 were turbulent in Northern Ireland: the In 1981, ten IRA prisoners starved themselves hunger strikes, staged by republican prisoners in support of their to death in a dispute with the British demands for political status, brought relations between the Irish government over their status. The families and British governments to a low point. Francis Hughes, one of of two of those who died were known to the prisoners to die on hunger strike, was a neighbour of the the Heaneys. Heaney, although not an IRA supporter, attended the wake of one of the Heaneys. The poems in Heaney’s 1984 collection, Station Island, hunger strikers, Thomas McElwee. face up to the complexities of the situation and the feelings called out in him by the events in the North.

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Grief and joy

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Heaney’s next collection of poetry, The Haw Lantern (1987), is dominated by a sense of loss and grief as the poet mourns his mother, who died in 1984. And many of the poems in Seeing Things (1991) commemorate his father (‘The Pitchfork’), who died in 1986. However, the late 1980s were marked by joy as well as grief. Heaney’s journeys to America brought him into contact with many writers, including a number from Eastern Europe, and there is a palpable sense of freedom in his writing in this period (‘Lightenings, viii: “The Annals Say”’). The 1990s were marked by increasing international recognition, which culminated with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. The prize is often awarded to writers at the end of their career, but Heaney produced some of his finest work after receiving the award. His 2006 collection, District and Circle, won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. The collection is notable for poems which respond to the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 and the bombing of the London Underground on 7 July 2005. Other poems such as ‘Tate’s Avenue’ look back in time. In 2010, Heaney published Human Chain, his twelfth collection. This was awarded the Forward Poetry Prize and the Irish Times Poetry Now Award.

Death

In August 2013, Heaney was hospitalised in Dublin for treatment of a swelling to the artery. After his departure for the operating room he sent a text to his wife, Marie, which included the words, ‘Noli timere’ – ‘Be not afraid’. The poet died shortly afterwards. At the time of his death he was, without question, one of the most admired and loved poets writing in English.

Social and Cultural Context

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The social and political context in Northern Ireland was part and parcel of Seamus Heaney’s inheritance and his poetry. Heaney was steeped in the history of division, in the family stories of sectarian assassinations in the 1920s, the murder of his cousin Colum McCartney in the 1970s, and the death of his neighbour Francis Hughes on hunger strike. He addressed this reality in his poetry; throughout these notes, you will find references to key moments in ‘the Troubles’ from a Catholic, nationalist perspective, including the civil rights marches of the late 1960s, the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry in 1971, the sectarian murders of the 1970s and the hunger strikes. A major achievement of Heaney is that, while he sought to face up to his responsibilities as a writer, his work is not overwhelmed by the enormity of the events to which it responds. However, it is equally true that, while his later work was marked by a lightness of spirit, Heaney questioned his own impulse to take flight and to ignore the demands of his community.

Poetic influences One of the most interesting features of Heaney’s search for an adequate poetic response to the pressure of public events is the range of poets who inspired him. Having trained as a teacher and having taught trainee teachers, Heaney was open to the idea of learning from others, and his poems and essays borrow from and refer to a wide range of writers. When Heaney began to write, and before he was aware of

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contemporary writers, the main influences on him were the works of William Wordsworth and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The subjects of The Prelude, Wordsworth’s long autobiographical poem, which charts the poet’s childhood and his relationship with nature, are reflected in the themes of Heaney’s first collection Death of a Naturalist (1966). As in Wordsworth, there is little separation between the poet and the persona of the poems. The influence of Hopkins is especially evident in the rhythms and forceful diction of the early poems.

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Patrick Kavanagh was an important influence, who, Heaney said, Heaney on Patrick Kavanagh gave him permission to write about his own place. And the manner ‘Kavanagh walked into my ear like an old-style in which Kavanagh bridged the gap between the ordinary and farmer walking a field. He had that kind of the sacred has been taken up by Heaney in his later work. John ignorant entitlement, his confidence contained a mixture of defiance and challenge. You were Montague provided further examples of how the local might being told that you would never hit your stride serve the universal in poetry and, through him, Heaney was led if you didn’t step your own ground, and would to the tradition of dinnseanchas – poems and tales which relate to never hit the right note if you didn’t sound as the original meaning of place names. As Heaney delved into the thick as your own first speech.’ Gaelic tradition, he also looked to other sources such as Greek myths and Norse rituals and sagas. From an early stage in his career, he showed a liking for a form that goes beyond the single poem, and his collections contain linked poems and poetic sequences.

The political and the transcendent

Following the example of early twentieth-century poets like T. S. Heaney on Eastern European writers Eliot, Heaney used classical poems as reference points for the ‘Eastern European poetry … was nurture, present. His poems do not stand alone but draw strength and but it was also injunction: it enjoined you to power from other poems. Thus, for example, both Virgil and be true to poetry as a solitary calling, not to Dante are presences behind many of the poems in which Heaney desert the post, to hold on at the crossroads addresses the dead. Heaney admired the mix of the political where truth and beauty intersect.’ and the spiritual in the work of both poets, and he tried to achieve a similar balance in his own. It was also the balance between the practical and the poetic that drew Heaney to the ancient Irish annals. Elsewhere, Heaney found inspiration and encouragement in the work of writers from Eastern Europe, who wrote in difficult and dangerous political circumstances.

From all these writers celebrated by Heaney, he draws the single lesson expressed thus in his 1968 essay The Government of the Tongue (see right ‘Heaney on the paradox of poetry’).

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Part of the excitement of reading Heaney is the way in which he leads you from the parish of Anahorish in Co. Derry outwards in space and time, making connections with kindred spirits, both living and dead, so that he verifies for us Kavanagh’s belief that the local is universal. And it is impossible not to feel attracted to a poet who speaks of poetry as ‘an agent of possible transformation, of evolution towards that more radiant and generous life which the imagination desires’.

Heaney on the paradox of poetry ‘Here is the great paradox of poetry and of the imaginative arts in general. Faced with the brutality of the historical onslaught, they are practically useless. […] In one sense the efficacy of poetry is nil – no lyric has ever stopped a tank. In another sense, it is unlimited. It is like the writing in the sand in the face of which accusers and accused are left speechless and renewed.’

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Themes

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Seamus Heaney’s poetry changed over the years. His early work is concerned with giving a faithful description of nature and reality, his middle work addressed the Northern Ireland situation, and his later work is playful and spiritual.

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Heaney’s poetry celebrates family and grieves for the loss of loved ones. He is a poet of love, marriage and death. His work celebrates farming and the link between that craft and the craft of poetry. He explores the relationship between childhood and adulthood, as well as the relationship between the past and the present, especially in relation to the violence between the two communities in the North during the Troubles.

Heaney’s poetry has always had a documentary quality, a looking-back and a taking-stock. However, his later poetry expresses a delight in the marvellous and the miraculous, the mystery and otherness of the world, including the mystery of death and the absences left by the dead. Poetry itself is, for Heaney, the means through which ordinary life is acknowledged, enriched and elevated. Poetry offers a kind of compensation for the sorrows of the world. It is the place where Phases in a writer’s life the dead are given an afterlife. Throughout his career, his poetry shows a delight in words, their sounds and textures. Heaney spoke of phases in a writer’s life – the

three phases turn out to be cyclic, that there are renewed surges of endeavour in your life and art, and that in every case the movement involves a pattern of getting started, keeping going and getting started again. Some books

are a matter of keeping going; some – if you’re

In a review of Heaney’s prose collection The Redress of Poetry (1995), the reviewer referred to Heaney’s character and its ‘general benevolence’. And it is indeed the generous, life-affirming vision of his poetry that is most impressive and memorable. Heaney might well have been writing about his own work when he said: ‘We go to poetry to be forwarded in ourselves.’

and the new freedom of later life: ‘I believe the

starting out, the taking stock (at around thirty),

lucky – get you started again. Seeing Things

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was a new start.’

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Timeline Born on 13 April on Mossbawn farm, south Co. Derry

1944

Attends Anahorish national school

1951

Wins a scholarship to St Columb’s College in Derry, where he boards for six years

1957

Begins his studies in Queen’s University, Belfast

1965

Marries Marie Devlin

1966

Publication of first collection, Death of a Naturalist; birth of first child, Michael

1968

Birth of second child, Christopher

1969

Door into the Dark published; visits United States for the first time

1972

Moves south to live in Co. Wicklow; Wintering Out published

1973

Birth of third child, Catherine; travels to Jutland

1975

Publication of North

1979

Publication of Field Work; visiting lecturer in Harvard University

1984

Publication of Station Island; mother dies

1986

Father dies

1987

Publication of The Haw Lantern

1991

Publication of Seeing Things

1995

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature

1996

Publication of The Spirit Level

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Elected as Saoi by Aosdána, the highest award that can be bestowed on an artist in Ireland Publication of District and Circle; wins the T. S. Eliot Prize and Irish Times Poetry Now Award

2006

1998

1939

Suffers a minor stroke; cuts back on public engagements

2009

Public celebrations to mark his 70th birthday

2010

Publication of twelfth collection, Human Chain; wins the Forward Prize and Irish Times Poetry

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2006

2013

Now Award Dies on 30 August in Dublin; buried in Co. Derry, near the graves of his mother and father

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Before you read

The Forge

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All I know is a door into the dark. Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting; Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring, The unpredictable fantail of sparks Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water. The anvil must be somewhere in the centre, Horned as a unicorn, at one end square, Set there immovable: an altar Where he expends himself in shape and music. Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose, He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows; Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

Share your knowledge ro r upwo of the craft of blacksmithing with the class. If there is a forge in your locality, tell your classmates about it.

Forge: a blacksmith’s workshop

anvil: the heavy iron block on which the blacksmith hammers metal into shape

Title

Glossary

fantail: the sparks make a shape like a fan unicorn: a mythical creature, usually represented as a white horse with a spiralled horn on its forehead

expends himself: uses up all his energy

4 7

jamb: the side part of a door frame flashing: signalling; speeding

bellows: device with two handles that blows air into a fire

Guidelines

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‘The Forge’ comes from Seamus Heaney’s second book, Door into the Dark (1969). The title of the collection is taken from the first line of the poem. The door into the dark is the door into the forge, but metaphorically, it is a door into mystery, particularly the mystery of poetry and the imagination.

Heaney on words as doors

‘When I called my second book Door into the Dark I intended to gesture towards the idea of

The poem uses the forge and the work of the smith as symbols for writing. The poet, like the blacksmith, uses his skill to create well-made objects.

poetry as a point of entry into the buried life of

the feelings […]. Words themselves are doors’

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Commentary Title and line 1

Heaney on ‘the dark’

‘I thought of “the dark” as a … positive

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element … in which poetry originates. The

phrase “door into the dark” comes from the first line of a poem about a blacksmith, a

shape maker, standing in the door of the forge … There’s also the usual old archetype of the

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The title of the poem recalls the young Heaney’s fascination with the local forge: ‘I was thinking of Barney Devlin’s forge at Hillhead, on the roadside, where you had the noise of myth in the anvil and the noise of the 1940s in the passing car.’ In both classical and modern literature, artistic creativity is associated with the figure of the smith.

dark as something you need to traverse in order to arrive at some kind of reliable light or

The first line of the poem encapsulates the way the poem hovers sight of reality.’ between memory and imagination. It suggests that as a young boy the poet was attracted to the mystery of the forge, with its door opening into a dark interior. Now, as a poet, he is interested in using words to explore the dark, the inner place of imagination and feeling where poetry begins.

Lines 2–5

The poet describes the outside of the forge, the bits of rusting metal from old cart wheels. The imagery suggests that the axles and iron hoops belong to a different era. If the outside of the forge suggests decay, the inside (lines 3–5) suggests energy and excitement. The anvil sings to the blacksmith’s hammering. Sparks fly and the hot metal hisses as it is cooled in water. Glimpsed from the doorway, the forge is an exciting and stimulating place.

Lines 6–9

Lines 10–14

Lines 6–9 concentrate on the anvil, the centre of the forge. The dark interior means that the anvil is not visible and this adds to its sense of mystery. Its shape is likened to the horn of the mythical unicorn. But the mythical is countered by its heaviness, such that it is ‘immovable’. The anvil is now described as an altar where the priest/blacksmith uses up all his energy, and where his hammer, as it beats metal into shape, makes music.

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The last five lines of the poem describe the blacksmith, ‘leather-aproned, hairs in his nose’, coming to the door of the forge to look out on the world. The suggestion is that the blacksmith looks back fondly to a time when people used horses for transport and has little time for the traffic ‘flashing in rows’. The blacksmith’s grunt (line 13) suggests his dismissal of the modern world; he turns his back on it. There is defiance in the way he slams the forge door behind him and sets to work, doing what blacksmiths have done for centuries – beating out metal.

Themes and imagery The poem moves between detailed physical description of a real forge and a real blacksmith, and the idea of the smith as a mythic figure, who, on the altar of creativity, makes art. The blacksmith and his craft are presented as symbols of poetry and the poet. At the time of writing this poem, Heaney spoke of poetry as something that lies in the darkness of memory and the subconscious (the forge), waiting to be discovered. When the discovery is made, the poet applies the traditional techniques of poetry to fashion the poem. To speak of technique is not to take the magical or sacred qualities away from the art of the smith or the art

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creativity is associated with the figure of the smith. In classical literature were Hephaestus, who crafted the armour of the gods, and Daedalus, who designed the Labyrinth at

In both classical and modern literature, artistic

of the poet. In the mind of the boy, the ‘I’ of the poem, there is something mysterious and sacred in the transformations which take place in the forge. Indeed, the central symbol of the poem, the anvil, is described as an altar and linked to the horned unicorn, symbols of the sacred and the mysterious respectively.

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The smith

Knossos to house the Minotaur. Shakespeare

While the poem dwells on the mysteries of creation, it also laments the passing of traditional crafts. The smith is a heroic forge and working-house of thought’, and but doomed figure, out of place in a changing world, upon which, Heaney also admired Hopkins’ poem ‘Felix in disgust and defiance, he turns his back and continues his craft. Randal’. In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the The poem praises the smith’s dedication to his craft and sets him Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus (note the surname) declares that he is going ‘to up as a timeless, exemplary figure. Interestingly, ‘The Forge’ forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated ends with the poet still outside the door. The smith retires into conscience of my race’. the darkness as if he has escaped the modern world, or as if the poet’s younger self has not yet entered the world of the forge where, in the dark interior, the smith works the magic of creation. The ending opens out a range of possible interpretations.

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describes the imagination as ‘the quick

Form and language

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‘The Forge’ is remarkable for the effects Heaney achieves in the use of consonants, and short, strong-sounding words (dark, ring, sparks, grunts, slam, flick, beat) which give a muscularity to the language, in keeping with the energy and noise of the smith’s work. The rhymes and half-rhymes in the poem mirror the music of the hammer striking the anvil. In the poem, the strength of the consonants and the effort required in giving voice to their sounds imitate the energy and forcefulness of the smith’s work.

‘The Forge’, as a celebration of the traditional craft of the blacksmith, is, appropriately, written in a traditional form, the sonnet, though the poem is looser in organisation than more traditional sonnets. The opening line has ten syllables, as in a Shakespearean sonnet. The poem falls into two parts: the first eight lines of the poem (octave) focus on the forge and its mysteries; the last six lines (sestet) focus on the smith himself.

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Questions Based on the description of the inside of the forge (lines 3–5), what impression do you form of the blacksmith and his art?

How does the description of the outside of the forge (line 2) compare with the description of the inside?

What details in Heaney’s description of the blacksmith are most striking?

Based on the last five lines of the poem, what kind of person do you imagine the blacksmith to be?

Trace the imagery of light and sound in the poem. What do they suggest about the art of the smith? Explain your answer.

At the centre of the poem are the images of the altar and the horned unicorn. What is the significance of these images for the themes of the poem?

The poem ends with the contrast between the traffic and the blacksmith’s traditional craft. What is the effect of this contrast?

The poem is written in the present tense. What is the effect of this?

a) Give three examples of words which, in your view, capture the strength and energy of the blacksmith and his work. b) Give an example of an image that is connected with sight; one that is connected with hearing; and one connected to the imagination.

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Taking the forge and the blacksmith as standing for the poet and his work, what does the poem say about the process of making a poem?

Which of the following is closest to your reading of the poem? ■ This is a poem about the process of writing poetry. n This is a poem written in celebration of a local craftsman. n This is a poem about boyhood fascination. n This is a poem about the pleasure of memory.

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If you were asked to nominate a person as an example of skill, artistry and imagination, whom would you choose? In pairs or groups, explain your choice.

Explain your choice, considering each point of view in your answer.

Compare this poem with ‘Bogland’ and ‘Lightenings, viii’ for variations on Heaney’s exploration of the art of making poetry.

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Bogland

Before you read

for T. P. Flanagan

They’ve taken the skeleton Of the Great Irish Elk Out of the peat, set it up An astounding crate full of air.

Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye Of a tarn. Our unfenced country Is bog that keeps crusting Between the sights of the sun.

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We have no prairies To slice a big sun at evening – Everywhere the eye concedes to Encroaching horizon,

In pairs, discuss all the ideas ro r upwo and images you associate with the words ‘bog’ and ‘bogland’. Consider the extent to which these words have a positive or negative connotation for you. You might return to your discussion when you have studied the poem and considered Heaney’s meditation on bogland.

Butter sunk under More than a hundred years Was recovered salty and white. The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot, Missing its last definition By millions of years. They’ll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks Of great firs, soft as pulp. Our pioneers keep striking Inwards and downwards,

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Every layer they strip Seems camped on before. The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage. The wet centre is bottomless.

Glossary 1

prairies: the vast areas of grassland in the central plains of North America

slice: cut (i.e. the distant horizon cuts the sinking sun in half)

concedes: gives way to

cyclops’ eye: the Cyclops is a one-eyed giant in Greek mythology

tarn: a small mountain lake; the word comes from Old Norse

Great Irish Elk: skeletons of huge deer were found preserved in the bogs

crate: Heaney compares the skeleton of the elk to a crate or container made of slats

coal: coal is what the bog will eventually become (‘its last definition’), but it will take millions of years for this to happen

pioneers: settlers in previously unknown, wild or unclaimed territory

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Guidelines

The prairies The prairies or Great Plains were the vast areas of open grasslands in the central part

of America. The prairies were sacred to many American tribes, including the Sioux,

Blackfoot, Crow, Cheyenne and Apache, and

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‘Bogland’ is the final poem in Seamus Heaney’s collection Door into the Dark (1969). It is widely regarded as one of Heaney’s most important early poems, and it suggests new possibilities for the direction of the poet’s writing. This is what Heaney himself said about the origins of the poem:

home to herds of buffalo. In the second half of

the nineteenth century, the railways brought

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many white settlers to the prairies, moving ‘We used to hear about bog butter, butter kept fresh for a great westward from their original settlements number of years under the peat. Then when I was at school along the east coast. From the perspective of the skeleton of an elk had been taken out of a bog nearby the settlers, the opening of the prairies was and a few of our neighbours had got their photographs in the a great adventure. For the American tribes, it ensured the destruction of their way of life. paper, peering out across its antlers. So I began to get an idea of the bog as the memory of the landscape, or as a landscape that remembered everything that happened in it and to it … Moreover, since memory was the faculty that supplied me with the first quickening of my own poetry, I had a tentative unrealised need to make a congruence between memory and bogland and, for want of a better word, our national consciousness. … At that time, I had … been reading about the frontier and the west as an important myth in the American consciousness, so I set up – or rather, laid down – the bog as an answering Irish myth.’

‘Bogland’ is one of the first poems in which Heaney speaks as a representative of his nationalist community.

Commentary

The poem consists of a series of statements.

Statement 1: Lines 1–6

Poem as response Heaney’s poem reads like a response to ‘In Praise of Prairie’ by the American poet, Theodore Roethke. In that poem, Roethke writes that ‘Horizons have no strangeness to the eye’. In another line he states, ‘Here

The poem begins with the poet speaking on behalf of the Irish distance is familiar as a friend’. race: ’We have no prairies …’. The speaker compares Ireland and America. On the US prairies the eye can travel across great distances to the furthest horizon, to where the sun sets. In contrast, in Ireland, the horizon advances towards you, or the eye is drawn to small lakes in the hills.

Statement 2: Lines 6–8

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The comparison between Ireland and America continues. In Ireland, the unfenced country is bog, which develops a hard layer on its soft turf between periods of sunshine.

Statements 3 and 4: Lines 9–15

The speaker informs the reader about items recovered from the bog in a preserved state: a Great Irish Elk and hundred-year-old butter.

Statements 5 and 6: Lines 16–22

According to the speaker, the bog itself is like butter, and gives way under foot. Millions of years will pass before it is changed into coal. That is why it is only the soft, waterlogged trunks of trees that will be dug out of the bog. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 117

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Statement 7: Lines 23–26

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The speaker makes an implied comparison between the American and Irish pioneers. In America, because of the vast prairies, the pioneers spread across the land into unclaimed and uninhabited territory. Because of the bog, Irish pioneers strike inwards and downwards (as opposed to onwards and upwards), and every layer they uncover seems previously inhabited.

Statement 9: Line 28

The poem concludes with the declaration that the wet centre of the bog is bottomless.

This is the only statement in the poem that is less than definite. The speaker wonders if the water in the bogholes might be seepage from the Atlantic Ocean.

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Statement 8: Line 27

Themes and imagery

‘Bogland’ turns on a comparison between the American prairies and Irish bogs. As the poem presents it, the American pioneers moved across empty spaces of the prairies, whereas pioneers in Ireland explore downwards. The word ‘pioneer’ suggests adventure and discovery: the adventure of poetry; the adventure of discovering your past and your national identity by cutting down through the layers of bog. According to the poem, the bog is generous: it preserves and returns the past to us, in the form of ordinary, domestic gifts (butter) and traces of the marvellous (the elk). The bog is also soft and accommodating.

‘Bogland’ is not simply a landscape poem. The landscape it describes is both the natural landscape of Ireland but also a cultural/visionary landscape. Thus, the poem is poised between the literal and the symbolic and the reader must constantly shift between the two.

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Heaney offers the bog as a symbol for Ireland, for Irish history, and for the memory and unconscious of the Irish race. To dig the bog, by ‘striking / Inwards and downwards’ (lines 23–24), is to search into the bottomless centre of Irish history. Although not stated explicitly in this poem, it is clear that the action of digging the bog is seized by the poet as a symbol of his work as a poet. For the poet, the bog is a symbol which seems inexhaustible, whose ‘wet centre is bottomless’ (line 28). The last line of the poem comes from the warning given by older people to keep children away from the bog. It is presented here with the force and excitement of illumination, as if the poet has gained an unexpected insight, which he offers to the reader with confidence and certainty. There is no bottom to the well of imagination. Indeed, the whole poem is delivered with a remarkable air of assurance and confidence. Heaney speaks on behalf of the race (‘We have no prairies’, line 1; ‘Our unfenced country’, line 6; ‘Our pioneers keep striking’, line 23), with no hint of self-consciousness. In ‘Bogland’, Heaney sets out to establish his own poetic myth, and does so with a confident excitement. What is most notable is the way that the bog, and the work associated with it, is treated as a metaphor. This is carried forward in Heaney’s poetry.

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Form and language

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‘Bogland’ is written in seven four-line stanzas, with many short lines. There is no formal rhyme scheme, but there are many instances of slant or half-rhyme (‘skeleton’/‘Elk’, ‘peat’/‘crate’, ‘years’/‘here’). The form is loose and yielding, mirroring the softness of the bog. In ‘Bogland’ there is a new spareness in Heaney’s poetic language and a direct way of speaking. The poem consists of nine sentences, each one a statement. This lends an air of certainty and authority to the speaker, as in the opening line, ‘We have no prairies’.

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Questions

What contrast does the poem establish between the American prairies and the bogs of Ireland?

In the poem what qualities are ascribed to bogland? Is it, for example, sinister, dangerous, generous, barren, shallow …? Explain your answer.

How does the bog work as: a) a symbol of Irish history, and b) a symbol of the imagination of the poet? In your view, is it a successful symbol? Explain your answer.

How would you describe the tone(s) of the poem? In making your answer, consider the poet’s use of the communal pronouns ‘Our’ and We’, and the declarative statements of the poem.

The poem has a sense of excitement and possibility about it. Where, in your view, is this excitement most evident?

Speaking of the poem, Seamus Heaney said, ‘From the moment I wrote it, I felt promise in “Bogland”.‘ What, do you think, did he mean by this?

What kind of person do you imagine the speaker of the poem to be?

The poem speaks of the bog melting and opening underfoot. Select two examples where the short line and/or the sounds of the poem also melt and open. upwo

In pairs, read the poem aloud to each other. As you listen, write down all the words and phrases which you find memorable. Based on this selection, discuss the themes and concerns of the poem.

Which of the following statements is closest to your understanding of the poem? The poem is about the difference between an American outlook and an Irish outlook. The poem is about the relationship between the past and the present in Ireland. The poem is about the relationship between memory and poetry. The poem is about the importance of symbols in understanding experience.

n n n n

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Explain your choice, considering each point of view in your answer.

Write your own text (poem, monologue, paragraph, essay, etc.) on the idea of the Irish as people of the bog.

The poet James Simmons has suggested that Heaney’s poetry is stuck in the past. Based on this poem, is this a fair criticism?

What differences and similarities can you see in the ideas on poetry and poetry-making in ‘Bogland’, ‘The Forge’ and ‘Lightenings, viii’?

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Before you read

The Tollund Man

This is the official museum website for the Tollund Man: http://www.tollundman.dk. When you have visited it, write your own response to the Tollund Man.

ny pa

Naked except for The cap, noose and girdle, I will stand a long time. Bridegroom to the goddess,

In the flat country near by Where they dug him out, His last gruel of winter seeds Caked in his stomach,

She tightened her torc on him And opened her fen, Those dark juices working Him to a saint’s kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters’ Honeycombed workings. Now his stained face Reposes at Aarhus.

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I Some day I will go to Aarhus To see his peat-brown head, The mild pods of his eye-lids, His pointed skin cap.

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II I could risk blasphemy, Consecrate the cauldron bog Our holy ground and pray Him to make germinate The scattered, ambushed Flesh of labourers, Stockinged corpses Laid out in the farmyards, Tell-tale skin and teeth Flecking the sleepers Of four young brothers, trailed For miles along the lines.

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Seamus Heaney III Something of his sad freedom As he rode the tumbril Should come to me, driving, Saying the names Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard, Watching the pointing hands Of country people, Not knowing their tongue.

Out there in Jutland In the old man-killing parishes I will feel lost, Unhappy and at home.

Aarhus: a city in Jutland, Denmark pods: shells or husks for peas and beans

skin cap: leather hat

Glossary 3

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the goddess: Nerthus, a goddess of the earth and fertility

torc: necklace made of metal, usually bronze or gold

fen: bog or marshy land

kept: preserved

trove: treasure buried in the earth

Honeycombed workings: the turfcutters dig out many small sections of the bog

blasphemy: the act of insulting sacred things

cauldron: large metal pot

make germinate: cause to sprout or grow

Stockinged corpses: the image comes from a photo of a farmer’s family who had been shot in reprisals by the Black and Tans during the War of Independence, 1919–1921

four young brothers: refers to a sectarian incident from the 1920s in which four Catholic brothers were killed by Protestant paramilitaries; according to Heaney, their bodies were ‘trailed along the railway lines, over the sleepers as a kind of mutilation’

tumbril: farm cart of the kind used during the French Revolution to bring condemned prisoners to the guillotine

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard: place names in Jutland, Denmark

Guidelines

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‘The Tollund Man’ comes from Seamus Heaney’s third collection, Wintering Out (1972). Like many of the poems in the collection, ‘The Tollund Man’ was written in response to the violence and murders in Northern Ireland. Glob’s book The Bog People provided Heaney with an imaginative framework for thinking about the violence in his home place. Heaney tells us that: It was chiefly concerned with preserved bodies of men and women found in the bogs of Jutland, naked, strangled or with their throats cut, disposed under the peat since early Iron Age times. The author P. V. Glob argues convincingly that a number of these and, in particular, The Tollund Man, whose head is now preserved near Aarhus in the museum at Silkeburg, were ritual sacrifices to the Mother Goddess, the Goddess of the ground who needed new bridegrooms each winter to bed with her in

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her sacred place, in the bog, to ensure the renewal and fertility of the territory in the spring. Taken in relation to the tradition of Irish martyrdom for that cause whose icon is Cathleen Ní Houlihan, this is more than an archaic barbarous rite: it is an archetypal pattern. And the unforgettable photographs of those victims blended in my mind with photographs of atrocities, past and present, in the long rites of Irish political and religious struggles.

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Heaney draws a parallel between the Tollund Man, the victim of a ritual killing in Iron Age Jutland, and political killings in contemporary Ireland, which he compares with the archetypal pattern of making sacrifices to the Mother Goddess (in this case, Mother Ireland). In trying to make sense of the present Troubles, Heaney searches the past, and finds not only a long history of barbaric rites, but a recurrence of ancient patterns.

Commentary

Section I

‘The Tollund Man’ opens with the speaker making a declaration of intent to go to Aarhus, in Jutland, to see the preserved body of the Tollund Man. The man had been hanged and his body placed in the bog, as a ‘Bridegroom to the goddess’. The bog has preserved the body, which takes on, for the speaker, the qualities of a saint. Once there, the poet says that he will stand a long time in contemplation. The opening sections give a detailed description of the preserved head of the Tollund Man, and the circumstances of his death.

Section II

In the second part of the poem, the speaker expands on the idea of the Tollund Man as a saint. He says he could risk blasphemy by making holy the bog and praying to the Tollund Man to make something good grow or germinate from the broken and scattered bodies of the victims of sectarian violence in the North.

Section III

In the third part of the poem, the speaker imagines himself driving through Jutland, en route to Aarhus, in a country where he does not speak the language. He imagines experiencing some of the feelings of the Tollund Man as he rode in the cart to his death. In the country of Iron Age murder, the poet imagines he will feel lost, but also, unhappily, at home.

Themes and imagery

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The poem was written in response to photographs of the Tollund Man and out of the awe and fascination provoked by those images. The entire poem has a religious feel to it and operates as a kind of prayer. The first section announces the speaker’s intention to go on a pilgrimage to view the sacred figure of the Tollund Man, who has experienced a kind of resurrection from his burial place in the bog. The second section invokes the Tollund Man’s power. The third section imagines how the speaker will feel when he goes to Jutland. In the movement from the past to the present and from Jutland to Ireland, in the second section of the poem, there is a compacting of both time and space. The poem brings into relation the victims of political atrocities in the North, and the Iron Age Tollund Man. However, whereas the Tollund Man was forewarned of his death and, perhaps, was even a willing sacrifice, the four brothers had their bodies broken and shredded.

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Seamus Heaney

Contemporary violence denies its victims the dignity that Heaney sees in the Tollund Man. In contemplating an appeal to the Iron Age killing of the Tollund Man, ‘to make germinate / The scattered … Flesh of labourers’ (lines 24–26), Heaney searches to find some way of translating the deaths of these victims of savage, sectarian hatred into a positive, generative force, to confer meaning and value on the deaths of local men.

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In the third section of the poem, the poet identifies with the Tollund Man, imagining himself retracing the final journey of the bridegroom to the goddess. The poet’s imagined sense of disorientation, evident in the strange place names and the implied threat in the pointing hands, leads him to an epiphany: he recognises the nature of home and realises that to travel to Jutland would be to encounter his own desolate, disconsolate sense of home. And implicit in this desolation is the poet’s desire for his home – that is, Ulster – to be other than what it is.

‘The Tollund Man’ is a remarkably accomplished poem by any standards, but critics have raised questions about its achievement. Does the poem represent a refusal to confront the reality of violence in the North? Heaney asks these questions of himself. He admits that he found it easier writing about a victim of 2,000-year-old violence than about a local, contemporary incident:

‘The barman at the end of our road tried to carry out a bomb and it blew up. Now there is of course something terrible about that, but somehow language, words didn’t live in the way I think they have to live in a poem when they were hovering over that kind of horror and pity. They just become inert. And it was in these victims made strangely beautiful by the process of lying in bogs that somehow I felt I could make offerings or images that were emblems.’

Heaney wants the Tollund Man to stand as an emblem or symbol, and in the poem the Tollund Man achieves a kind of beauty. Is it dangerous to suggest that the victims of ritual killings achieve a kind of beauty, or is there something consoling in this idea?

At the centre of the poem is the image of the Tollund Man, preserved in the bog, and returned to us after thousands of years, as a kind of sacred ancestor. The bog is personified as a goddess and the poet uses sexual imagery to describe his burial as a kind of consummation (lines 12–16). Another set of imagery describes the victims of sectarian/political violence in graphic terms, their flesh scattered and defiled. In the final section, the speaker pictures himself driving through Jutland. The place names suggest the foreignness of the place. The image of the journey is one frequently used by Heaney, as in ‘Postscript’, ‘The Pitchfork’, ‘The Underground’ and ‘Lightenings, viii’.

Form and language

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The poem is written in four-line stanzas. The short line allows for subtle changes of pace and tone. The underlying tone of sadness of the opening stanza, the long vowel sounds, the half-rhymes (‘peat’/‘head’, ‘mild’/‘lids’); the alliteration (‘peat’, ‘pod’, ‘pointed’) and consonance (‘mild’, ‘pods’, ‘lids’) sets the dominant tone of the poem.

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Questions Summarise in a few sentences what the poem is about.

What, in your view, is the tone of the first stanza? How is this tone achieved?

The Tollund Man was a ‘Bridegroom to the goddess’ (line 12). What kind of bride was she? Look particularly at the images in stanzas 3 and 4 of the first section of the poem.

Where is the identification of the Tollund Man as a kind of sacred ancestor most evident in the poem?

Why is the bog described as a cauldron (line 22)?

The poet considers calling on the Tollund Man ‘to make germinate’ (line 24) the murdered victims of sectarian violence in the North. What kind of germination, do you think, might the poet have in mind? Explain your answer.

In your view, what does the phrase ‘sad freedom’ (line 33) suggest about the bridegroom/victim?

What are the differences between the death of the Tollund Man and the deaths of the four brothers referred to in the second section of the poem? Explain your answer.

What, in your opinion, does the Tollund Man represent? Is he, for example, a Christ-like figure, whose death and bizarre resurrection offers a kind of hope? Explain your answer.

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The poet identifies closely with the Tollund Man’s experience. Does the poet make the same identification with the victims of contemporary violence? Explain your answer.

The poem ends with a kind of revelation. What, in your opinion, has the poet gained from his imaginary pilgrimage to Jutland?

Some critics argue that the poem’s linking of the sectarian violence in the North to the ritual killings in Jutland offers an excuse to murderers. Do you agree with this point of view? Discuss in groups.

upw

Here are three views of the poem. Discuss the extent to which each view corresponds to your own view of the poem. n The theme of the poem is religious pilgrimage. n The poem is a meditation on violence in society. n ‘The Tollund Man’ is a personal poem about public events. Does the analogy between the violence in the North and the ritual killings in ancient Jutland help you understand, in any way, the violence in the North during the Troubles? Explain your answer.

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Seamus Heaney Before you read

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Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication for Mary Heaney

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1 Sunlight

of each long afternoon. So, her hands scuffled over the bakeboard, the reddening stove

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Title:

Mossbawn: Heaney’s childhood family home

Dedication: Mary Heaney: the poet’s aunt, unmarried sister of his father, Patrick; Mary lived with the family in Mossbawn griddle: flat iron pan used for baking

measling: becoming red from the heat, like the rash from measles

love: one of the few occasions in Heaney’s poetry when the word ‘love’ is used

meal-bin: a container for storing meal (flour); also used for animal feed

and measling shins: here is a space again, the scone rising to the tick of two clocks. And here is love like a tinsmith’s scoop sunk past its gleam in the meal-bin.

Glossary

Now she dusts the board with a goose’s wing, now sits, broad-lapped, with whitened nails

in the slung bucket and the sun stood like a griddle cooling against the wall

There was a sunlit absence. The helmeted pump in the yard heated its iron, water honeyed

sent its plaque of heat against her where she stood in a floury apron by the window.

In pairs, discuss the images you ro r upwo would choose to suggest the security and warmth of home. Return to your discussion after you have read the poem.

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Guidelines

Heaney on Mossbawn ‘Our farm was called Mossbawn. Moss, a

colonists gave to their fortified farmhouses … Yet … bán is the Gaelic word for white. So might not the thing mean the white moss, the

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moss of bog-cotton?’

‘Sunlight’ is the first of two poems under the collective title ‘Mossbawn’, which open the collection North (1975). The poem, set in the poet’s childhood home, stands apart from those poems in North which deal with the violence of the conflict in Northern Ireland. In ‘Sunlight’, Heaney paints a portrait of the farmyard and kitchen, with the poet’s aunt as the central human figure.

planters, and bawn, the name the English

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Scots word probably carried to Ulster by the

Commentary Lines 1–9

The first nine lines recreate a scene from the poet’s childhood – the empty farmyard bathed in sunlight. The yard is transformed by the glow of the sun (and the poet’s memory), so that the ‘water honeyed / in the slung bucket’. The references to warmth – the iron of the pump heating up, the sun as a griddle cooling off – prepares the reader for the change of focus in the poem to the aunt baking in the kitchen.

Lines 10–16

The poet paints a warm, tender portrait of his aunt at work. The stove itself seems to respond to the aunt, sending out ‘its plaque of heat’, to where she stands in a ‘floury apron’.

Lines 17–21

Heaney on his Aunt Mary

As the description continues, the change in tense – ‘Now she dusts … / now sits …’ – places the aunt in a continuous present. The ordinary, domestic chore of baking is described with a painter’s eye: the aunt ‘dusts the board / with a goose’s wing’; fingernails are whitened; shins redden from the heat. The image might be from a painting by Vermeer and has a timeless quality.

‘Mary had white hair and a fair rosy face; she

stood still and straight while her hands did all the work at the bakeboard and the kitchen

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filled with the fragrance of the baking bread.’

‘She was a tower of emotional strength … I loved her dearly. She was the heart of the house in some way, and as a child I was “petted” on by her, as they say. Mary was

always there as a kind of second mother.’

Lines 22–28

The space named in the second-last stanza (line 22) is not only the space where the scones will rise, but the space where Heaney can pause and celebrate the love shown by his aunt for his family, a love enacted every day in her domestic routine. It is the space that allows the final thought to grow and blossom, as the poem opens out emotionally at the end: And here is love like a tinsmith’s scoop sunk past its gleam in the meal-bin.

Just as the scoop is hidden in the meal, so his aunt’s love is hidden but constant, as is the memory of her, sunk in the poet’s consciousness, but brought to light now in loving remembrance.

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Seamus Heaney

Themes and imagery

Heaney on the water pump in the yard ‘I would begin with the Greek word omphalos,

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meaning the navel, and hence the stone that

marked the centre of the world, and repeat it, omphalos, omphalos, omphalos, until its

blunt and falling music becomes the music of our back door.’

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somebody pumping water at the pump outside

This is a poem about love, and the warmth and security at the heart of the family home. The central images of warmth and the baking of bread, symbolise nurturing and nourishment. The setting of the poem in Mossbawn is important. In a radio interview, Heaney referred to it as ‘the first place’, his version of Eden. In the poem, Mossbawn is a world of sunlight and feminine care, a world of grace and blessing. It stands as a place of sanctuary in a world that can be violent and brutal. The ‘helmeted pump’ (line 2) is an important symbol in Heaney’s world. The pump goes down into the earth and finds spring water, a symbol of purity and life.

Heaney on his Aunt Mary 2 ‘For

much

her

adulthood,

she

was

surrounded by the unconditional love of

Form and language

The presiding figure in the poem is that of Heaney’s Aunt Mary. children and she gave it back without stint. Hers is a nurturing presence, protective and gentle. ‘Sunlight’ She had a hard early life and a secure old age is one of the rare poems in which he uses the word ‘love’. and both showed in her gaze.’ Interestingly, ‘I’, the first-person pronoun, is not used in the poem, so that the poet’s love for his aunt is implied rather than stated. Love and memory go hand in hand in the poem. ‘Sunlight’ begins with ‘a sunlit absence’ (line 1) but ends, through the poet’s act of remembering, with the presence of his aunt and the timeless love they share.

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The poem is written in short, four-line stanzas, a form favoured by Heaney. The form allows him to speak in the rhythm of his own voice, ornamented by the music of alliteration, long vowel sounds and consonance. The lines run into each other, and this enjambment gives a flow to the poem, until the pause at the end of line 21, before the beautiful and elevating final stanza. Language and theme go hand in hand in ‘Sunlight’. The long vowels (‘each long afternoon’) and detailed description create a sense of slow time or time standing still (‘the sun stood’, line 6), while the alliteration on the initial ‘h’ sound – ‘helmeted’, ‘heated’ and ‘honeyed’ – in the first stanza mirrors the heating process, as the reader exhales their own breath in saying the words.

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Questions The poem paints two pictures, one of the yard and one of the kitchen. Describe each picture.

What is the dominant atmosphere created by the pictures?

The pump is described as ‘helmeted’ (line 2). In your view, what qualities does this adjective ascribe to the pump?

What, do you think, is the purpose of the image of the sun as a griddle in line 7? Is the image a successful one? Explain your answer.

Trace all the images of baking in the poem. In your view, does the poem succeed in linking the human activity to the natural processes of the weather? Explain your answer.

The final stanza commences with the declaration, ‘And here is love’. Has the poem, in your opinion, built sufficiently to this declaration? Explain your answer.

In your view, what kind of love is suggested by the image of the tinsmith’s scoop sunk in the meal-bin?

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Comment on the effect of the following italicised words as used in the poem:

n ‘her hands scuffled’ n ‘measling shins’ n ‘the tick of two clocks’.

Tone is clearly an important part of the poem’s message. Trace the pattern of ‘u’ and ‘o’ sounds in the poem, noting how they contribute to the sense of slow time.

upwo

‘Sunlight’ is a celebration of the poet’s home and of his aunt, Mary Heaney. Why, in your opinion, did Heaney choose this as the first poem in North (1975), a collection which deals, for the most part, with the theme of violence?

From your reading of the poem, what does the woman symbolise in the poem? Compare the female figure in this poem with the goddess in ‘The Tollund Man’ and with the male figure in ‘A Constable Calls’.

Write a loving description of one of the following:

n a table set for dinner

n the sun shining in the back garden n a vase of flowers

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n a loved one preparing food.

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Seamus Heaney

A Constable Calls

Before you read

His cap was upside down On the floor, next his chair. The line of its pressure ran like a bevel In his slightly sweating hair.

pa om

In the potato field? I assumed Small guilts and sat Imagining the black hole in the barracks. He stood up, shifted the baton-case

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A shadow bobbed in the window. He was snapping the carrier spring Over the ledger. His boot pushed off And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked.

Glossary Title:

‘Any other root crops? Mangolds? Marrowstems? Anything like that?’ ‘No.’ But was there not a line Of turnips where the seed ran out

Further round on his belt, Closed the domesday book, Fitted his cap back with two hands, And looked at me as he said goodbye.

He had unstrapped The heavy ledger, and my father Was making tillage returns In acres, roods, and perches. Arithmetic and fear. I sat staring at the polished holster With its buttoned flap, the braid cord Looped into the revolver butt.

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Heating in sunlight, the ‘spud’ Of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back, The pedal treads hanging relieved Of the boot of the law.

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His bicycle stood at the window-sill, The rubber cowl of a mud-splasher Skirting the front mudguard, Its fat black handlegrips

As a class, brainstorm ro r upwo the likely circumstances in which a local Garda might call to your house, and discuss the welcome he or she would receive.

Constable: a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)

bevel: a line or an edge; here, the mark left by the band of the constable’s cap

assumed: took on; felt

the domesday book: in 1068 William I ordered a survey of the value and ownership of the land of England. The Domesday Book recorded the result of this survey. In the poem, the phrase is used to refer to the official record of crop returns, registered by the constable. The word ‘Domesday’ also refers to the Last Judgement (in Christianity, the final day of the world, when God will judge everyone), or any other day of reckoning

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Guidelines

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‘A Constable Calls’ is the second poem in a sequence of six called ‘Singing School’. These poems are autobiographical, describing key moments in the poet’s life which helped define him as a poet and a citizen from the Catholic community in a sectarian state. The poems in ‘Singing School’ concern fear and power. In ‘A Constable Calls’ Heaney conveys the sense of implicit threat Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) felt by the young boy in the official visit of the constable. The From the beginning of the Northern Ireland poem shows the alienation of the Catholic, nationalist community State in the 1920s until the establishment of the from the agents of the state.

RUC was the police force in Northern Ireland. The RUC had a predominantly Protestant membership and was seen as pro-loyalist.

Commentary

Unlike the Gardaí, the members of the RUC started in the North in the late 1960s, the RUC

Lines 1–8

were armed. When the civil rights movement

Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2001, the

The poem opens with a description of the constable’s bicycle, leaning outside against a window-sill. In precise language, the individual parts of the bike are described. The choice of words suggests that the observer is not simply recording what he sees but is responding in a negative way. The scene is from the past.

used excessive force in breaking up marches.

Lines 9–16

The speaker observes the scene indoors. The cap of the policeman was lying on the floor. It had left a mark in the constable’s sweating hair. In the fourth stanza, the observer speaks directly about the constable (‘He had unstrapped / The heavy ledger’). Lines 13–15 make clear what was happening and where it was happening. The observer’s father was making tillage returns to the local constable. The constable had called to the family home for this purpose.

Lines 17–20

The opening line of the fifth stanza sums up the situation in three words: ‘Arithmetic and fear.’ The poet looking back captures what the young boy felt at the time and his fixation with the constable’s gun in its holster.

Lines 21–27

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The curt exchange between the boy’s father and the constable is recorded. The boy remembers something that his father has not reported: ‘a line / Of turnips’. He feels guilty at this omission and imagines the jail, ‘the black hole’ in the barracks, where he or his father might be sent.

Heaney on being Catholic in Derry ‘Even though there was no sectarian talk

or prejudice at home, there was still an indignation at the political status quo. We knew and were given to know that Ulster wasn’t meant for us, that the British connection was meant to displace us.’

Lines 28–36

The narrator describes the policeman preparing to leave. His actions are deliberate: he fixes his baton, closes the ledger and puts on his cap. The observer says that the constable looked at him as he said goodbye. The final four lines describe the policeman getting on his bicycle and cycling away. The final three words capture the tension and pressure of the entire visit.

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Themes and imagery

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Seamus Heaney

In the poem, the father is obliged to give an account of his crop returns. This relatively minor matter is used by the poet to suggest the many ways in which the nationalist community was called to account by a police force which they regarded as oppressive. The incident illustrates power and control in action. In ‘Sunlight’, the aunt’s presence evoked warmth and security, whereas here, the constable’s presence is enough to cause fear, doubt and guilt in the young Heaney.

Heaney on his parents’ attitude to sectarianism ‘My mother … had a critical, disaffected attitude, but my father tended to sail through many of those aggravations as if he didn’t notice.’

Th e

The constable would have been a neighbour of the Heaneys, but there is no sense of this visit having a social dimension. The constable is not offered tea or a drink, although he is sweating. There are no pleasantries. The interaction takes the form of an interrogation, with a minimal exchange of words. The only words spoken by the constable are a series of questions. The only word spoken by the boy’s father is the monosyllabic ‘No’.

The young boy, the narrator, is fascinated by the constable’s gun. His fascination turns to dread when his father fails to mention a line of turnips, and the boy, feeling like an accessory to a crime, pictures a fearful place of punishment ‘in the barracks’ (line 27). Even as the policeman cycles away, the sounds of the bicycle, as it ‘ticked, ticked, ticked’ (line 36), carry menace – the menace of an explosive timing-device. This is in high contrast with ‘Sunlight’, where the ticking of the clocks, as the aunt waits for the scones to rise, creates a space for love.

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Heaney on being an Ulster Catholic

The poem works by way of detailed descriptions. The bicycle of the constable is first described, in the opening stanzas, in graduate with a job, a self-respecting adult of precise, cold language: ‘rubber cowl of a mud-splasher / … fat sorts, but I was still subject to the … Northern black handlegrips’. The elements of the bicycle are associated, Ireland reminders that I’d better mind my by clever word play, with the character of the constable and Fenian manners. The B-Special Constabulary were on the roads at night. The anti-Catholic with the power of the police to arrest and use force. The phrase speeches were still being delivered by ‘handlegrips’ suggests handcuffs, and the gleaming ‘cocked Unionist leaders on the Twelfth of July.’ back’ dynamo brings to mind a gun ready to fire. The word ‘the boot of the law’, when read in the context of 1969 and the violence done on the civil rights marchers by a Protestant constabulary, gains an emotional force and suggests that the law is administered in an oppressive way. When the focus of the poem switches indoors, the constable remains an impersonal, indistinct presence. The parts of his uniform are described so that the man, like his bicycle, seems composed of separate, inanimate pieces.

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‘When I began to write in 1962 … I was a

The image in the final line, the ticking of the bike as the constable cycles away, with its repetition and the harsh ‘ck’ sounds, brings the poem to a tense close that suggests an impending explosion.

Form and language

The poem is written in four-line stanzas and composed in short, concise phrases such as ‘the boot of the law’ (line 8). The short lines help to build the tension in the poem. There is no regular rhyming scheme in the stanzas and this creates an impression of control without harmony, which matches the theme of the poem. The poem has a short-story quality, with the relationship between two communities dramatised in one small incident.

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The harsh ‘ck’ sounds and the clipped ‘t’ and ‘d’ sounds in the first two stanzas, which are picked up in the final stanza, contribute to the cold, impersonal nature of the descriptions. Heaney uses plosive ‘p’ and ‘b’ sounds and alliteration to create a sense of heaviness and threat. While the descriptions might be impersonal, they are not objective. They convey the attitude of the observer to the constable as much as they convey a sense of the constable or his position in the community.

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SNAPSHOT

A snapshot from the poet’s autobiography Themes of fear and power Personal memory that speaks of the experience of a whole community Constable intrudes into the private world of the family Constable described in terms of his uniform and equipment Descriptions are cold and impersonal Harsh sounds Feelings of guilt, alarm and dread Ominous last line

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Seamus Heaney

Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem How do you imagine the young boy felt when the constable arrived at the house?

On the evidence of the poem, what kind of man do you imagine the constable to have been?

What kind of welcome did the constable receive from the narrator’s family?

‘I sat staring at the polished holster’ (line 18). What does this tell us about the boy?

What was the purpose of the constable’s call?

What caused the young boy to feel guilty?

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Thinking about the poem

Select two words or phrases from the first two stanzas of the poem that are suggestive of threatening violence. Explain your choices.

Does the poem allow the reader room to sympathise with the constable or is he definitely the ‘baddie’ in the story? Explain your answer.

‘And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked’ (line 36). What is the effect of the last three words of the poem, particularly in the context of Northern Ireland?

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Here are three statements about the poem. Which one is closest to your reading of the poem? In groups or pairs, discuss your choice. n The poem is about a small boy’s fear. n The poem is about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. n The poem is about ordinary people’s fear of the law.

Imagining

Turn the events described in the poem into a short story, written as first-person narrative, in the voice of the young boy.

You are asked to make a film of the poem. Describe the atmosphere you would create and the images, music and sounds you would use to create it.

You are the young boy in the poem. It is twenty years later and you are studying to become a journalist. You go to the home of the retired constable and interview him about this incident. Write the script of the interview.

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Before you read k

After eleven years I was composing Love-letters again, broaching the word ‘wife’ Like a stored cask, as if its slender vowel Had mutated into the night earth and air

The refrigerator whinnied into silence. My desk light softened beyond the verandah. Small oranges loomed in the orange tree. I began to be tense as a voyeur.

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Up, black, striped and damasked like the chasuble At a funeral mass, the skunk’s tail Paraded the skunk. Night after night I expected her like a visitor.

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The Skunk

Brainstorm the main words ro r upwo and ideas you associate with the word ‘skunk’. When you have read the poem, discuss the extent to which any of these associations are present in ‘The Skunk’.

And there she was, the intent and glamorous, Ordinary, mysterious skunk, Mythologized, demythologized, Snuffing the boards five feet beyond me.

Of California. The beautiful, useless Tang of eucalyptus spelt your absence. The aftermath of a mouthful of wine Was like inhaling you off a cold pillow.

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It all came back to me last night, stirred By the sootfall of your things at bedtime, Your head-down, tail-up hunt in a bottom drawer For the black plunge-line nightdress.

Glossary 1

damasked: damask is a reversible fabric with a design woven into it; like damask, the skunk’s tail is reversible – it has markings on the underside

chasuble: outer vestment worn by a priest when saying mass, usually with a decorative design in a different colour from that of the chasuble itself; at a funeral mass, the chasuble is white with black markings

voyeur: person who derives pleasure or excitement from watching, often secretly, others undress or engage in sexual acts

broaching: here, opening, as in opening a bottle of wine

stored cask: suggests a valuable wine or spirit kept in storage

mutated: changed

Mythologized: turned into a myth

Snuffing: examining by sniffing

sootfall: soundless dropping to the floor

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Seamus Heaney

Guidelines

Commentary

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‘The Skunk’ comes from Seamus Heaney’s fifth collection of poetry, Field Work (1979). This collection has a number of poems which deal in personal terms with the Troubles, remembering friends and family of Heaney who were murdered in Northern Ireland. Field Work also contains a number of poems in which Heaney speaks in a natural, conversational voice about himself and his wife. ‘The Skunk’ is one of these marriage poems.

I published what I consider to be the first

poem where I was in earnest … Everything happened quickly and at the same time – the development of our relationship, the entry into poetry, the marriage itself. Inside three years. One excitement quickening the other.’

Stanza 1

‘I met her in October 1962 and the next month

‘The Skunk’ is a poem about the poet’s love for his wife. It is a poem about the daily habit of love, a playful poem that combines irony and humour with genuine affection and love. It is also a poem that could not have been written without a sense of trust in the love between husband and wife.

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Heaney on Marie 1

The poem begins with an old memory from when the poet lived in California, opening with the startling image of a skunk’s tail held high. The tail is compared to the black and white vestments worn by a priest at a funeral mass. Night after night the poet expected the skunk to appear in the garden ‘like a visitor’.

Stanza 2

Stanzas 3 and 4

In the house each evening the speaker waits for his visitor. It is a quiet house; the noise of the refrigerator is compared to the neighing of a horse. The light from the desk casts a soft light beyond the verandah. There are small oranges on the orange tree in the garden. In this quiet atmosphere the poet describes himself as feeling as ‘tense as a voyeur’. It is a humorous, if risky, comparison, linking the coming of the skunk to erotic feelings in the speaker.

There is a change of focus: the speaker tells us he had been writing love letters to his wife for the first time in eleven years. Suddenly the word ‘wife’ – with ‘its slender vowel’ – takes on a special meaning. It seems as if everything in his surroundings – the night air, the fragrant smell of the eucalyptus trees, the taste of wine – is filled with her invisible presence.

Heaney on Marie 2 ‘Marie has always been a buoyant spirit. There’s a terrific readiness about her. She has this great combination of spontaneity and staying power.’

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Stanza 5

The poet brings us back to the speaker waiting for the skunk to visit; and she is suddenly there, not five feet from the speaker. Adjectives such as ‘intent and glamorous, / Ordinary, mysterious’ indicate an association for the poet with his feelings for his wife and their marriage.

Stanza 6

The speaker explains to his wife that the memory of the skunk came back to him as she undressed and searched in a bottom drawer for her black nightdress. The erotic charge of the moment brings back the memory of the love and desire he felt for her when he was separated from her during his time in California. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 135

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Themes and imagery

This is a poem about married love; in particular, it is about a husband’s love for his wife and the erotic love at the heart of marriage.

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The theme of the poem is absence and the effect of absence upon the lover, a sophisticated version of the theme ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder‘. The distance between the poet and his wife serves to bring her more sharply into his focus. She fills his consciousness as, away Heaney on showing poems to Marie from home, he writes her love letters. Through her absence, the poet rediscovers and reclaims her, realising how much ‘Marie had a good sense of what rang true. No matter what she’d actually say, I always knew he prizes and values her. To say the word ‘wife’ is to release what she felt … I don’t think there was any her presence into the air around him. The bedroom scene, nervousness [in showing Marie ‘The Skunk’]. in which the poet’s wife adopts a ‘head-down, tail-up’ (line 23) There was a playful element in the poem, after posture as she searches for her nightdress, becomes a symbol for all, and a definite serious engagement. It was the nature of erotic intimacy in marriage. It is an intimacy that is about a skunk … but it was also about the transatlantic cable that connected us.’ affectionate, sometimes comic, and stirring.

‘The aftermath of a mouthful of wine Was like inhaling you off a cold pillow.’

The poem conveys the sacred mystery at the heart of an ordinary marriage. Through the image of priestly vestments in the first stanza, and in the magical effect of saying the word ‘wife’, as described in stanzas 3 and 4, he causes her spirit to be present in the atmosphere and the objects around him. There is an echo of the sacramental in lines 15–16:

The imagery clearly draws on Heaney’s Catholic upbringing and likens the mystery of marriage to the mysteries of the Eucharist. The black nightdress of the final line, echoing the chasuble in the first, represents a vesting in preparation for the mysteries of married love.

Form and language

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The poem is written in unrhymed four-line stanzas. Heaney uses lines of different length and enjambment (run-on lines) to create a conversational tone. The language is carefully considered and phrased, as in line 14, ‘Tang of eucalyptus spelt your absence’. The line is perfectly balanced; the long vowels and the clusters of consonants (‘tang’, ‘eucalyptus’, ‘spelt’) create a sensuous atmosphere. The effect is to create a poem that is warm and affectionate in tone and rhythm but simultaneously highly wrought and carefully fashioned. In contrast to the tension and pressure conveyed in the short lines of ‘A Constable Calls’, the long lines of this poem reflect an attitude that is relaxed and playful.

Heaney on advice from a friend

‘In his wisdom, as poet and psychologist, he

advised us that all would be well provided we never let six weeks pass without seeing each other. And we never did.’

The metaphors in ‘The Skunk’ are enriched by many brilliant choices of words and phrases. ‘Sootfall’ (line 22) is a notable example. The word captures the gentle noise of the clothes falling to the ground. It also picks up on the colour black, which features throughout the poem. For the critic Neil Corcoran, ‘sootfall’ also contains the idea that the falling clothes are worn and soiled by

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Seamus Heaney

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everyday living. The speaker is ‘stirred’ (line 21) by the fall of these clothes, a stirring that is all the more authentic for being caused by such a real undressing. The phrase ‘a stored cask’ (line 11) is also noteworthy. It suggests something valued, precious and mature. For the poet, his relationship with his wife contains these qualities.

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Questions

What causes the poet to think about the skunk that used to visit his garden in California?

What words and phrases in the poem establish the setting as being outside Ireland?

a) In the first stanza, the skunk’s tail is compared to the priest’s chasuble at a funeral. Explain the comparison. b) Identify other unusual images in the poem. What, in your view, is the effect of these images?

In the second stanza, what is the effect of the speaker describing himself as ’tense as a voyeur’?

The poet/speaker recollects a period of absence from his wife. How does the poem suggest that, despite this absence, the poet was aware and mindful of her?

a) In what way, do you think, might the word ‘wife’ be like a ‘stored cask’ (lines 10–11)? b) Do you think Heaney gives the word ‘wife’ a romantic and erotic charge? Explain your answer.

In the poem, the poet’s wife is identified with the skunk. a) What, in your view, are the risks involved in this identification? b) Do you think the poem overcomes them? c) The critic Christopher Ricks suggests that the comparison of his wife to a skunk reveals Heaney’s trust in the love between them. Would you agree? Explain your answer.

The skunk is described as ‘glamorous’ (line 17). Do you think this is an apt description? Is there any other animal you would associate with glamour? Explain your answer.

Comment on the use of ‘sootfall’ in the final stanza.

Read back over the poem. Identify the images that have a religious or magical association. Bearing these in mind, what, in your view, is the poem saying about the nature of marriage?

‘“The Skunk“ is a poem that is full of humour, affection and love.’ Give your view of this assessment of the poem.

Imagine how the poet’s wife felt when she read ‘The Skunk’. Imagine then the poet’s children reading the poem. Discuss, in pairs or groups.

Write a short piece of prose or poetry in which you describe the quiet of a house at night. You can use stanza 2 of this poem as your inspiration.

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Before you read

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The Harvest Bow

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As you plaited the harvest bow You implicated the mellowed silence in you In wheat that does not rust But brightens as it tightens twist by twist Into a knowable corona, A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent Until your fingers moved somnambulant: I tell and finger it like braille, Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

This poem is about an ro r upwo object which has no monetary value but is priceless to the poet. As a class, discuss family keepsakes (photos, objects) which are much loved and treasured.

And if I spy into its golden loops I see us walk between the railway slopes Into an evening of long grass and midges, Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges, An auction notice on an outhouse wall— You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

The end of art is peace Could be the motto of this frail device That I have pinned up on our deal dresser— Like a drawn snare Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

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Me with the fishing rod, already homesick For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes Nothing: that original townland Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

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Seamus Heaney Glossary harvest bow: a bow made from straw worn in one’s lapel at the fair to celebrate the end of the harvest

implicated: here, intertwined or woven

mellowed: calm and relaxed

corona: circle of light like that which surrounds the sun or the moon

love-knot: originally, harvest bows were love tokens

lapped: wrapped (i.e. the spurs are held in place by cloth that is wrapped around the legs of the birds)

spurs: spikes on the back of the legs of cock birds

game cocks: male chickens bred and trained for fighting

Harked: paid attention to

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somnambulant: as in a state of sleepwalking

Gleaning: gathering or understanding

palpable: that which can be touched or felt by hand

auction notice: sign announcing the sale by auction of Mossbawn, the family home where Heaney spent his childhood

the big lift: the lift to the spirit; the emotional life

flushes: rouses or startles (game birds) so that they fly up from the ground

The end of art is peace: a line from a poem by Coventry Patmore, popular Victorian poet

drawn snare: trap that has been activated

Slipped: slipped free from; escaped

spirit of the corn: life that makes the corn germinate each year

Guidelines

Lines 1–10

Commentary

The poem is addressed to the poet’s father and comes from the collection Field Work (1979). In 1972, at the height of the Troubles, Heaney moved to Glanmore in Co. Wicklow. This was the year of Bloody Sunday, when thirteen marchers were shot dead by British soldiers at a civil rights march in Derry. In ‘The Harvest Bow’ there is a sense of the poet looking to the example of his father to draw inspiration and hope. Another Heaney poem, ‘Digging’, demonstrates how his father provides the poet with an example that he wishes to follow.

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The poem begins with the poet remembering his father making the harvest bow. In the son’s eyes the father wove his ‘mellowed silence, into this ‘throwaway love-knot of straw’. The poet recalls the hands that made the harvest bow: the hands of a cattle dealer who carried a stick or a cane; the hands of an unsentimental countryman who enjoyed cock fighting. Now they work ’with a fine intent’, weaving the stalks of wheat into a little bow.

Lines 11–24

The poem moves to the present, with the poet holding the harvest bow and reading it through touch like a blind person might read braille. As the poet looks through the loops of the bow, he remembers an evening from childhood, walking with his father, who wore a harvest bow and carried a stick. The walk took place as the family farm was about to be sold. The poet suggests that his father’s feelings about the original family home were tied into the harvest bow rather than spoken aloud.

Moving house The notice of auction (line 17) is a reminder of the move made by the Heaneys from Mossbawn, the family home, after the death of the poet’s younger brother Christopher, an event commemorated in ‘Mid-Term Break’. The sale of the house marked the end of the poet’s childhood. As the auction draws near the young Heaney already feels ‘homesick’.

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Lines 25–30

In the final stanza the poet considers the significance of the bow, now placed on the dresser in his family home. The description of it as ‘still warm’ brings to mind the treasured domestic atmosphere of ‘Mossbawn: 1. Sunlight’.

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The poem is one of the many that Heaney wrote about his father. The portrait of Patrick Heaney presented in the poem is among the most affectionate to be found in Heaney’s writing. The poet’s father emerges as a man who is strong, robust and unsentimental. He is a man who has ‘lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks’ (line 8), or strode with his stick ‘Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes’ (line 21); a man ‘tongue-tied’ (line 24), who expressed himself in action; a man who mellowed in silence and whose hands, as he plaited the straw, were his means of self-expression.

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Themes and imagery

As with many of the craftsmen celebrated in Heaney’s poetry, the father in ‘The Harvest Bow’ becomes an exemplar, a model, teaching the poet how an artist or craftsman can express himself through his work. The father’s hands, harkening ‘to their gift’, worked with a ‘fine intent’ (line 9). There is an understanding between the father and the son, not reached through words but expressed by the harvest bow, which Heaney fingers and reads ‘like braille, / Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable’ (lines 11–12). Thus, the poet translates what he has read in the harvest bow into words, which he, in his turn, fashions or plaits and weaves into a poem.

The harvest bow is a symbol of the love between the father and the son. It is a ‘love-knot’ (line 6) that joins them. Holding it in his hands, and looking through ‘its golden loops’ (line 13), the poet sees the evenings he shared with his father – the boy walking towards his future (‘already homesick / For the big lift of these evenings’ lines 19–20), the father walking by the remnants of his ‘spirit of the corn’ past. The bow celebrates the gathering in of the harvest, and the gathering in of the father–son relationship. The harvest bow The harvest bow is an emblem of agricultural labour and love of the land. The spirit of the may be lifeless, ‘the spirit of the corn’ (line 29) having slipped corn is not only the spirit of bountiful nature, away from it, but it retains its warmth and is enriched by the spirit but it is also the patient spirit of agriculture – of of the man who gave it life.

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the human being working the soil. As such, the harvest bow represents a strength of continuity

The motto which opens the final stanza, ’The end of art is peace’, expresses, among other things, the peace and harmony between of tribal loyalties and communal strife. It is a symbol of rural rituals tied to the land. father and son, arrived at through their respective arts. The motto also suggests that the aim or purpose of art is the creation of peace, though the double meaning can be read to suggest that peace, as in peace of mind, may bring artistic inspiration to an end. The motto has wider and larger significance when read in the context of the political situation in Northern Ireland.

and inheritance that is free of the pressures

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Seamus Heaney Heaney on ‘The Harvest Bow’

Form and language

‘I remember discovering a shape and then realising that it could be built on, and relishing the whole gradual, cumulative effect. But the

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The poem itself represents a poetic plaiting and weaving. texture of ‘The Harvest Bow’ is richer than It is a carefully structured and textured creation in six-line many of the other poems in Field Work.’ stanzas of near-rhyming couplets (‘rust’/’twist’, ‘loops’/’slopes’, ‘peace’/’device’), with internal rhymes and repetitions – ‘brightens as it tightens twist by twist’ (line 4). The son follows his father’s example by weaving together sounds and images into a tightly woven creation. At the same time, the long lines and enjambment create a conversational effect.

Questions Explain as clearly as you can what a harvest bow is.

a) From the evidence of the poem, what kind of man was Heaney’s father? b) What parts of his personality are represented by the plaiting of the harvest bow?

a) What, in your view, are the implications of the phrase, ‘mellowed silence’ (line 2)? b) What does the phrase suggest to you about the relationship between father and son?

‘Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable’ (line 12). What does the poet glean from touching the harvest bow? Do you think family heirlooms or keepsakes can tell us about the person who owned or made them? Explain your answer.

What, do you think, do the images of stanzas 3 and 4 say about the closeness and distances between father and son? Explain your answer.

Write a note on the phrase ‘the spirit of the corn’ (line 29) and its relationship to the themes of the poem.

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‘The end of art is peace’ (line 25). Discuss, in pairs or groups, the significance of this motto for: n The father n The relationship between father and son n The poet n Northern Ireland.

Explain your understanding of the image of the ‘drawn snare’ (line 28) that concludes the poem.

Like the harvest bow, which it celebrates, the poem is a tightly made structure. Describe the stanza form and the variety of rhyme used in the poem.

‘The harvest bow, the “frail device” woven by the father, becomes a rich and complex symbol within the poem.’ Discuss this statement.

‘I was already homesick for the big lift of those evenings ...’ Writing in the voice of the poet (or in your own voice) write a poem or prose piece inspired by the above line.

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Before you read k

Or some new white flower japped with crimson As the coat flapped wild and button after button Sprang off and fell in a trail Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.

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There we were in the vaulted tunnel running, You in your going-away coat speeding ahead And me, me then like a fleet god gaining Upon you before you turned to a reed

The Underground

Try to find some atmospheric ro r upwo images based on the idea of being ‘underground’. Discuss all the ideas, real and imaginary, associated with being ‘underground’.

Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms, Our echoes die in that corridor and now I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons

To end up in a draughty lamplit station After the trains have gone, the wet track Bared and tensed as I am, all attention For your step following and damned if I look back.

Glossary

The Underground: the London train system (the Tube), which operates through tunnels under the ground

Title

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3–4

going-away coat: the coat worn by a bride when leaving on her honeymoon

a fleet god ... reed: an allusion to the story of Pan and Syrinx

japped: an Ulster Scots word meaning spattered or splashed

Albert Hall: the Royal Albert Hall, in the fashionable South Kensington area of London, is one of the most famous concert venues in the world

Honeymooning: a honeymoon is, traditionally, the holiday taken immediately after a wedding and is associated with harmony and happiness

moonlighting: doing something by the light of the moon; the word has a host of interesting associations related to dangerous, secret or illegal activities undertaken in the night

the Proms: a season of summer concerts of classical music; ‘Prom’ is an abbreviated form of ‘promenade’, a walk or stroll associated with display and dressing up, and a promenade concert is one in which some of the audience stand.

11 15–16

Hansel: ‘Hansel and Gretel’ is one of the fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers all attention ... look back: the line echoes the story of Orpheus and Eurydice

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Seamus Heaney

Guidelines

London Underground Speaking of ‘District and Circle’, a sequence of poems set in the London Underground, Heaney talks of the dreamlike or nightmarish

quality of travelling on the Tube – how ‘the

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underground/underworld/otherworld parallels

come into play’. He also refers to the ’awareness of the mythical dimensions of all such journeys underground, into the earth, into the dark’.

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The poem comes from the 1984 collection Station Island, a book concerned with questions of guilt, and with the public responsibility of the poet. While many of the poems in the collection are severe and self-admonitory, ‘The Underground’ is an exception – it is a playful, celebratory love poem recalling a dash to a concert in the Albert Hall during the Heaneys’ honeymoon in London, and captures the energy and excitement of the newly-weds. Here is Heaney’s own account of the poem:

… we’re into this next book at a run, heading up and away. I liked it because it seemed to have both truth to life and truth to love.

Commentary Lines 1–8

Pan and Syrinx

The poem opens with the poet addressing his wife, recalling the dash they made from the vaulted tunnel of the London Underground to the Albert Hall. As they ran, the buttons of her going-away coat fell off. The poet compares their dash to a moment from the Greek legend of Pan and Syrinx.

Lines 9–10

Pan was the Greek god of shepherds, fields and woods. With the hindquarters, legs and horns of a goat, he was associated with fertility and spring. The amorous Pan pursued the beautiful wood spirit Syrinx. Fleeing him, she called to her sisters, the spirits of the river, to save her, and they transformed her into a reed, just as Pan was about to seize her. From this reed, Pan made musical pipes upon

The poet fills in the background: the couple were on their which he played sad and sweet melodies. honeymoon and were late for the Proms concert. There is a change of tone in line 10: clearly time has passed and something has changed between the ‘There’ which opens the poem and the ‘now’ of line 10.

Lines 11–16

Hansel and Gretel Hansel and his sister, Gretel, were the children of a poor woodcutter. Facing starvation, the children overheard their stepmother urge their father to abandon them in the woods. The children gathered pebbles from the garden and laid a trail as they were brought deep into the woods. In the moonlight, they found the pebbles and retraced the path home.

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The poet describes himself as the fairy-tale character Hansel as he retraces the path they made on their honeymoon. The journey ends in a draughty station after the trains have all gone. He is tense, listening for his wife’s footsteps behind him. Is he too stubborn to look back for her, or is he realising that now they are married, he must trust that she is following him?

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Themes and imagery

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Although it is a love poem, Heaney does not use the word ‘love’ (he rarely does in his poetry). The poem ends unconventionally, with the male persona waiting for his beloved who is following behind but ’damned if I look back’ (line 16). It is not a conventional end to a love poem, but it may have the truth to life that Heaney refers to in his comments on the poem. The love described in the poem is composed of many elements: desire, pursuit, excitement, escape, change, silence, complication and perseverance.

On the run

Open and closed

Interestingly for a poem which describes a honeymoon, ‘The Underground’ is about emerging from the Underground only to return to it, or somewhere very similar: ‘a draughty lamplit station’ (line 13). The honeymoon described in the poem is defined by pursuit and flight. The couple described in the poem seem constantly on the run, with neither the young husband nor the Orpheus and Eurydice young wife at rest or together. One pursues the other or one leads and the other follows. In this poem of flight and return Orpheus was a Greek musician and poet with the power to charm any creature, even moving there is an erotic tension in the first two stanzas as the speaker, stones to tears. He visited the underworld, ’like a fleet god‘ (line 3), pursues his beloved, and another kind of land of the dead, to plead for the return of his tension, possibly that between being a husband and a poet, in the wife, Eurydice. His music moved Hades and last stanza where the ‘I’ of the poem strides ahead of his wife and Persephone, rulers of the underworld, to allow refuses to look back. Does he fear he will lose her if he does, as Eurydice to return with him, on condition that Orpheus walk ahead of her and not look back Orpheus lost his wife? Is he obliged to trust that she is following, until they reached the upper world. However, as he listens for her step? Certainly the distance between ‘There’ in his anxiety and love, on reaching the border in line 1 and the ‘now’ in line 10 seems immense, and the placing of the two worlds Orpheus looked behind him, of the word ‘die’ in line 10 seems to bring the honeymoon and the and Eurydice was lost to him forever. sense of togetherness to an abrupt stop.

Th e

As in ‘Postscript’ and ‘The Pitchfork’, ‘The Underground’ describes the persona of the poet caught between the excitement and energy of a moment and a more cautious and clenched way of encountering the world. The honeymoon is all rush and excitement. The final stanza, Heaney on Orpheus ‘well beyond the honeymoon’, presents the persona of the poem ‘But in the end, the “damned if I look back” as guarded and closed. The lesson of encountering the world line takes us well beyond the honeymoon. In off-guard is one that the poet learns again and again, as in ‘The this version of the story, Eurydice and much Pitchfork’ (‘the opening hand’) and ‘Postscript’. In ‘A Call’, the else gets saved by the sheer cussedness of impulse to open the heart is suppressed and the declaration of the poet up ahead just keeping going.’ love never leaves the poet’s lips.

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Seamus Heaney

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The poem reminds us of one of Heaney’s poetic methods: he takes a memory from ordinary life and overlays it with classical allusions, so that the story of the young honeymooners is enlarged and takes on greater significance. In this poem the young honeymooners’ race through the London Underground is linked to the classical lovers Orpheus and Eurydice and their journey from the underworld, and also to the story of the god Pan and the nymph Syrinx. There is humour and ingenuity in Heaney’s use of classical allusions. Orpheus, for example, was chief among poets and musicians and his journey to the underworld in pursuit of his beloved wife is one of the most famous of all classical love stories. We can see the parallel with Heaney’s poetic persona, full of love for his new wife, racing through the tunnel to get to a classical music concert. The god Pan, renowned for his lusty passion and linked to fertility and spring, is often seen in the company of Eros, the god of love and romance.

Form and language

The poem is written in four fourline stanzas with a variable rhyming pattern. As with all of Heaney’s poems, there are all kinds of rhymes and half-rhymes echoing through the poem. The first nine lines proceed at a break-neck pace, with only two commas to slow the headlong rush. The energy of the poem and the excitement of the young couple caught in the series of actions is described with a present participle, ‘running’, ‘speeding’, ‘gaining’, ‘honeymooning’, ‘moonlighting’. There is also a hint of erotic abandonment in the use of the word ‘wild’ (line 6) and the image of the buttons not simply falling but springing from the flapping coat.

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The final rhyme of ‘track’ and ‘back’ provides a sense of ending and also catches something of the stubborn character of the poem’s narrator.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT

Playful, celebratory poem Energy and excitement reflected in language of poem True to life in description of love Love as desire, pursuit, escape, silence, perseverance Ordinary moment described in terms of ancient tales and classical stories A love poem without the word ‘love’ Not a conventional ending Persona presented as attentive but stubborn

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem In a couple of sentences, tell the story of the poem.

Look at the images of flight and pursuit in the poem. Who leads and who follows in the course of the poem?

Look at the use of personal pronouns in the poem (‘I’, ‘me’, ‘You’, ‘we’, ‘Our’). What do they tell you about the relationship between the poet and his wife?

How is the energy and excitement of the newly-weds captured in the first nine lines of the poem? Refer to language, imagery and sounds in your answer.

In a couple of sentences, say what you think is the theme of the poem.

In the poem there are allusions to the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice; Pan and Syrinx; and Hansel and Gretel. Did these add to your enjoyment of the poem? Explain your answer.

How would you characterise the relationship described in the last six lines of the poem? Explain your answer.

From your reading of the poem, which of the following statements best describes the personality of the speaker? n He is romantic. n He is stubborn. n He is determined. Explain your choice.

Thinking about the poem

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Select your favourite image, line, phrase or sequence in the poem and say why you have chosen it.

Discuss the possible meanings of the statement: ‘Our echoes die in that corridor’ (line 10).

Select one stanza from the poem. Comment on the music and rhythm of the stanza.

‘The love described in the poem is characterised by energy and an erotic charge though not by harmony and togetherness.’ Give your response to this assessment of the poem

Imagining

Write a short (3–6 lines) poem in the voice of the ‘You’ of the poem, spoken in the ‘draughty lamplit station’.

Rewrite the poem leaving out all the classical and fairy-tale allusions. What is lost and gained in doing so?

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Your class is compiling an anthology of love poems. In pairs, make a case each for including or omitting ‘The Underground’ from the selection, and debate the decision.

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Seamus Heaney Before you read

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The Pitchfork

As a class, discuss all the possible ro r upwo uses and misuses of a pitchfork. Now read to see if Seamus Heaney goes beyond what you might expect to find in a poem with this title.

Riveted steel, turned timber, burnish, grain, Smoothness, straightness, roundness, length and sheen. Sweat-cured, sharpened, balanced, tested, fitted. The springiness, the clip and dart of it.

So whether he played the warrior or the athlete Or worked in earnest in the chaff and sweat, He loved its grain of tapering, dark-flecked ash Grown satiny from its own natural polish.

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Of all implements, the pitchfork was the one That came near to an imagined perfection: When he tightened his raised hand and aimed high with it, It felt like a javelin, accurate and light.

And then when he thought of probes that reached the farthest, He would see the shaft of a pitchfork sailing past Evenly, imperturbably through space, Its prongs starlit and absolutely soundless –

But has learned at last to follow that simple lead Past its own aim, out to an other side Where perfection – or nearness to it – is imagined Not in the aiming but the opening hand.

Glossary

Pitchfork: a long-handled fork with a number of steel prongs used for tossing hay or other loose material like dung. The word can also refer to a tuning fork. Heaney plays upon both meanings in the poem

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Title

chaff: fine-cut hay or straw used as animal feed or bedding; can also refer to the dry outer casing of grain, which is also used as animal feed (traditionally, the chaff was separated from the grain by tossing the grain into the air)

the clip and dart: the pitchfork has taken on the qualities of the actions performed with it – trimming or clipping the hay or tossing it swiftly

probes: spacecrafts that travel through space to gather scientific information

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Heaney on saving hay ‘My heyday in the hay was when I was in

Guidelines

my mid- to late-teens, home from college,

‘The Pitchfork’ comes from Heaney’s 1991 collection, Seeing Things, which features many poems that ‘credit marvels’. It is also always be happening in sunshine, because a collection that celebrates and mourns the poet’s father, Patrick you couldn’t work at hay unless you had good Heaney, who died in 1986. The poet worked on ‘The Pitchfork’ weather.’ and a companion piece, ‘The Ashplant’, in the house where his father was dying. The opening poem of the collection is a translation of the Aeneid, Book VI, in which Aeneas asks permission to go to the underworld to meet his dead father. enjoying the camaraderie of the neighbours,

Stanzas 1 and 2

perfect suitedness to the jobs they had to do. It meant that the work of turning a swathe, for example, was its own reward; angling the shaft and the tines so that the hay turned over like a woven fabric – that was an intrinsically artistic challenge. Tasty work, as they say. Using the pitchfork was like an instrument. So much so that when you clipped and trimmed the head of a ruck, the strike of the fork on the

The third stanza is a brilliant description of the physical qualities of the pitchfork and the feel of the implement in the hand.

Stanzas 4 and 5

Stanza 3

hay made it a kind of tuning fork.’

lightness and rightness in the hand, the

The poem opens with a statement. As often with Heaney, it is like we have come into the middle of a conversation. The speaker states that, of all the farm implements, the pitchfork came closest to ‘an imagined perfection’. When the ‘he’ of the poem held it above his head, it felt like a javelin. He tells us that ‘he’ loved the polished grain of the handle, whether he used it in play, as a warrior or athlete, or in work.

‘I loved handling the fork and the rake, their

Heaney on handling a pitchfork

Commentary

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the freedom of the holiday. And it would

The speaker tells us that when the ‘he’ of the poem thought about spacecraft exploring the farthest reaches, he saw in his mind’s eye the pitchfork sailing silently through space, its prongs lit by the stars. And he has learned to follow the lead of the pitchfork, way out beyond ‘its own aim’, to where perfection is imagined not in aiming but in opening the hand and letting go.

Themes and imagery

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The poem is one of commemoration, celebrating the poet’s father through one of the farm implements associated with him. The poem works by indirection; there is no direct address to his father or mention of him in the poem. It is likely that the ‘he’ referred to on five occasions in the poem relates to the poet’s younger self. Yet it is impossible to read the poem, and the collection from which it comes, without relating it to the poet’s father. (Some critics believe the ‘he’ is the poet’s father, and the poet commemorates him by depicting him as a perfect craftsman, a skilful warrior and a javelin thrower, like a hero from classical mythology.) The pitchfork, like other objects in Heaney’s poetry – spade, ashplant, trowel, hammer, cane – speaks of masculine strength and solidity, and is associated with the men in his family as well as with friends and neighbours.

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Seamus Heaney ‘Digging’ The first poem in Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist, was a celebration of the

skill of his father and grandfather in handling farm implements. ‘By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.’

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Like the harvest bow, in the poem of the same name, the pitchfork is linked to his father, and the open hand of the last line of the poem may well refer to the poet letting his father go, letting his soul sail free in the afterworld. Equally it could refer to the father preparing to let go of his hold on life and set sail into the afterworld.

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As in many of Heaney’s poems, ‘The Pitchfork’ is a sophisticated meditation on the art of poetry. With line 2, ‘an imagined perfection’, the poem is not saying that the pitchfork was perfect but that it came closest to what the young poet imagined perfection to be. In its suitedness to the task, the pitchfork, the tuning fork, works as a symbol for the kind of poetry Heaney wants to write. It is rooted in the earth and in the ordinary things of a farm, yet it is capable of flight through the air and of probing the empty spaces with its metal prongs.

The poem also reveals Heaney’s attitude to real working objects and the ordinary lives of the people, like his father and grandfather, who used them. In mixing the description of ordinary farm work with fanciful visions, the real sits side by side with the marvellous. The pitchfork belongs to the real world of measurement, weight and balance, but it also belongs to the imagined world of visions, wonders and miracles, serving as both farm implement and poetic tuning fork. At the heart of the poem is the desire to translate, to transform.

The poem concludes with an admission that the ‘he’ of the poem has learned ‘at last’ to follow the lead of the pitchfork/spaceship as it sails ‘Past its own aim, out to an other side’ (line 18). This is a lesson in acceptance and trust, both in relation to life and the work of poetry. The concluding image of the ‘opening hand’ represents an openness to experience and a willingness to follow the imagination wherever it leads. In ‘The Pitchfork’, that willingness leads to a calm floating through space. In an interview about the poem, Heaney quoted the Polish poet, Czesław Miłosz: ’Open the clenched fist of the past.’ ‘The Pitchfork’ is a poem that looks forward with an open hand, while remaining rooted in the past.

Although the poem was written around the time of his father’s death, ‘The Pitchfork’ has a playful quality. Heaney takes a farm implement from his childhood and projects it into a dream world, turning it into a rich and beautiful symbol. In Heaney’s poem ‘Crossings’, the poet’s father is associated with Hermes, the ‘god of fair days, stone posts, roads and crossroads’, and a guide to souls journeying to the otherworld. The poem concludes:

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… Flow on, flow on The journey of the soul with its soul guide And the mysteries of dealing-men with sticks.

The imagery in ‘Crossings’ resonates with the imagery of the pitchfork sailing soundlessly through space, travelling out beyond this world, mirroring his father’s soul travelling in an imagined afterlife, a placeless heaven. In ‘The Pitchfork’ Heaney improvises a vision of eternity from a farm implement he and his father both loved and handled with skill, an image of eternity for a generation raised on Star Trek. This fantasy element lends surprise and delight to a poem of commemoration.

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Form and language

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Doctrine of true presence

This doctrine of Catholicism, where the bread is simply the bread but is also something otherworldly and wonderful – the body of the

He would see the shaft of a pitchfork sailing past Evenly, imperturbably through space, Its prongs starlit and absolutely soundless –

The language which describes the physical quality of the pitchfork reveals not only Heaney’s power of observation, but also a genius for precise, balanced language. However, it is lines 14–16, which capture the weightless, soundless flight of the pitchfork, that reveal Heaney’s genius in matching sound and rhythm to meaning:

The poem is written in four-line stanzas. There is a pleasing mixture of sensuousness and lightness to the language that mirrors the qualities of the pitchfork. Indeed, line 12 (‘The springiness, the clip and dart of it’) might well serve as a description of the poem itself, with its consonance, precise sounds, repetitions and balanced vowels.

Saviour – allows the marvellous to radiate

Questions

Consider the ways in which a pitchfork might be used by an athlete, a warrior and a farmer. Do you think it is an interesting symbol, as developed in the poem?

What was your reaction to the image of the pitchfork sailing through space? Did you find it amusing, silly, thought-provoking, moving? Explain your answer.

Make a selection of three or four of your favourite words, phrases or images from the poem and say why you chose them.

The third stanza is a brilliant listing of the physical qualities of the pitchfork. Comment on the stanza in detail, noting the patterns of sound which give the stanza its spring and dart.

Who, in your opinion, is the ‘he’ referred to in the poem? Is it Heaney’s younger self, his father, or a combination of both? Explain your answer.

‘In choosing to write about the pitchfork, Heaney is celebrating both his farming background and his father. Here, as elsewhere in his poetry, Heaney makes the ordinary into something extraordinary, visionary and poetic.’ Give your response to this view of the poem.

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from a real object.

In interviews Heaney referred to the final image in the poem, the ‘opening hand’, as representing a generous and unclenched attitude to life. Have a class discussion on the circumstances, personal, social or political, that might facilitate or hinder the development of such an attitude.

Give your response to the afterlife as imagined by Heaney in the poem.

Do you like the fact that the meaning of the poem cannot be paraphrased in a simple way? Explain your answer.

Think of an object or keepsake associated with a loved one who has died and write a commemorative piece using the object as a starting point.

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Seamus Heaney Before you read

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As a class share any folklore from ro r upwo your area – stories that contain the mysterious, magical or supernatural.

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Lightenings

ny 5

The anchor dragged along behind so deep It hooked itself into the altar rails And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise Were all at prayers inside the oratory A ship appeared above them in the air.

viii: ‘The Annals Say’

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope And struggled to release it. But in vain. ‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’

The abbot said, ‘unless we help him.’ So They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

Glossary

annals: historical records; here, the Annals of Clonmacnoise

Clonmacnoise: the monastery of Clonmacnoise was one of the most important monasteries in early Christian Ireland. Founded in 548 by St Ciaran, it flourished until the sixteenth century and was renowned as a place of learning. Many manuscripts were written there

oratory: small chapel

A ship: in Anglo-Saxon poetry, there are references to a ship that transports the souls of the dead from this world to heaven

hull: main body of the ship

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Guidelines

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The poem comes from the collection Seeing Things (1991). It is one of a sequence of forty-eight, twelve-line poems. Most of these poems derive from dreams, visions, old stories or quotations. The sequence is divided into four sections, each with twelve poems. The section from which this poem comes is called ‘Lightenings’. Lightenings are moments of vision, insight or illumination when the actual flows into the visionary.

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The Annals of Clonmacnoise, in which the story of the ship appears, was originally written in Irish, but survives now only in ‘The title arrived by accident when I found a an English translation dating from the seventeenth century. The dictionary entry that gives it to mean a flaring annals were early quasi-historical records kept by monks in various of the spirit at the moment before death. And monasteries, detailing notable events in a given year, such as there were the attendant meanings of being the death of the abbot of the monastery or another important unburdened and illuminated, all of which fitted person, eclipses of the sun or similar natural phenomena, as what was going on as the first poems got written.’ well as miracles and other marvellous happenings. The annalists recorded events without comment or any effort at interpretation. In a matter-of-fact way, the wonders of the world were listed alongside mundane happenings.

Heaney on the title ‘Lightenings’

In some respects, the annals provide Heaney with an example to follow – an example of how the commonplace and the visionary might exist side by side. Here are two of Heaney's comments on the story:

The story was unforgettable: it’s there in Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson’s A Celtic Miscellany, but the version I have is a bit different because I misremembered some of the details. In the original, the boat’s anchor ‘came right down to the floor of the church’, whereas I have it hooking on to the altar rails – somehow it enters miraculously through the roof and the crewman shins down a rope into the sanctuary.

The story has the ‘there-you-are and where-are-you’ of poetry. A boat in the air, its crewman on the ground, the abbot saying he will drown, the monks assisting him, the man climbing back, the boat sailing on. The narrative rises and sets, the magic casement opens for a moment only and the marvellous occurs in a sequence that sounds entirely like a matter of fact. The crewman is a successful Orpheus, one who goes down and comes back with the prize, which is probably what gives the whole episode its archetypal appeal.

Commentary

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Lines 1–3

The opening stanza tells us that the annals report that a ship appeared in the air above the monks as they prayed in their chapel.

Lines 4–12

The anchor of the ship dragged along behind and got stuck in the altar rails. As the ship came to a halt, a crewman climbed down the rope and tried to release the anchor. The abbot said to the monks that the man would drown unless they helped him. So the monks did help and the ship was freed and able to sail on. The last two lines tell us that the man climbed back into the ship, out of a world that to him seemed ‘marvellous’.

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Seamus Heaney

Themes and imagery

Beowulf

Heaney’s 1987 collection The Haw Lantern contains a translation from the Anglo-Saxon

epic poem Beowulf, describing the placing of King Scyld in the ship of death and the launching of the ship on the sea. The journey

‘Lightenings, viii’ suggests that the marvellous is ultimately a matter of perspective. For the sailor, the monks at prayer represent the marvellous while, for the monks, it is the ship sailing through the air that is marvellous. The ship itself is symbolic. It hints towards Anglo-Saxon poetry that contains many references to a ship that brings the souls of the dead from this world to a world elsewhere.

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Station Island (1984), the collection which preceded Seeing Things, was written during a turbulent period in the North, and conscience and civic responsibilities are recurrent themes. In comparison to Station Island, Seeing Things is characterised by a lightness of being, a freeing of the poet’s spirit. While the poems in the collection deal with truth, they also celebrate mysteries. ‘Lightenings, viii’ brings together contrasting elements: the life of prayer and the life of action; the religious and the secular; a world that is earth-bound and one that floats free. The contrasts are captured in the images of weight, strain, anchorage, release, buoyancy and flight. And amid these images of restraint and freedom, there is the desire of the imagination to loosen the binds of this world and float away.

appears as a magical adventure, whose

ultimate destination is unclear and uncertain.

In ‘Lightenings, viii’, the earth-bound experience of the monks and the flight of the sailors are linked. The ship cannot continue its journey without the assistance and permission of the monks. Read symbolically, the poem suggests that the high-flying imagination is dependent upon commonplace experience. Read in the light of the political situation in Northern Ireland, the abbot, another exemplary figure in Heaney’s poetry, preaches a doctrine of tolerance and understanding which translates into an act of genuine friendship: ‘”This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,” / The abbot said, “unless we help him.”’ (lines 9–10). The crewman is saved by goodwill and common sense. The crewman is a supernatural being, a spaceman, but the abbot acts out of a spirit of acceptance and neighbourliness, with an open hand. And the poem itself, in offering the story of the ship, invites its readers to show the same openness as that demonstrated by the abbot.

Poetry as vehicle of harmony

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Interestingly, Heaney speaks of ‘Lightenings, viii’ in the context of the division and contradiction involved in being born in Northern Ireland, and the role of poetry as a vehicle of harmony – as a means of imagining a totally inclusive future. He quotes with approval the historian Roy Foster’s statement that ‘the notion that people can reconcile more than one cultural identity may have much to recommend it’. Heaney goes on to say: Whatever the possibilities of achieving political harmony at an institutional level, I wanted to affirm that within our individual selves we can reconcile two orders of knowledge which we might call the practical and the poetic; to affirm also that each form of knowledge redresses the other and that the frontier between them is there for the crossing. All of which is implicit in this short poem.

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Form and language

The poem is written in four three-line stanzas (tercets). Heaney said this about the form of the poem:

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The 12-line form felt arbitrary but it seemed to get me places swiftly. So I went with it, a sort of music of the arbitrary that’s unpredictable, and can still up and catch a glimpse of the subject out of the blue. There’s a phrase I use, ‘make impulse one with wilfulness’: the wilfulness is in the 12 lines, the impulse is in the freedom and shimmer and on-the-wingness.

As befits the telling of a traditional tale, the long lines and long vowel sounds create an unhurried, conversational feel to the poem. Here is the voice of the storyteller, claiming an authority that goes beyond his personal authority. The tone of the poem is simple and matter-of-fact. The marvellous is presented as the ordinary.

Having read the poem, see if you can retell the story to a classmate, without hesitation. upw

Why, do you think, does Heaney begin the poem with ‘The annals say …’?

Identify the contrasting elements brought together in the poem. How, in your view, do the contrasting elements relate to the theme of the poem?

In your view, what does the final line of the poem suggest about the nature of the marvellous? Explain your answer.

What, do you think, is the effect created by the long lines employed in the poem?

a) In your opinion, what virtues does the abbot possess? b) What example does he offer to the poet and to the reader?

Writing of the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, Heaney declared: ‘When he writes about places now, they’re the luminous spaces within his mind.’ How, in your view, might this statement be applied to ‘Lightenings, viii’?

Heaney said that the poem was ‘a kind of image of poetry itself’. In your view, what image of poetry does it offer?

Although the poem is concerned with a visionary experience, examine how the verbs used by Heaney root it in the physical world.

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Write your version of the story, adding any details which you think will enhance its qualities.

Questions

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Discuss the extent to which the internet and social media encourage belief in the marvellous and the miraculous.

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Seamus Heaney Before you read

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With a partner, discuss the best ro r upwo and worst kind of phone calls you might have to make.

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A Call

The weather here’s so good, he took the chance To do a bit of weeding.’ So I saw him Down on his hands and knees beside the leek rig, Touching, inspecting, separating one Stalk from the other, gently pulling up Everything not tapered, frail and leafless, Pleased to feel each little weed-root break, But rueful also . . . Then found myself listening to The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks Where the phone lay unattended in a calm Of mirror glass and sunstruck pendulums . . .

‘Hold on,’ she said, ‘I’ll just run out and get him.

And found myself then thinking: if it were nowadays This is how Death would summon Everyman.

Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.

Glossary 5

rig: ridge, the leeks are planted in ridges rueful: feeling sorrow or regret

pendulums: swinging levers that mark time in a clock

Everyman: the central character in a late fifteenth-century English morality play of the same name. God sends Death to summon Everyman to come before Him to give an account of his life

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Guidelines

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‘A Call’ comes from The Spirit Level (1996), Heaney’s first collection after he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is a book published in the poet’s middle age and is concerned with keeping going, with maintaining a level spirit. The title of the collection suggests, on the one hand, a poetry that is airy and free floating, and on the other, a questioning of that impulse – a measuring of the spirit; a taking-stock; a selfexamination. The poems in The Spirit Level move back and forth between earth-bound realities and airiness. In this poem the lift to the spirit comes from hearing the voice of the beloved after the dreaded thought of the loved one’s absence through death.

The entire poem has a dramatic quality; it reads like a scene from a play. In the following analysis, the ‘he’ of the poem is taken to be the poet’s father. However, the poem may have been inspired by a phone call Heaney made to his friend Brian Friel.

Commentary

Lines 1–5

The poem describes what was once a common experience in a time before mobile phones: a caller waits for a loved one to come to the phone. As he waits, he can hear the faint background noises of the house. The poem opens with the dramatic, ‘Hold on’ and we are immediately brought into the middle of the scene. The person answering the phone asks the caller to wait while she runs out to get ‘him’, most likely the poet’s father. The line break after the word ‘weeding’ signals a shift in the poem’s perspective.

Lines 6–10

The narrator imagines the loved one on his knees, weeding. The three dots, or ellipsis, at line 10 indicate another shift in the poem as well as a sense of space and time.

Lines 11–14

The narrator is back in the present moment, listening to the hall clocks through the phone. Skilfully, the poet draws us in and we too become aware of the silence.

Lines 15–16

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What fills the silence is the imagining of the phone call as Death’s summons. In a brilliant shift, the phone call is re-imagined as a contemporary version of Death summoning Everyman. In Everyman, God sends Death to bring Everyman before Him to give an account of his life.

Final line

The final line of the poem – ‘Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.’ – is separated from the rest of the poem, and conveys the relief of the narrator.

Themes and imagery ‘A Call’ is a poem about the fragility of life and the love we have for those closest to us. The themes are developed through the imagery. In describing the father-figure, Heaney returns to the imagery of the

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first poem in his first collection, ‘Digging’, when the poet describes the father-figure handling a spade with vigour. That physical strength has diminished. Now the gardener is described as ‘Touching, inspecting and separating’ and ‘gently pulling up’ (lines 6–7) the plants. The use of the word ‘frail’ (line 8) and the image of the root breaking suggest that the gardener is as fragile as the weeds he pulls. The adjectives ‘Pleased’ and ‘rueful’ (lines 9–10) capture the mixture of pleasure in the work and sorrow at causing a living thing to cease to be. The activity of weeding serves as a reminder to both gardener and narrator of the fragile hold we have on life, the constant threat posed by mortality to the living roots of family.

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The centre of the poem (lines 11–14) is filled with absence and silence. The placing of the word ‘grave’ casts a shadow on everything that follows. The narrator imagines the empty hall and a mirror which reflects nothing but sunlight. As he waits for his father to come to the telephone, he is conscious of the empty space and his father’s absence. The ticking of the clocks is a reminder of the time left to his father, and from here it is a short imaginative leap to Everyman. The reference to the medieval morality play evokes a world in which there were constant reminders of death and the judgement of God which would follow it. These death reminders feature not only in literature but in religious and secular art. Heaney’s gift, here and elsewhere, is to take a thoroughly modern object, in this case a phone, and an equally modern activity – making a phone call – and relate them to the medieval or the ancient world, reminding us that the modern world is not so distant, after all, from the world of the Middle Ages. Like our medieval ancestors, we are faced with the mystery of death and the human emotions which surround it. Strong, silent father

In his poem ‘The Stone Verdict’ from the 1987 The phone call made by the poet in the late twentieth century collection The Haw Lantern, Heaney refers brings to mind the call that will soon summon his beloved father to his father’s ‘old disdain of sweet talk and to death. The choice of the word ‘thinking’ (line 15) is interesting. excuses’, and his ‘lifetime’s speechlessness’. It is more guarded, more cautious, more distancing than words like ‘feeling’ or ‘fearing’ that could also have been chosen. The last line (‘Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.’) has a double effect of allowing us to hear words that were not spoken. It shows the middle-aged narrator shielding himself from feeling. Here, as in other poems we are studying, the poet notes his own tendency to be guarded, though openness is celebrated in both ‘Postscript’ and ‘The Pitchfork’. The line also succeeds in suggesting something of the character of the gardener. In other poems, Heaney has described his father as a silent man who was stoical in the face of life’s ups and downs. The last line reveals the taciturnity the son has inherited from the father. There is a gentle irony in the fact that a poem on the subject of a phone call is filled with silence. In the poem ‘Album’, in Heaney’s final collection, he regrets that he never embraced his father when his father was well.

Form and language

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The poem is laid out in irregular stanzas, which mirror the progression of thought. As in a sonnet, the connecting words ‘So’, ‘Then’, ‘And’ and ‘Next’ mark this progression. This organisation creates the dramatic tension and the relief felt in the final line. The layout, the line length and the absence of rhyme give the poem the appearance of a text from a play, in keeping with the Everyman theme. The language of the poem has an unfussy naturalness about it that masks the verbal patterns, the assonance and consonance, and the weight and balance in the phrasing. The language of lines 11–14, as the narrator listens to the clocks, emphasises the tension. The careful choice and placing of words with long vowels and clear consonants slows everything down so we hold our breath with the narrator, and listen as he listens. Elsewhere in the poem the sense of immediacy is created by the use of present participles (-ing verbs): weeding, touching, inspecting, separating, listening, thinking. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 157

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Exam-Style Questions What thoughts go through the narrator’s head as he waits for the ‘he’ to come to the phone?

What picture do you form of the he, the poet’s father, from the poem?

What does the last line of the poem suggest about the relationship between the two men?

What does the word ‘here’ in line 2 tell us about the back story of the poem?

How does the poet picture the gardener in lines 5–10?

What fears and tensions govern the third stanza of the poem?

‘The final line is marked by feelings of relief and love.’ Do you agree with this reading of the line? Explain your answer.

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Understanding the poem

Thinking about the poem

As the poet waits for his father to come to the phone, he hears the ‘ticking of hall clocks’ (line 12). What does the sound symbolise in the context of the poem? Explain your answer.

‘The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks’ (line 12). Comment on the effect of the word ‘grave’ and its position and importance in the poem.

Consider the word ‘thinking’ in line 15. Suggest why the poet chose to use it.

How is the movement of thought reflected in the shape of the poem on the page? Explain your answer.

Look at the final line of the poem: ‘I nearly said I loved him.’ In your view, is the poem stronger or weaker for having no direct declaration of love?

Writing in the voice of the poet (or in your own voice), write a poem or prose piece inspired by the following line: ‘Were I to have embraced you and told you I loved you, I would have said ...’

Imagining

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If you were to make a film set in modern times in which death comes to claim a soul, how would you represent death? In pairs or groups, discuss your ideas.

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SNAPSHOT

Dramatic opening Moves from action to remembering Further movement from remembering to thoughts of death Amplified silence at the centre of the poem Relief at sound of father’s voice Language plain and unfussy Relates the modern phone call to the medieval summons of Death Guarded feeling at end

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Seamus Heaney Before you read

With a partner, discuss the ro r upwo most breathtaking place you have ever travelled to.

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And some time make the time to drive out west Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, In September or October, when the wind And the light are working off each other So that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stones The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans, Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white, Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads Tucked or cresting or busy underwater. Useless to think you’ll park and capture it More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

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Postscript

Glossary

Postscript: something added as an afterthought

Title

Flaggy Shore: portion of the Atlantic shoreline in north Co. Clare, where the flat slabs of Burren limestone run right to the sea

earthed lightning: the white swans look like lightning which has struck the surface of the lake

Tucked or cresting: some of the swans have tucked in their heads so that they rest on their bodies, some have their necks extended and others have their heads underwater

buffetings: gusts of wind which push or knock against the car

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Heaney. In visiting Mount Vernon, they were recalling another literary friendship, that between Lady Augusta Gregory and the poet W. B. Yeats. The swans mentioned in the poem bring to mind the swans in Yeats’s poem ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, written when he stayed with Lady Gregory in her home at Coole Park in south Co. Galway, about fifteen miles from the Flaggy Shore.

Guidelines ‘Postscript’ is the final poem in the collection The Spirit Level (1996), published after twenty-five years of violence in the North had ended with a ceasefire in 1994. ‘Postscript’ reads like a small moment of happiness after the storm of public discord. It is also a poem written in middle age and shows an awareness that life is constantly changing. The poem was written after a trip made by Heaney and his wife, Marie, and the playwright Brian Friel and his wife, Anne. This is how Heaney describes it:

were close friends of Seamus and Marie

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The playwright Brian Friel and his wife, Anne,

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The swans

[The poem] came from remembering a windy Saturday afternoon when Marie and I drove with Brian and Anne Friel along the south coast of Galway Bay. We had stopped to look at Mount Vernon, Lady Gregory’s summer house – still there, facing the waters and the wild; then we drove on into this glorious exultation of air and sea and swans. There are some poems that … leave you with a sensation of having been visited, and this was one of them. It excited me, and yet publishing it in the Irish Times was, as much as anything else, a way of sending a holiday postcard – a PS of sorts – to the Friels.

The poem is a record of the sightseeing drive as well as the rich afterthoughts of the drive. It captures the real journey and the sense of mystery and reward to which it gave rise. Like many of Heaney’s poems, it is not a poem that can be tied to a single meaning. As Heaney says in the poem, ‘Useless to think you’ll park and capture it’ (line 12).

Commentary

Lines 1–11

Lines 12–16

The first eleven lines, written as one sentence, consist of advice to ‘make the time to drive out west / Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, / In September or October’. This is the time of year, the speaker says, when the wind and the light create memorable effects on the ocean and the inland lake with its flock of swans.

The second sentence of the poem makes a simple statement: it is useless to think that you will park your car and capture the experience more thoroughly. The next and final sentence elaborates, in an elusive and mysterious way, on this impossibility. It suggests that the experience is poised somewhere between the physical and the spiritual, and has the power to touch the heart.

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Themes and imagery Reading ‘Postscript’ is like overhearing the end of a conversation in which someone offers advice to a friend (or a tourist) to take a car journey along the north coast of Co. Clare, and describes the beauty of the landscape, the changing light and the feelings it will inspire, especially in September or October. So one theme of the poem is the pleasure of going for a coastal drive in a place of great natural beauty in Irish weather. But there is more. It is about the feelings caused in us by natural beauty and a changing landscape, the way these can move us and make us question our place in the world. The poem suggests that it is impossible to capture or snatch from time the important and profound experiences of life – they hurry through us and we hurry through life.

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The journey described in the poem is a dramatic one, with the wild sea on one side and a lake on the other, on which a flock of swans appear like ‘earthed lightning’ (line 8). Like a painter, the speaker appreciates the interplay between the light and the wind, the way the wind whips up foam on the ocean and ruffles the feathers of the swans. Like everything else in this landscape, the swans seem powerful, with ‘fully grown headstrong-looking heads’ (line 10). The world described in ‘Postscript’ is a world in flux, caught between wild things and settled things, between things earthed and things in flight. In the last line the speaker links the drive out west along the Flaggy Shore with a profound moment when the heart is surprised and open to experience. (Is there an implication that the speaker’s heart is often guarded and not open to the world?) Some critics see the whole poem as symbolising the way poetry brings you to places that are neither here nor there, but exist between the physical world and the world of the spirit and the imagination.

Heaney wrote ‘Postscript’ in middle age. For some readers, the poem is about getting older. It is about realising that you are poised between earth and sky, that the self is a ‘hurry’ (line 14) through which life passes, and that there is no escape from time and change. Paradoxically, the poem attempts to capture the immediate experience more thoroughly, and preserve the moment from the ravages of time.

Like all journey poems, ‘Postscript’ can be read in a metaphorical way, with the journey symbolising the journey through life and the journey of the poet. It focuses especially on a moment when we seem to be ‘neither here nor there’ (line 13), but exist on the edge of things, just as the car travels in the space between the land and the sea and is blown off balance. Therefore, the observation that it is ‘Useless to think you’ll park and capture it’ (line 12) might well be read as the speaker’s philosophy that life cannot be controlled or commanded, because our hearts can always be blown open by the surprising and unexpected in our lives. (This is reminiscent of the ‘opening hand’ at the end of ‘The Pitchfork’.)

The swans – ‘earthed lightning’ (line 8) – can be seen as symbolising poetry itself, an elemental force that connects earth and sky. The shore also has symbolic resonance, standing as the boundary between land and ocean, earth and heaven, life and death. In addition, to travel west, towards the setting sun, has connotations of mortality.

Heaney has spoken of imagining a phase in a writer’s life which might involve ‘solitary wandering at the edge of the mighty waters’. These remarks might lead you to read the poem in a new light.

Form and language

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The poem has a sonnet-like structure. The opening eleven lines, written as one sentence, describe an experience and the last five lines, containing two sentences, reflect on it. The opening ‘And’ sets a conversational tone and the entire poem, written in blank verse, proceeds as if we are overhearing a conversation. However, the alliteration, consonance and internal rhymes create a rich pattern of sounds. As the poem moves to its emotional climax, the final thought is expressed in simple and powerful words: ‘And catch the heart off guard and blow it open’ (line 16). Indeed, the whole poem is written with great confidence and assurance.

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Questions a) What advice does the speaker give to the would-be traveller? b) Does the speaker make a good job of promoting the west of Ireland and the wild Atlantic? Explain your answer.

‘Useless to think you’ll park and capture it’ (line 12). Explain, as clearly as you can, what the ‘it’ is that is so hard to capture.

The poem is rich in description. Select two images which you think are particularly effective and explain your choice.

The first eleven lines of description are written as one sentence. What effect is created by this?

The poem reads like the advice of a wise man on how to lead your life. What is the wisdom that the speaker offers?

‘A hurry through which known and strange things pass’ (line 14). In the overall context of the poem, what, do you think, is the meaning of this line, and what does it say about the nature of the self?

‘Catch the heart off guard’ (line 16). a) What does this phrase tell us about the speaker of the poem? b) What are the things in life that have the power to ‘catch the heart off guard’?

The poem recalls a car trip through the Burren. Comment on the symbolism of the car journey and the landscape through which the travellers pass.

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Which, if any, of the following statements are closest to your own view of the poem? n It is a poem about the power of nature to take our breath away.

n It is a poem about how life passes us by in an instant. n It is a poem about being open to experience.

n It is a poem about the power of poetry to capture the mysteries of life.

‘The poem is written in ordinary language which seems to take flight and lifts off, just as the car seems to lift off as the wind catches it sideways.’ Do you agree with this statement? Support your answer by reference to the poem.

Describe a place you know which has the power to lift the spirits and explain, in as much detail as you can, why this is so.

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‘Other than saying, “I was there” most photos and selfies fail to capture the special quality of important and profound moments in our lives. Even when we take a photo, the moment remains elusive.’ In pairs or groups, give your response to this statement in the context of the poem.

‘Postscript’ is a memory poem, a postcard sent to friends after a memorable day driving along the coast of Clare. Write your own memory poem, recalling a special day in your life, associated with a particular place.

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Seamus Heaney Before you read Think about an item of furniture or soft furnishing that you associate with a member of your family or with a happy family occasion. Jot down some words or phrases that come to mind.

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Tate’s Avenue

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Not the one scraggy with crusts and eggshells And olive stones and cheese and salami rinds Laid out by the torrents of the Guadalquivir Where we got drunk before the corrida.

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Not the brown and fawn car rug, that first one Spread on sand by the sea but breathing land-breaths, Its vestal folds unfolded, its comfort zone Edged with a fringe of sepia-coloured wool tails.

Instead, again, it’s locked-park Sunday Belfast, A walled back yard, the dust-bins high and silent As a page is turned, a finger twirls warm hair And nothing gives on the rug or the ground beneath it.

I lay at my length and felt the lumpy earth, Keen-sensed more than ever through discomfort, But never shifted off the plaid square once. When we moved I had your measure and you had mine.

Title

Tate’s Avenue: a street in south Belfast, near Queen’s University

vestal: virginal or chaste. The word derives from Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth and the household; the Vestal Virgins kept the sacred flame in the temple dedicated to the goddess

sepia-coloured: brown, like the colour in early photographs

Guadalquivir: one of the great rivers of Spain, it flows through the cities of Seville and Córdoba in Andalusia

corrida: bullfight

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Glossary

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Guidelines

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‘Tate’s Avenue’ comes from the 2006 collection, District and Circle. District and Circle are both lines on the London Underground system. Two trains on the Circle line were bombed in the attack of 7 July 2005, killing fourteen people. This attack and the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001 influence some of the poetry in the book. Many of the poems are elegies or are set in the afterlife. Other poems circle back to the district of Heaney’s childhood and cover the same ground explored in his first collection, Death of a Naturalist, published forty years earlier. ‘Tate’s Avenue’ comes On the Heaneys’ early relationship out of the poet’s relationship with his wife, Marie, whom he met ‘Marie and I had started to see each other just in Belfast in 1962 when both were completing their studies and about the time of the folk revival. Marie was starting out on their teaching careers. The development of a very true singer so we moved about for a the relationship is traced through descriptions of three rugs while with a crowd of other young teachers, used by the young couple that mark different stages in their life scouring the parties.’ together.

Commentary

Stanza 1

The first of the three rugs recalled in the poem is a ‘brown and fawn car rug’. It is not the rug he wants to describe, but it is associated with the early, chaste stage of their relationship, and with car trips to the seaside.

Stanza 2

The ‘scraggy’ rug of the second stanza is an altogether different one. This rug is more used and more bohemian. The setting is Spain, and the references to food and wine suggest excitement and passion.

Stanza 3

Stanza 4

And it is to Belfast that the poem turns in the third stanza. This is ‘locked-park Sunday Belfast’, a world away from the excitement of the time recalled in stanza 2. Although the two who occupy it are aware of each other, ‘nothing gives on the rug’.

In the final stanza the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘You’ appear for the first time. The narrator tells us he never shifted once, and when eventually they moved, they each had the other’s measure.

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Themes and imagery

Remembering Tate’s Avenue

‘“Death of a Naturalist” I wrote in one of the flats on a Sunday afternoon, after lying out in the sun with Marie and her flatmates at the back of the place they had in Tate’s Avenue. The dead heat in their little back garden …’

The poem traces the different stages in a love relationship. The car rug of stanza 1 refers to an early stage. Everything about the description suggests care and caution. The use of the adjective ‘vestal’ suggests the newness of the rug and the chasteness of the relationship. The rug does not breathe sea air but sticks to the tamer breaths of land. The image of the ‘comfort zone’ fringed with ‘sepia-coloured wool tails’ suggests neatness and order

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Seamus Heaney rather than the wildness of young passion. The impression is created of a relationship that is formal, careful and virginal. Heaney on the corrida

‘The choreography in the ring and the surge and response of the crowd with the music

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going on and on just carried you away. And

your focus stayed tight on the man and the bull. There was something hypnotic about the

cloak-work, something even vaguely Satanic

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A different stage is described in stanza 2. Here there is a sense of abandonment and intoxication: the intoxication of exotic food and drink, and the danger, passion and sexuality invoked by the Spanish setting (‘the torrents of the Guadalquivir’) and the reference to the corrida. The couple have moved from the safety and chastity of the first stanza to something more wild, exciting and passionate. The corrida represents a difference in the way life is lived and understood from the culture of Belfast.

about that black crumpled-horn killing-cap on the matador’s head …’

The relationship described in the final two stanzas belongs to an earlier phase of the relationship than that described in stanza 2. In stanza 3, the reference to ‘locked-park Sunday Belfast’ suggests a puritanical culture and an atmosphere of suppression and inhibition, far removed from the wild romanticism of Spain. A prison-like sense of curtailment and drabness is suggested in the description of the ‘walled back yard, the dust-bins high and silent’. It is against this backdrop that the young couple play out a love game or test. The rug is spread on the hard unyielding ground and, intent on reading, nothing is given away by the reader to the one observing. The phrase ‘nothing gives’ suggests a battle of wills in which neither party is willing to concede or yield an inch. In erotic terms, the phrase suggests that there will be no yielding of the ‘soft’ feminine to the ‘hard’ masculine.

In the final stanza, the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘You’ appear for the first time. Now the ‘I’ stretches out on the rug and feels ‘the lumpy earth’. He is, we are told, ‘keen-sensed’. Though uncomfortable he is not prepared to move, to give up his place on the rug beside her. Instead, he persists and stakes a claim to the territory. When eventually the pair move, nothing is said, but things are understood. No one will be taken for granted in this relationship and both will bring determination and stubbornness to it.

Interestingly, the final stanza of the poem is firmly rooted on ‘the lumpy earth’. This is not love as a flight of fantasy, but something altogether more grounded and careful, love as a measuring up, as an equal match. If the rug itself symbolises love, then love is a patch of ground to be marked out and defended. The fact that nothing external happens and nothing is said seems to intensify the erotic frisson between the young lovers. Heaney on a good poem ‘Each poem is an experiment … The image I have is from the old cartoons: Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse coming hell for leather to the edge of a cliff. Skidding to a stop but unable to halt, and shooting out over the edge. A good poem is the same, it goes that bit further and leaves you walking on air.’

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From the poem it is clear that love is influenced by where you come from and where you are. In the poem ‘Tollund’, which is set in Jutland in a landscape that looks like the familiar landscape of Co. Derry, the persona describes himself and his beloved standing ‘footloose, at home beyond the tribe’. In Belfast, with its locked gates, there is no escape from the tribe. In Belfast, lovemaking becomes a version of ‘no surrender’ and ‘not an inch’.

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Form and language

‘[The erotic belongs in poetry] but the problem is, how to get it in. It’s present – in an abstinent kind of way – in a District and Circle poem like

“Tate’s Avenue”.’

Like so many of Heaney’s poems, it is richly patterned with half-rhymes (‘never’/‘measure’), assonance (‘spread’, ‘breaths’), alliteration (‘lay’, ‘length’, ‘lumpy’) and consonance (‘drunk’, ‘locked’, ‘park’, ‘back’). Here, as elsewhere in his poetry, Heaney delights in the shape and sound of words.

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Heaney on the erotic in poetry

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‘Tate’s Avenue’ is written using the same four four-line-stanza form that is found in ‘The Underground’. The first three stanzas are composed of single sentences. The final stanza is composed of two sentences; the second forms the last line and gives the poem a strong concluding statement.

Questions

Place the three rugs in order, according to the stages of the relationship.

What impression of the rug (and the relationship between the couple who shared it) do you form from stanza 1? What words and details influence your impression?

The rug described in the second stanza suggests an altogether different phase of the lovers’ relationship. What words and details strike you as particularly revealing?

Use three carefully considered adjectives to characterise the love described in stanza 2.

The third stanza moves the poem to Belfast. What impression of the city is conveyed in this stanza? Identify the key words and phrases in creating this impression.

‘And nothing gives on the rug or the ground beneath it.’ Would you agree that the relationship between the young lovers reflects an attitude of ‘no surrender’ and ‘not an inch’.

How does the last stanza convey the stubbornness of the persona of the poem?

‘The idea of love that emerges from the poem is one of measuring up and finding each equal to the other.’ Comment on this view of the poem.

‘It is clear from “Tate’s Avenue” that love and the way you behave as lovers are related to where you are. This is a Belfast poem.’ Comment on this interpretation of the poem. Examine one stanza and note how Heaney uses alliteration, consonance and assonance to create the music of the poem.

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Based on the last stanza of the poem, write a short dialogue between the young lovers that captures the quality of their relationship.

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Exam-Preparation Questions ‘In Heaney’s poetry we encounter contrasting female and male presences in a world that is, by turns, familiar and reassuring, and violent and unnerving.’ Give your view of this assessment of Heaney’s poetry.

‘Heaney’s poetry is constantly engaged in finding images for the processes of the imagination and for poetry itself.’ Discuss.

‘Seamus Heaney’s poetry is rich in imagery and metaphor and expressed in a sensuous language.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Seamus Heaney on your course.

‘In his poetry, Seamus Heaney seeks to find a balance between the demands of his social conscience as a Northern nationalist, and the freedom of his imagination.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Seamus Heaney on your course.

‘I no longer wanted a door into the dark, I wanted a door into the light.’ Discuss Seamus Heaney’s poetry in terms of poems of darkness and poems of light. You should refer to both the themes and imagery found in the poetry of Heaney on your course.

Heaney’s poetry is populated with exemplary figures from whom he learns. Give examples of three figures from the poems you have studied, outlining their importance to the poet.

Do you agree with the view that history and memory – personal, familial, racial – lie at the heart of Heaney’s poetry? Support your opinion with reference to the poems by Seamus Heaney on your course.

‘Many of Heaney’s poems explore relationships: relationships of love; relationships of conflict; the relationship between the real and the imagined; and the relationship between the past and the present.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Seamus Heaney on your course.

The citation for the Nobel Prize refers to ‘an authorship filled with lyrical beauty and ethical depth which brings out the miracle of the ordinary day and the living past’. Point to examples of Heaney’s poetry where these qualities are to be found. Explain your choices.

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‘What I find appealing in the poetry of Seamus Heaney.’ Write an essay in which you outline the appeal that Heaney’s poetry has for you.

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Some of the following topics might be included: n Heaney’s skill as a poet n The themes – personal, familial and national n The attachment to his home place n The careful attention Heaney pays to the actual, and his delight in the visionary and marvellous n The memorable lines and images that stay with you Support your answer with reference to the poetry of Heaney on your course.

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Write an introduction to the poetry of Seamus Heaney for readers new to his work. Your answer should include: n The themes and concerns of his poetry n Heaney’s use of language and your response to it.

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Some of the following topics might also be included in your answer:

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n The importance of exemplary figures in his poetry n The marriage poems and the relationship they describe

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n The metaphors for poetry n The question of the response to the pressure of public events n The relationship between the real and the imaginary.

Support your answer with reference to the poetry of Heaney on your course.

Seamus Heaney remains one of the most popular poets in the English-speaking world. Why, do you think, is this so?

You could consider some of the following topics in your answer:

n While often dealing with his home place, his poetry has universal appeal n Detailed descriptions of the real flow into flights of imagination n The celebration of love and family

n The personality of the poet revealed in the poems

n His courage in speaking as a representative of his people n The hopefulness of his poetry.

n His delight in the sounds and shapes of words

Support your answer with reference to the poetry of Heaney on your course.

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Mossbawn is childhood Eden Celebrates the rural, the local, and traditional crafts Celebrates exemplary figures – Aunt Mary and his father Public poems address violence and conflict in Northern Ireland Private world familiar and reassuring – public world violent and unnerving Speaks as representative of his community Roots of poetic language found in childhood experience

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SNAPSHOT SEAMUS HEANEY

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Descriptive language, strong rhythms and rich sound patterns Themes of memory and excavation of the past Love poems: playful, celebratory and unsentimental Poetry rooted in the ordinary world – imagination flies beyond it Contrasting images of weight and flight Classical allusions deepen everyday experiences Poetry is hopeful and uplifting

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Seamus Heaney

Sample Essay

Answer addresses the task straightaway

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I think Seamus Heaney’s poetry does move between ‘earth-bound realities’ and ‘flights of poetic fantasy’. However, it can be argued that it is only in his later writing that his poetry breaks free of earth-bound realities and takes flight.

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‘Seamus Heaney’s poetry moves between earth-bound realities and flights of poetic fantasy.’ Discuss this view of Heaney’s poetry, supporting your answer with references to the poems by Heaney on your course.

Seamus Heaney’s father farmed fifty acres in County Derry and also worked as a cattle dealer. He was a man of the earth, and the earth and the soil are central to help make its case to Seamus Heaney’s poetry. After primary school, Heaney won a scholarship to St Columb’s College, Derry, and there he came to love English literature and the literature of the Greeks and Romans. The mixture of a love of ordinary things and a love of literature is reflected in many of Heaney’s poems, where the poet uses his poetry to celebrate the life he knew as a child. Answer gives brief note

on poet's background

Take the example of his early poem ‘The Forge’. What could be more The discussion keeps real and down-to-earth than a detailed description of the local forge the terms of the question in focus to be discussed with its ‘old axles and iron hoops rusting’, where ‘real iron’ is beaten out? The young poet sees music in the solid objects and celebrates the music of ordinary life when Uses short quotations he writes of ‘the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring’. The poem is a celebration of to support points a traditional craft and is written in a traditional form: the sonnet. The figure of the blacksmith in his leather apron, with ‘hairs in his nose’, is as earth-bound a figure as they come. The language of the poem, with its alliteration and consonant sounds, suits the description of the blacksmith as a strong, masculine figure: ‘Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick’. This paragraph

introduces first poem

For the poet, the blacksmith’s anvil becomes an altar, a magical object ‘Horned as a unicorn’. Upon this altar the blacksmith beats out iron and ‘expends himself in shape and music’. In other words, the blacksmith symbolises the poet, who takes the raw material of life and beats it into the shape and music of poetry. The door of the forge, ‘a door into the dark’, symbolises the young poet entering through the door of words into the darkness of the imagination. At this early stage of his career, Heaney places his faith in describing real things in carefully shaped and In concluding the musical poems. He is happy to stay earth-bound, though the image of the unicorn discussion of the is an early indication of the visionary qualities which characterise his later poetry.

poem, the answer goes back to the terms

Another early, earth-bound poem, ‘Bogland’ makes the association of the question between the earth and the imagination. When Heaney was at school, the skeleton of an elk had been taken out of the bog near his home. This skeleton, and the stories he had been told of butter buried for ‘More than a hundred years’, made him think of the Throughout the answer, short bog as the memory of the landscape. To recover the past you dig ‘Inwards and quotations are downwards’. The last line of the poem – ‘The wet centre is bottomless’ – suggests integrated into the that the young poet realises that just as there is no bottom to the bog, there is no argument bottom to the well of imagination, especially when the imagination explores the past of his childhood and his community. The final line of the poem suggests a poetry rooted in

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Introduces second

poem

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to the key phrases and ideas in the question

the soil, though it must be dug up by the imagination. What greater contrast could there be between poetry imagined as digging into the soil and poetry imagined as taking flight?

‘Mossbawn: 1 Sunlight’ is another poem dealing with the real. Like a painter painting a life portrait, Heaney paints a domestic scene and places his much-loved aunt in the centre. The portrait is warm and affectionate, filled with images of light and heat, and while the beautiful last stanza is written with love, the image is of a love half-buried:

into answer

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Introduces third poem

The candidate returns

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And here is love like a tinsmith’s scoop sunk past its gleam in the meal-bin.

The scoop is sunk and stuck in the meal-bin, just, it can be argued, as Heaney’s imagination is stuck in the real.

Concludes one line of

argument

‘The Pitchfork’ is a poem that recalls the poet’s youth in Co. Derry, when he learned to handle a pitchfork. In many ways it is a poem that goes back to ‘The Forge’ in its celebration of a farm implement made of beaten metal and wood. To the young poet, the pitchfork was an implement of work and play. Holding it, he could imagine himself as a warrior or an athlete:

Makes reference

across poems

When he tightened his raised hand and aimed high with it, It felt like a javelin, accurate and light.

The poem sets out to capture the physical quality of the pitchfork in a series of descriptive words and phrases. For example:

Sweat-cured, sharpened, balanced, tested, fitted. The springiness, the clip and dart of it.

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line of argument, the

However, the centre of the poem is inspired by the image of the pitchfork in flight through the air. On this occasion the imagination does not stay rooted in the earth answer now introduces but sails beyond it into space. The pitchfork becomes a space probe sailing ‘Evenly, a different line imperturbably through space, / Its prongs starlit and absolutely soundless’. It is a beautiful and striking image. Here we can see the poet’s imagination take flight and leave the earth-bound realities behind. In the poem, the visionary and the marvellous take over from the real and the earth-bound. At the end of the poem, Heaney seems to offer himself some advice on how his poetry might develop. He tells himself he has to let the poem travel wherever it is bound. The ‘opening hand’ which concludes the poem suggests a willingness to The argument is developed in the follow the imagination where it leads. In this poem it leads far out into space on a paragraph. Concludes soundless flight through starlight. with a strong image Having established one

Another poem which celebrates the imagination in flight is ‘Lightenings, viii: “The Annals Say”’. The poem comes from a collection entitled Seeing Things. The title hints at the theme of visions and marvels which lie at the heart of ‘The Annals Say’. It is a poem written in a light-hearted way and the lightness allows the poem and the imagination to rise and take flight. The poem gives an account of an incident recorded in the Annals of

The final poem

supports the new line

of argument

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Seamus Heaney

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Clonmacnoise, in which the monks of Clonmacnoise were disturbed at prayer by a ship sailing above their heads through the air. Heaney tells the story in a matter-of-fact way, describing how ‘The anchor … hooked itself into the altar rails’. A crewman ‘shinned and grappled down the rope’ and the abbot ordered the monks to assist the sailor. The ship was released ‘and the man climbed back / Out of the marvellous as he had known it’. The poem brings together a world that is earth-bound and one that floats free. The contrast between these two worlds There is a good deal of summary in this is captured in the images of anchorage on the one hand, and release on the other.

paragraph, so a clear

point has to be made in

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In the poem, the earth-bound monks and the flying sailors are linked. The ship the final sentences cannot continue its journey without the assistance of the monks. Reading the poem as a metaphor for Heaney’s poetry, we could say that the poem suggests that the high-flying imagination is dependent upon earth-bound realities. However, these realities do not weigh the imagination down and the poem delights in the wondrous quality of the story it tells.

In ‘The Annals Say’, the imagination takes flight, though it does not lose sight of the earth and the same may be said of all Heaney’s poetry: there are dizzying moments of flight and lightness,w but the earth remains always in view.

Purpose

ESSAY CHECKLIST

The concluding comments sum up the argument made throughout the essay

Yes 4

No 8

Has the candidate understood the task?

Has the candidate responded to it in a thoughtful manner? Has the candidate answered the question?

Has the candidate made convincing arguments?

Coherence

Comment:

Has the candidate linked ideas?

Comment:

Does the essay have a sense of unity?

Language

Is the essay written in an appropriate register?

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Are ideas expressed in a clear way? Is the writing fluent?

Comment:

Mechanics

Is the use of language accurate? Are all words spelled correctly? Does the punctuation help the reader?

Comment:

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1844–1889

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Gerard Manley Hopkins 178

Spring*

182

As kingfishers catch fire

187

The Windhover

192

Pied Beauty

197

Felix Randal

201

Inversnaid*

205

No worst, there is none

210

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day

214

Thou art indeed just, Lord

218

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God’s Grandeur

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Biography

Early life

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Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, close to London, on 28 July 1844. He was the eldest of nine children. The family was prosperous: his father, Manley Hopkins, had been Consul-General to the Hawaiian Islands and he owned a company that insured against ship wrecks. He was also a writer and a poet. His mother, Catherine Smith, was the daughter of a wealthy physician. She was highly educated and well read in German literature and philosophy. An aunt who lived with the family was a musician and painter, and she encouraged her nephew in both of these arts for which he showed a precocious talent, as he did for languages. Gerard was not the only talented member of his family: two of his brothers became professional artists. The household was a religious one. The family was Anglican, and one of Gerard’s sisters became an Anglican nun.

When Hopkins was eight, the family moved from Stratford to Hampstead in north London. Stratford was suffering from the effects of industrial development and Gerard and Catherine wanted their children to grow up in a healthy environment. As a young boy, Gerard loved to climb trees. He had a love of nature all his life.

Hopkins attended a prestigious grammar school; past students included the famous writers Samuel Coleridge, Charles Lamb and Thomas De Quincey. Hopkins was not physically strong, but he had tremendous courage and spirit and he was academically gifted. His talent for words and writing was clear from an early age. What was also clear was his remarkable willpower and his willingness to endure hardship. On one occasion, to prove a point, he abstained from all liquids for a week until his tongue went black and he collapsed.

Edinburgh.

His studies and vocation

An inscription of a Hopkins quotation in

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In 1863, Hopkins won a scholarship to Oxford University. There Robert Bridges he met Robert Bridges and the two became lifelong friends, Bridges was born in the same year as Hopkins, keeping up a correspondence right up to the time of Hopkins’s but lived forty-one years longer than his friend. Their friendship was conducted mainly death in 1889. Bridges prepared and edited the first edition of through letters, in which they exchanged Hopkins’s poetry in 1918. At Oxford Hopkins was tutored by the opinions on philosophy, religion, poetry and art critic Walter Pater, who also became his friend. At the time, politics. the university was a hotbed of ideas; many of the students were influenced by ideas from the German philosophers Kant, Hegel and Marx, and were turning away from religion. The Anglican Oxford Movement was an attempt to stem the tide of secular ideas by presenting a fervent, intellectual defence of religion. Hopkins was drawn to the Oxford Movement and to one of its founder members, John Henry Newman. Newman had been converted to Catholicism and after some soul-searching, Hopkins followed his example. Hopkins had a stubborn and wilful streak, but he was willing to submit to the authority of Rome. Initially, his conversion caused a rift with his parents, who were loyal and devout Anglicans. However, they had a deep love for their son and the rift was soon healed.

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Joins Jesuits

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Hopkins enjoyed university and was a brilliant student. His sketchbooks, diaries and poems from this period show his love of nature, his gift for friendship and a serious and intense personality. A sonnet from this time, ’Myself Unholy’, reveals a tendency to judge himself harshly. In 1868, a year after graduating from Oxford, Hopkins joined the Society of Jesus, whose members are called Jesuits. In a gesture that shows the severity of his personality, he destroyed all his poetry in order to devote his life to God. The training to become a Jesuit is long, rigorous and disciplined. However, it was during this training that he experienced some of the happiest days of his life.

For three years (1874–1877), he studied theology at St Beuno’s College in north Wales. He loved Wales; he loved the people, the countryside and the Welsh language. He was particularly struck by the rich sound patterns of Welsh poetry. At St Beuno’s his Superior encouraged him to write a poem commemorating the death of five nuns who had drowned in a ship wreck. The poem ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ incorporates the alliteration, assonance and internal rhymes he found in Welsh poetry, and set Hopkins on his writing journey. The poem was turned down by the editors of the Jesuit magazine, but, encouraged by his Superior, Hopkins continued to write and produced ten sonnets which show a delight in the world and a view of nature as a sign of God’s energy and beauty in the world. These sonnets include: ‘God’s Grandeur’, ‘Spring’, ‘The Windhover’ and ‘Pied Beauty’. For the rest of his life, Hopkins wrote religious poetry and made his writing part of his religious vocation, though he was careful to avoid publication. Hopkins was ordained in 1877. Over the next four years he held several posts, including one in the parish of Leigh, a small industrial, Hopkins was extremely sensitive to his ‘smoke-sodden’ town in Lancashire. The people needed a priest environment. From Liverpool, he wrote to and Hopkins fell in love with them. It is likely that ‘Felix Randal’ Bridges: ‘I take up a languid pen to write to was written after the death of one of his parishioners in Leigh. you, being down with diarrhoea and vomiting, After Leigh, he was transferred to a parish in a slum district of brought on by yesterday’s heat …’ Liverpool, which he called a ‘hellhole’. Hopkins was overwhelmed by the degradation caused by industrialisation, and the baseness of both the people and the life they lived. In Liverpool he was fatigued, dispirited and depressed, and he lost the ability to write. However, he worked as hard as he could and was conscientious in his duty.

Sensitive Hopkins

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In preparation for his final vows in the Jesuits, Hopkins spent most of 1882 studying and reading. He wrote: ‘my mind … is more at peace than it has ever been and I would gladly live all my life … in seclusion from the world and be busied only with God’. But the Jesuits did not live in seclusion. Instead, in 1884 Hopkins was appointed Professor of Greek at University College Dublin.

Dublin 1884–1889 Hopkins was not happy in Ireland. He found Dublin dirty and grim. His colleagues at the university did not know what to make of this eccentric, patriotic Englishman. His accommodation at St Stephen’s Green was dilapidated and rat-infested. He considered the professorship an honour, but it came with a huge examination load. ‘It is killing work,’ he wrote, ‘to examine a nation.’ The sickness and depression to which he was prone increased during his time in Dublin and became, in his own words, ‘constant and crippling’. He went on to say, ‘when I am at the worst … my state is much like madness’. Out of this personal anguish he wrote six

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pa om

Social and Cultural Context

sonnets in 1885, collectively known as the ‘terrible sonnets’ or ‘the sonnets of desolation’. Among them are ‘No worst, there is none’ and ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark’. Hopkins struggled on. He felt an increasing conflict between his impulse to write and his religious duties. Four years after writing the ‘terrible sonnets’, on 17 March 1889, Hopkins wrote of his frustration and his loss of poetic inspiration in ‘Thou art indeed just, Lord’. It was one of the last poems he wrote. Three months later, he fell ill with typhoid. On 8 June he was given the sacrament of the sick. As he received it he was heard to say, ‘I am so happy’. He died soon afterwards and was buried in the Jesuit plot at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. At the time of his death his poetry was known only to family members and some friends.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Inequality

Hopkins lived through a time of change in economics, politics, the arts, religion and science. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had been published in 1859. The Communist Hopkins is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. Manifesto had appeared in 1848. Dickens published Hard Times in 1854. Many intellectuals challenged traditional beliefs, including belief in God. Child labour, poor housing and health care, infant mortality and the damage caused to the environment by industrialisation were all indicators of a society in turmoil.

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As a priest working in parishes in Lancashire and Liverpool, Hopkins would have been conscious of the inequality in society. He witnessed the desperate poverty and appalling living and working conditions of the poor. His experiences led him to make the half-serious statement that he was a communist, in a letter to his friend Robert Bridges in 1871. He believed it ‘a dreadful thing’ that so many lived ‘a hard life without dignity, knowledge, comforts, delight, or hopes in the midst of plenty – which plenty they make’. He was also aware of the consequences for both workers and the environment of the Industrial Revolution.

Science and religion

As an intellectual, Hopkins was aware that more and more people were turning to science to find the meaning of life. And the world that science described had little place for God. The publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 marks a moment in history when scientific truths began to replace religious ones. For Hopkins, the advances in science and art did not threaten his religious belief – they reinforced it. He believed that any close examination of nature revealed the grandeur of a divine creator. To perceive and appreciate beauty in nature was, for Hopkins, to discover the presence of God, as in the poem, ‘As HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 175

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kingfishers catch fire’. For Hopkins, nature was charged or ‘electrified’ with the power of God. The uniqueness of every living thing in every moment expressed the purpose and creativity of God. Hopkins’s concepts of ‘inscape’ and ‘instress’ (see below) were ways of describing God’s presence. In Hopkins’s mind, science could describe nature and explain natural phenomena, but it was religion which understood the purpose and meaning of nature. For him, nature was the expression of God in the world. When Hopkins saw beauty in nature – as in a kingfisher, or a falcon in flight – he felt motivated to love and serve God.

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The inscape and instress of poetry

Hopkins brought his ideas on inscape (the unique quality of an object, its ‘thisness’) and instress (the energy which holds Hopkins worried whether his thoughts this uniqueness together and the effect of the uniqueness of and ideas were compatible with religious an object upon the beholder; the internal excitement of the thinking. Then, in 1872, during his training beholder) into his writing. He believed that each poem should with the Jesuits, he discovered the writing of have its own unique set of qualities, held together by the a medieval English friar called Duns Scotus. Scotus maintained that it is the unique energy of the artist. He disliked the repetitive and tame rhythms combination of qualities (size, texture, colour, and metres used by many of his contemporaries. He believed shape, movement and so on) which give a that poetry should draw strength from the rhythms of speech. thing its individual identity. This essence, He wanted the freedom to create particular rhythmic effects this ‘thisness’, is what defines the reality of to suit the uniqueness of the object or experience described every object in nature. After studying Scotus, in each of his poems. He wanted his poems to sound dynamic Hopkins felt able to celebrate the particularity and variety of nature and to celebrate the and dramatic. Hopkins devised the term ‘sprung rhythm’ for his Creator whose spirit and energy moulds system. The basic idea was that each line of a poem should have things into their unique patterns and forms. a fixed number of stresses per line rather than a fixed number of syllables. The effect is to create a feeling of energy and forward motion. However, what gives a Hopkins poem its unique quality is inscape, the total pattern of sound, not just its rhythm. He used rhyme, both at the end of lines (end rhyme) and within lines (internal). He was fascinated by vowel music and alliteration. Influenced by Welsh-language poetry, he created complex patterns of vowel sounds and alliteration. Hopkins also sought out Anglo-Saxon words to breathe life and vitality into his poems. He used compound adjectives (‘dapple-dawn-drawn’ in ‘The Windhover’, for example) combined with alliteration and internal rhyme. Just as Hopkins believed God shapes things into unique forms and patterns, he used his energy to shape each poem into its unique form.

Duns Scotus

Themes

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Hopkins’s poetry expresses his love of God and God’s creation. When Hopkins looks upon the beauty of nature, he sees the creative power and grandeur of God (‘The Windhover’, ‘Spring’, ‘Pied Beauty’, ‘God’s Grandeur’, ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’). In some of the poems he contrasts the creative power of God with the destruction and smearing of the beautiful earth by humankind (‘God’s Grandeur’). Hopkins’s poetry expresses his consciousness of sin and its corrupting influence (‘Spring’). This is countered by the power of Christ to redeem and save sinners (‘Spring’, ‘Felix Randal’, ‘The Windhover’). And just as Hopkins’s love of God can lead to outpourings of joy and ecstasy in his poetry, his religious doubt and depression can lead to outpourings of despair (‘No worst, there is none’, ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark’). Hopkins’s frustration and personal unhappiness are expressed in ‘Thou art indeed just, Lord’.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Timeline Born on 28 July in Stratford, Essex to High Anglican parents

1852

Family move to Hampstead

1854

Attends Highgate Grammar School

1863

Attends university at Oxford

1866

Follows John Henry Newman into the Catholic Church

1867

Graduates with a first-class degree in Classics

1868

Enters the Jesuit order

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Studies theology and learns Welsh in north Wales

1874–7

1844

Writes ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’; poem rejected by a Jesuit journal

1877

Ordained a priest; writes some of his best poems, including ‘Pied Beauty’, ‘The Windhover’

1876

and ‘God’s Grandeur’

Spends three months in a parish in a small town in Lancashire

1880

Writes ‘Felix Randal’; spends two years in a parish in the slum area of Liverpool

1882

Spends a year studying and reading before final vows

1884

Appointed Professor of Greek at University College, Dublin

1885

Writes his ‘terrible sonnets’

1889

Dies in Dublin of typhoid fever

1918

Robert Bridges, poet and friend of Hopkins, publishes an edition of Hopkins’s poems

1967

First complete edition of Hopkins’s works is published

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1879

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Before you read

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Using a good dictionary, look up the different meanings of the word ‘grandeur’. In your view, how many of these meanings could apply to God?

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

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God’s Grandeur

And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs – Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Glossary

charged with: filled with the energy of, as in a charge of electricity

foil: gold or silver in sheet form; when shaken, the foil gives off flashes of light like lightning

reck his rod: heed or care about God’s authority; in the Bible, the rod is often a symbol of God’s power, anger and just punishment; on other occasions it symbolises God’s guidance

5–6

Generations … toil: the earth has been polluted by the weary routine of generations of workers

seared: dried up; withered; scorched

bleared: blurred, e.g. by tears or inflammation

nor can … shod: by wearing shoes, people no longer have a direct connection with the soil

the last lights: the setting sun

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Guidelines

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This poem is one of ten sonnets that Hopkins wrote at St Beuno’s in Wales in 1877, during one of the happiest periods of his life. The poem contrasts the destructive effect of human activity on the earth with the regenerative power of nature. Here, as in ‘Spring’, ‘Pied Beauty’ Hopkins describing St Beuno’s and ‘The Windhover’, Hopkins celebrates the divine energy ‘The house stands on a steep hillside, it that flows through nature and manifests itself in the beauty of commands the long-drawn valley of the Clwyd the natural world. In a meditation, Hopkins wrote, ‘All things … to the sea … opposite it is Snowdon and its are charged with love, are charged with God and if we know how range … The air seems to me to be very fresh to touch them give off sparks and take fire …’. and wholesome.’

Commentary

In ‘God’s Grandeur’, Hopkins presents two contrasting worlds: the world of nature made by God, unspoiled and beautiful; and the degenerate, ugly world that is the result of generations of human activity.

Lines 1–8

The poem opens with the natural world, shot through with the splendour of its creator. The world is like an electric battery, fully charged with the divine energy that keeps it in being and sustains it. The second line tells us that God’s grandeur ‘will flame out, like shining from shook foil’. The image here, as Hopkins explained to his friend, the poet Robert Bridges, is of the glinting of gold leaf or tinsel. In line 3 we have another image of the traces left by God’s grandeur on the natural world (‘like the ooze of oil’). Here, the oil oozes from crushed olives. Hopkins had the Old Testament in mind when he used this image – olive oil symbolised power and kingship as well as priesthood.

Line 4 (‘Why do men then now not reck his rod?’) introduces a firm moral tone into the sonnet. Hopkins is asking why human beings pay no attention to God’s authority and anger. The lines that follow explain why God might be angry. Through their various activities, generations of people have converted a beautiful world into a place ‘seared with trade’ and ‘bleared, smeared with toil’. The planet ‘wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell’. This sonnet identifies Hopkins as an environmentalist before the term came into use.

Th e

Lines 5–8 reflect Hopkins’s experience as a priest in Lancashire: ‘I was yesterday at St Helens, probably the most repulsive place in Lancashire… The stench of sulphuretted hydrogen rolls in the air, and films of the same gas form on railing and pavement.’ In line 8 we find a reminder of industrial man’s divorce from nature: ‘nor can foot feel, being shod’. The foot in a shoe is no longer in direct contact with the earth, an image of the separation of mankind from the natural world.

Lines 9–14

The final six lines of the sonnet take over where the first three left off, and reintroduce a celebratory, optimistic note. The despair expressed in lines 5–8 gives way to consolation. In spite of all the grimness created by mankind (‘And for all this’), nature possesses the power of renewal. The key here is line 10: ‘There lives the dearest freshness deep down things’. This is a reference to the undying life forces that are constantly at work renewing the face of the earth.

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Lines 11–12 (‘And though the last lights … / eastward, springs’) convey an image of the dark night giving way to a bright morning in the east. In the final two lines, Hopkins identifies the source of the constantly renewed life of nature. This is the Holy Ghost, the great spiritual power that broods over the sleeping ‘bent’ Earth with ‘bright wings’. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is represented as a dove.

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What Hopkins writes in the final two lines of the sonnet is a distinct echo of John Milton’s treatment of the same theme in the epic poem Paradise Lost, where the Holy Spirit has a similar function:

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Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad’st it pregnant

This depiction, in turn, is based on the account of the Creation in the Book of Genesis: ‘and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters’.

Themes and imagery

The main theme of the poem is that the world is filled with the grandeur of God and sustained by divine energy. The presence of God in nature is shown in two ways. One is sudden and brilliant as when foil is shaken and gives off flashes of light, like lightning. The other is more gradual and accumulative, as when oil is crushed and gathers into a thick pool. The poem contrasts the brilliance of God’s presence with the way in which humans have defaced Earth, leaving it smeared and soiled. The images of human activity suggest the monotony and soul-destroying nature of work in industrial England. It is not only nature but humans, too, who are ‘bleared, smeared with toil’ (line 6). The poem concludes with a series of hopeful images. The first is the sense of renewal with the arrival of morning light. The second is the image of the Holy Ghost, the embodiment of divine energy and power, hovering in a protective way over the world, as a mother bird hovers over a nest. It is this image which draws the ecstatic ‘ah!’ of the last line of the poem.

Form and language

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‘God’s Grandeur’ is a Petrarchan sonnet – that is, it is divided into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines) with a tight rhyming scheme, in which only four rhymes are used. The rhyming pattern is abbaabba cdcdcd. The strict formal structure acts as a counterbalance to the passion and excitement that the poem expresses. Though there are many end-stopped lines, the poet uses enjambment (running-on of a phrase or thought from one line to another) to great effect: ‘like the ooze of oil / Crushed’ (lines 3–4) throws the emphasis onto the verb by holding it back until the next line, and so adds to the force of the physical action of ‘Crushed’. In a different way, the enjambment in the final four lines, together with the interjected ‘Oh’ and ‘ah!’, give a breathlessness to the joy that is being expressed.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

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As you read the poem aloud, you will notice that Hopkins chooses plain, simple words, mostly of one syllable, rather than unfamiliar or learned ones. The following words from the poem all have their origin in Old English or in the Anglo-Saxon elements of Middle English: world, God, will, shook, gathers, greatness, ooze, reck, rod, trod, smeared, smell, bare, foot, shod, spent, dearest, freshness, deep, down, things, though, last, lights, black, west, went, morning, brown, brink, eastward, springs, Holy Ghost, broods, warm, breast, bright, wings.

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Hopkins uses alliteration in every line of this poem. For example, the first three lines contain ‘grandeur of God’, ‘shining from shook foil’, ‘gathers to a greatness’ and ‘ooze of oil’. This gives vigour and emphasis to what he has to say.

Another common feature of Hopkins’s style is his use of internal rhyme. For example, ‘rod’ at the end of line 4 rhymes with the treble ‘trod’ in line 5.

Questions

‘God’s Grandeur’ is based on a contrast. Identify this contrast and explain how Hopkins develops it.

Comment on the effect of the word ‘charged’ in line 1.

What is the effect of placing ‘Crushed’ at the start of the fourth line?

a) Comment on the verbs chosen by Hopkins to describe human work and its effect in the world: ‘trod’, ‘seared’, ‘bleared’, ‘smeared’ (lines 5–6). b) Discuss the portrayal of humans in the poem and the effect of their presence on the earth.

‘Nature is never spent’ (line 9). Explain your understanding of this statement.

What kind of God is contemplated in the poem?

What is the role of the Holy Ghost in the poem?

Identify four interesting words or phrases from the poem and describe their impact.

‘In the poem Hopkins shows his love of God but also his disgust for humanity.’ Discuss.

Some critics suggest that it is easy to differentiate between Hopkins the poet and Hopkins the priest in reading the poem. Do you agree?

In pairs, discuss how this poem might be used by the movement to ‘save the planet’.

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Write your own poem contrasting the beauty of the planet with the destruction caused by human activity.

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Before you read

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In pairs, discuss all the things you ro r upwo associate with the beauty of spring.

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring – When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

Ire

Spring

What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Glossary

weeds, in wheels: ‘weeds’ here refers to wild flowers; the long shoots turn over and over as they grow out – Hopkins may have had blackberry stems in mind

Th e

look little low heavens: the blue eggs with their black spots remind him of the sky studded with stars

rinse: purify

wring: squeeze and twist; in this case also evoking ‘ring’ as a bell

juice: sap of life; joyful fruitfulness

strain: echo, reminder or symbol

Have, get: claim for yourself

it: the innocent mind of youth (line 13)

cloy: induce a feeling of distaste or nausea as a result of indulging in food or drink that is too rich or too sweet

Mayday: a spring festival, celebrated on the first day of May; for Catholics, it is a day of special devotion to Mary and celebrates her purity

maid’s child: Christ, the son of the Virgin Mary

worthy the winning: worth winning

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Guidelines

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This is another of the sonnets Hopkins composed in 1877 while studying theology in Wales at St Beuno’s. It was written in May. He was attracted to the sonnet form because it allowed him to combine precision (necessary because its brevity demanded this) with freedom. The sonnet remained his favourite poetic form. The poem celebrates the loveliness of spring and relates it to the Garden of Eden and the innocence of humankind before the Fall. The poem also expresses a bleak view in relation to the effects of sin on the innocence and purity of children.

Commentary

The sonnet is divided clearly into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). In the octave, Hopkins describes an experience of the countryside in spring. He celebrates the hedgerows and the meadows and their varied beauties. The tone is enthusiastic and the language From a Hopkins sermon is fresh and vivid. The final six lines take the poem in an explicitly ‘… the boy or girl, that in their bloom and religious direction. For Hopkins, spring is an echo of the sweet heyday, in their strength and health give purity of life in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. The poem themselves to God and with fresh body and ends with an urgent plea to Christ to preserve the youthful, joyously beating blood give him glory, how spring-like innocence of girls and boys. near he will be to them …’

Lines 1–8

Lines 9–14

The entire octave conjures up a world of beauty, joy, movement, colour and happy innocence. Nature is untroubled and enjoying itself: the weeds ‘shoot long and lovely and lush’; a thrush’s eggs resemble ‘little low heavens’; and the song of the thrush echoing through the woods, with its bell-like clarity and pure sound, affords an almost mystical experience: ‘it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing’. The pear tree dazzles in the sun. The branches brush the blue of the sky as it rushes towards the earth. The emphasis is on the carefree state of all natural things (‘the racing lambs too have fair their fling’).

Th e

The sestet reflects on the natural world depicted in the octave. The fresh beauty of spring is an echo for Hopkins of the lost innocence ‘of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning / In Eden garden’, when humanity was still free from original sin. From line 11 to the end of the poem, spring becomes a symbol of the youthful innocence of children (‘Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy’). There is, as Hopkins sees it, a second Fall when sin takes away this innocence, when the innocence of children becomes ‘sour with sinning’. This is why he asks Christ to protect the innocence of children in the springtime of their lives, when they are not tainted by the world. If Christ answers Hopkins’s fervent plea in lines 11–14, the effect will be the preservation of innocence, at least in the case of the young. Thus, in a sense, ‘The Fall’ Hopkins is asking Christ to reverse the original Fall, which involved In Catholic teaching, Original Sin is the the corruption of Adam and Eve and the loss of Eden. Hopkins took a pessimistic view of human nature. He saw how people were confirmed in their ‘sinful’ ways. In 1880, he wrote, ‘And the drunkards go on drinking, the filthy … are filthy still …’.

sin inherited by all humankind from Adam

because he disobeyed God’s command not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Adam’s disobedience is called ‘the Fall’ because he fell from a state of grace and innocence.

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Themes and imagery

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The poem celebrates the loveliness, energy and vitality of spring. The colourful and descriptive language reveals Hopkins’s sympathy with nature and his painter’s talent for close observation. The imagery strives to capture the movement, sounds, colours, shapes, texture and luxuriousness of the countryside in spring. The shoots of the wild flowers curl forward in graceful wheels. The imagery next focuses on the little sky of the thrush’s eggs before zooming out in lines 7–8 to take in the wide expanse of blue sky. The song of the thrush striking the ear is compared to lightning, like the ‘flame out’ in ‘God’s Grandeur’. The reference to lightning is taken up in the description of the ‘glassy’ (line 6) pear tree, which suggests the light catching the leaves and blossoms of the tree so that they glint like jewels. The sense of abandon is caught in the use of ‘fling’ (line 8) to describe the lambs as they frisk about. In the first eight lines, the senses are over-whelmed. Even the blue of the sky seems to be rushing to the earth. The effect is dizzying.

Th e

As in almost all of Hopkins’s other poems, the impulse behind ‘Spring’ is primarily religious. And this impulse becomes clear in the sestet. Here the themes of innocence and sinfulness are introduced. The springtime of the year reminds Hopkins of the springtime of the world before the sin of Adam and Eve caused them to be expelled from the Garden of Eden and lose their original innocence. Hopkins is downcast when he thinks of the effects of sin on the innocence and purity of children, who are close to the original innocence of Eden. It is the contrast between the beauty of spring and the sickening effects of sin (lines 11–12) that leads to the urgent prayer to Christ to claim the mind of young people before they become corrupted. The innocent mind of youth is symbolised in the freshness of ‘Mayday’ (line 13). Hopkins uses a simple but telling metaphor to suggest the loss of innocence, making the physical ‘Maid’s child’ a reflection of the spiritual in the reference to ‘cloy’, ‘cloud’ and In Catholic teaching, Jesus was conceived by ‘sour’ (lines 11–12). The idea here is that the innocent mind, like a the Holy Spirit, without the agency of a human health-giving drink, is sweet at the beginning, but can, with time, father. In the Gospel of Luke, Mary is informed turn sour, in this case ‘with sinning’. The reference to Christ as by the angel Gabriel that she will conceive a ‘maid’s child’ (line 14) recalls the child Jesus and his virgin mother, child and answers: ‘Behold the handmaid of both symbols of purity in Catholic teaching. It suggests that the the Lord.’ innocence of youth will be particularly prized by Christ.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Form and language

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The octave of this sonnet conveys with tremendous emotion and energy the unique qualities (the inscape) of different features of the hedgerow and meadows around him. Hopkins uses alliteration, long vowels and sweet sounds to describe the weeds growing in lush abundance: ‘When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush’ (line 2). The poem shows Hopkins pushing language to its limits. The thrush is said to ‘rinse and wring’ (line 4) the ear in a phrase whose sound and meaning combine to convey an intense experience. The phrase carries strong religious overtones. ‘Rinse’ suggests purification by holy water, while ‘wring’ is a play on words, suggesting both the strong impact of the thrush’s song and the clear, bell-like quality of its sound.

Hopkins makes generous use of alliteration (‘blooms’, ‘brush’, ‘blue’ in lines 6–7, for example) and run-on lines to give the effect of the energy associated with spring. Lines 7 and 8 provide a good example: ‘that blue is all in a rush / With richness’. The energy is also conveyed in the strong nouns and verbs: shoot, rinse, wring, strikes, leaves, blooms, brush and the -ing of: echoing, descending, racing. There is a tone of ecstasy throughout the first eight lines as the rhythm rushes forward. The rhymes ‘lush’, ‘thrush’, ‘brush’ and ‘rush’ express the sensuousness of spring.

There is a slower, more meditative feel to the beautiful words which run across lines 9–10. Here the alliteration, assonance, half-rhyme and repetition create a quiet, harmonious and sweet-sounding, prayerful tone. In lines 11–12, the music of the poem takes on a jarring, abrupt rhythm, with the repeated use of the comma, creating a staccato effect. The alliteration (‘cloy’ and ‘cloud’, ‘sour’ and ‘sinning’) and the strangled sound of the verb ‘get’ suggest the poet’s physical revulsion from the sins which will sour the innocent children. The order of the words in the final two lines suggests the poet’s anguish, though the sounds of the poem are harmonious once again.

Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem

Do you agree with Hopkins when he says, ‘Nothing is so beautiful as Spring’ (line 1)?

Describe as clearly as you can the way the loveliness of spring affects the poet (lines 1–8).

What, in your view, do the weeds, the eggs, the thrush, the pear tree and the lambs all have in common?

Th e

How does Hopkins describe the sky in lines 6–8?

How would you answer the poet’s question, ‘What is all this juice and all this joy’ (line 9)?

Why does the springtime remind the poet of ‘the beginning / In Eden garden’ (lines 10–11)?

What are the poet’s fears and wishes for the ‘Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy’?

a) Why does Hopkins refer to Christ as the ‘maid’s child’ (line 14)? b) What does Hopkins ask Christ to do for the children of the world?

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Thinking about the poem Do you think the religious turn in the poem, in the sestet, works?

One critic suggests that the voice in the sestet of the poem (lines 9–14) is not in harmony with the voice of the octave (lines 1–8). Comment on the two voices, and explain why you agree or disagree with the critic.

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Which of these three statements is closest to your understanding of the poem? ■ The poem is about the loveliness of spring.

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■ The poem is about the corruption of humanity.

■ The poem is about the power of Christ. Explain your choice, considering each statement in your answer.

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‘Hopkins is too pessimistic in his view of humanity and too optimistic in his view of nature.’ Discuss, in pairs or groups.

Imagining

Describe an occasion (real or imagined) when it seemed the blue of the sky was rushing towards you. Use ‘Spring’ as a model in choosing your words and phrases to describe the experience.

You are making a short film to accompany a reading of the poem. Describe how you would use images, colour and sound effects to convey the mood of the poem.

A sonnet Impressive alliteration Original imagery Contrast in tone between octave and sestet First eight lines describe Final six lines reflect; they are a prayer Close, accurate observation of nature Spring as the season of innocence Innocence of children Fear of corruption and sin Lively and energetic

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■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT

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Gerard Manley Hopkins Before you read

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‘This is me.’ ‘I am what I am.’ ro r upwo ‘I am what I do.’ As a class, discuss the idea of being true to yourself and having your own identity. What is a person’s true self? Now read Hopkins’s thoughts on individuality and selfhood.

of ny pa 10

Í say móre: the just man justices; Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is – Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

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As kingfishers catch fire

Glossary

kingfishers: small birds with brilliantly coloured feathers

dragonflies: insects with colourful, transparent wings

dráw fláme : Hopkins is describing the flash of the sun on the wings of the kingfisher and dragonfly

tumbled … wells: this line describes the stones of line 3

tucked: an old form of ‘plucked’

Bow: the thick metal area at the mouth of the bell; the clapper strikes the bow and causes it to ‘fling’ out its unique sound

Deals out: gives expression to

being ... dwells: which lives inside each living thing

Selves: becomes completely itself; Hopkins coins the verb ‘selves’ to mean ‘goes its own way’ (the subject of the verb is ‘Each mortal thing’ in line 5)

justices: acts justly and reveals his innermost spiritual nature

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Keeps grace: observes God’s will

plays: acts

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Guidelines

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The poem is undated and is not mentioned in any of Hopkins’s letters. It is the clearest expression of Hopkins’s view of the world, as influenced by Duns Scotus, the medieval philosopher who maintained that each thing in nature had a unique individuality which defined its reality. Hopkins follows Scotus’s example, praising the uniqueness of each thing in creation and declaring its true purpose is to be itself. This is a standard sonnet consisting of an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines), with a change of thought and emphasis after the octave.

Commentary

Lines 1–4

The sonnet resembles a hymn in which the uniqueness of each created thing is affirmed. Moreover, Hopkins asserts that it is the purpose of each created thing to be itself. Hopkins was influenced by the fourteenth-century British philosopher, Duns Scotus, who emphasised the distinction between the created world and the uniqueness of each individual thing within the world. Scotus used the Latin word Haecceitas, usually translated as ‘thisness’, to describe the uniqueness of each thing. Hopkins believed that this word corresponded to his own word ‘inscape’. In the act of being itself, of expressing its uniqueness, each thing gives glory to God.

Th e

The first four lines of the octave give examples of how everything in nature expresses its inner identity, its inscape, in ways that are unique to itself. A kingfisher diving into a river or a dragonfly skimming the surface of the water express their unique identity in ways that dazzle, as their wings catch the sun. Stones tumbling down a well ‘ring’ out or proclaim their identity in their own way. A plucked string gives out a distinctive note; a ringing bell flings out its sound like a signature.

Lines 5–8

Having given his examples, Hopkins now expresses his theory or principle of selfhood as it relates to mortal or living things. All living things have a unique identity, but they also share a common purpose (line 5). That purpose is to give expression (‘Deals out’) to the uniqueness that lies within. They give expression to their inner identity in their actions and all they do. Lines 7–8 state that each mortal or living thing becomes completely itself (‘Selves’); proclaims itself (‘speaks and spells’) and, by being, declares its purpose on Earth (‘for that I came’).

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Gerard Manley Hopkins Lines 9–14

‘Justices’

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In the sestet, Hopkins focuses his attention on human beings: The phrase ‘the just man justices’ echoes the ‘Í say móre: the just man justices; / Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all words spoken by Jesus to John the Baptist his goings graces’. Hopkins believed that humans are born with in the Bible (Matthew (3: Verse 15): ‘For so it certain potential qualities or personalities. So, for example, a becomes us to fulfil all justice.’ person might be born just. However, in order to make this quality become real, the person must choose to act in a just way. It is only when ‘the just man justices’ that he becomes fully himself, as God wishes him to be and made him to be. In becoming fully himself, the just man keeps the favour or grace of God and all his actions (‘goings’) are marked by God’s grace. The last four lines develop this idea further. When a just man acts according to his inner nature in the sight of God, God sees him for what he is – Christ, because Christ lives in those who live good lives. According to Hopkins, God sees Christ in the limbs and eyes of men, and Christ looks through their features ‘To the Father’.

Line 13’s ‘Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes’ suggests that spiritual goodness impacts on the physical loveliness of the person. In a sermon, Hopkins spoke of how Christ’s divinity was reflected in his body:

In his body, he was most beautiful. … I leave it to you, brethren, then to picture him … in his bearing how majestic, how strong and yet how lovely and lissom in his limbs, in his look how earnest, grave but kind.

Themes and imagery

According to Hopkins, everything in nature strives to express its unique identity and in doing so gives glory to God and is charged with God’s grandeur. When Hopkins writes in line 8, ‘for that I came’, he means that the purpose or mission of each thing is to be fully itself. As a priest and theologian, Hopkins believed that each thing in nature, by becoming itself, glorified God the creator. In ‘All things glorify God’ a sermon, Hopkins preached that all things in nature ‘make him Hopkins wrote, ‘All things glorify God but [God] known; they tell of Him; they give Him glory’. In the sestet they do not know it. The birds sing to him, the he turns to humanity. Human beings are more individualised thunder speaks of his terror, the lion is like his and distinctive than anything else in the world. For Hopkins, the strength … they are something like him, they man who acts justly realises his deepest and truest identity, and in make him known …’. doing so becomes one with the body of Christ, and lovely in the sight of God.

Th e

Hopkins distinguishes between humankind and the rest of creation. All non-human objects give glory to God by being what they are. However, they do this in an unconscious way. Humans are the only beings in God’s creation who have the power to accept or reject the will of God. A stone expresses itself (‘Selves’, line 7) as it tumbles down a well, but it cannot be other than what it is. It cannot refuse its identity, as ordained by God. When a ‘just man’ (line 9) chooses to live his life in accordance with God’s will, it pleases God. For Hopkins, the human being who lives a life of grace, who lives as God desires, lives in Christ and Christ in him and is therefore lovely in the sight of God.

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In his notes, Hopkins wrote: ‘All things therefore are charged with love, are charged with God, and if we know how to touch them give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and

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flow, ring and tell of him.’

Line 8 of the sonnet is an echo of the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John: ‘For this was I born, and for this I came into the world; that I should bear witness to the truth’ (John 18:37). Hopkins’s invocation of Christ’s words reminds us that in doing what they were created for – in expressing themselves and their purposes – all things in creation, but especially human beings, bear witness to the truth of God the Creator.

‘Charged with love’

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Hopkins was a painter and a musician and this is reflected in the imagery he used. He loved the way some surfaces threw off brilliant flashes of light and colour as they were lit by the sun. The imagery which describes this phenomenon is itself exciting: the kingfishers ‘catch fire’; the dragonflies ‘dráw fláme (line 1). His ear was attuned to the different sounds around him. A stone, a bell and a stringed instrument all have their unique signature, their way of announcing their uniqueness through sound. The idea that God sees Christ in the body of the just person follows the teaching of St Paul, who wrote: ‘I live, now not I; but Christ lives in me.’

Form and language

The sonnet is written in Hopkins’s sprung rhythm, with five stresses per line. The rhyming scheme is conventional with the octave rhyming abbaabba and the sestet rhyming cdcdcd. The energy and particularity of the examples chosen from nature (the kingfishers, dragonflies and stones) are each described in language that has its own soundscape and unique combinations of echoing sounds. Compare, for example, the combination of sounds in the first four words of the opening line – ‘As kingfishers catch fire’, with the sounds in the last three: ‘dragonflies dráw fláme’. The words used in lines 2–3 to describe the stones falling down the well have a musical and onomatopoeic quality: ‘tumbled’, ‘rim’, ‘roundy’, ‘ring’. Notice how in line 13 (‘Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his’), describing the loveliness of the humans in whom Christ lives, the alliteration and repetition, the long vowel sounds, and the soft ‘s’ and ‘l’ sounds all combine to create a sound that is pleasing and lovely in itself.

Th e

Elsewhere, the poem features some daring experiments with language and syntax. For example, Hopkins uses the accumulated ‘Why do I employ sprung rhythm? Because it words ‘tumbled over rim in roundy wells’ (line 2) as an adjective is the nearest to the rhythm of prose, that is to describe stones. In lines 3–4, there is internal rhyme and halfthe native and natural rhythm of speech, the rhyme, which subtly imitates the sound of bells, an effect best least forced, the most rhetorical and emphatic appreciated when the lines are read aloud; notice how the sound of all possible rhythms …’ echoes across the following groups of words: ‘ring’, ‘string’ and ‘fling’; ‘hung’, ‘swung’ and ‘tongue’. This kind of internal rhyme was a feature of the Welsh poetry that Hopkins studied during his time in Wales.

Hopkins on sprung rhythm

The syntax of the poem (its ordering of words) is often so condensed that the meaning is both rich and difficult to unravel. (All the complex thought of the poem is contained in just two sentences.) In line 6, for example, ‘that being indoors each one dwells’ is a compressed way of saying ‘the essence that lives (dwells) inside each mortal thing’. Hopkins often makes nouns function as verbs, as in line 7, where ‘Selves’ is used to mean ‘becomes completely itself’. Another example is in line 9, ‘the just man justices’, where the use of ‘justices’ as a verb expresses the idea that the actions of a just man reveal his just nature.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Questions How do kingfishers catch fire and dragonflies draw flame (line 1)?

Hopkins describes a ringing bell as finding its tongue ‘to fling out broad its name’ (line 4). What does he mean?

‘What I do is me: for that I came’ (line 8). What, according to the poem, is the purpose of every ‘mortal thing’ (line 5)?

‘The just man justices.’ Discuss the meaning of this memorable statement.

According to the last four lines of the poem, how does the just man appear to God?

How does Hopkins distinguish between human beings and natural things in relation to his theme of selfhood?

Discuss the theme of celebration in the poem.

‘For Hopkins, each human being is made in the image of Christ and it is his or her purpose to reflect Christ back to God.’ Discuss this statement in relation to the poem.

‘The poem suggests that everything in creation is unique to itself.’ Do you agree with this reading of the poem?

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Hopkins uses language in an original way in an effort to convey the beauty, energy and mystery of creation. Select some examples of words and phrases in this poem that strike you as original. Explain your choices.

Comment on the resemblances between this sonnet and ‘God’s Grandeur’. What differences can you discover?

‘Hopkins comes across as a person of great sensitivity and conviction.’ Based on this sonnet, do you agree with this view of the poet? upwo

Working in groups, create a rap-style version of the poem, using percussive sounds to bring out the musical qualities of the poem.

Select four things from nature and write a poem celebrating their unique qualities.

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Before you read

The Windhover

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I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

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To Christ our Lord

As a class, discuss the concepts of ro r upwo heroism, beauty, sacrifice and supreme achievement, and the figures who embody these qualities for you. Now examine how these ideas are incorporated into ‘The Windhover’.

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Glossary

Windhover: a kestrel or small hawk. As the name suggests, the windhover can stay suspended in the air for long periods while looking for prey

Title

caught: saw (caught sight of)

minion: follower, servant

dauphin: prince, the heir to the throne

Th e

dapple: marked with spots or splashes of colour

drawn: attracted; also drawn or outlined

Falcon: note the capital letter. Falcon is a French-derived word

rung upon the rein: a metaphor from horse-training, where a horse is held at the end of a long rein and made to circle as if in a ring. In falconry, the verb ‘ring’ means to rise in spirals. The image suggests that the kestrel is pivoting on the point of a wing as he banks or spirals

wimpling: beautifully pleated, fluttering, rippling

bow-bend: wide arc

Rebuffed: mastered, pushed back

achieve: perfection

here: in my heart and/or in this bird

AND: in Hopkins, the capitalised ‘AND’ seems to mean, ‘and as an inevitable result’

chevalier: knight on horseback; pronounced to rhyme with ‘here’ and ‘dear’

plód: hard work; ‘shéer plód’ may be a pun on ‘ploughshare’

plough: ploughed land

sillion: furrow; a word Hopkins coins from the French word sillon

gold-vermillion: royal colours in coats of arms; vermilion is a rich red colour

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Guidelines

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The poem was written at St Beuno’s in Wales and was dated 30 May 1877. In a letter to a friend, Hopkins described it as ‘the best thing I ever wrote’. The title comes from a local name for a kestrel, and reflects the bird’s remarkable ability to hover in the wind. There was a display of stuffed birds at the college which included a kestrel. The inscription for the exhibit included the name ‘windhover’. The bird, hovering in the air, makes a distinctive cross shape. The subtitle, ‘To Christ our Lord’, was added later to emphasise the religious significance of the poem. ‘The Windhover’ is the most discussed of all Hopkins’s poems because of the richness and ambiguity of the language and the relationship between the octave and the sestet.

Commentary

The poet recalls watching a kestrel flying through the dawn sky. He was deeply moved by the strength, skill and beauty of the bird as it mastered the air and the wind, performing the most difficult exercises with ease and total control. The poet’s thoughts move from the falcon to his own heart and to Christ. The falcon’s beauty and skill may be great, but the beauty and achievement of Christ are a billion times greater, as is the achievement of those who serve God faithfully, though this beauty may be hidden from view.

While the language may be difficult, the structure of the sonnet is straightforward. The first eight lines, written in the past tense, are devoted to the windhover, and the final six, written in the present tense, concern Christ and the poet himself as the servant of Christ.

Lines 1–8

Lines 9–11

As in most sonnets, the octave of this poem sets the scene. The poet was up at dawn and caught sight of the windhover, or falcon. In these eight lines, we find the poet concentrating on the skill, power and majesty of the bird. He marvels at its control of the air, its swift, graceful movements and its ability to overcome the forces that would hinder its passage. The poet sums up all this in a few words: ‘the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!’

Th e

In the second part of the poem, Hopkins reflects on the meaning of the experience he has described in the octave. ‘Brute beauty’ (line 9) describes the unselfconscious, instinctive, physical beauty of the bird which also, however, gives off flashes of divine beauty, like every natural thing. However great these qualities are, they are ‘a billion / Times told lovelier’ in Christ, whose divine energy, glory and splendour breaks from him like fire. (It is generally agreed that ‘my chevalier’ in line 11 is Christ, and that the ‘thee’ of line 10 refers to Christ. However, the ‘thee’ could also refer to Hopkins’s own ‘heart in hiding’.)

Lines 12–14

The phrase ‘No wonder of it’ means that it is not surprising that the ‘lovelier’ fire of God’s beauty has broken forth. After all, humble, everyday actions can produce sudden, unexpected beauty, as the plough shines from being polished by the earth it turns over. In the same way, the dull embers of a fire can break open to reveal ‘gold-vermillion’ sparks.

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Christian ideas behind the poem

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The Christian framework within which Hopkins wrote may help you in understanding his intention in writing ‘The Windhover’. For example, Hopkins describes the fire that breaks from Christ (or from the heart of Christ’s follower) as dangerous as well as lovely. Behind this is the idea that the service of God can involve the Christian in doing God’s will without question, which can often mean danger and suffering, as it did for Christ. Hopkins stresses the link between suffering and spiritual achievement. The language and imagery of the final two lines of the poem invoke Christ’s suffering and death. Christ’s greatest work for mankind was to offer himself on the cross as a sacrifice. The ‘blue-bleak embers’ (line 13) can be seen as his suffering and death and apparent failure at the end of his life. ‘Fall, gall themselves, and gash’ (line 14) suggests the physical torment of Christ as he carried the cross and was crucified. Vermilion is the colour of blood, which is also gold, or precious, because, for Christians, Christ’s blood redeemed the world. From his suffering and apparent defeat, the true splendour of Christ is revealed to the world, the ‘bluebleak embers’ of death breaking open to reveal their ‘goldvermillion’ splendour.

Another idea behind the poem is that the follower of Christ, like Christ himself, often leads a humble, plodding or even bleak life. However, this life can suddenly be charged with the power of God and can flame out, so that what may seem hidden, obscure or commonplace from the outside, conceals a spiritual and divine beauty within. In a sermon, Hopkins described the poverty and hardship of Christ’s life, which he believed must also be lived by his followers: ‘poor was his station, laborious his life, bitter his ending: through poverty, through labour, through crucifixion his majesty of nature shines’.

Themes and imagery

Th e

The main theme of the poem is that the natural beauty and achievement of the kestrel is only a faint reflection of the spiritual splendour of Christ, whose power and energy are ‘a billion / Times told lovelier, more dangerous’ (lines 10–11), and the followers of Christ share in this spiritual splendour even if their lives seem unremarkable from the outside. The theme is elaborated through a series of striking images.

The images relate to the bird, to Christ and to the poet himself; and because the bird is charged with the grandeur of God, and the follower of Christ shares in Christ’s life, the imagery can transfer from one to the other. The opening of the poem contains a succession of comparisons: the windhover is presented as a royal bird (‘Falcon’, line 2), as the faithful servant of the morning (‘minion’, line 1), as a prince and heir to the daylight (‘dauphin’, line 2). He is a masterful horseman and a graceful skater; his strength and skill (‘hurl and

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gliding’, line 6) overcome the attack of the wind. These images along with the reference to ‘chevalier’ (line 11), invoke the world of the royal court and princely knights. If the windhover is a prince of the natural world, Christ is the prince of the spiritual world. All of the qualities of the bird come to symbolise Christ, the poet’s chevalier: royalty, valour, pride and beauty.

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As in other poems by Hopkins, there are images of hiding and sudden revelation. Against the glamour, freedom and exhilaration of the bird, the poet’s life seems hidden (‘My heart in hiding’, line 7) and plodding (line 12). Contrasted with these notions of obscurity and dullness are the images of fire (line 10) and the transformation of the ‘blue-bleak embers’ (line 13) into the beautiful colour combination of ‘gold-vermillion’ (line 14).

The images of buckling, falling, galling and gashing relate to the suffering and death of Christ on the cross.

Form and language

The rhythm and movement of the lines, allied to the impressive patterns of sound, capture the kestrel’s freedom, energy and mastery of the air, and the poet’s reaction to what he saw. Notice the range of punctuation, which controls the ebb and flow of the poem: the four exclamation marks, the difference between the fragmented punctuation and the free-flowing lines, between the sudden stops mid-line and the enjambment. Listen out for the rhymes, alliteration and assonance. (In the first two lines alone, there are eleven alliterative words.) Remarkably, the first stanza’s rhyming scheme of ‘king’, ‘wing’, ‘swing’ and ‘thing’, and the closely allied ‘riding’, ‘striding’, ‘gliding’ and ‘hiding’, does not sound monotonous because of the punctuation and enjambment. Read the poem aloud and notice how the lines rise and fall. Note also the onomatopoeic qualities of some words and phrases. In line 5, for example, the sound and rhythm of ‘then off, off forth on swing’ suggests the swooping flight of the falcon. The very sound of ‘Rebuffed the big wind’ (line 7) mirrors the meaning of the words.

Hopkins uses noun–adjective combinations in a highly original way. The most extreme example is ‘rolling level underneath him steady air’ (line 3). Here, the first five words are to be read as a single adjectival phrase qualifying ‘air’.

French and Anglo-Saxon words The title of the poem, ‘The Windhover’, is an interesting example of a compound word or kenning, found in Anglo-Saxon poetry. However, this is the only poem of Hopkins

Th e

On nearly every line there are interesting word choices, for which contains so much French vocabulary – ‘minion’, ‘dauphin’, ‘chevalier’, ‘sillion’, example the use of ‘caught’ (line 1) rather than ‘saw’; ‘caught’ ‘vermillion’ – and draws much of its imagery is a more dynamic word; it dramatises the moment when the from the world of Norman/French chivalry. poet saw the bird. It also introduces the theme of freedom – By line 2, the Anglo-Saxon ‘windhover’ has there is no way that the timid, duty-bound priest can catch the become the French ‘Falcon’, the only upper free, magnificent bird. Consider ‘drawn’ (line 2): the windhover case noun in the poem. is attracted or lured by the dawn. However, it also suggests that the bird is drawn or outlined by the dawn light and so is visible to the observer. (References to painting and writing recur in Hopkins’s poems – the‘plume’ of line 9 can be read as an oblique reference to his own writing, which glorifies God.) The most interesting word in the poem is ‘Buckle!’ in line 10. Here the meaning is so concentrated that it is neither possible nor useful to identify a single meaning. There are three ways of interpreting it: a) bring together, fasten, fuse; b) prepare for battle; c) collapse, crumple, buckle under pressure, surrender. There is an argument that the word contains all these meanings. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 195

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Questions a) Identify the four titles given to the kestrel in the title and opening lines of the poem. b) What is the effect of these titles?

How does the poet convey the control and beauty of the kestrel’s movements?

What do the words ‘hurl’ and ‘gliding’ (line 6) suggest about the bird in flight?

Where in the poem is the sense of breathless excitement most evident?

Explore the variety of meaning in the phrase ‘My heart in hiding’ (line 7), as it relates to Hopkins’s life, purpose and ambition.

In what way did the sight of the kestrel stir the heart of the poet?

Look at the six nouns used in line 9 to summarise the qualities displayed by the kestrel. Explain your understanding of each.

Consider the possible meaning of the three words ‘here’, ‘Buckle!’ and ‘thee’ (lines 9–10).

The windhover is used as a symbol of Christ. What relationship do you see between them? What have they got in common?

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Why, do you think, might Hopkins, a Jesuit and student for the priesthood, consider Christ his chevalier (or consider himself Christ’s chevalier)?

How might Hopkins consider the achievement of Christ and the achievement of a follower of Christ to be more lovely and dangerous than that of the kestrel?

The windhover embodies beauty. Look at the images of emerging beauty in the final three lines of the poem. How do these images relate to the life of Christ and the life of a follower of Christ?

How do the movement and rhythm of the poem help to convey its meaning? Discuss the significance of alliteration in this regard.

Hopkins added the dedication ‘To Christ our Lord’ sometime after he composed the poem. Without this dedication, would you be able to recognise this sonnet as a Christian poem? If so, which words or expressions would allow you to do this?

What words that the poet uses suggest that this is a love poem?

In this sonnet we encounter the natural speech of a person under the stress of excitement. Mention some of the elements that make the poet’s language sound natural and true to life.

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Write an account of an encounter with a natural phenomenon that was so impressive that it felt like a spiritual experience.

Working in small groups, devise a reading of the poem that does justice to its dynamic qualities.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins Before you read

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Have a class discussion and ro r upwo see if you can agree on what in the world deserves to be praised and glorified.

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All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

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Pied Beauty

Title

Glossary

Pied: formed of different colours, like a magpie dappled: marked with spots or splotches of colour

couple-colour: of two colours

brinded: brown with streaks of another colour

rose-moles all in stipple: rose-coloured markings spotted with black Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls: chestnuts that are so bright they look like hot coals plotted and pieced: patchwork effect given by the pattern and variety of fields

fold, fallow, and plough: these are fields devoted to grazing (‘fold’), unused fields (‘fallow’) and cultivated fields (‘plough’)

trádes: occupations

gear and tackle and trim: equipment appropriate to the trade; ‘tackle’ generally refers to rigging for a ship, while ‘trim’ can refer to outfits or fittings

Th e

counter: contrasting

spare: unique or rare

fickle: liable to change

adazzle: glittering; sparkling

fathers-forth: generates; creates

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Guidelines

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The poem is dated Summer 1877, and was written at St Beuno’s. This was the year in which Hopkins emerged fully as a poet. Within a few months he wrote some of the poems for which he is best known, among them ‘God’s Grandeur’, ‘Spring’, ‘The Windhover’ and ‘Pied Beauty’. These are celebratory poems which express delight in the beauty of nature and in a world ‘charged with the John Rushkin grandeur of God’. They are hymns of praise to God and to the world marked by his presence. Art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), who had a great influence on Hopkins, believed that the kinds of beauty found in nature were signs of God’s presence. He argued that the experience

Commentary

working of the divine power for glory and for beauty. Ruskin believed it was the role of the artist to open the eyes of others to the beauty of the world, and suggested that artists should

Standard sonnets have fourteen lines, but this poem has ten lines plus two words. Hopkins called this experimental form a ‘curtal sonnet’. It is constructed, as Hopkins explained, ‘in proportions resembling those of the sonnet proper, namely, 6 + 4 instead of 8 + 6, with however a half line tail piece’.

in nature for fresh evidence of the ceaseless

and serve God. He encouraged artists to look

of natural beauty prompted a desire to love

focus on what distinguishes the individual of any species.

St Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, summed up the philosophy of the order in two mottoes: ‘Ad majorem Dei gloriam’ (For the greater glory of God) and ‘Laus Deo semper’ (Praise to God at all times). In Jesuit schools there was a tradition that students wrote these mottoes at the beginning and end of each piece of work. The sonnet follows the Jesuit tradition, by employing shortened versions of the motto at its beginning and end.

Lines 1–4

Lines 5–6

The poem begins with a prayer glorifying God for the variety of the created world. It then goes on to give examples of this variety, moving from the sky to the water, and then to earth. Animals, fish, birds and trees are mentioned. The examples come in a rush, in quick succession.

Hopkins introduces the variety in human activity, first in relation to agriculture, where the fields have a patchwork quality, and then in relation to working trades, summarised in three words: ’gear and tackle and trim’.

Lines 7–9

Th e

These lines summarise the qualities Hopkins admires in dappled things. He likes the fact that they stand out; he likes the contrast which runs in great variety throughout nature.

Lines 10–11

Hopkins clearly identifies the unchanging and eternal God as the source from which flows all the changeable beauty of nature. In the final line Hopkins sings God’s praise.

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Themes and imagery

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The glory of God is to be found in the variety and diversity of nature, and in the work of humans. All good things come from God and it is our duty to praise him. In this poem the presence of humans is not detrimental to nature; human activity fits the pattern of the variety in nature.

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Both ‘dappled’ (line 1) and the ‘pied’ of the title suggest a diversity in patterns of colour and texture. The visual diversity of the first five lines gives way to more general qualities of diversification and difference, to a celebration of the unique and original (line 7) and to the principle of similarity and contrast which adds such variety to the world (lines 8–9). Line 10 introduces the greatest contrast of all: between an eternal God, whose beauty is unchanging, and the constantly changing beauty of the world. Note how Hopkins uses a present tense verb (‘fathers-forth’) to suggest that God’s creative activity is never-ending, and how the poem begins and ends with God. It is the creative power of God which gives unity and harmony to the diversity of dappled things.

Form and language

Notice how nature in the poem lives in movement and change. The ‘couple-colour’ (line 2) of the sky is a passing thing. The chestnuts fall, the finches fly, the trout swim. The ‘Fresh-firecoal’ (line 4) provides an instance of energy which spends itself as it burns. As for the landscape, what is ‘fold’ (grazing land) one year is ‘fallow’ the next, and ‘plough’ (cultivated land) after that (line 5). All trades, with ‘their gear and tackle and trim’ (line 6), are constantly in the process of making and changing the world.

Th e

Hopkins’s sonnets about nature have a twopart structure. The first part describes a scene, while the second part places this scene in a religious context and extracts a lesson from it. ‘Pied Beauty’ – a shortened, ‘curtal’ sonnet – works in a similar way. The first six lines celebrate the varied wonders of God’s creation, while the next four sum up the general qualities Hopkins appreciates in dappled things, and identifies and praises God for the everchanging beauty of the world, whose own beauty is eternal.

The language of the poem is dynamic, suggesting urgent activity and ongoing life and movement. Hopkins breaks up conventional syntax and multiplies associations between things with bewildering rapidity. The lists of things (‘Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings’, line 4) and qualities (‘swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim’, line 9) come thick and fast. It is noteworthy that the sound of every quality word (‘brinded’, ‘freckled’, ‘sweet’, ‘sour’, ‘adazzle’, ‘dim’) suggests the qualities they name. The punctuation – with its dashes, commas, semi-colons, full stops and the colon of line 10 – helps create the sense of excitement and forward movement. The overall effect is to make us feel as if the things which language lays out in space and time and in order of succession (in the first 9 lines), are really happening simultaneously.

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Questions What do the first and last lines of the poem tell you about Hopkins’s purpose in writing this sonnet?

Hopkins compares the coloured sky to a ‘brinded’ (line 2) cow. Do you think it is an amusing or successful comparison?

List all the ‘dappled’ (line 1) things mentioned in the poem. How many are natural and how many are made by human activity?

How does Hopkins convey a sense of movement and change in nature?

What does Hopkins mean when he says that God’s beauty is ‘past change’ (line 10)?

There is a paradox (a seeming contradiction) in the relationship between Hopkins’s God and the created universe. Comment on this paradox.

How does this poem differ from the other Hopkins sonnets you have studied? Comment on this difference.

‘In “Pied Beauty” there is an elaborate pattern of sound (assonance, alliteration and rhyme) and punctuation which enhances the meaning of the poem.’ Discuss.

This has been described as a visionary poem. Would you agree?

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In your own words, outline the main idea expressed by Hopkins in this poem. Are you convinced by what Hopkins is claiming here?

How are humans presented in this poem? Compare and contrast the presentation of humans in this poem with their presentation in ‘God’s Grandeur’.

Based on this poem, the others written at St Beuno’s in 1877 (‘God’s Grandeur’, ‘Spring’, ‘The Windhover’) and ‘As kingfishers catch fire’, what kind of man do you imagine Hopkins to have been? In pairs or groups, discuss.

Using ‘Pied Beauty’ as a model, write a short piece (poetry or prose) urging people to open their eyes to the beauty of the world.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins Before you read

Felix Randal

What, do you think, are the special qualities that are needed to work with the sick and the dying? Imagine how you would cope if you had a duty of care to people who were close to death. Read the poem in light of your thoughts on the subject.

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This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears. My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears, Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;

Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!

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Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended, Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?

How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years, When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers, Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!

Felix Randal: the farrier’s real name was Felix Spencer; he died in 1880, aged thirty-one farrier: blacksmith who specialises in the shoeing of horses pining: wasting away due to pain and upset when reason rambled in it: when Felix lost the full use of his mind Fatal four disorders: four illnesses, all of which could cause Felix to die fleshed: took hold in his body contended: fought (to kill Felix) anointed: given the Sacrament of the Sick, part of the last rites of the Catholic Church, where the priest blesses the sick person with holy oils and prays for them heavenlier heart: a more religious outlook; a heart ready to accept God’s will reprieve and ransom: Holy Communion Tendered: brought or offered, but also with the meaning of acting in a tender way all road ever: in whatever way he may have; this is a dialect expression from Lancashire in the north-west of England us too it endears: sick people grow fond of the priests who minister to them in their illnesses child: in a spiritual sense, with also the suggestion that sickness has made him as helpless as a child How far … years: when you were fit and strong, thoughts of sickness and death were far from your mind boisterous: noisy and energetic random: built of stones of irregular shapes and sizes; also suggests a carefree attitude peers: fellow blacksmiths fettle: fix, prepare; also the suggestion that farrier and horse are ‘in fine fettle’, i.e. healthy and well drayhorse: large, strong horse used to pull heavy loads sandal: horseshoe

Title 1 3 3 4 4 4 6

Glossary

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6 7 8 8 9 11

12 12 13 13 14 14 14

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Guidelines

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This sonnet was written in Liverpool in April 1880. Hopkins worked in Lancashire for three months at the end of 1879. There he tended to one of his sick parishioners, a local farrier. The poem begins at the end of the story with the news of the death of Felix Randal. As a priest, Hopkins takes consolation in the fact that he helped the once powerful man to make his peace with God. He reflects how ministering to the sick creates a close bond between priest and patient, and how moved he was by the plight of his parishioner, his spiritual child. The poem concludes with an image of the blacksmith in his prime, when he had no thought of the sickness that was to befall him.

Commentary

The sonnet is clearly divided into two parts: octave and sestet. As in Hopkins’s other sonnets, the first part is primarily descriptive, the second reflective.

Lines 1–8

Lines 9–11

In the first four lines, Hopkins sketches the circumstances of Felix Randal’s decline and death. We learn some essential things about the farrier: we are told of his magnificent build and handsome appearance (‘his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome’), and of his fatal illness. Lines 2–4 describe the physical decay of the once-powerful Felix Randal. However, the story of Felix is told from Hopkins’s perspective as a priest. From line 1 the emphasis is on his duty as a priest to comfort the sick, so Communion lines 5–8 describe the spiritual acceptance that Felix developed Hopkins believed that Holy Communion (‘our (‘a heavenlier heart’), after initially cursing God for the sickness sweet reprieve and ransom’) commemorates that befell him. Hopkins traces the change in Felix to when he and re-enacts the sacrifice Christ made on brought him Holy Communion (‘our sweet reprieve and ransom’) Calvary. Christ’s death is believed to have freed or ransomed the human race from the and gave him the Sacrament of the Sick (‘Being anointed and all’). effects of sin and death and opened the door Hopkins turns with a sigh (‘Ah well’) from his memories of Felix to to eternal life. the present and offers prayer for the soul of the departed.

Th e

Hopkins reflects on the sympathy and fondness that is established between a sick person and those who care for them. But instead of the poem continuing in a more general way, Hopkins paints a personal and touching picture of his care of Felix Randal and the emotional effect of the experience. As a priest he had spoken and prayed words of comfort (‘My tongue had taught thee comfort’); with his hands he had blessed and comforted the farrier (‘touch had quenched thy tears’). But his own heart had been touched by the man’s suffering and he refers to Felix as ‘child’, a term that suggests both a spiritual relationship and a feeling of tenderness. Had the poem ended here, it would have been a touching poem about the relationship between a priest and a dying man.

Farrier

A farrier is a blacksmith who specialises

in shoeing horses. The trade of the farrier flourished in industrial towns: most heavy goods were transported on carts pulled by teams of heavy dray horses.

Lines 12–14

Instead, Hopkins paints a vivid picture of the blacksmith in his prime, before there was any thought of sickness. The final three lines of the poem, which are splendid, forceful and musical,

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

offer an impressive contrast to what has gone before. There is a sense of celebration in the final two lines, as the dominance of Felix in his mastery of his craft (‘powerful amidst peers’) is invested with an almost mythic quality. He is a figure like Hercules in his strength and power. The exclamation mark which ends the poem lends an air of triumph and awe.

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Themes and imagery

The poem turns on the contrast between strength and weakness; how the powerful and physically huge blacksmith is reduced to a tearful child by sickness and pain.

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The poem has a number of interrelated themes. The first is sickness and death and how illness can weaken the strongest of men. The second is the comfort that religion can offer to those close to death. The third theme relates to Hopkins in his role as priest; Hopkins finds consolation in knowing that his priestly care helped his parishioner to make peace with God before his death. Underlying the poem is the Catholic belief that the sacraments, here the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, and the Sacrament of the Sick, can reconcile sinners to God.

Form and language

This is a Petrarchan sonnet and follows a standard pattern of rhyme, abbaabba ccdccd. In addition, there are internal rhymes. In line 1, ‘dead then’ is a half-rhyme with ‘ended’. In line 5, ‘cursed’ and ‘first’ are set side by side. In line 9, ‘endears’ rhymes with itself. In the final line, ‘grey’ and ‘dray’ chime off each other. Hopkins uses alliteration and alliterative phrases throughout the poem (‘big-boned’, ‘heavenlier heart’, ‘reprieve and ransom’, ‘tears that touched’, ‘bright and battering’). The use of heavy alliteration and the presence of six stresses in every line create a sense of solidity and urgency in a poem about a strong and powerful man. Felix Randal was a blacksmith and Hopkins uses both dialect phrases and older words (‘farrier’, ‘all road ever he offended’, ‘random’, ‘fettle’) to suggest a craft which has existed for centuries.

Th e

‘How far from then forethought of’ in line 12 is an example of Hopkins’s daring use of language. He inverts normal word order and omits some words but still conveys his meaning. The ‘random grim forge’ in line 13 is an expression typical of Hopkins, conveying more than one meaning. It suggests that the dark forge where Felix worked was built of stones of irregular shapes and sizes, and thus constructed in a ‘random’ fashion. But the phrase also carries the hint that in his carefree days, Felix had been unthinking, or random, in his thoughts. However, it is not only in his complex uses of language where Hopkins’s genius is apparent. The verb ‘tendered’ (line 8) preceded by the use of ‘our’ (line 7) perfectly captures the sense of care and tenderness that Hopkins brings to his duties as a priest. The closeness between the priest and the sick man is conveyed in the use of the pronouns ‘my’ and ‘thy’, with their internal rhyme, in the beautifully balanced phrases ‘thy tears’ and ‘my heart’ (line 11). HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 203

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Arguably, the most impressive use of language is in the magnificent final line, ‘Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!’ Here, meaning is reinforced by the soundscape and the choice of words. The powerful rhythm, strong alliteration (‘great’/‘grey’, ‘bright’/‘battering’) and assonance (the ‘ay’ sounds in ’great grey dray’) enact the hammer-blows delivered by Felix on the anvil, and the sounds of the horse’s shoes as they batter the ground, while the verb ‘fettle’ and the onomatopoeic adjective ‘battering’ also work perfectly.

Explain your answer. Is this the dominant tone of the poem?

What, do you think, is the tone of the first line of the poem: ■ Relieved ■ Sad and upset ■ Cold and indifferent?

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Questions

How are the strength and power of the healthy Felix conveyed?

How did Felix Randal react to his sickness?

What role did Hopkins play in tending to the sick and dying Felix Randal? How was he affected by the experience?

Explain as clearly as you can why Holy Communion is referred to as ‘our sweet reprieve and ransom’ in line 7.

Does the speaker see the illness of Felix as an unqualified disaster? Explain your answer.

What is the effect of the final line of the poem on our perception of Felix Randal?

Why is the sandal of the last line described as ‘bright and battering’?

‘The theme of the poem is the comfort that religion brings to the sick and dying.’ Discuss.

The language of the poem is original and exciting. Choose three examples of this and show how they work.

From the evidence of the poem, do you think Hopkins was proud of his achievement as a priest in ministering to his sick parishioner?

Imagine you are Hopkins. Write a letter to your mother in which you tell her about your parishioner who died, and share your thoughts and feelings on his death.

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You are invited to make a backing track to accompany a reading of the poem. In groups, discuss the sounds and music you would use to enhance the poem. If possible, create the track.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins Before you read

Inversnaid

Glossary

Inversnaid: a small village on Loch Lomond in the Scottish Highlands, famous for its waterfall

Title

Degged with dew, dappled with dew Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

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This darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Do you have a favourite wild ro r upwo place? What is it about it that inspires you? Share your thoughts with a partner. Now read ‘Inversnaid’.

darksome: mixture of ‘dark’ and ‘handsome’

burn: Scots word for stream

rollrock: describes the river’s path, a rocky, rolling path

highroad: the path or course of the river

coop: enclosed hollow where the water is hemmed in by rocks

comb: the fast-flowing water combs over the stones

Flutes: forms channels; also the sound made by the stream

windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth: the windblown foam on the pool at the foot of a waterfall; the foam is a fawn colour and sits on the water like a hat

twindles: a word coined by Hopkins, probably combining ‘twists’, ‘dwindles’ and ‘twitches’; another possible meaning is ‘dwindling into twins’ (i.e. dividing itself in half)

broth: seething water

fell-frowning: frowning in a sinister way; a fell is also a mountain

rounds: surrounds; also, murmurs or whispers

Degged: sprinkled

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groins: folds or curved edges, e.g. where the legs meet the body

braes: steep banks

brook: stream

Wiry heathpacks: clumps of heather

flitches: ragged clumps

beadbonny ash: the ash tree, with its pleasing (bonny) red berries (looking like beads)

bereft: deprived

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Guidelines

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The poem was written in September 1881. Writing to a friend towards the end of his life, Hopkins wrote: ‘I could wish I were in the Highlands. I never had more than a glimpse of their skirts. I hurried from Glasgow one day to Loch Lomond. The day was dark and partly hid the lake, yet it did not altogether disfigure it but gave it a pensive or solemn beauty which left a deep impression. I landed at Inversnaid … for a few hours.’ The visit to Inversnaid was a fleeting one, but Hopkins’s notebooks have many references and notes on waterfalls and streams in other wild places.

Commentary

The poem describes a stream in the Highlands of Scotland. The first stanza describes the brown stream flowing rapidly and falling over a waterfall to the lake below. The second describes the froth on the surface of a dark whirlpool on the path of the stream. The third describes the gentle landscape on the upper part of the stream. In the final stanza, the poet wonders what would become of the world if it were deprived of such wet and wild landscapes, and pleads for them to be retained.

The poem has two main aspects: one is a celebration of the wild beauty of the Scottish Highlands; the second is the verbal music and word play that Hopkins uses to capture the landscape. In this, as in his other work, Hopkins captures the uniqueness of each thing he describes. Throughout the poem, sound, rhythm, movement and description work together to paint a fresh, original and precisely accurate picture of what is being described.

Stanza 1

Stanza 2

The first stanza is a description of a stream (a ‘burn’) rushing down a hillside over its rocky, rolling riverbed. The water is rushing at such a pace that the stream is topped with foam. The river bed has many stones and pools so that the flow of water is sometimes checked in hollows (‘coop’), or the water combs its way over and through protruding stones and obstacles. The sense of line 4 is that the foamy water forms channels (‘Flutes’) until it flows over a low waterfall into the lake below. The energetic surge of the stream is emphasised in the strong alliteration (‘burn, horseback brown’, ‘rollrock highroad roaring’) and the music of the stream is reflected in the repetition of the musical ‘r’ sound.

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The second stanza describes the brown-coloured suds in a ‘pitchblack’ whirlpool on the stream’s path. The froth sits on the surface of the pool like a bonnet. The water in the pool is described as ‘broth’, suggesting it is thick and brown from the peat soil of the mountain. In this whirlpool, the froth twists and turns on the surface of the twirling water. The pool is so black and so menacing (‘fell-frowning’), and its swirling water is so powerful, that even Despair itself would drown here. (Another way of reading the line is that the energy of the swirling water overcomes despair.)

Stanza 3

The third stanza is a piece of landscape painting describing the upper part of the stream, now called a ‘brook’, and its banks. This stretch of water, being a ‘brook’, is a gentler stretch of water. The ‘groins of the braes’ are the narrow folds that the brook passes through on this part of its journey to the lake. Here the banks are sprinkled with dew, which creates the kind of dappled effect celebrated by Hopkins in ‘Pied Beauty’.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

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The ‘heathpacks’ are clumps of heather, while the ‘beadbonny ash’ depicts the bright berries of the rowan tree that is common in the Highlands. The landscape here is dotted with the splotches and flecks of colour so loved by Hopkins. What is notable in these lines is Hopkins’s understanding of how a variety of strong consonant sounds suggests the range of colour in the scene.

Stanza 4

Whereas the first three stanzas are purely descriptive, the final stanza reflects on the value of what the poet has seen at Inversnaid, and wonders what would happen if the world was deprived of such places. A lover of nature, Hopkins pleads that such areas ‘Of wet and wildness … be left’, noting that the world needs ‘the weeds and the wilderness yet’.

Themes and imagery

The poem expresses a deep appreciation of the wilderness, away from the influence of humans. Hopkins was much concerned with what he called ‘the decline of wild nature’, and having experienced the depressing and poisonous atmosphere of industrial Britain, he delighted in the wildness, remoteness, peace and unspoiled beauty of places like Inversnaid. The wilderness symbolised for Hopkins what he described in ‘God’s Grandeur’ as ‘the dearest freshness deep down things’. Hopkins regarded wilderness as nature in its purest form. Hopkins was always able to find spiritual meanings in nature, although ‘Inversnaid’ is one of the few poems of his in which God is not mentioned. However, the flowing stream in the Highland wilderness has spiritual overtones. For Hopkins, it signifies the waters of healing and rebirth so often mentioned in both Old and New Testaments.

The poem is an exercise in the kind of word painting that Hopkins loved. The emphasis is placed on the colour, texture and movement of the stream and the surrounding nature. Interestingly, there is darkness in the imagery at the heart of the poem, depicting a ‘pool so pitchblack’ it can round ‘Despair to drowning’ (lines 7–8).

Form and language

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The poem is written in a four-line, rhyming stanza and has the quality of a Scottish folk song, no more so than in line 12: ‘And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn’. The four verses are packed with alliteration: ‘fleece of his foam’ (line 3), ‘Degged with dew’ (line 9), ‘flitches of fern’ (line 11), ‘wet and wildness’ (line 14); vowel music: in line 9, ‘Degged with dew, dappled with dew’, we move from ‘e’ to ‘i’ to ‘u’, and then from ‘a’ to ‘i’ to ‘u’; internal rhyme: ‘comb’ and ‘foam’ (line 3); repetition, personification, compound words: ‘rollrock’ (line 2), ‘heathpacks’ (line 11), ‘beadbonny’ (line 12); dialect words: ‘burn’ (line 1), ‘braes’ (line 10); and archaic words: ‘rounds’ with the sense of ‘whispers’ (line 8). The soundscape of the poem, with its strong, clear-sounding words, mirrors the energy, movement and sound of the rushing stream. Hopkins uses the pronoun ‘his’ instead of ‘its’ in referring to the stream (line 2); the personification of the rushing water gives effect to the idea of a living stream.

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Exam-Style Questions In stanza 1, what words and phrases capture the energy of the gushing stream?

‘… and low to the lake falls home’. Describe what is happening at the end of stanza 1.

a) Describe the water in the whirlpool of stanza 2. b) What is the mood of this stanza?

Read stanza 3 in your best Scottish accent and enjoy the music of the language.

What does the poet wish for in the final stanza? How does he emphasise this wish?

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Understanding the poem

Thinking about a poem

Comment on Hopkins’s playful and experimental use of language in the poem in phrases such as ‘flitches of fern’ (line 11). Select your favourite example.

What does the scene depicted in the poem mean to Hopkins, and why?

Show how rhythm and movement contribute to the effect of the poem.

What, do you think, is the main point of the poem?

This poem differs in one respect from the other nature poems by Hopkins you have read on the course. Comment on this difference.

Hopkins believed in the value of wild and natural landscapes. How important do you consider them to be? Discuss your opinions in groups or pairs.

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‘Hopkins was both energised and thrown into anxiety by his visit to Inversnaid.’ Discuss.

Imagining

Write a short poem or prose piece in response to the title ‘In Praise of Wilderness’. If possible, make a recording of your piece. Consider what images, sounds and music you would use in making a film to accompany it.

What, do you think, attracts tourists to Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way tourist trail? Would Hopkins have understood the attraction? Share your thoughts with your class.

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SNAPSHOT

Poet’s love of the Scottish Highlands First three stanzas are descriptive, and create pictures Last stanza reflects on the value of wild nature and pleads for it to be left alone Lively rhythm and movement Constant alliteration One of the few poems by Hopkins where God is not mentioned

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

The ‘terrible sonnets’

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‘No worst, there is none’ and ‘I wake and feel the fell dark, not day’ are two of a series of sonnets which Hopkins wrote in Dublin in 1885. Along with the later ‘Thou art indeed just, Lord’, these are known as the ‘dark’ or ‘terrible sonnets’, or ‘the sonnets of Desolation’. These poems reveal Hopkins in a mood of black depression and facing despair, weighing up the alternatives of death and madness. They were written after a prolonged bout of psychological torment in which he imagined himself barely out of hell. The causes of this torment were multiple, and the sonnets reflect years of frustration.

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In Dublin Hopkins was overcome by the drudgery and boredom involved in marking large numbers of examination scripts at University College Dublin, but his career as a university professor was merely the culmination of a life marked by disappointed hopes. During his working life, as he remarked, he had done nothing ‘but do without, take tosses, and obey’. His eccentric manner had undermined his gifts as a preacher; he was a scholar who had produced no important work; he was a lover of beauty who was obliged to minister for years in ugly slums; he was a poet whose work was not recognised in his lifetime; and he was a priest whose varied talents were never fully made use of. His often poor health left him with impaired energy. He was a patriotic Englishman forced to live in a country (Ireland) whose ‘unlawful’ politics he despised. Above all these circumstances, his fanatical devotion to duty tended to make him too hard on himself. One commentator suggests that his action displayed ‘a destructive ruthlessness with himself’. In the depths of despair, he allowed himself little comfort and sought little outside help, relying instead on his own willpower to carry him through. By willpower alone he tried to overcome his feelings of loss, frustration and despair and to act as a true servant of God. The strain of this effort caused him great suffering and personal anguish.

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Before you read

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No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief ? My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief – woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing – Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No lingering! Let me be fell; force I must be brief ’.

No worst, there is none

In pairs, speculate ro r upwo on the circumstances and state of mind of a person who describes their situation as the worst possible, as Hopkins does at the outset of this sonnet.

Pitched past pitch of grief: made blacker than black (pitch = black); or thrown farther than grief can throw (pitch = throw); or beyond any measurable pitch of sound (a musical analogy)

Glossary

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

pangs: sudden pains, physical or emotional

schooled: trained, conditioned

forepangs: previous pangs

wring: distress or torture (wring = twist)

Comforter: the Holy Ghost

Mary: to many Catholics, Mary is the ‘Comforter of the Afflicted’

cries heave, herds-long: his cries of distress go on and on like the bellowing of herds of cattle

main: wide expanse, as of an ocean; principal part

fell: cruel and swift in the infliction of pain

fathomed: measured (the depth of something); fathom = unit of depth in water

Hold them cheap: dismiss or underestimate them

ne’er: never

Durance: the human ability to endure; short for endurance

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Guidelines

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The poem was written in Dublin sometime in 1885. ‘No worst, there is none’ is the most despairing of the ‘terrible sonnets’. The poem might justly be described as an uncensored look into the depths of Hopkins’s soul. In a letter to his friend, Hopkins described how these poems came to him ‘like inspirations unbidden and against my will’. He also described his state as one ‘of a continually jaded and harassed mind’.

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Commentary

The structure of the sonnet is clear. The eight lines of the octave (lines 1–8) describe the intense mental agony of a man in deep spiritual desolation and depression. The six lines of the sestet (lines 9–14) offer a general reflection on what has been described in the octave.

Lines 1–4

The theme is announced in the first sentence – ‘No worst, there is none’: there is no bottom limit to this suffering; the poet declares he has been thrown beyond all measure of grief. In line 2, Hopkins suggests that the suffering he will experience in the future will be worse than what has gone before; the new torments (‘pangs’) have been taught by the previous ones (‘forepangs’), so his mind and soul will be tortured all the more (‘wilder wring’). In the face of such horror, the speaker looks in vain for help and comfort from the Holy Spirit (the ‘Comforter’), repeating the question, ‘where?’. He next turns to the Virgin Mary (‘mother of us’) for relief. These pleadings remain unanswered and it is clear that Hopkins feels cut off and alone in his torment.

Lines 5–8

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Hopkins uses a series of disconnected images to convey his suffering. Echoing Psalm 130 (‘Out of the depths, I cry unto thee, O Lord’), line 5 describes his cries of despair. His cries ‘heave’ or come forcefully from his chest, suggesting the physical side of his distress. He associates his cries with the ungainly heaving movement of a line of cattle (‘herds-long’) as they move one behind the other. Next he thinks of his cries huddling together like a herd in a great expanse (‘huddle in a main’). ’Huddle’ suggests fear and unease. The word ‘main’ also brings in an image of his cries crowding together in an ocean of sorrow. He suggests that his personal torment forms part of a greater ‘wórld-sorrow’, presumably that of a sinful world, or perhaps a world in which the faithful feel abandoned by God. He compares his cries to the sound of iron being beaten on an anvil. The iron seems to wince or flinch as it rings out, just as the poet’s soul cries out as it is beaten on the ‘áge-old’ anvil of suffering. For some commentators, the image of ‘wince and sing’ suggests the soul of the faithful person singing God’s praise, in the depths of their suffering. In lines 7–8, there is a temporary respite from torment. Just as the sounds of a violent storm can ‘lull’ and ‘then leave off’, so his cries settle. This lull seems to follow the intervention of ‘Fury’, a vengeful spirit whose shriek, echoing in the poet’s tormented mind, speaks of sudden and cruel punishment: ‘“Let me be fell; force I must be brief”’. Interestingly, the word ‘lingering’ is broken in two at the line break. Does this suggest that the poet is somehow hanging on to his own despair?

The Furies The reference to ‘Fury’ comes from Greek myth and drama. The Furies were spirits from the underworld who punished those who had committed a crime. They were a continuous, tormenting

presence,

devoid

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sympathy and relentless in their desire to punish. They are sometimes regarded as the embodiment of a tortured conscience, never letting the person escape their predicament.

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Lines 9–14

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The tone of the final six lines of the sonnet is more subdued and less agitated than that of the first eight. The sestet comments on the octave; it is a grim reflection on the ways in which human beings can be exposed to terror and intense suffering. Hopkins uses the image of a mountain climber confronted with the prospect of plunging into an unmeasured abyss to suggest the horror of a mind’s plunge into deep despair. He says that only those who have never experienced the depths of despair that he has (‘ne’er hung there’) may make light of the terrors that he is describing (‘Hold them cheap’). And that even those like himself who have reached the depths of despair are not able to endure its horrors for long. Human endurance (‘Durance’) is small or limited in such cases.

In the final lines the sonnet offers ‘a comfort [that] serves in a whirlwind’, a phrase which suggests that when someone is in such a state of desperation as the one the poem describes, any means of sheltering from it is better than none. In this instance, the comfort is sleep, or death: ‘all / Life death does end and each day dies with sleep’. For Hopkins, though, this thought can scarcely have been consoling. Each day may die with sleep, but given what we have learned from the poem, the next day will probably yield new horrors.

Themes and imagery

The theme of this poem is mental and spiritual torment. The poem expresses this torment in a profound way. The poet is overcome by feelings of desolation and abandonment. In the octave, he uses a series of disconnected images to convey his cries of despair, moving from images of a herd of cattle to the sound of metal being beaten on an anvil, to the shrieking of a Fury. The randomness of the imagery suggests a mind desperately searching for an adequate means to express his torment. Little wonder that Hopkins drew on the imagery of Shakespeare’s King Lear, which explores the themes of mental anguish and madness, as well as of Greek legend, to convey the horror of his experience. The opening words of the poem, ‘No worst, there is none’, echo those of Edgar (King Lear), upon seeing his blind father: ‘… the worst is not / So long as we can say, “This is the worst.”’ In lines 9–10 of the poem, the imagery of cliffs and mountains is similar to that in Act 4, Scene 6 of King Lear, where Edgar leads his blind father in imagination to the cliffs of Dover and gives him a vivid description of the dizzying fall. The phrase ‘no-man-fathomed’ – echoes Edgar’s ‘So many fathoms down precipitating’. Turning away from the ‘steep or deep’ (line 12), the poet seeks any shelter in a whirlwind. The reference to ‘Wretch’ (line 13) echoes Lear’s speech in the storm: ‘Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are / That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm …’ (Act 3, Scene 3). The shelter brings to mind the hovel found for the tormented Lear by his servant, Kent. The final line of the sonnet echoes a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: ‘Our little life is rounded with a sleep’ (Act 4, Scene 1). The effect of these allusions is to add weight to the poem.

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In the sonnet there is an overriding sense that despair is associated with falling, plunging or being thrown into darkness, a personal version of the First Fall, when sin tainted the ‘Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy’, as Hopkins says in ’Spring’.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Form and language

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The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, with an octave and sestet, rhyming abbaabba cdcdcd. In traditional sonnets, many of the lines begin with an unstressed syllable. Here, line 4 (‘Mary’), line 10 (‘Frightful’), line 13 (‘Wretch’) and the last line (‘Life’) all begin with a stressed syllable, adding an emphatic and unrelenting quality to the poem, an effect also achieved by the heavy alliteration – ‘Pitched past pitch’ (line 1), and the brilliant use of consonant sounds – ‘h’, ‘w’, ‘f’, for example – which embody the physical effort involved in saying the words of the sonnet. Compared to the nature sonnets, the diction is simpler and more straightforward and there are no compound or unusual words. There is compression and the use of words which have multiple meanings, such as ‘pitch’ in line 1. ‘Pitch’ is used to convey the sense of being thrown or cast forcefully beyond any normal level of suffering. The nerves of the speaker are like a musical instrument set to an unbearably high pitch. ‘Pitch’ also conveys complete darkness, as in ‘pitch black’. The word is also used to describe the high-pitched shrieks of a person overwhelmed by suffering.

Questions

Consider what it means to be ‘Pitched past pitch of grief’ (line 1).

In lines 3–4, the speaker asks two questions. What is the answer to these questions?

What is the effect of the verb ‘heave’ in line 5?

What is the effect of the speaker personifying the voice in his mind as a Fury?

Comment on the imagery of the mountains and the cliffs in the sestet. Do you think it is effective?

What is the nature of the relief from the torment of despair, as described in the last two lines of the poem?

How does Hopkins suggest that the spiritual and mental torments he records here are not peculiar to himself?

What image of human life emerges from the poem?

Hopkins was a deeply religious man. What help does he get from his religious faith here?

What lines in the poem best convey the intensity of the poet’s torment through the use of sound, rhythm and word choice?

Which of the following statements is closest to your view of the poem?

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Having read the poem, do you understand the cause of the suffering described so vividly by Hopkins? Explain your answer.

■ The Hopkins who emerges from this poem is a person of immense courage.

■ The Hopkins who emerges from this poem is a person obsessed with himself.

■ The Hopkins who emerges from this poem is a person who suffers intolerable torment. Explain your choice, referring to all three statements in your answer.

Using the title, ‘No worst, there is none’ as a source of inspiration, write a monologue in which a person, real or imagined, speaks of their situation.

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In groups, identify another text (poem, novel, play, autobiography, film) which paints a convincing and powerful portrait of a person in a state of desolation. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 213

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Before you read

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I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! And more must, in yet longer light’s delay. With witness I speak this. But where I say Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day

Darkness, insomnia, ro r upwo nightmares, unheard cries for help, hell, bitterness, self-disgust. In pairs, discuss the kind of text where you would expect to find these elements.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse. Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see The lost are like this, and their scourge to be As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

fell: a word with a variety of meanings: as a noun it means the hairy skin of an animal, a hill, bitterness; as an adjective it means cruel, fierce, malevolent

black hours: the hours of darkness and despair before morning

witness: good reason, personal experience

dead: here, undelivered or unanswered

gall: bitter liquid from the gall bladder, associated with bitterness of spirit

decree: law

Selfyeast of spirit: the poet imagines his spirit as a yeast which sours the body

The lost: the damned souls in hell

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Glossary

Guidelines The poem is undated but was most likely written in 1885, during Hopkins’s time in Dublin. It is the darkest of the ‘terrible sonnets’, taking up where ‘No worst, there is none’ leaves off, with the speaker waking from sleep. But where ‘No worst …’ ended in sleep, this poem ends in a version of hell.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Commentary

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This sonnet is an expression of Hopkins’s spiritual and mental crisis and of his struggle to overcome it. He enacts this struggle rather than merely describing it, and involves the reader intimately in it. In the process, he strains and stresses language to achieve a remarkable intensity of expression. Sometimes the language is so compact that meaning is obscured (‘And more must, in yet longer light’s delay’, ‘Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours’). In a sense, words are not adequate to express what Hopkins is feeling: the terrible consciousness that God, the ultimate source of meaning in his life, is too far away to hear his cries of distress. The sonnet divides itself into two distinct parts. The first part, consisting of the eight opening lines (the octave), is mainly devoted to a description, and enactment, of the speaker’s terrifying, tortured state of mind. The second part, consisting of the remaining six lines (the sestet), is mainly reflective, as the speaker wonders why he has been chosen by God to suffer so intensely, and compares his state to that of souls condemned to endure the pains of hell for eternity.

Lines 1–8

The first four lines of the sonnet show the speaker suffering symptoms which are characteristic of despair and depression. The speaker wakes in darkness, long before daybreak, and is haunted by despairing thoughts until it is time to rise. Waking is accompanied by the perception of the darkness as a malevolent, menacing element: ‘the fell of dark’. Here, ‘fell’ is both an adjective and a noun. As an adjective it means ‘having evil intent or purpose’; as a noun it is the hairy skin of a wild beast, an image of nightmarish horror. The night has been marked not by refreshing sleep, but by ‘black hours’ filled with terrifying visions of repulsive things. To add to the miseries already endured, the speaker knows there will be further hours of self-torture before he faces another comfortless day (‘And more must, in yet longer light’s delay’).

The extent of the speaker’s misery is further emphasised in lines 5–6: ‘But where I say / Hours I mean years, mean life’. Hopkins’s bouts of depression increased both in intensity and in length as he grew older. Thus, each episode, like the one described in the sonnet, seemed like an eternity of suffering and horror, extending intolerably both into the past and into the future, taking over his entire life. In lines 6–8, the speaker comes to the heart of his suffering: the experience of being cut off entirely from God and thus from all spiritual comfort. His ‘countless’ cries for God’s help are not being answered. God, i.e. ‘dearest him’, is so far away that he cannot, or does not wish to, answer the sufferer’s pleas, which are like ‘dead letters’. Interestingly, Hopkins expresses no anger towards God, still referred to as ‘dearest him’.

Lines 9–14

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In the sestet, the opening sentence (‘I am gall, I am heartburn’) presents an image of the speaker’s sense of his torment. Gall is a bitter substance produced by the liver; heartburn is a form of indigestion caused by stomach acids; both can leave a bitter taste in the mouth. These physical ailments are symbolic of Hopkins’s bitter state of mind. They also suggest that his entire being, his body as well as his mind, was in pain during his bouts of depression. In 1888, he noted that ‘that body cannot rest when it is in pain, nor the mind be at peace as long as something bitter distils in it and aches’. He seeks an explanation for his sufferings and bitter frustration in a mysterious (‘most deep’) decree issued by God at his (Hopkins’s) birth, which laid down that he would be doomed to taste bitterness in his life, or that he himself would be the taste of bitterness (‘my taste was me’). It is a haunting image of self-loathing. The ‘curse’ of line 11 is the curse of Adam, the curse of original human sinfulness. In Hopkins’s eyes, it is his sinful nature that is the origin of his unbearable spiritual and mental suffering and his physical distress. He sees the curse as having taken effect at his birth and as being part of his very nature – his bones, flesh and blood.

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In line 12 (‘Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours’) he imagines the sinful and selfish spirit as a yeast which makes the ‘dull dough’ of his body sour. Instead of being nourished by bread, he finds its taste disgusting. (Compare this to the bread of Holy Communion, which nourishes the soul.) The imagery suggests that an overpowering, oppressive weight has settled on his spirit. Hopkins on hell This idea is reinforced in the final two lines, where the speaker Hopkins wrote a sermon on hell, a common compares himself to the damned souls in hell (‘The lost’). Hopkins practice in his day, in which he emphasised sees the real misery of the damned as the torture of facing the the absolute self-isolation of the damned, reality of what they are: ‘their sweating selves’.

the bitter taste of their sins: ‘no worm but themselves gnaws them, and gnaws no one but themselves’. The worm here is the worm of conscience, ‘which is the mind gnawing and feeding on its own miserable self’.

of the damned in hell eternally confronting

It can scarcely be said that the poem ends on a hopeful note, but there is a slight withdrawal from total despair in its last two words: ‘but worse’. While sharing in kind some of the experiences of the damned, the speaker sees a difference in degree between their miseries and his: theirs extend into eternity; the speaker is not in hell, and therefore the damned are worse off than he is because their torment, unlike his, is endless.

employed in ‘I wake and feel’, Hopkins wrote

guilt of their sins. In imagery similar to that

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left alone to torment themselves with the

Themes and imagery

The sonnet is a powerful account of spiritual desolation, mental torment and physical sickness.

The theme of the relationship between the dutiful priest and his God is to the forefront of this sonnet. The speaker’s cries for help do not reach God, their intended recipient. At the same time, the poem suggests that his suffering was decreed from God. The decree is described as ‘deep’ (line 9), which is different from being understandable. (In one draft of the poem, Hopkins adjusted ‘deep’ to ‘just’ but changed it back to his original choice.)

The symbolism of light and darkness reinforces the main idea here. Light (endlessly delayed) signifies hope and reassurance, while darkness signifies spiritual desolation. This symbolism is in tune with the common description of this kind of spiritual despair as ‘the dark night of the soul’.

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The taste of bitterness and sourness as a reflection of his spiritual desolation is a powerful image. Here the physical mirrors the spiritual. In ‘As kingfishers catch fire’, Hopkins celebrated the idea that the purpose of the self is to become most itself, in all its individuality and uniqueness. In this sonnet, the self, tainted by original sin, tastes bitter in his own mouth. The self is a source of loathing and self-hatred. Given the importance of bread in Catholic ritual, where the bread of the Eucharist nourishes the soul, the image of the self as a bread that is sour and dull is striking.

Hopkins on hope

‘There is a happiness, hope, the anticipation

of happiness hereafter; it is better than

happiness, but it is not happiness now. It is as if one were dazzled by a spark or star in the

dark, seeing it but not seeing by it ...’

The end of the poem, in which the speaker compares his suffering to the suffering of the souls in hell, is startling. What distinguishes Hopkins’s despair from the despair of the souls in hell is that he retains hope that he will go to heaven. In his periods of darkness, this hope did not comfort Hopkins, but it may have prevented him from surrendering completely to his despair.

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Form and language

The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, with an octave and sestet, rhyming abbaabba ccdccd.

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The rhythm is smoother and the language simpler than in the nature sonnets of 1877. While there is compression of meaning, these are more mature and thoughtful poems, more direct and emotionally powerful. The poem is less heavily alliterative than many of the other poems we look at. Instead, the sonnet uses long vowel sounds and repetition to convey the speaker’s sense of weariness and despair, as in: ‘What hours, O what black hours we have spent’ (line 2). At moments it seems as if the words barely raise above a whisper: ‘With witness I speak this’ (line 5).

Questions

Comment on the symbolism of darkness and light in the poem.

In the second line, the speaker refers to ‘black hours we have spent’. What is the significance of ‘we’ here?

What kind of intervention would help to ease the speaker’s misery?

The speaker is being racked by two kinds of suffering. What are these, and how are they suggested?

Do you think that the speaker derives any consolation in thinking that the plight of souls in hell is similar to his own, ‘but worse’ (line 14)? How does his plight differ from theirs?

What is the speaker’s explanation of his suffering?

Explore the imagery of taste in the poem and comment on its effectiveness.

Compare Hopkins’s view of selfhood in this poem with his view in ‘As kingfishers catch fire’.

‘The poem paints a portrait of a lonely, friendless person.’ Discuss.

What view of God emerges from this poem?

The word ‘I’ is used eight times in the poem. What is the effect of this? Does it, for example, make the poem an intensely personal statement? Does it make the speaker seem preoccupied with himself? Explain your answer.

Where in the poem is the intensity of the poet’s experience most vividly expressed?

Write a short poem or poetic monologue inspired by the title ‘Dead letters’.

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The sonnet has many of the elements of a horror movie. With this in mind, discuss the colour scheme, the images, the sound effects and music you would use in making a film to illustrate the words of the poem.

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Before you read

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of 5

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end? Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain, Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

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Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c.

Thou art indeed just, Lord

In groups discuss your ro r upwo understanding of what it means to be ‘just’. Bear in mind your discussion when you read the sonnet.

Glossary

Epigraph Justus… prosperatur: the Prophet Jeremiah (Book of Jeremiah, 12:1) wonders why God permits the good to suffer and the wicked to prosper; the Latin is translated in the first lines of the poem contend: argue, dispute, debate

thwart: obstruct, frustrate

sots: drunkards

thralls: slaves

banks: hedgerows, riverbanks

brakes: areas where plants grow in abundance

leavèd how thick: how thick they are with leaves

fretty chervil: chervil is a kind of wild parsley, with delicately fringed (‘fretty’ or fretted) leaves

Time’s eunuch: the ‘time’ here is the present, when he feels so unproductive; a eunuch is a man incapable of fathering children; the usage echoes a verse in Matthew’s gospel which suggests that some eunuchs make themselves so ‘for the kingdom of heaven’s sake’

work that wakes: a living work; Hopkins may be referring to his priestly work or to his poetry

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Guidelines

Hopkins on being in Ireland

‘Tomorrow morning I shall have been three

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years in Ireland, three hard wearying wasting wasted years. … In those I have done God’s will (in the main) and many many examination papers.’

What is my wretched life? Five wasted years almost have passed in Ireland. I am ashamed of the little I have done, of my waste of time. All my undertakings miscarry. I am like a straining eunuch. I wish then for death, yet if I died now I should die imperfect, no master of myself, and that is the worst failure of all. O my God, look down on me.

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‘Thou art indeed just, Lord’ was written in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day 1889, in the last year of the poet’s life. The year before, Hopkins had written:

Like the other ‘dark’ or ‘terrible sonnets’ (‘No worst, there is none’ and ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark’), this one is largely autobiographical. The speaker is Hopkins himself and the subject matter is his despair that he has accomplished so little in his life, which he has dedicated to God. His feelings of failure were heightened by his unhappiness and personal circumstances. He disliked his job as a Professor of Greek in Dublin and his health was poor. He believed that he had little of worth to show for his sincere efforts as a priest to achieve something for those around him. He was also conscious that his poetic inspiration had largely failed and dried up. His old notebooks were filled with ‘the beginning of things’, like ‘ruins and wrecks’ which might well have been completed but for the fact, as he put it, that ‘every impulse and spring of art seems to have died in me’.

Lines 1–2

Commentary

These frustrations are reflected in ‘Thou art indeed just, Lord’. In the year before he wrote the poem, he made some nightmarish entries in a notebook, describing his utter despair and self-contempt. In one of his entries, Hopkins recorded that ‘I began to enter on that course of loathing and hopelessness which I have so often felt before, which made me fear madness’. It is little wonder that Hopkins described this, and the other ‘terrible sonnets’, as having been ‘written in blood’.

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The unhappy, frustrated speaker, who is a priest and a creative artist, is putting difficult questions to God. He states in the opening line that God is just, but he has questions, and he feels those questions are also ‘just’. The questions he goes on to ask are similar to those found in the Old Testament when good people, like the prophet Jeremiah, are shocked that the wicked are permitted to prosper, while the good endure hardship and disappointment. For the good person, God’s justice is incomprehensible. This is the problem at the heart of this sonnet.

Lines 3–4

The speaker asks God why it is that people who spend their lives doing evil deeds enjoy success and prosperity while, at the same time, everything he, a faithful servant, attempts ends in failure.

Lines 5–7

He wonders how God, whom he acknowledges as his friend, could treat him any worse if he were his enemy. As things stand, God seems to obstruct and defeat the poet’s best efforts. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 219

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Lines 7–9

The poet now moves to direct statement. Drunkards and those who are slave to their sexual appetites have more success in their spare time than he who devotes his life to the service of God.

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Lines 9–12

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There is a shift of focus beginning in line 9. Hopkins urges God to look on nature coming alive again in spring. There is energy in the wind and the birds are building their nests.

Lines 12–14

In mid-sentence, the speaker contrasts his situation with nature. Nature may be full of new life, but he is barren, dry and unproductive, and has nothing worthwhile to show for all his efforts. He opened the poem with a challenging, complaining question and closes with a prayer, asking God to nourish his talent and make him productive.

Themes and imagery

The poem is born out of a sense of bafflement with divine justice. The sonnet is a carefully composed expression of despair made by a faithful servant who questions whether his life of devotion has been wasted. The poem expresses a deep sense of personal failure and confusion. Hopkins portrays himself as existing in a state of spiritual and artistic paralysis: his central image for this is sexual impotence; he resents the fact that he cannot share in the teeming growth of nature, since he cannot beget anything. All around him, he sees growth, renewal and new life. But he is ‘Time’s eunuch’ (line 13), who cannot ‘breed one work that wakes’, i.e. one work that comes alive. The poem ends on a prayer: Hopkins prays that his sterility may be relieved by God, who, as Hopkins put it in ‘Pied Beauty’, ‘fathers-forth’ everything in creation: ‘Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain’ (line 14).

Underlying the structure of the poem and the language of the courtroom is the image of God as the ultimate judge of human life. The problem for Hopkins is that he sees no evidence of God acting justly, that is, giving people, including himself, what they deserve.

Form and language

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The poem follows the rhyming scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet, abbaabba cdcdcd, but the poem does not fall into the neat division of octave and sestet, with new ideas beginning mid-line. The poem can be divided loosely into four movements. In the first four lines, the theme (God’s justice) is stated and the speaker outlines his case, arguing with God that he is being unfairly treated. In lines 5–13, he brings forward the evidence in favour of his argument. The first part of this evidence has to do with the success of others and his own failures: those who succeed are sinners whereas he, a virtuous man, is a failure (lines 5–9). The second part of the evidence consists of contrasting pictures of fertile nature and his own sterile, unproductive life (lines 9–13). In the final line, the speaker moves from complaint to prayer as he seeks relief from his condition. As the poem develops, there are changes of tone. The beginning is calm and controlled, with the speaker addressing God, as a lawyer might address a judge in a courtroom. The sense of control wavers in line 7. The

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

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words ‘Defeat’ and ‘thwart’ suggest a personal and deliberate campaign waged by God against the speaker. The speaker’s emotion spills over in his use of judgemental and expressive language, ‘the sots and thralls of lust’. The speaker regains his composure across lines 8 and 9: ‘… than I that spend, / Sir, life upon thy cause.’ Then, midway through line 9, there is further change of tone. The imperatives ’See’ (line 9) and ‘look’ (line 11), the exclamation mark after ‘thick’ (line 10), and the adjective ‘fretty’ (line 11) reveal an excitement and pleasure in nature, and a corresponding quickening in the language of the poem. The tone of these lines is more emotionally open and positive than at any other point in the poem. This hymn of praise to nature ends on the optimistic ‘birds build’ (line 12). Continuing the zigzag in the poet’s thought, this phrase is immediately followed by the negatives ‘not’ and ‘no’. The twisted syntax, punctuation and the repeated stresses across lines 12 and 13 – ‘but nót Í búild; nó, but stráin, / Tíme’s éunuch, and nót bréed óne wórk that wákes’ – enact the speaker’s struggle to accept his predicament. The poem ends with a quiet and dignified prayer to God to send rain to nourish the dry roots of his life.

Questions

In what sense does the speaker find God’s ways difficult to understand?

How does the speaker’s life differ from the life of nature all around him?

In your own words, summarise the argument outlined by the speaker.

What is the effect of the use of ‘sir’ (lines 2 and 9) in the poem?

How does this poem differ in mood and tone from ‘No worst, there is none’?

What, do you think, is the speaker’s main grievance?

How do the images used by the speaker help to advance his argument?

Where in the poem is it evident that the speaker’s emotions threaten to break through the calm and logical arguments he is making?

a) On the evidence in the sonnet, what kind of person do you imagine the speaker to be? b) On the evidence in the sonnet, what kind of person does the speaker imagine God to be?

‘For all its logic and controlled arguments, the sonnet is an expression of hurt, confusion and frustration.’ Discuss.

This poem conveys the speaker’s deep sense of being treated unfairly by God. Write a short piece, poetry or prose, about your own experience of being treated unfairly.

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SNAPSHOT GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Religious faith is at the heart of his poetry Range of human interest is relatively narrow Remarkable descriptive powers A profoundly gifted nature poet Celebrates the activity of God in the world An important experimenter and innovator Reveals his compassion for others

■ ■ ■ ■

Strives to express the essence and uniqueness of each individual thing Highly distinctive use of language ‘Terrible sonnets’ explore spiritual desolation and psychological conflicts Sees God as the unchanging source of the diversity in nature

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Exam-Preparation Questions Having studied the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, what kind of person, do you think, might have written them? Illustrate your answer with relevant details from the poems.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was deeply conscious of the individuality and uniqueness of each created thing. How is this reflected in his poetry?

In his poetry, Gerard Manley Hopkins reveals a profound understanding of the dark corners of the human mind. How is this reflected in his poetry?

‘Everything in Hopkins is influenced by his belief in God.’ Consider the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins in the light of this statement.

The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins alternate between gladness and dejection. Explain how this is so.

‘Hopkins’s innovative style expresses both his joy in nature and his struggles as a priest.’ Discuss this view of the poet, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins on your course.

Using the evidence provided in the poems, discuss Gerard Manley Hopkins’s understanding of God and his own relationship with him.

Discuss the elements of conflict in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Gerard Manley Hopkins is sometimes described as a difficult poet, fond of obscure language, unfamiliar ideas and eccentric ways of expressing his meaning. Would you agree?

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Write an essay on Gerard Manley Hopkins as a nature poet. You might consider the following:

■ His view of the natural world as a reflection of God ■ His description of natural things

■ The happiness he derives from contemplating nature ■ How human beings relate to the natural world.

Write a piece in which you explain why you like or dislike Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetry. Support your points by reference to, and/or quotation from, the Hopkins poems on your course. The following are reasons you might give for liking Hopkins’s poetry: ■ The poems are original and distinctive ■ Hopkins’s descriptions make us see and feel what is being described, often in new and surprising ways ■ Hopkins is a fine nature poet ■ Hopkins’s poems deal with important issues, such as humanity’s place in the universe, our relationship with God, the reflection of God in nature ■ Hopkins is one of the great masters of language. The following are reasons you might give for not liking Hopkins’s poetry: ■ The poems are extremely odd ■ Many of the poems are baffling, and slow to yield up a meaning ■ Hopkins has invented a new kind of language, which is difficult to learn ■ Hopkins does not deal with subjects that interest me ■ The poems seem to have been written for learned readers, mainly adults, and not for young students.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Sample Essay

paragraph refers to the question and indicates areas that will be discussed

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I admire Hopkins’s originality, especially his use of language. No other poet I know uses language in the same way as Hopkins does. His originality Gives clear signpost lies mainly in his diction and rhythm, as well as in his strong reliance on to discussion of language alliteration.

Introductory

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Write about those aspects of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins that appeal to you.

All of the ten poems on our course suggest that Hopkins was consistent in his use of alliteration, not for its own sake, but because it helped to give an effect of rhythmic energy and emphasis to his poetry. In ‘The Windhover’, for example, we can see how effective alliteration can be:

… how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend; the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind.

‘The off, off forth on swing’ is an example of how Hopkins can deploy a combination of alliteration and urgent rhythm to suggest the surging, swooping flight of the support points kestrel. In the same poem, he accents every syllable to express the idea that mere plodding effort causes a plough to shine in its progress through a furrow: ‘shéer plód makes plough down sillion/Shine’. Another example of the same kind of effect is found in the opening of the sonnet, ‘I wake to feel the fell of dark, not day’, and again in ‘Pied Beauty’: Refers to more than one poem in discussion ‘Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough’.

Uses details and

quotation to

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I admire Hopkins’s choice of words. In ‘Pied Beauty’, he conveys the endless variety of nature using the plainest words (‘with swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim’). A further dimension to the use of these six plain words is that their sounds echo their meanings. Shows detailed knowledge of poem For example, the short vowel in ‘swift’ and the long vowel in ‘slow’ serve to enact the meanings. In the passage from ‘The Windhover’ above, the onomatopoeia – sound echoing meaning – of ‘Rebuffed’ is perfect in its context. I find Hopkins’s experiments with Expresses personal words and groups of words fascinating. In ‘The Windhover’, he chooses a dialect response to the poems word for furrow (‘sillion’) because it makes an appropriate rhyme for two other words suggesting intensity: ‘billion’ and the vibrant colour ‘vermillion’. He also adds a depth of resonance and suggestiveness to his poems by using words with double or multiple meanings, as he does in ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark’. In this context ‘fell’ can suggest ‘malevolent’ or ‘evil’ and also ‘the hairy skin of a beast’.

Another aspect of his language that lends variety to his poetry is his resort to new Introduces new area of discussion coinages and sometimes obsolete dialect words. His coinages include ‘groins of the braes’ for hillsides, ‘Wiry heathpacks’ for clumps of heather, and ‘flitches’ for clumps of fern – all from ‘Inversnaid’. His numerous obsolete and dialect words include ‘Degged’ for sprinkled in ‘Inversnaid’, ‘tucked’ for plucked in ‘As kingfishers catch fire’, and ‘brinded’ in ‘Pied Beauty’. I particularly like the use of ‘twindles’ in ‘Inversnaid’, which incorporates ‘twists’, ‘twitches’ and ‘dwindles’. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 223

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I also admire the way in which Hopkins, within the fourteen lines of a sonnet, can compress so much meaning and achieve such variety of tone. In ‘Felix Randal’, for example, we see Felix the blacksmith in his feeble final days, no longer ‘big-boned Introduces new poem and hardy-handsome’ but ‘pining, pining’ as a result of ‘fatal four disorders’. He is Uses short quotations ‘impatient’ at first and then, having been anointed by the priest (Hopkins himself), achieves peace (‘a heavenlier heart’). Hopkins manages to include both a spiritual reflection on the power of the sacraments of the Catholic Church to heal troubled souls, and a depiction of the mutual love and respect that can grow between the sick person and the priest. In addition, he conveys his satisfaction that he has comforted and consoled Felix, and quenched his fears. Having expressed all these thoughts, Hopkins still manages a magnificent ending Emphasising the compression of to the sonnet. This ending looks back to the mighty Felix as he was in his prime: meaning ‘When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers, / Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!’

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Returns to question

A different sort of achievement of Hopkins’s poetry is his deep understanding of depressive states of mind, as expressed in the dark sonnets he wrote towards the end of his life. The most impressive of these, ‘No worst, there is none’, gives a moving account of what a state of depression really feels like to someone who has experienced it: ‘O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall / Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap / May who ne’er hung there.’ In these ‘depressive’ sonnets, Hopkins is also able to give the reader a powerful sense of what a person with a deep faith in God experiences when the God in whom he believes and whom he trusts seems to repay this belief and trust by making him suffer constant agony and despair. This is especially so when he thinks all those around him are blessed with success, even when they have no time for God: ‘Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must Quotation sums up / Disappointment all I endeavour end?’ The poem from which these lines come, argument ‘Thou are indeed just, Lord’, dramatises the feelings of abandonment and Clear account of despair that many good people feel when their best efforts end in total failure: he, argument of the poem Hopkins, cannot ‘breed one work that wakes’.

Opens up a new line

of argument

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Another impressive sonnet is ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark’, which describes what a person in the depths of depression feels on waking in the dark of night, having had his or her sleep constantly interrupted by nightmarish thoughts and feelings. Worse still, the sufferer knows that further terrors await before morning comes: ‘And more must, in yet longer light’s delay’. One such night is bad enough, with its ‘black hours’, but there is worse: this suffering lasts a lifetime: ‘But where I say / Hours I mean years, mean life.’ This sonnet and others do not merely talk about suffering: they use strong rhythm, condensed syntax and tortured language Effective summary of strength of the poem to act it out, and make us feel as if we are sharing it: ‘My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief / Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing –‘.

Another aspect of Hopkins’s work that I admire is his treatment of the natural world, which he constantly sees as an expression of God’s power and majesty. This is the joyful side of his achievement. One of his nature poems, ‘God’s Grandeur’ is particularly relevant for Discussion balances the depressive side of the modern age. I find the description of what human beings have done to spoil Hopkins’s achievement the beauty of the natural world very moving: ‘Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; / And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil.’ What I admire about this poem is that Hopkins, who deplores the destruction of God’s work by countless generations

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Gerard Manley Hopkins of people, can still express faith that God will restore what humans have devastated, because ‘nature is never spent’ and ‘Because the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.’

Concluding paragraph returns to question

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As well as identifying and discussing the aspects of Hopkins’s poetry that appeal and summarises argument to me, I have tried to indicate why I find those aspects particularly impressive. I am struck by the range and variety of Hopkins’s work, in form, subject matter and use of language, and by the fact that a poet whose work was completed well over a century ago can have the significance it does for a reader in the twenty-first century.

ESSAY CHECKLIST Has the candidate understood the task?

Yes 4

No 8

Purpose

Has the candidate responded to it in a thoughtful manner?

Comment: Coherence

Has the candidate answered the question?

Has the candidate made convincing arguments?

Has the candidate linked ideas?

Does the essay have a sense of unity?

Comment: Language

Is the essay written in an appropriate register?

Are ideas expressed in a clear way?

Is the writing fluent?

Comment: Mechanics

Is the use of language accurate?

Are all words spelled correctly? Does the punctuation help the reader?

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Comment:

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Paula Meehan

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b. 1955

234

The Pattern

239

The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks

247

Cora, Auntie

255

The Exact Moment I Became a Poet

261

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Buying Winkles*

My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis 264 Hearth Lesson*

269

Prayer for the Children of Longing*

274

Death of a Field

279

Them Ducks Died for Ireland

284

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Paula Meehan

Biography

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Childhood

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Paula Meehan was born in 1955 in Dublin. The eldest of six children, she spent some time in England, where her parents were looking for work, and attended a primary school there. On returning to Ireland, she went to various Dublin primary schools, including the Central Model Girls’ School in Gardiner Street. She recalls living in the tenements in Sean McDermott Street with ‘a very, very extended family’ and, despite the poverty, dilapidation and overcrowding, says it was ‘a magic kind of place’. The poem ‘Buying Winkles’ brings that world vividly to life. This early unsettled period of moving from temporary accommodation to temporary accommodation fuelled Meehan’s passion for the movement to aid the homeless in Ireland. Tenements

Meehan’s grandfather had taught her to read and write before Big houses in central Dublin that once belonged she started school, skills which she likened to ‘a weapon’ as they to the (often British) wealthy classes were gave her independence and turned her into a ‘print junkie’. She converted into flats and rooms in the nineteenth still remembers her early love of nursery rhymes, street rhymes, century to house the poor. Conditions were cramped, unsanitary and basic in these Mass, prayer and patterns of sound. Phrases such as ‘on the tenement houses. You can visit an example warpath’, ‘I’ll have your guts for garters’ or ‘I’ll swing for you’ today at 14 Henrietta Street in Dublin, where intrigued her with their images and implications. Living with one hundred people lived in 1911. her grandparents in Finglas, Meehan recalls a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems that had been given to her aunt by an American boyfriend and that her grandfather kept in his writing cabinet. She was drawn to the book and still has it today: ‘I think the little quatrains look like jewels on the page’. ‘A startling moment’ is how Meehan describes the first time she saw the characteristic patterns on the pages of Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson’s influence can best be seen in the poem ‘Cora, Auntie’, with its long dashes and the capitalisation of certain words.

Meehan says she had the ‘reputation of being a troublesome child’. In an anecdote about primary school, she recalls getting into trouble in 5th class for writing a poem about a dead dog instead of the essay set by the teacher about milk: ‘so I had a sense very early that poetry could get you into trouble big time and that’s borne out just by looking at what happens to poets in cultures that become very oppressive’.

Young adulthood

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Secondary school was also a time of impermanence for Meehan. She attended Holy Faith Convent in Finglas until she was expelled. She then prepared for her Inter Cert. on her own, gaining the habit of self-direction and independent study, before attending Whitehall House Senior College for her Leaving Certificate. She also re-encountered Emily Dickinson, the only female poet to be included in the national poetry textbook at the time, Soundings. While in secondary school Meehan became involved in music and dance: ‘there were bands everywhere, music was a great unifying culture’. She was a fan of the counter-culture ideals that were gathering huge momentum at the time and that were reflected in the music of artists such as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Meehan also wrote song lyrics and began to write poems to ‘honour’ the Dublin people she knew and their ‘lives of deprivation but also of great courage and of course great humour, which is the signature mode of the city’. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 227

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HIGHER LEVEL Counter-culture of the 1960s

Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 for the poetic quality of his lyrics.

Meehan on travel ‘I hitched to Crete to walk in the landscape that gave rise to the ancient myths, to stand in the

cave where Zeus was born.’

occurring at the time. Dylan went on to win the

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this culture and the massive social changes

Meehan went to study at Trinity College, Dublin in 1972, where she was one of the 0.04% of the student population to come from a working-class background. ‘Always on the brink of homelessness or living in some terrible kips’, she studied English, History and Classical Civilisation and graduated in 1977. Her classical education can be seen in the poem ‘Hearth Lesson’, where she compares her parents to Greek gods. During her Trinity years, Meehan took time out to travel widely in Britain and continental Europe, often becoming involved in street theatre/ performance. After college, she continued to travel, spending time in Crete, the Shetland Islands and the USA.

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Listen to the song ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’ by Bob Dylan to get some idea of

Life as a poet

After teaching and studying in Eastern Washington University alongside influential beat poet Gary Snyder and poet Carolyn Kizer, Meehan returned to an Ireland changed beyond recognition. Return and No Blame was Meehan’s first published poetry collection. It came out in 1984 to much critical acclaim but was not a commercial success. She lived in Dublin’s Fatima Mansions and, fuelled by anger at the oppression and the ghettoised lives of the underprivileged families she witnessed there, she became involved in workers’ co-ops, taught on literacy programmes and in prisons, and organised writers’ workshops.

Moving to Leitrim and living on the dole, Meehan managed to have some of her poetry published in newspapers, which gave her a much-needed confidence boost to pursue a life as a poet. She lived in Leitrim for three years: ‘I wanted to build a garden, watch something grow and harvest it.’

In February 1990 she met fellow poet Theo Dorgan, of whom she has said, ‘he has always made the time and space to help me live in those strange places’. She had contributed a piece to the Great Book of Ireland, which Dorgan was editing, and for him it seems to have been love at first sight: ‘I just thought, ah, there you are. It was as simple as that … Home is wherever Paula is.’

Meehan has published several collections of poetry, including Pillow Talk in 1994, and written plays for stage and radio, including plays for children. She has collaborated throughout her working life with dancers, visual artists and film-makers and is a member of Aosdána, the Irish association of creative artists. From 2013 to 2016, she held the prestigious position of Ireland Professor of Poetry.

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She has received many awards, including the Marten Toonder Award for Literature, the Butler Literary Award for Poetry, the Denis Devlin Memorial Award and the PPI Award for Radio Drama. On 21 March 2019, she received an honorary doctorate from Dublin City University (DCU) at which Dr Mary Thompson said: ‘her verse is elegantly wrought, often magically incantatory and always accessible’, adding that Meehan’s work ‘gives voice to her people and places’.

Meehan has had almost thirty different addresses in Dublin and now lives in Baldoyle with Dorgan and their beloved dogs. She ‘Paula Meehan is that rare and precious thing likes to write on the Dart and gets ideas and inspiration while – a vocational poet of courage and integrity.’ walking her dogs in Howth. She is also an activist campaigning about many issues including addiction, gender inequality, abortion and the homelessness crisis in Ireland. Carol Anne Duffy on Meehan

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Social and Cultural Context

Dublin soundscape

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Amid the impermanence and poverty of Meehan’s early life in inner-city Dublin, she encountered the close, lively world of the tenements, with its rich oral tradition, which has shaped a lot of her language and imagery. She describes that world as ‘a huge resource’, ‘a poetic heartland … between the canal and the river’ and says, ‘I got my language there’.

There were few books around and it was unusual to get a secondary education let alone access to university. Where there was a dearth of literature, there was plenty of culture, ‘folk songs, games, stories from old people, including an unbroken A typical tenement building. link in history to people who remembered the Famine’. She describes her maternal grandmother as a ‘poet’ in the way that she would interpret and recount her dreams. On the subject of the ‘sound-maps’ of her Dublin city childhood, she says:

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One of the most noticeable things about it, even to me as a child, was that there were no books, not many at least, in the houses around, in the flats. So an awful lot of the energy, the excitement was in the oral. I grew up in an oral tradition: the stories, the singers, the old people, the lore, the sometimes very empowering lore. I soon developed, I believe, a hunger for ritualized sound, in and of itself. The rhetoric around trade union politics, for instance, would feed it as much as, what seemed in childhood, the continual ceremonials around the church. Then, it was the part of the city where the Citizen Army had been active. That had a whole set of stories and dramas. It had the old lore of the Monto, which at the turn of the last century was the biggest red light district in Europe servicing the garrison, the docks, the Ascendancy, and the labouring classes. The old whores were still around when I was a child; it had the lore of the docks and the dockland community. It was a vivid, interesting, and textured world formed with a lot of song, a lot of music, not least the music of the city itself, the steel hoop rims on cobbles, the horses’ hooves. There was an abattoir near us. I remember the squealing of pigs and the cries of sheep waiting to be slaughtered. The music of the Latin, of the bells of the church, all of that – a fantastically rich childhood in sonic terms.

Inequality The 1960s and 1970s were ‘class bound’ and life choices were massively affected by social and economic circumstances. The poor had fewer options than the rest of society. ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’ explores the drive Meehan had to escape the shackles of poverty and class. ‘The Pattern’ sets her mother’s life of polishing floors, making ends meet and using hand-me-downs against Meehan’s exotic dreams of escape ‘to Zanzibar, Bombay, the Land of the Ethiops’.

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Meehan feels a responsibility to use her childhood experiences as a springboard to explore and often challenge inequality: ‘I have to give back to the people who gave me language, gave me a way of surviving in language.’ She has recognised the sacrifices her parents and grandparents made to ensure that she got an education and has sought to repay that debt by ‘trying to take the poems out into the community’.

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Alongside the poverty and unemployment of the 1980s, a heroin epidemic gripped Ireland, especially its inner-city dwellers. Teaching in women’s prisons, Meehan met the victims of this world, some of whom were the children of her school contemporaries. ‘Prayer for the Children of Longing’ comes in no small part from this culture shock. In these women prisoners, Meehan saw the ‘natural giftedness’ of those who had ‘very little opportunity or salvation’. When Meehan tried years later to track down the women from her first prison workshops, only one was still alive. The arts for Meehan were therefore ‘a path that will hold you steady in an often chaotic world’. The 1994 collection Pillow Talk showed a development in Meehan’s style following her work within the prison system, with sharper and freer verse.

In addition to the obstacles posed by poverty, Meehan had to overcome issues related to gender expectations and inequality. She began writing poems as a schoolgirl but did not have the confidence to share them: ‘I was surrounded by very strong and articulate men and they were the writers … I became a secret writer.’ Meehan now considers that poetry transcends gender.

Activism

Savita Halappanavar

The Magdalene Laundries, Kerry Babies and child sexual abuse scandals are just some of the events that rocked Ireland in its recent past and led to huge social, cultural and legal changes. The death of Anne Lovett in 1984 provoked Meehan to write ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’, which captured the nation’s imagination and was a breakthrough poem for her. It was inspired by the outrage felt at the needless tragedy of a fifteen-year-old girl who died giving birth at this statue’s feet. The shame of teen pregnancy, Ireland’s culture of sexual repression, organised religion’s hypocrisy and the failure of a nation to protect and inform its young angered Meehan.

Savita Halappanavar died from infection after

miscarrying her first child in a Galway hospital in October 2012. Her death caused international

controversy. Her husband said she had pleaded for a termination during the miscarriage, but medical staff had refused her requests because

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there was still a foetal heartbeat.

Meehan sees poetry and activism as complementary ways to change society for the better. She was part of the Reclaim the Streets movement in 2002. She recited ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’ at the start of a protest march following the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012 and participated in the ensuing campaign to reform the laws on abortion. She also took to the stage to recite her poetry at a Rock Against Homelessness concert in 2018.

Meehan’s poetic activism has focused more broadly on historical injustices and social critiques that view class, gender and environmental exploitation as intimately connected: So many of our vulnerable ecosystems were (are still) under threat from mindless turbo development. Late century capitalism run riot. Now that the boom is over and we’ve gone into recession and the government is using taxpayers’ money to bail out the banks, we may have a breathing space to estimate what’s been lost through the unmediated and rampant greed that characterized both planning and building in nineties and noughties Ireland.

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Themes

Meehan is a firm believer in poetry as therapy and a force for social change. She sums it up in her characteristically direct and wry way: ‘If poetry wasn’t useful it would’ve died off like our tails.’ She has said that, beyond telling stories, some poems ‘just give you a moment of vision or transcendence or colour even, or just an image that you can carry around with you. Two lines. Two lines can save a life. I believe it.’

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Social justice and society’s injustices are central to many of her poems. Her poetry gives a voice to the marginalised and to people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Teenage pregnancy and Ireland’s failure to provide a safe space to deal with it is strongly expressed in ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’. ‘Prayer for the Children of Longing’ also looks at how Ireland has failed its young. This secular prayer commemorates the deaths of those who, through poverty and disillusion, fell prey to the violent and tragic world of drug addiction. Meehan encountered disadvantage and poverty early on in her life and ‘Buying Winkles’, ‘The Pattern’ and ‘Hearth Lesson’ explore this issue. Meehan’s family moved about often, and she lived with her grandparents when her parents went to England to seek employment. ‘Cora, Auntie’ tells a similar story of emigration as Meehan celebrates the life and commemorates the death of her beloved and irrepressible Aunt Cora.

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Birds and notions of flight, freedom and escape from the expected norms for the underprivileged find voice in her words and images. Having experienced poverty and social inequality and seen their effect on the lives of women, Meehan was determined to escape the cycle of drudgery and explore the world and all it had to offer. In ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’, she recalls the terrible indignity of a teacher’s warning that if the pupils (all girls) did not work hard in school they would ‘end up’ working in the sewing factory. She also realises, ‘the teacher was right / and no one knows it like I do myself’.

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Meehan asks questions of the act of commemoration in the amusingly titled ‘Them Ducks Died for Ireland’. This poem looks at the struggle to achieve the Irish Republic from the point of view of a window overlooking St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. Meehan has likened the process of creating poetry to a child at a window making a mark with her breath, an image she uses in this poem to represent time. The poem considers the involvement of people on the margins such as the nurses who tended to the injured and dying. Nature and conservation are also issues that Meehan explores in her work. ‘Death of a Field’ laments the repurposing of a field An elegy is a poem of mourning. It commemteeming with wildlife as a site for forty-four houses in Fingal, orates the life and death of someone. In Dublin. An elegiac sense extends to the changes Ireland is Meehan’s case this is extended to land in undergoing, as more and more land gets paved over and built ‘Death of a Field’. ‘My Father Perceived as a upon. Finglas is also the setting of ‘My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis’, ‘Cora, Auntie’ and ‘The Vision of St Francis’. Nature is celebrated as Meehan’s stooping, Pattern’ are also elegies. silver-haired father is transformed into a young man again, made new by the sunshine as birds come to feed on the breadcrumbs he scatters ‘in a Finglas Garden’. We see religious language and imagery cropping up in this and many of Meehan’s poems.

Meehan’s elegies

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We use the phrase ‘the speaker says …’ when writing about most poems, but with Meehan’s work this is not always necessary. Her poems are openly autobiographical and connected to real people, places and memories from her life. Family permeates her work. Anecdotes about her mother, her father and her aunt as well as her own childhood add an authenticity and accessibility for readers all over the world who have grown to love these poems. She does not shy away from describing the more troubled aspects of her family history. An instance of this appears early on in ‘The Pattern’, when we are told that part of the meagre legacy left to her by her mother is ‘the sting of her hand / across my face’. Despite tackling serious issues, there is often a wry sense of fun in Meehan’s work. ‘Hearth Lesson’ describes the regular rows over money that Meehan witnessed between her parents but, using classical allusions, raises them to have the qualities of an epic tale. She compares the warring couple to Zeus and Hera, the king and queen of the Greek gods, ‘for his every thunderbolt / she had the killing glance’. Her likening of women working in the sewing factory to ‘trussed chickens’ in ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’ is another original and darkly funny image.

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Timeline Born in inner-city Dublin Studies English, History and Classical Civilisation at Trinity College, Dublin

1982–3

Studies Poetry at Eastern Washington University

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1972–7

1955

First collection, Return and No Blame, published; death of Anne Lovett in Granard

1986

Reading in the Sky published

1990

Met partner, fellow poet Theo Dorgan

1991

The Man Who Was Marked by Winter published

1994

Pillow Talk published

1995

Kirkle (a play for children) produced

1996

Mysteries of the Home published

1997

Mrs Sweeney (a play) produced; The Voyage (a play for children) produced

2001

Dharmakaya, winner of the Denis Devlin Award, published; Cell (a play) produced

2003

Three Irish Poets, also featuring Mary O’Malley and Eavan Boland, published; The Wolf of

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1984

Winter (a play for children) produced

Six Sycamores, a collaboration with artist Marie Foley, published

2007

Days Like These, also featuring Tony Curtis and Theo Dorgan, published

2008

Music for Days (a work for radio) published

2009

Painting Rain published

Participated in Dublin’s ‘One City One Book’ initiative; recited her work in Beijing on the

2014

Ireland’s Professor of Poetry

2013–16

2004

occasion of President Michael D. Higgins’s State Visit to China

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2016

Geomantic published; Imaginary Bonnets with Real Bees in Them (writings from the Irish

Chair of Poetry) published Conferred with an honorary doctorate from Dublin City University

2020

Judge for Griffin Poetry Prize; As If By Magic: Selected Poems published

2019

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Research the idea of the quest from the classical world. Choose a hero such as Theseus or Perseus and briefly explain the notion of what a mythical quest is and the various stages/ elements it contains.

Before you read

of 5

My mother would spare me sixpence and say, ‘Hurry up now and don’t be talking to strange men on the way.’ I’d dash from the ghosts on the stairs where the bulb had blown out into Gardiner Street, all relief. A bonus if the moon was in the strip of sky between the tall houses, or stars out, but even in rain I was happy – the winkles would be wet and glisten blue like little night skies themselves. I’d hold the tanner tight and jump every crack in the pavement, I’d wave up to women at sills or those lingering in doorways and weave a glad path through men heading out for the night. She’d be sitting outside the Rosebowl Bar on an orange-crate, a pram loaded with pails of winkles before her. When the bar doors swung open they’d leak the smell of men together with drink and I’d see light in golden mirrors. I envied each soul in the hot interior. I’d ask her again to show me the right way to do it. She’d take a pin from her shawl – ‘Open the eyelid. So. Stick it in till you feel a grip, then slither him out. Gently, mind.’ The sweetest extra winkle that brought the sea to me. ‘Tell yer Ma I picked them fresh this morning.’ I’d bear the newspaper twists bulging fat with winkles proudly home, like torches.

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Buying Winkles

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Glossary Title

tanner: sixpence in old money; half a shilling

Winkles: a type of shellfish

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Guidelines

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From the collection Mysteries of the Home (1996), ‘Buying Winkles’ pays tribute through childhood memory to the places and people of inner-city Dublin.

Commentary

of ny pa om

The speaker is sent on an errand by her mother to buy winkles. The mention of ‘sixpence’ sets the scene in the past. The family can ill-afford this purchase, as indicated by the words ‘spare me’. The errand becomes quest-like, fraught with danger: ‘don’t be talking to strange / men’, ‘dash from the ghosts / on the stairs’. The stairs and its ghosts refer to the tenements in Dublin’s inner city (see page 227), which were often in disrepair: ‘the bulb had blown’. When the speaker reaches the street outside, she is ‘all relief’, and it is even better if the moon or stars are out. This detail tells us that she is not on a one-off errand; it is a regular occurrence.

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Lines 1–7

Lines 8–14

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The speaker seems to relish these adventures, ‘even in rain I was happy’, and looks forward to the prize ahead: ‘the winkles / would be wet and glisten blue like little / night skies’. The poem next offers a charming picture of childhood superstition: the speaker would ‘jump every crack in the pavement’, as stepping on the cracks was thought to be bad luck. Then we get our first glimpse of the friendly community she belongs to, as she waves to women leaning out of their windows or ‘lingering in doorways’. Despite her mother’s warning earlier, the child clearly has no fear of the groups of men she encounters either and happily weaves a path through them.

Lines 15–28

Halfway through the poem the child reaches her destination. The winkle-seller is outside a pub called the Rosebowl, sitting on a wooden crate and selling her wares from a pram. The scene is so vividly wrought that we feel we are there with the child as she catches a glimpse inside the warm, noisy, busy bar: ‘I’d see light in golden mirrors. / I envied each soul in the hot interior’. She asks the winkle-seller to demonstrate the knack of removing the meat from the tightly curled shells using a safety pin. To some of us, words such as ‘eyelid’ and ‘slither’ might seem off-putting, but our young speaker has no such reservations. She

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savours the ‘sweetest extra winkle / that brought the sea to me’. The winkle-seller’s instruction, ‘Tell yer Ma I picked them fresh this morning’, suggests that the woman knows the speaker’s mother and perhaps has experience of her exacting standards!

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Lines 29–31

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The poem ends in triumph. The child has successfully completed her quest by bringing the ‘newspaper twists’ containing the winkles ‘proudly home like torches’.

Themes and imagery

Tenement life is a clear theme in this poem. While many people might imagine that the tenements of Dublin were squalid and rough, the picture Meehan paints is a far brighter and more joyful one. The child waves to the women and wanders fearlessly through the men in this vibrant and lively night-time scene to reach the winkle-seller, who gives time and attention to her. The woman is primarily there to feed the patrons of the bar, just like a fast-food van or stall might sell its wares outside such places these days. Despite the threats of ‘strange / men’ and ‘ghosts / on the stairs’ and the darkness as ‘the bulb had blown’ (lines 2–4), the child runs the gauntlet of these dangers almost naïvely to seek out the winkle-seller. A more jaundiced eye might see the background scene differently. The women wait at home ‘at sills’ (line 12) while the men head ‘out for the night’ (line 14) to a bar that would ‘leak / the smell of men together with drink’ (lines 18–19). There is an obvious gender division here, which is often a theme in Meehan’s work. There may also be a hint at prostitution as the women not sitting at their window sills are ‘lingering in doorways’ (line 13). The child seems oblivious to this and travels merrily through the busy scene to carry out her mother’s errand.

The imagery and theme of the quest permeates the poem and may have much to do with Meehan studying the Classics at university. Many Greek and Roman heroes were set a quest by a powerful figure. It would be a difficult task, fraught with danger but full of adventure. The hero was often aided by a mentor of some kind, just as the winkle-seller helps the child. The hero then returns with the object of desire, triumphant, just as the child returns ‘proudly home’ with her ‘newspaper twists / bulging fat with winkles’ ‘like torches’ (lines 29–31). The simile of torches is interesting as light and darkness play a vital role in the imagery of the poem. The tenement stairs are in darkness (line 4), the child hopes that the moon or stars will light the way (lines 6–7), the winkles will ‘glisten blue like little / night skies’ (lines 9–10), the bar is full of bright light reflected in ‘golden mirrors’ (line 20) and by the end of the poem the darkness is banished by the twists of winkles shining ‘like torches’ (line 31).

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The winkles themselves may symbolise many things in the poem, including the object of the quest, the approval of the mother, the poverty of the family and freedom. In your view, what do they represent? Meehan’s relationship with her mother is a theme in many of her poems (including ‘The Pattern’, which is the next poem in this anthology, and it may be useful to compare the two in this regard). Here, the relationship is represented in a positive way: her mother sent her on a quest and she was successful in it. The mood at the end is suffused with pride and a sense of achievement.

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Form and language

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Meehan skilfully uses small details to set her poem firmly in place and time. A ‘sixpence’ or ‘tanner’ (lines 1 and 10) was part of the currency used in Ireland up to the early 1970s. Place names feature in many of Meehan’s poems. Here, ‘Gardiner Street’ and the nearby ‘Rosebowl Bar’ (lines 5 and 15) bring us to the heart of tenement Dublin. The image of female street traders sitting on crates and selling their wares from prams would have been very familiar to Dubliners of past generations and can still be seen today, for example outside matches at Croke Park. Meehan also employs inner-city Dublin idiom, ‘don’t be talking’ (line 2) and ‘Tell yer ma’ (line 28), to bring the women’s voices to light simply and effectively.

The poem is a simple, unbroken lyric, which lends immediacy to what is essentially an anecdote. We hear the voice of an adult fondly recalling the childhood errand of buying winkles and realising the innocent joy of the experience.

The opening lines are beautifully lyrical, turning an ordinary request into something much more special. We hear, for example, the sibilant ‘spare me sixpence and say’, the rhyme of ‘say’ and ‘way’ and the punchy alliteration of ‘the bulb had blown’ all within the first four lines. This use of sibilance, rhyme The Molly Malone statue in Dublin city centre. She sold shellfish from her barrow. and alliteration continues throughout the poem and lifts a simple story, simply told, to a higher level, one that is musical and intricate. Assonance is also skilfully used, stretching sounds to create mood and atmosphere. Read lines 12–14 aloud, focusing on the ‘w’ sounds and long or echoing vowel sounds that transform a walk down a street into something very special.

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‘The sweetest extra winkle / that brought the sea to me’ (lines 26–27) sounds like a child’s nursery rhyme and effectively conveys the delight of the young speaker upon achieving her quest. The winkle is all the sweeter for being ‘extra’ – free, which reminds us of the poverty of the times. The taste of the sea in the salty flesh of the creature transports the child from her humble surroundings. The ritual of carefully freeing the winkle from its shell creates a mood of reverence for this special treat.

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem In bullet points, summarise the journey of the child.

What impression do you have of the child in this poem? Is she brave, naïve, optimistic or something else? Use quotation and reference from throughout the poem in your answer.

a) Discuss the two similes used in the poem to describe the winkles. b) In your opinion, what do the winkles symbolise in the poem as a whole? Give reasons for your answer.

Compare and contrast the portrayals of men and women in the poem.

Comment on the character of the winkle-seller in the poem.

Why, do you think, are the wraps of winkles compared to torches in the simile at the end of the poem? In your answer you might also examine the imagery of darkness and light.

Thinking about the poem

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What evidence of poverty can you find in the poem?

Choose two sound effects from the poem that stood out to you. Write them out and explain why you chose them.

Choose two images from the poem that stood out to you. Explain what is being described in each and why the image is effective.

How do the events of this poem fit into the idea of a heroic quest?

How is tenement life presented in the poem? Does it seem bleak and squalid or more cheerful and vibrant? Give reasons for your answer.

Imagining

Write the dialogue between mother and child when the child returns home with the winkles.

Write a poem, descriptive passage or diary entry in which you recount a similar childhood memory (real or imagined).

Create your own quest story in which you elevate a seemingly ordinary errand to mythic status as this poem does.

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SNAPSHOT ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Vivid imagery Sound effects add musicality Unbroken lyric Quest Tenement life in Dublin

■ ■ ■ ■

Gender differences Light and darkness Joy and achievement Anecdote

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The Pattern

Before you read G

Is there a photograph ro r upwo of someone in your family that is particularly memorable or important? Describe and discuss this either in a short written piece or with a classmate.

First she’d scrub the floor with Sunlight soap, an arm reach at a time. When her knees grew sore she’d break for a cup of tea, then start again at the door with lavender polish. The smell would percolate back through the flat to us, her brood banished to the bedroom.

as women without tags like mother, wife, sister, daughter, taken our chance from there. At forty-two she headed for god knows where. I’ve never gone back to visit her grave.

when we had grown bitter and apart. Some say that’s the fate of the eldest daughter. I wish now she’d lasted till after I’d grown up. We might have made a new start

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Little has come down to me of hers, a sewing machine, a wedding band, a clutch of photos, the sting of her hand across my face in one of our wars

As she buffed the wax to a high shine did she catch her own face coming clear? Did she net a glimmer of her true self? Did her mirror tell what mine tells me?

I have her shrug and go on knowing history has brought her to her knees. She’d call us in and let us skate around in our socks. We’d grow solemn as planets in an intricate orbit about her.

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She bending over crimson cloth, the younger kids are long in bed. Late summer, cold enough for a fire, she works by fading light to remake an old dress for me. It’s first day back at school tomorrow.

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She must have stayed up half the night to finish the dress. I found it airing at the fire, three new copybooks on the table and a bright bronze nib, St Christopher strung on a silver wire,

‘Pure lambswool – Plenty of wear in it yet. You know I wore this when I went out with your Da. 35 I was supposed to be down in a friend’s house, your Granda caught us at the corner. He dragged me in by the hair – it was long as yours then – in front of the whole street. He called your Da every name under the sun, 40 cornerboy, lout; I needn’t tell you what he called me. He shoved my whole head under the kitchen tap, took a scrubbing brush and carbolic soap and in ice-cold water he scrubbed every spick of lipstick and mascara off my face. 45 Christ but he was a right tyrant, your Granda. It’ll be over my dead body anyone harms a hair of your head.’

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as if I were embarking on a perilous journey to uncharted realms. I wore that dress with little grace. To me it spelt poverty, the stigma of the second hand. I grew enough to pass

it on by Christmas to the next in line. I was sizing up the world beyond our flat patch by patch daily after school, and fitting each surprising city street to city square to diamond. I’d watch

the Liffey for hours pulsing to the sea and the coming and going of ships, certain that one day it would carry me to Zanzibar, Bombay, the Land of the Ethiops.

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There’s a photo of her taken in the Phoenix Park alone on a bench surrounded by roses as if she had been born to formal gardens. She stares out as if unaware that any human hand held the camera, wrapped entirely in her own shadow, the world beyond her already a dream, already lost. She’s eight months pregnant. Her last child.

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Paula Meehan Her steel needles sparked and clacked, the only other sound a settling coal or her sporadic mutter at a hard place in the pattern. She favoured sensible shades: Moss Green, Mustard, Beige.

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Tongues of flame in her dark eye she’d say, ‘One of these days I must teach you to follow a pattern.’

Sometimes I’d have to kneel an hour before her by the fire, a skein around my outstretched hands, while she rolled wool into balls. If I swam like a kite too high amongst the shadows on the ceiling or flew like a fish in the pools of pulsing light, she’d reel me firmly home, she’d land me at her knees.

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I dreamt a robe of a colour so pure it became a word.

Glossary

percolate: filter gradually

cornerboy: colloquial term for a boy/man who hangs around street corners

carbolic soap: disinfectant soap containing phenol

St Christopher: a religious medal reputed to protect those on a journey

stigma: mark of disgrace or shame

Zanzibar: island region of Tanzania

Bombay: previous name of Mumbai, India’s largest city Land of the Ethiops: Ethiopia, often considered the cradle of civilisation where human life as we know it began

sporadic: occurring at irregular intervals

skein: length of thread or yarn, loosely coiled and knotted

Th e

Guidelines ‘The Pattern’, from the collection Painting Rain (2009), explores the often-strained relationship between Meehan and her mother. Meehan became estranged from her mother and always regretted that her mother died (aged forty-two) before they had a chance to mend their relationship.

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Commentary Lines 1–11

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Among the few things her mother left to her, the speaker includes a sewing machine, a wedding ring, photos and memories. The most prominent memories seem to portray a sometimes violent relationship, as evoked in the lines: ‘the sting of her hand / across my face in one of our wars’. The relationship eventually broke down completely, ‘when we had grown bitter and apart’, and the speaker regrets this because her mother died before she had ‘grown up’. She voices her regret at what might have been: ‘We might have made a new start’.

Lines 12–27

Although she has not been visiting her grave, the speaker holds her mother in her memories, especially those of her mother as a housewife and seamstress. She recalls her mother scrubbing and polishing the floor until it shone like a mirror. The children waited this process out in the bedroom, enjoying the lavender smell of the polish wafting into them. The speaker wonders if her mother saw who she really was, reflected back at her in this shining floor, just as the speaker now sees herself in the mirror. Perhaps this reveals a connection she hopes she may still have to her estranged and deceased mother. Did her mother realise that she was ageing and that poverty and illness were grinding her down? The question is emphasised by the phrase ‘knowing history has brought her to her knees’. A fonder memory follows, where the children are allowed to slide and skid on the polished floor, albeit in a ‘solemn’ way that is compared to planets orbiting around the mother, who is the centre of their universe.

Lines 28–47

Another memory is of her mother as a seamstress, making a new dress from an old lambswool one for her daughter, who is about to start back to school. The necessity of this process hints at the poverty of this family and the lengths the mother had to go to to keep the family afloat, ‘plenty of wear in it yet’. Her mother had worn this dress while dating the speaker’s father and recalls how they were caught on the street by ‘your Granda’, who ‘dragged me in by the hair’, shouted insults at her boyfriend and then roughly scrubbed the make-up off her face with ‘carbolic soap and in ice-cold water’. Then the mother declares: ‘It’ll be over my dead body anyone harms a hair of your head.’ This statement might seem admirably protective and affectionate until we remember the stinging slaps mentioned earlier in the poem.

Lines 48–63

Th e

We learn that the mother toiled ‘half the night’ to finish the dress and to organise her daughter for returning to school. There are ‘three new copybooks on the table and a bright / bronze nib’ along with a talisman of the patron saint of travellers, a St Christopher’s medal ‘strung on a silver wire’. This medal was a prescient gift as along with remembering the shame of wearing hand-me-downs, ‘To me it spelt poverty’, the daughter recalls yearning for more than her humble surroundings: ‘I was sizing / up the world beyond our flat’. She was already spellbound by the ships that visited Dublin and imagined they would one day transport her to the most exotic destinations imaginable: ‘Zanzibar, Bombay, the Land of the Ethiops’.

Lines 64–71

The speaker returns to the photographs mentioned at the beginning of the poem and is struck by one in particular in which her mother is ‘in the Phoenix Park / alone on a bench surrounded by roses’. It is maybe 242 / DISCOVERY: POETRY ANTHOLOGY

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Lines 72–91

hard for this daughter to believe that the seamstress and floor scrubber she knew was once the beautiful and cultured-looking young woman pictured. The faraway expression of her mother in this photograph strikes her; she seems unaware of anyone else and is perhaps foreseeing the drudgery her life will entail and the exotic possibilities already lost to her (but now within her daughter’s sights): ‘wrapped / entirely in her own shadow, the world beyond her / already a dream, already lost’.

Th e

More memories of making clothes come to the speaker. This time her mother is knitting by the fire, following a pattern. We might compare her creativity with wool to the poet’s creativity with words. However, the mother plays it safe by using only muted colours: ‘sensible shades: / Moss Green, Mustard, Beige’. Her daughter, on the other hand, craves the vivid and exciting: ‘I dreamt of a robe of colour’. One of the final images in the poem is of the daughter kneeling and holding the skein of wool for her mother to roll into balls. This thread becomes like the line of an angler or the string of a kite, with the mother trying to anchor her daughter to her as the daughter strives to break away like a kite in the wind or a fish struggling to be free: ‘she’d reel me firmly / home, she’d land me at her knees’. The question ‘Did she net a glimmer of her true self?’ at line 21 may have foreshadowed this later image. The version of her mother as an angry parent from the poem’s opening lines returns, ‘Tongues of flame in her dark eye’, as she determines to keep her daughter from such freedoms: ‘I must / teach you to follow a pattern’.

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Themes and imagery

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This poem primarily explores Meehan’s relationship with her mother, Helena McCarthy (known to most as ‘Sis’), who died at the age of forty-two following a life of poverty and ill health. Meehan has described their relationship as ‘afflicted’ and the poem as ‘an attempt to come to terms with my mother’s legacy … her pattern was handed onto me and rejected by me’.

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Her mother’s hands are a key image in the poem. They show her as a hard worker: ‘she’d scrub the floor’ (line 13). They display her creativity through knitting, sewing and an ability to do what we would call ‘upcycling’ today: ‘to remake an old dress for me’ (line 32). They are also symbolic of the breakdown of this relationship, as Meehan recalls: ‘the sting of her hand / across my face in one of our wars’ (lines 3–4).

Regret looms large as both a mood and a theme in the poem. Meehan has said she feels keenly the ‘ghost’ of her mother and that ‘had she lived longer she could have found a place for her ferocious energy and intelligence’. She was only in her late teens when her mother died and the loss of what might have been had they had time to repair their relationship is expressed clearly in the poem: ‘We might have made a new start / as women without tags like mother, wife, / sister, daughter’ (lines 8–10).

The mother wants her daughter to follow ‘The Pattern’ of the title, which is a reference not only to the knitting and sewing patterns she uses but also to the life she wants for her. It seems to imply that the mother wished her daughter to be tethered to her, to be safe and ordinary and similar. Meehan, however, yearned for exotic places, colour and freedom. This dynamic can be seen as the poem comes to a close: ‘If I swam like a kite too high / amongst the shadows on the ceiling / or flew like fish in the pools / of pulsing light, she’d reel me firmly / home’ (lines 84–88). In this mixed simile, Meehan imagines freedom and escape, but her mother seems to sense this and, like an angler hauling in a fish or someone dragging a kite back to land, she pulls her daughter to her. The wool that Meehan holds while her mother winds it into balls represents this bond, this tether. The idea that her daughter longs to be elsewhere seems to anger the mother: ‘Tongues of flame in her dark eye’ (line 89). Her words seem as much a threat as a promise: ‘One of these days I must / teach you to follow a pattern’ (lines 90–91).

Th e

The mundane and stifling life of poverty is something Meehan saw destroy her mother: it ‘brought her to her knees’ (line 24). In Ireland at that time, the class system saw to it that those in poverty remained there regardless of their intelligence or ability. This woman, whom Meehan notices in an old photo seemed ‘as if she had been born to formal gardens’, is reduced to scrubbing floors and recycling old clothes for her children. She is the centre of her children’s universe and might seem burdened by this. Even their playtime seems stilted and joyless: ‘She’d call us in and let us skate around / in our socks. We’d grow solemn as planets / in an intricate orbit about her’ (lines 25–27). The photo taken in Phoenix Park is a key image in the poem. It seems to suggest that the mother realises there is a world out there that she can never be part of: ‘the world beyond her / already a dream, already lost’ (lines 69–70). ‘Moss Green, Mustard, Beige’ (line 77) are the ‘sensible shades’ her mother sticks to, representing the dull life she is forced to live. Meanwhile, her daughter dreams of colourful places full of promise. ‘Zanzibar, Bombay, the Land of the Ethiops’ (line 63) are a far cry from the flat this family inhabits and sound exotic, distant and full of adventure. These imaginings show that this young girl already had a mind bursting with creativity and a determination to explore the world. It is interesting to note that Meehan travelled around Europe and went to America as soon as she got the chance (see Biography).

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Form and language

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This poem is an unlikely elegy. Meehan mourns her mother’s death but does not look back on their relationship with rose-tinted glasses: ‘At forty-two she headed for god knows where. / I’ve never gone back to visit her grave’ (lines 11–12). The conversational style of this bald admission, said simply amongst lines full of poetic sound effects, makes the statement stand out all the more. Here we sense an incredibly honest voice using this poem as therapy (a way of dealing with difficult feelings and experiences), something Meehan says poetry often is. Meehan recognises that her mother was determined to teach her to ‘follow a pattern’ (line 91). When she describes how her mother would ‘reel me firmly / home, she’d land me at her knees’ (lines 87–88), we sense her feelings of claustrophobia. Her yearning to escape this insular and restricted life is clear.

Mixed metaphors appear in the closing stages of the poem; for example: ‘swam like a kite’ (line 84) and ‘f lew like a f ish’ (line 86). Note the alliteration and sibilance here and also in the beautiful phrase ‘pools / of pulsing light’ (lines 86–87). Perhaps this set of jumbled images conveys frustration as her mother seeks to hold back her daughter and her exotic dreams? What do you think? The tension between the two points of view drives the poem forward until the very last line. Then, as you will also see in the poem ‘Hearth Lesson’, the mother has the last word.

Rhetorical questions are used to move the poem along and expose its themes and contrasts: ‘did she catch her own face coming clear? / Did she net a glimmer of her true self? / Did her mirror tell what mine tells me?’ (lines 20–22). Meehan is both comparing and contrasting herself with her mother. By using questions, she increases the sense of regret and mourning because we know her mother can never answer her. Meehan must try to sort through these ideas herself, and the poem is helping her do so. She tries to move away, to find her own path, but she is also tethered to the past, which is something we see in many of these poems containing anecdotes about family.

In this long anecdotal poem, the rhyme is almost hidden, but close inspection reveals its musicality and intricacy. Meehan packs every phrase with so much meaning and this is reflected in the soundscape created. It is a good idea to search online for a recording of Meehan reciting ‘The Pattern’ and to listen carefully to how she performs this work. Listen to the onomatopoeia, internal rhyme, sibilance and hard energy in line 72 as just one small example: ‘Her steel needles sparked and clacked’. The needles are ‘steel’, reflecting the hard qualities of this unforgiving and stubborn matriarch. ‘Clacked’ is onomatopoeic and the ‘ked’ internal rhyme created echoes this metallic, rhythmic sound. The sibilant ‘s’ sounds rush the line along, mimicking the speed and skill of this woman’s craft.

Th e

Using direct speech brings the mother’s voice to life and we see a kinder and more relatable side to her here also. As she adjusts the red dress, she tells her daughter a story from her past and we learn that her upbringing was harsh: ‘I wore this when I went out with your Da … your Granda caught us … He shoved my whole head / under the kitchen tap … Christ but he was a right tyrant’ (lines 35–46). The colloquial speech and intimacy of the story create a heartwarming moment in a poem that mostly details the speaker’s desire to escape this woman and her world. We see lots of triples in Meehan’s work. Groups of three are pleasing to the eye and ear, which is why they are used so much in rhetoric. You will find examples of this at lines 50 and 51: ‘three new copybooks on the table and a bright / bronze nib, St Christopher strung on a silver wire’. See lines 63 and 77 for more examples.

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The phrase ‘I have her shrug and go on’ at line 23 is worth noting. The poet is telling us here that she is in control of this memory, which may make us wonder about how much of it is real and how much has been created by the imagination. As we all know, memory is not infallible, and it is to Meehan’s credit that she admits as much here.

Ire

Questions

What items have been left to the speaker according to stanza 1 and what might each represent for her in terms of her memories of her mother?

How does the speaker show in the poem that the relationship between mother and daughter broke down?

a) Describe the section where the mother cleans and then lets the children play on the polished floor (lines 13–27). What do you picture here? b) What mood is created and what words or phrases create this mood?

a) In your own words, re-tell the anecdote about the grandfather catching the mother and father on a date and his violent reaction (lines 35–46). b) Why, do you think, has Meehan included this incident in the poem?

What details in lines 47–55 show a more caring side of the mother?

Read lines 56–63. What is the speaker yearning for here? How is a sense of longing created in these lines?

a) In lines 64–71, the speaker describes one of the photos mentioned in the opening lines. Describe the image in your own words, explaining what the speaker sees in her mother in this photo. b) Comment on how this image may add to the speaker’s determination not to be ‘brought to her knees’ by ‘history’ (line 24) and her desire to forge her own way in the world.

Compare images of freedom and escape with those of restriction and yearning in the poem.

What, do you think, does the speaker mean when she says: ‘I dreamt a robe of a colour / so pure it became a word’ (lines 78–79)? Could this relate to her dreams of far-flung, exotic places or to her subsequent career as a poet? Perhaps you have other ideas?

Explain what you think ‘The Pattern’ of the title might symbolise. Look at this from three points of view – what it means to the speaker, to the mother and to you in your life.

Meehan has called this poem ‘an attempt to come to terms with my mother’s legacy … her pattern was handed on to me and rejected by me’. Explore how this statement sums up the purpose and subject matter of the poem.

Th e

How is the imagery of sewing and knitting woven through the poem and how does this add to the themes Meehan is exploring?

13 G

upw

Comment on Meehan’s use of language and her different styles of narration as the poem progresses. Give lots of examples and comment on the effect of each. You might work on this in groups and assign different members certain sections of the poem. Agree on a mood and tone for each speaker.

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Paula Meehan Before you read

of 5

It can be bitter here at times like this, November wind sweeping across the border. Its seeds of ice would cut you to the quick. The whole town tucked up safe and dreaming, even wild things gone to earth, and I stuck up here in this grotto, without as much as star or planet to ease my vigil.

The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks

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As a class, discuss the need to respect the differing beliefs and opinions of others. You are about to read an emotive and ro r upwo provocative poem dealing with serious issues about which there are vastly differing viewpoints. While this poem lends itself to an important discussion and debate, it is vital to remember that although we all have the right to express our convictions and opinions, we are not entitled to do so at the expense or to the detriment of others. Choose your words carefully.

Th e

The howling won’t let up. Trees cavort in agony as if they would be free and take off — ghost voyagers on the wind that carries intimations of garrison towns, walled cities, ghetto lanes where men hunt each other and invoke the various names of God as blessing on their death tactics, their night manoeuvres. Closer to home the wind sails over dying lakes. I hear fish drowning. I taste the stagnant water mingled with turf smoke from outlying farms.

They call me Mary — Blessed, Holy, Virgin. They fit me to a myth of a man crucified: the scourging and the falling, and the falling again, the thorny crown, the hammer blow of iron into wrist and ankle, the sacred bleeding heart. They name me Mother of all this grief though mated to no mortal man. They kneel before me and their prayers fly up like sparks from a bonfire that blaze a moment, then wink out.

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Even an autumn burial can work its own pageantry. The hedges heavy with the burden of fruiting crab, sloe, berry, hip; clouds scud east pear scented, windfalls secret in long orchard grasses, and some old soul is lowered to his kin. Death is just another harvest scripted to the season’s play.

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Or the grace of a midsummer wedding when the earth herself calls out for coupling and I would break loose of my stony robes, pure blue, pure white, as if they had robbed a child’s sky for their colour. My being cries out to be incarnate, incarnate, maculate and tousled in a honeyed bed.

It can be lovely here at times. Springtime, early summer. Girls in Communion frocks pale rivals to the riot in the hedgerows of cow parsley and haw blossom, the perfume from every rushy acre that’s left for hay when the light swings longer with the sun’s push north.

But on this All Souls’ Night there is no respite from the keening of the wind. I would not be amazed if every corpse came risen from the graveyard to join in exaltation with the gale, a cacophony of bone imploring sky for judgement and release from being the conscience of the town.

Th e

On a night like this I remember the child who came with fifteen summers to her name, and she lay down alone at my feet without midwife or doctor or friend to hold her hand and she pushed her secret out into the night, far from the town tucked up in little scandals, bargains struck, words broken, prayers, promises, and though she cried out to me in extremis I did not move, I didn’t lift a finger to help her, I didn’t intercede with heaven, nor whisper the charmed word in God’s ear. On a night like this I number the days to the solstice and the turn back to the light. O sun, centre of our foolish dance, burning heart of stone, molten mother of us all, hear me and have pity.

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Paula Meehan Glossary grotto: a small cave, sometimes specially built, that houses a religious statue, usually the Virgin Mary vigil: watch over someone ill or dead, especially overnight cavort: move in a playful way; frolic

7 9

intimations: hints; warnings garrison: military barracks

scourging: beating with a leather whip

incarnate: made human, often refers to a god taking human form

maculate: stained; spotted

pageantry: elaborate display

scud: move quickly; dart

keening: crying to mourn the dead

exaltation: praise and celebration

cacophony: loud, harsh and inharmonious mixture of sounds

in extremis: Latin phrase meaning at the point of death; in extreme difficulty

intercede: intervene on her behalf

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Guidelines

‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’ is from the collection Mysteries of the Home (1996). As a young working-class girl growing up in inner-city Dublin, one of Meehan’s favourite images was that of the statue in the Pro-Cathedral of Stella Maris/Star of the Sea in which the Virgin Mother stands upon a crescent moon, her head surrounded by stars. Many years later, Meehan wrote this unsettling, powerful poem in response to a shocking event. In January 1984, a fifteen-year-old girl named Ann Lovett died giving birth, in secret, to her baby son, at a hillside grotto on the outskirts of her hometown of Granard, Co. Longford. When she was found by passers-by, her baby boy was dead. She herself died later that day in hospital. A whole generation still remembers the name Ann Lovett and the awful heartbreak and loneliness associated with her story. Meehan read part of this poem at a protest following the death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012 (see page 230).

Commentary Lines 1–19

Th e

The first two stanzas depict a dark, freezing November night. As an icy wind howls, the speaker, a statue of Mary in a grotto, tells of the utter darkness: ‘without as much as / star or planet to ease my vigil’. The word ‘vigil’ implies that the statue is watching over someone or something. The trees ‘cavort in agony’, seeming to writhe in the gale as if in dreadful pain. The statue is reminded of what happened in the past and happens in the present in this place where armies built garrisons and violence has often been wrought in the name of religion. Death affects the fauna too, with fish dying in ‘the stagnant water’ of the lake while people are shut up in their farmhouses burning turf. The atmosphere is bleak and oppressive.

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Lines 20–29

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The speaker introduces herself by telling us what others call her: ‘They call me Mary – Blessed, Holy, Virgin.’ We might note that she does not call herself this. She suggests that these are titles thrust upon her by people who try to ‘fit me to a myth of a man crucified’ (in other words to Jesus Christ). The Bible’s story of the torture of Jesus and his subsequent crucifixion is described: his crown of thorns, the beatings, nailing him to a cross and piercing his heart. She tells us she has been named ‘Mother of all this grief’, even though she is said to be a virgin: ‘mated to no mortal man’. The statue then tells us how demands are made of her by the people who ‘kneel before me’ and pray. Their prayers seem to be ineffectual: ‘like sparks from a bonfire / that blaze a moment, then wink out’.

Lines 30–42

There is a more positive shift now as the statue tells us how ‘lovely’ spring and summer can be here. Little girls make their First Holy Communion in white dresses, although they are not quite as lovely as the white in nature where the ‘cow parsley and haw blossom’ have sprays of lacy, white flower heads. Another religious rite happens in summer – weddings, when even the earth, personified as a woman, desires sex: ‘the earth herself calls out for coupling’. The statue is wrapped up in all this sensuality and would shed her traditional garb of pale blue and white robes if she could. Note again this attire has ‘honeyed bed’ been thrust upon her. These childish and innocent colours are not The poet W. B. Yeats called sex the ‘honey of her own choice. If she could, she ‘would break loose of my stony generation’, in other words, the pleasure that robes’. She yearns to become flesh, ‘incarnate’, and to dishevel a compensates for the pain of childbirth. bed with lovemaking, ‘maculate and tousled in a honeyed bed’.

Lines 43–49

Autumn follows with the rite of burial. Nature is ripe and heavy with sweetening fruit: ‘crab, sloe, berry, hip’. Just as windfall apples lie rotting on the grass of an orchard, an ‘old soul’ is buried with his family: ‘lowered to his kin’. There seems to be a natural order to everything so far: children make their First Communion in spring (the season of birth and new life), summer is the time of weddings and sexual maturity, and then as nature ripens and begins to die back in the autumn harvest, the old are buried. Winter follows as death is ‘scripted to the season’s play’. This order suggests that the lives of people are in harmony with nature and the seasons and everything is as it is meant to be and happening just as it should.

Lines 50–55

We are brought back to the ‘All Souls’ Night’ described in the opening of the poem. The wind screams like mourners lamenting Keening is the action of wailing in grief for a the dead; it is ‘keening’. The statue half expects such sounds to dead person. It is a ritualised show of sorrow raise the dead in the graveyard to come and wail along with the and respect at the meeting point between life elements. A Judgement Day scene is imagined, with the souls and death. A great tradition in Ireland’s past, this vocal artform was performed at the wake and bodies of the dead becoming ‘a cacophony of bone’ begging or graveside, generally by experienced elder the heavens for their judgement. Interestingly, they seem more women. Keeners were often professionals concerned with no longer ‘being the conscience of the town’ than hired to perform their laments. with whether they are assigned to heaven or hell. What might it mean that these ancestors are seen as the ‘conscience of the town’? Are they used by the current townsfolk to justify old-fashioned prejudices and outdated customs?

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‘keening’

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The final stanza has a distinctly pagan feel as the statue looks not to God but to the sun, a female and ancient deity. The solstice is invoked and summer is recalled. The sun is prayed to, ‘O sun / centre of our foolish dance’, and called ‘mother of us all’ by the statue, which might imply she has revoked this title herself. She asks this ‘molten’ deity to hear her and ‘have pity’. It is a bleak ending to a very provocative and emotive poem.

Finally, we come to the crux of the poem. After much digression, the statue tells us that this miserable November night reminds her of another night when a fifteen-year-old girl lay down alone at her feet and gave birth to a baby, without any medical assistance or a friend to help. The girl had kept the pregnancy secret. When her time to birth the baby arrived, she left the town with its pettiness and prejudices, ‘tucked up in little scandals / bargains struck, words broken, prayers, promises’. She came to the Statue of the Virgin Mary to give birth, and when she cried out in her worst distress, ‘in extremis’, the statue did nothing: I did not move, / I didn’t lift a finger to help her, / I didn’t intercede with heaven, / nor whisper the charmed word in God’s ear.’ This list seems to emphasise all the things the statue might have done but did not or could not.

Lines 56–74

Themes and imagery

A response to the tragic death of Ann Lovett and her baby in 1984, this poem deals with some very controversial themes and has sometimes alarmingly provocative imagery.

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Birth and death, innocence and sex, heat and ice are juxtaposed to create a tense and menacing atmosphere. We are first introduced to these contrasts in the image ‘seeds of ice’ (line 3). Surely ice will kill a seed? A seed represents birth, new life, but ‘seeds of ice’ foreshadows the tragic circumstances of the birth to come, as the child will die in the freezing cold of a winter storm after his young mother ‘pushed her secret out into the night’ (line 60). The ice seems to attack, it seems to deliberately want to ‘cut you’ (line 3). Meehan uses pathetic fallacy to convey the ambivalence or perhaps even cruelty of the elements. The town is ‘tucked up safe and dreaming’ (line 4), warm and ignorant of the suffering their ‘little scandals’ (line 61) may cause. This technique is effective in emphasising the loneliness of the statue and, later on, of the girl at her feet. Another effective early image using contrast is that of the trees in the storm. The trees ‘cavort in agony’ (line 9). Note the paradox here; ‘cavort’ is generally used to describe playful, often sexual, activity, yet the trees writhe ‘in agony’. You may notice other paradoxical or unusual pairings as the poem progresses. The stormy setting introduces a mood of anxiety and anger with sexual undertones. Darkness is absolute as the statue HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 251

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Miasma is a common concept in ancient Greek tragedy, which Meehan would have studied while at Trinity College. It means a ‘pollution’ that will bring disease and death to the place

watches over the area, maintaining her ‘vigil’ (line 7), and images of death and decay pervade the second stanza: ‘ghost voyagers … death tactics … dying lakes … fish drowning … stagnant water’. It is as if a miasma punishes the town for the death of this girl. All of nature seems to cry out against this outrage.

Miasma

suffering a plague because its king died at the hands of his son, who, unwittingly, has taken his father’s place and married his own mother.

A gender divide is clear in the imagery of stanza 2, which is of male wars often killing in the name of male gods: ‘where men hunt each other and invoke / the various names of God as a blessing / on their death tactics’.

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Sophocles’ play Oedipus, the town of Thebes is

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where a crime against nature has occurred. In

Weather and the seasons are used consistently in the imagery of the poem to convey themes of birth, death and injustice while also creating a powerful atmosphere of torment and disquiet. As time progresses in the poem, the seasons seem to be in harmony with the religious rites of passage in the Catholic faith. The statue recalls spring in stanza 4 and relates it to the sacrament of communion, ‘Girls in Communion frocks’ (line 31), yet nature is stronger and more beautiful as these dresses are ‘pale rivals to the riot in the hedgerows’ (line 32). Summer is linked with weddings, using language and imagery that are clearly sexual: ‘the earth herself calls out for coupling’ The creation myths of most cultures portray (line 37). The statue also yearns for sexual fulfilment: ‘My being the earth as a female entity, a goddess, the / cries out to be incarnate, incarnate, / maculate and tousled in mother of all life. For example, Gaia in Greek a honeyed bed’ (lines 40–42). She is clearly unhappy with her mythology or Terra Mater (Mother Earth) in Roman mythology. The sun is described in ‘Blessed, Holy, Virgin’ labelling by men (line 20). Such overt similar terms at the end of this poem. sexuality and sensuality may make for uncomfortable or even offensive reading. However, we need to try to see why Meehan seeks to shock. It may be that she wishes to shake us from our slumber in order to really see the hypocrisy and the injustices that people commit in the name of religion and at the expense of the female gender. The poem appears to suggest that if religion did not fetishise virginity and purity, if sexual relations before marriage was not a sin, then Ann Lovett may not have died secretly giving birth at the foot of a statue in a grotto in Granard on a winter’s night. The anger of the poet is palpable, and her themes are forcefully conveyed in her images. According to the poem, the statue wishes to love, whereas men want to worship ‘a myth of a man crucified’ with all the gory violence of ‘scourging and the falling, and the falling again, / the thorny crown, the hammer blow of iron / into wrist and ankle, the sacred bleeding heart’ (lines 21–24). The poet questions why we might be shocked at the idea of the Virgin Mary yearning for sexual relations, but not shocked by the grotesque images of torture and suffering in the crucifixion of Christ. This poem is designed to make us ask such questions and to encourage us to examine our own beliefs and consciences in the hope that we can learn from the death of Ann Lovett.

Th e

Earth

Autumn is a time to grow old and begin to die: ‘Death is just another harvest’ (line 48). In stanza 7, the statue returns to the present, All Souls’ Night, when even the wind mourns the dead: there was ‘no respite from the keening of the wind’ (line 51). A ghoulish image follows of the bones of the dead rising up and seeming to protest, perhaps at being held responsible for outrages in the name of religion: ‘a cacophony of bone imploring sky for judgement / and release from being the conscience of the town’ (lines 54–55). The statue muses that the night Ann Lovett died was ‘a night like this’ (line 56).

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Paula Meehan

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In the penultimate stanza, the climax of the poem, we finally see the tragic image of the fifteen-year-old girl lying prone and alone at the feet of the Virgin Mary, who cannot or will not help her. The final stanza is an anticlimax as all the statue can do is await the summer again: ‘I number the days to the solstice’ (line 68). Rather than worshipping the ‘myth of a man crucified’ (line 21), she turns to a far older deity, the sun, a female god full of fire and passion: ‘burning heart of stone / molten mother of us all’ (lines 72–73). And rather than asking for any miracle, she simply says: ‘hear me and have pity’ (line 74).

Ire

Form and language

The statue speaks in the idiom of rural Ireland. For example, ‘It can be bitter here … ice would cut you to the quick’ (lines 1–3).

The gender divide is also carried through the language. Note, for example, the repetition of ‘They’ in stanza 3. ‘They’ seems to represent men. The statue suggests that certain attributes have been thrust upon her by men: ‘They call me Mary – Blessed, Holy, Virgin, / They fit me to a myth of a man crucified’ (lines 20–21). She seems to feel that these labels do not accurately represent her, and she angrily rejects the belief that she is the ‘Mother of all this grief’ (line 25). She also feels ill-represented Greek chorus by her pale blue and ‘pure’ white robes, which seem ‘as if they In most Greek tragedies the chorus represented had robbed / a child’s sky for colour’ (lines 39–40). Once again, the opinions of the public and was composed the language used reveals that this is something that has been of men. The playwright Euripides, however, thrust upon her; she has no choice. The statue is like the chorus had a female chorus in Medea; this chorus in a Greek tragedy: she can observe and comment on the action was sympathetic to the plight of the female protagonist. but cannot interfere or take part in it.

Repetition is used throughout this elegy. At times it imitates prayer but in a twisted way. See, for example, the triple ‘I did not’ or ‘didn’t’ in the penultimate stanza. Religion uses threes extensively, ‘The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’ being a famous example. The statue uses this pattern of speech to admit that she could or would not help the girl in her hour of need: ‘I did not move, / I didn’t lift a finger to help her, / I didn’t intercede with heaven’ (lines 64–66). This repetition is almost a mantra, a chanted confession of inaction.

Th e

Assonance is used extensively in the poem, often creating an eerie quality. Hear the long ‘a’ and ‘o’ sounds in the ghostly phrase ‘a cacophony of bone’ (line 54), which adds to the nightmarish image as the statue imagines the dead rising ‘from the graveyard to join in exaltation with the gale’ (line 53). The word ‘cacophony’ is onomatopoeic, and we can perhaps hear the sounds of bones clacking against each other as the skeletons rise up. The overall mood created by the sounds and language in the poem is one of restrained anger. As the child lies dying, giving birth to a baby who will also die, the town is ‘tucked up’ (line 61) asleep. ‘Tucked up’ conveys a cute, cosy slumber and intimates companionship in contrast to the abject loneliness of the fifteenyear-old girl who is ‘in extremis’ (line 63) and has fled to avoid the censure of the townspeople. Motherhood is mentioned elsewhere in the poem but becomes central in the language of the final section, where a pagan prayer to the sun is uttered by the statue, in possibly a negation of the Catholic faith (lines 70–74).

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Questions Describe the setting conveyed in the first stanza. What details in the language and imagery create this picture?

‘The second stanza is full of death and pain, all at the hands of men.’ Give examples to support this statement.

‘They call me’, ‘They fit me’, ‘They name me’, ‘They kneel before me’. What is the effect of this repetition in stanza 3? Who are ‘They’ and what is the speaker’s attitude to them?

How are the seasons of spring and summer evoked in the language and imagery used in stanzas 4 and 5?

The speaker contrasts the typical autumn that comes and goes with this particular ‘All Souls’ Night’ (stanzas 6 and 7). How do they differ and suggest why the poet uses this contrast?

Stanza 8 relates the plight and death of a fifteen-year-old girl. Look at the language used in this stanza and comment on its effect on you. For example, consider the phrase ‘I remember the child’ (line 56), where the word ‘girl’ could have been used instead.

Do you think the final stanza offers a satisfactory ending to the poem? Give reasons for your answer.

Life is described by the speaker as ‘the season’s play’ and ‘our foolish dance’ (lines 49 and 71). What, do you think, does the statue mean by these euphemisms?

Comment on how gender is represented in the poem and how a gender divide is conveyed.

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Ire

What might it mean that the dead are seen as the ‘conscience of the town’ (line 55)? Are the current townsfolk using their ancestors to justify old-fashioned prejudices and outdated customs? Give reasons for your answer.

Paradoxes appear throughout the poem. For example, on All Souls’ Night, the night of the dead, a girl gives birth. Find two more examples and attempt to explain the seeming contradiction.

‘Nature is in harmony with human life in much of the poem, but this balance is distorted by the girl’s predicament.’ Trace this pattern in the poem and comment on how and why it is disrupted.

a) What impression do you have of the speaker at the end of the poem? b) Did your impression of the speaker change as the poem progressed? Answer with reference to the poem as a whole.

Choose one of the following statements and write a response using this poem to agree or disagree: a) ‘I love [Paula Meehan’s] verbal energy and the profound compassion that I find in her work. She is a dynamic public advocate for Irish poetry.’ – Maureen Kennelly b) ‘The burden of the statue’s complaint in “The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks” is that she is immobilised in an uncongenial role.’ – Antoinette Quinn

Th e

In your opinion, what message did Meehan want to convey by writing this poem?

r upwo

If there had been social media at the time of Ann Lovett’s tragic death, what might the reactions have been? Compose tweets, messages on Facebook, Instagram, etc. What would the hashtag be? What form might protests take? This might be useful as a group exercise as long as boundaries are respected.

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Cora, Auntie

Before you read

laughing at Death— love unconditional keeping her just this side of the threshold

of 10

she tilted at Death. Scourge of Croydon tram drivers and High Street dossers on her motorised invalid scooter

thick and curly as when she was a girl; always a girl in her glance teasing Death—humour a lance

in her voice. Old skin, bag of bones, grinning back at the rictus of Death:

Ire

as her body withered and her eyes grew darker and stranger as her hair grew back after chemo

that last year: bearing the pain, not crucifixion but glory

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Staring Death down with a bottle of morphine in one hand, a bottle of Jameson in the other:

What is emigration and ro r upwo why does Ireland have such a long history of it? What drives people to emigrate? Discuss these questions as a class.

always a girl in her name— Cora, maiden, from the Greek Kopπ, promising blossom, summer, the scent of thyme. 25

And we would know the very moment it was time to go and leave her in the arms of Death who desired her so

Th e

and walk out under the stars of April thrown like sequins on the velvet of night.

***

Sequin: she is standing on the kitchen table. She is twenty one. It is nineteen sixty one. The women are sewing red sequins to the hem of her white satin dress as she moves slowly round and round.

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Sequins red as the berries, red as the lips of maids in old time ballads,

Ire

I’ve snatched from the flux to catch this poem at my own kitchen table—

Cora, Marie, Jacinta, my aunties, Helena, my mother, Mary, my grandmother— the light of those stars

only reaching me now. I orbit the table I can barely see over. I am under it singing.

All that year I hunted sequins: roaming the house I found them in cracks and crannies,

a black cat swinging in a silver horseshoe, a giant key to the door, emblems of luck, of access.

She was weeks from taking the boat to England. Dust on the mantlepiece, dust on the cards she left behind:

***

in the pillowcase, the eiderdown, under the stairs, in a hole in the lino,

in a split in the sofa, in a tear in the armchair in the home of the shy mouse.

Th e

which I open now in her memory— the coinage, the sudden glamour of an emigrant soul.

Glossary 2

morphine: drug used to relieve pain

Jameson: brand of Irish whiskey

chemo: chemotherapy; a cancer treatment that often causes hair loss

With odd beads and single earrings, a broken charm bracelet, a glittering pin, I gathered them into a tin box

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red as blood on the snow, as blood on the bedsheet, as this red pen on this white paper

lance: long spear

Croydon: south London neighbourhood

rictus: frozen grin; also used to describe a skull or the face of a corpse

flux: action or process of flowing; state of constant change

eiderdown: large quilt for a bed

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Paula Meehan

Guidelines

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‘Cora, Auntie’ is from the collection Painting Rain (2009). Here Meehan commemorates the life and death of her aunt.

Commentary

Ire

Lines 1–30

Cora is near the end of her life. Despite her terminal cancer, she ‘tilted at Death’ is defiant and upbeat: ‘Staring Death down … laughing at Death The references to a ‘lance’ and Cora tilting … teasing Death’. She is hanging on to life, tenuously kept there at death may allude to the famous novel Don by ‘unconditional’ love. The physical changes in this admirable Quixote by Cervantes. The eponymous hero fights windmills with a lance, believing them woman are undeniable and her body is ‘withered’. However, her to be giants he must slay. He is a comic yet hair, which had fallen out due to her chemotherapy treatment, has tragic figure in the novel and the phrase ‘tilting grown back ‘thick and curly as when she was a girl’. The speaker at windmills’ has come to mean fighting an observes that her aunt always had a girlish look. A comic image imaginary enemy – a useless endeavour. follows of Cora terrorising the London town of Croydon, where ‘tram drivers and High Street dossers’ have to get out of the way of her scooter. She has coped admirably with her illness without being a martyr to it: ‘bearing the pain, / not crucifixion but glory / in her voice’.

Lines 31–51

The speaker recalls the meaning of her aunt’s Greek name: Cora means ‘maiden’, in other words a young girl. It can also suggest a virgin. To the speaker, the name is redolent of the warmth of Greece and its heady aromas: ‘promising blossom, summer, the scent of thyme’. (Meehan explored Greece in her youth and was taken with its beauty and mythical past.) Her thoughts turn to Cora’s death, which was instantly felt. Death was a persistent suitor who finally won her aunt’s affections and got to take her out into the velvety glistening April night, where stars were ‘thrown like sequins’.

Th e

The image of sequins is picked up at the start of the second section of the poem, but the scene has shifted to her aunt’s twenty-first birthday in 1961. Cora is being fitted into a ‘white satin dress’ and red sequins are being sewn into its hem by the women around her. It is a heartwarming picture of a close family of women. A series of similes compare the red of the sequins to ‘berries … lips of maids … blood on the snow … blood on the bedsheet’ and the pen the poet is using to write the poem at her own kitchen table. Thus, Meehan skilfully places herself within the poem and merges the different moments in history like a ‘flux’ in time and place, enabling her to catch a memory and preserve it in words. The women from this scene – Meehan’s aunts, mother and grandmother – are listed by name and thus also preserved. They are likened to ‘stars’ whose ‘light’ is only just reaching the poet, who now – from the distance of time and with the life experience she has accumulated – appreciates the women they were. Her viewpoint as a child was very different: she was under the table ‘singing’, barely able to see over it when she moved around this family of women.

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Lines 52–72

Themes and imagery

Ire

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More of Cora’s background is filled in as we learn that only weeks after her birthday she emigrated, like so many others had to do at the time, to England. The twenty-first birthday cards and gifts – ‘a black cat swinging in a silver horseshoe, / a giant key to the door’ were traditional symbols of freedom and entrance into the adult world – grow dusty when Cora leaves them behind to go to London. Clearly missing her aunt, the child keeps the red sequins she finds dotted all over the house. The list of household locations is quite endearing and shows Cora’s presence was still felt keenly by the child in these glittering little red reminders. They felt so precious that she kept them in a box, a typical little girl’s box of treasures, ‘With odd beads and single earrings, / a broken charm bracelet, a glittering pin’. The speaker opens the box now to remember her Auntie Cora, whom she honours with this poem. The memories it contains are like currency, ‘coinage’, to help her recall this glamorous, vivacious, colourful woman, whom she describes as ‘an emigrant soul’.

Emigration, family and the indomitable strength of the human spirit are themes strongly conveyed in this poem and in the story of its subject, Meehan’s Aunt Cora. We first meet Cora near the end of her life, as she copes with cancer. The poem works back and forth in time from there. A memorable and amusing image is that of Cora merrily terrorising Croydon’s tram drivers and layabouts, who must take action to avoid ‘her motorised invalid scooter’ (line 15).

The sun, moon and stars are common images in Meehan’s poetry. Here, she recalls being in ‘orbit’ (line 50) around her older female relatives, and only now appreciating ‘the light of those stars’ (line 48). Note the similarity to an image in ‘The Pattern’ where the children skate around their mother, who is like the sun, on the polished floor.

Th e

Death is personified in the poem. He is depicted as an old enemy, a sparring partner and even a suitor as Cora grows more and more ill. Cora teases him, using humour as a ‘lance’ to keep him at bay (line 12). In time she comes to resemble him: ‘Old skin, bag of bones, / grinning back’ at his ‘rictus’ (lines 20–21). She eventually succumbs to his seductive charms, ending up ‘in the arms of Death who desired her so’ (line 27). This happens at night, as the action in many of Meehan’s poems does, especially the elegies. She dies ‘under the stars of April’, which are like ‘sequins on velvet’ (lines 28–30). This simile of sequins, which will become a motif in the poem, leads the poet to an earlier memory of her aunt.

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Paula Meehan

Ire

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In a flashback to 1961, Meehan is a child under the kitchen table as her female relatives sew red sequins onto the hem of her aunt’s white party dress. The sequins come to symbolise not only Cora’s vivacity and joie de vivre but also her suffering and death: ‘red as blood’ (line 40). Meehan enters the poem and in its back-andforth timeline she ‘snatched from the flux’ (line 43) some memories and crafted them into the poem in red ink ‘at my own kitchen table’ (line 45). Just as her female relatives were skilled seamstresses, Meehan is skilled at the craft of creating with words. Red ink on white paper is like the red sequins on Cora’s white dress. Images of red and white come in a triplet form: ‘red as blood on the snow, / as blood on the bedsheet, / as this red pen on this white paper’ (lines 40–42). The central image here may be one of sexual awakening if blood on a bedsheet is taken as a sign of lost virginity. After Cora left, the speaker found sequins everywhere and the places listed provide the reader with images that convey the poverty and disrepair of her home: ‘in a hole in the lino, / in a split in the sofa / in a tear in the armchair’ (lines 63–65).

Many of these sequins end up in a box of broken and mismatched treasures, which Meehan opens as she celebrates her aunt. This box, which elicits memories and anecdotes leading to the creation of poetry, could be an excellent and fitting metaphor for Meehan’s creative process – the object stimulates a memory and a story that can be explored using creativity and skill. The result is a celebration of ‘the sudden glamour / of an emigrant soul’ (lines 71–72), a crafted piece of art, a poem. We see the same process with the sewing machine and photo in ‘The Pattern’.

Form and language

The poem is an elegy for the poet’s beloved aunt and as such celebrates her life and commemorates her death. The wording of the title straightaway suggests tenderness for the eponymous aunt of the poem. Aunt Cora or Cora Aunt would sound more formal; the use of the colloquial ‘Auntie’ is far more relaxed and affectionate. Naming is important in Meehan’s work and in this poem she takes care to name the women in her family who were so influential: ‘Cora, Marie, Jacinta, my aunties, / Helena, my mother, Mary, my grandmother’ (lines 46–47).

The patterns and form of this poem are heavily influenced by the highly original American poet Emily Dickinson. The use of dashes and the capitalisation of ‘Death’ will be familiar to fans of this poet. The idea of death as a patient suitor can be traced directly to Dickinson’s poem ‘Because I could not stop for death’ (see ‘Influence of Dickinson’).

Th e

The poem has a lyrical and lilting quality due to the sound effects used. Hear, for example, how repetition, internal rhyme and sibilance transform the description of the tatty furniture where young Meehan finds sequins, elevating it to music: ‘in a split in the sofa, / in a tear in the armchair’ (lines 64–65). Alliterative phrases also spring with energy like ‘cracks and crannies’ (line 60) and ‘broken charm bracelet’ (line 68). The overall effect is cheerful and celebratory, bursting with the energy Cora herself seemed to have.

Influence of Dickinson The first two stanzas of ‘Cora, Auntie’ show the influence of Emily Dickinson on Meehan: Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility – In ‘Cora, Auntie’, Meehan’s aunt ends up ‘in the arms of Death who desired her so’ (line 27).

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Cora, the name Cora is a name derived from the ancient Greek Κόρπ (Kórē), an epithet of the Greek goddess Persephone, who became the queen of the

underworld after being kidnapped by Hades.

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She lived in the underworld for half the year and her return to Earth brought warmth, blossom and growth to the land again.

Ire

Meehan uses threes extensively in her work and this poem is no exception. Look at the three-line (tercet) pattern to the stanzas. The poem itself is divided into three sections. There are groups of three within the stanzas also. Consider, for example, ‘promising blossom, summer, the scent of thyme’ in line 24 to match the beauty and sweet-scented warmth of Greece with Cora and her name. Using Greek letters to show the origin of Cora’s name also adds a note of the exotic to the language, both visually and orally, ‘Cora, maiden, from the Greek Kopπ’ (line 23).

Questions

What is your impression of Cora from the first section of the poem (stanzas 1–10)?

How is death personified in the poem? What attributes does he have?

Describe Cora’s battle with cancer, as depicted in the first section of the poem.

How does the poet link her memories of the past with the present in lines 31–51? Consider colour, objects and place.

In lines 34–42, what things are red and what might each symbolise?

What has the speaker ‘snatched from the flux’ (line 43) and what do you understand the word ‘flux’ to mean?

In the third part of the poem (from line 52), what has Cora left behind both physically and as a legacy?

The box of trinkets in the final lines of the poem may be a metaphor for the poem itself. Do you agree with this analysis? Give reasons for your answer. If you do not agree, suggest an alternative.

Find and explain an example of each of the following in the poem: symbol, simile, metaphor, personification.

Compare this poem to ‘The Pattern’ in its description of family life and use of anecdote.

Write an epitaph (phrase on a headstone) and either a eulogy (spoken account of the deceased) or an obituary (written account of the deceased) for Cora based on the details in this poem.

Th e

a) This poem is an elegy. Explain how this genre is evident in this poem. b) What other elegies by Meehan have you encountered?

Write an elegy using a three-line stanza pattern of any length to commemorate someone in your life.

Write three brief entries in the diary of an emigrant. The first before leaving home, the second upon arrival in the new country and the third after living abroad for some time.

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Paula Meehan Before you read G

Share an early memory from ro r upwo school with your classmates.

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The Exact Moment I Became a Poet

Ire

For Kay Foran

said Attend to your books, girls, or mark my words, you’ll end up in the sewing factory.

It wasn’t just that some of the girls’ mothers worked in the sewing factory or even that my own aunt did, and many neighbours, but that those words ‘end up’ robbed the labour of its dignity.

was in 1963 when Miss Shannon rapping the duster on the easel’s peg half obscured by a cloud of chalk

Not that I knew it then, not in those words – labour, dignity. That’s all back construction,

making sense; allowing also the teacher was right and no one knows it like I do myself.

duster: used to erase chalk from a blackboard

trussed: tied up tightly

conveyor belt: continuously moving surface used in factories

Th e

But: I saw them: mothers, aunts and neighbours trussed like chickens on a conveyor belt,

Glossary

getting sewn up the way my granny sewed the sage and onion stuffing in the birds. Words could pluck you, leave you naked, your lovely shiny feathers all gone.

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Guidelines

‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’ is from the collection Dharmakaya (2001) and recalls a moment in primary school that led to a life as a poet.

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Commentary

Ire

Lines 1–18

The poem uses enjambment extensively right from the first line, which flows seamlessly from the title: ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet / was in 1963’. The moment was when a teacher banged chalk from her duster and told her students that if they do not work hard enough, they will ‘end up’ working in the sewing factory. The speaker is not so much offended by the fact that her aunt, neighbours and classmates’ mothers work there as she is by the phrase ‘end up’. In hindsight, ‘back construction’, she realises that this two-word phrase ‘robbed / the labour of its dignity’. In other words, the hard toil those women did was reduced in value by suggesting that it is the worst thing that could happen and using it as a threat to make the children work harder. The speaker feels keenly that she realised the insult of this phrase more than anyone else and acknowledges that part of the sting in the words came from the fact that ‘the teacher was right’.

Lines 19–27

In a strange simile, the women working in the sewing factory are likened to chickens that have been plucked, stuffed and had their wings and legs tied up with string so that they are ready to be cooked. This process leaves the bird naked, restricted and vulnerable. Words can have the same effect on people. They can pluck our self-respect and dignity away, ‘your lovely shiny feathers all gone’, leaving us exposed.

Themes and imagery

The power of words is a major theme here. Education is the key to escaping a life of drudgery and toil, which is summed up in the simile describing the factory workers as being ‘trussed like chickens / on a conveyor belt’ (lines 20–21). A conveyor belt suggests non-stop repetitive work without any creativity or joy. Without education, people are left like plucked, trussed-up, oven-ready chickens: exposed and powerless to escape the inevitable. Words, like feathers, allow us to fly, to achieve and they also protect us. The powerful closing phrase combines the strands of this theme and its associated imagery: ‘naked, / your lovely shiny feathers all gone’ (lines 26–27). Without education, you are vulnerable and the words of those who do have the education have the power and can rob you of your dignity.

Th e

This reality is especially true for the lower classes and particularly for poor women. The poem highlights the lack of opportunities for women in 1950s and 1960s Ireland. Note that Miss Shannon’s class is all girls and that the workers in the sewing factory are all women. Sewing and women are strong themes and images in Meehan’s poetry, including ‘The Pattern’ and ‘Cora, Auntie’. Notice the shift in position and tone for the speaker in the poem during the last three stanzas. She becomes a more detached observer, looking at the women who surrounded her. With hindsight or ‘back construction’ (line 15), she sees them as dehumanised by their menial and repetitive work. They have become like slaughtered animals ready for the oven: ‘trussed like chickens’ (line 20). They are restricted, repressed and oppressed by circumstances beyond their control.

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Paula Meehan

Form and language

Ire

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The poem’s language is typically accessible and the format is familiar in Meehan’s poetry. It takes an anecdote and uses hindsight or ‘back construction’ (line 15) to raise an issue. It uses enjambment (where the meaning continues beyond the end of the line onto the next line) to let the poem flow, without even the interruption of a capital letter from the title into the anecdote. It has a dramatic style, opening with a time, place and action. It is 1963 and Miss Shannon is in her classroom, cleaning her chalk duster while delivering a warning and a threat: the girls must ‘Attend’ to their ‘books’ or they will ‘end up’ working in the sewing factory (lines 4–6). The use of italics rather than quotation marks for her speech seems to elevate the language of the teacher, which is quite formal, showing us her education and mastery over words. Interestingly, although the speaker is offended, she feels that the teacher is right. The blank verse (verse without rhyme) of the poem adds to its accessibility and creates a conversational tone. As we have seen in other poems, Meehan often uses groups of threes; here, she employs unrhymed tercets and a characteristic trinity: ‘mothers, aunts and neighbours’ (line 19).

Questions

What is your impression of Miss Shannon from the information given in the poem?

What two reasons are there for Miss Shannon’s comment about ending up in the sewing factory being offensive to the speaker? Which one is given more weight? Why?

What do you understand by the phrase ‘That’s all back construction’ in line 15? What is it referring to in the poem?

The speaker admits ‘the teacher was right’ (line 17). What was she right about? What tone do you imagine the speaker is using as she says this line?

The speaker feels that she knows the truth of the teacher’s words more than anyone (line 18). Using your study of this poem, and of Meehan in general, explain why you think she may feel this way.

There is a change in position and tone for the speaker in the final three stanzas of the poem. Describe this shift and identify how and why it has occurred.

a) Explain what you think Meehan is trying to convey in the simile ‘trussed like chickens / on a conveyor belt’ (lines 20–21). How does this describe the women she is observing? b) Why, do you think, does Meehan also include her granny in the account in stanza 8?

What do the ‘shiny feathers’ at the end of the poem represent in your opinion?

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‘Education and success are determined by social class.’ Write a debate speech for this motion and perhaps even have a class debate on the subject.

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My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis

It was the piebald horse in next door’s garden frightened me out of a dream with her dawn whinny. I was back in the boxroom of the house, my brother’s room now, full of ties and sweaters and secrets. Bottles chinked on the doorstep, the first bus pulled up to the stop. The rest of the house slept

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for Brendan Kennelly

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Who was St Francis of ro r upwo Assisi? Research this saint and share your findings. You might also share an image you came across in your research.

Before you read

except for my father. I heard him rake the ash from the grate, plug in the kettle, hum a snatch of a tune. Then he unlocked the back door and stepped out into the garden. Autumn was nearly done, the first frost whitened the slates of the estate. He was older than I had reckoned, his hair completely silver, and for the first time I saw the stoop of his shoulder, saw that his leg was stiff. What’s he at? So early and still stars in the west?

boxroom: small bedroom

eaves: lower part of a roof that projects beyond the walls

Th e

pandemonium: wild and noisy disorder, confusion or uproar; literally, abode of all demons

piebald: patches of two colours, usually black and white

Glossary

They came then: birds of every size, shape, colour; they came from the hedges and shrubs, from eaves and garden sheds, from the industrial estate, outlying fields, from Dubber Cross they came and the ditches of the North Road. The garden was a pandemonium when my father threw up his hands and tossed the crumbs to the air. The sun cleared O’Reilly’s chimney and he was suddenly radiant, a perfect vision of St Francis, made whole, made young again, in a Finglas garden.

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Guidelines

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From the collection Mysteries of the Home (1996), ‘My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis’ considers the poet’s father, portraying him as a quiet and gentle man, kind by nature. Meehan has said that her father fed not only birds in their Finglas back garden but also caged guard-dogs in a nearby industrial estate.

Title and dedication

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Commentary Lives of the Saints

One of the most revered Catholic books after the Bible, Lives of the Saints lists the Catholic

saints and provides an image and a description of the life of each saint. Each life is followed by a ‘lesson’ taken from that life to help the reader apply the virtues of the saint to their own life.

Books about saints were hugely popular in Catholic Ireland. Meehan found she was frightened by some of the images they included, which often depicted gruesome torture and death. However, she perceived the image of St Francis of Assisi as an image of comfort.

The poem is dedicated to Brendan Kennelly, an Irish poet and academic, who taught Meehan when she was in Trinity College and who also often uses birds as symbols and images in his poetry.

Stanzas 1 and 2

Stanza 3

When the speaker hears a horse whinny, it shakes her from a dream in which she was back at home in Finglas listening to the sounds of the early morning: the clink of milk bottles and the first bus of the day arriving outside. Inside the house, the sounds of her father pottering about in the kitchen, putting the kettle on and cleaning out the fire, can be heard. Winter is approaching and the frost on the roof-tiles of the houses in the estate reminds her of her father’s silver hair. He is ageing, she realises, as she notes the stoop of his shoulder and the stiffness in one of his legs. She asks herself what he could be doing, going out into the back garden so early on this cold morning when stars are still visible in the sky.

Th e

Her answer comes immediately. Her father is feeding breadcrumbs to the birds, which flock in huge numbers to their benefactor from every corner of the area. Their number and variety are noted as they converge, all shapes, sizes and colours, to feed from the crumbs her father scatters for them, arms out wide. As the sun rises over a neighbour’s house, represented by ‘O’Reilly’s chimney’, her father is transformed by the dawn light and his age slips away. He is made new. He is young again and blessed, ‘suddenly radiant’. The poem’s title is explained now as her father seems to her to be a vision of St Francis St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and especially known St Francis, from Assisi in Italy, is the patron for his affinity with birds. Her father is ‘made whole … again, / in a saint of the environment and animals because Finglas garden’ as his years and his frailties fall away through his he loved all creatures and was loved by them. simple act of kindness. He preached messages of kindness, love and tolerance to all who would listen, even to the birds who flocked to him.

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Religious imagery is used to convey the theme of love within the family and again the importance of memory surfaces in Meehan’s work. The image of St Francis, arms outstretched as birds flock around him, was a familiar and iconic one to Irish children and is used to great effect here to praise the kindness of her father. He is not the wasteful, aggressive man we will meet in ‘Hearth Lesson’ but rather a gentle soul whose love of nature transforms him into a saint. An ‘unsung hero getting on with life’ is how Meehan described her father when talking about this poem. It shows the deep effect the Catholic Church had on Irish consciousness in those days that a heroic figure to a child becomes saintlike. Religion is present in some form or another in many of Meehan’s poems (we saw St Christopher being mentioned in ‘The Pattern’, while ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’ and ‘Prayer for the Children of Longing’ are heavy with religious themes ‘pandemonium’ and images). The In John Milton’s famous epic poem Paradise word ‘pandemonium’ Lost, which tells how Satan fell from heaven to (line 30) comes from become the devil, Pandemonium is the capital religious idiom, of hell, the place of residence of all the little referring to all the spirits or demons. little spirits or demons in hell. The noise and multitude of the birds flocking to feed on the breadcrumbs thrown by the father is captured in this exotic image. The words ‘made whole’ (line 36) are taken from Luke’s gospel in the Bible (‘thy faith has made the whole’) and give a prayer-like effect to the ending of the poem.

Themes and imagery

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Birds appear in many of Meehan’s poems. The chickens in ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’ and the magpies and wagtails in ‘Death of a Field’ are just two examples. They often represent freedom as well as nature. This poem, which is set in the urban environment of Finglas, celebrates the variety and beauty of nature. Meehan was acutely aware that the natural spaces in the places familiar to her were being replaced with more buildings and concrete as Dublin’s suburbs grew. Here, her father is portrayed as a champion of the natural world (represented by the birds) and she seems to adore him for it. Other images from nature include the ‘piebald horse’ (line 1), which is the cue to awakening the memory, and the ‘stars in the west’ (line 22) and silver frosted roof tiles, which transform a lowly council estate.

More transformation is to come in the rejuvenation of her father and his elevation from an ordinary man putting the kettle on and raking ‘the ash from the grate’ (line 11) to sainthood. This elevation is reflected in how the father’s appearance is suddenly transformed: ‘hair completely silver … stoop / of his shoulder … his leg was stiff’ (lines 18–21) becoming ‘suddenly radiant, / a perfect vision of St Francis, / made whole, made young again, / in a Finglas garden’ (lines 34–37). The juxtaposition of incongruity (where a writer deliberately places ideas or images together that may ordinarily seem to be illogical – it often has a humorous effect) is a literary technique often used by Meehan whereby unlikely images and ideas exist together, their strange

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contrast serving to emphasise each other. The everyday sights and sounds of a household – sweaters, a kettle, the chinking sound of milk bottles, etc. – are placed alongside more spiritual and ethereal words and images: ‘secrets’ (line 6), ‘pandemonium’ (line 30), ‘radiant’ (line 34). The effect produced is interesting and enlivening.

Form and language

The idea and form of the dream vision is prominent in ancient Irish folklore and poetry and this poem begins like a modern version of this tradition. It gives the poem a dreamy effect and a kind of flashback quality. The dream is immediately recalled and relayed to us in accessible language and in blank verse. However, many poetic techniques are employed to give the poem a lyrical quality.

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The notion that kindness, generosity and conservation can transform us into blessed and special people is one way to read the poem. Ordinary people can be extraordinary through their actions. A saint is most commonly regarded as a worker of miracles and the father’s transformation has a miraculous quality to it, given that his stooping old age disappears and he is young again through his charitable action of feeding the birds. Meehan has always been a campaigner and activist for those who need a voice, for those who suffer through the inequalities in our society. A small action of selflessness and charity can have a hugely positive effect. As Portia says in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: ‘How far that little candle throws its beams, so shines a good deed in a naughty world.’

Threes are always pleasing to the ear and, of course, have religious connotations. An example in this poem is ‘ties and sweaters and secrets’ (line 6) – note the sibilant ‘s’ sounds here also, which have a calming and possibly mysterious sound. Another threesome is the father’s trio of actions in the early morning: he hums, he cleans and he puts the kettle on. Also, the birds that flock to him are threefold, being of every ‘size, shape, colour’ (line 24). Note also the three-stanza format of the poem. Stanzas 1 and 2 are effectively linked through enjambment and stanzas 2 and 3 are linked through a question and its answer.

Dream visions The dream vision or aisling is an important part of Irish literary and mythical traditions. It usually portrays a man enchanted by a female vision who represents Ireland. Meehan subverts this pattern in ‘My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis’ and instead she has a vision of a man – her father transformed into a benevolent saint.

Threes The trinity of ‘the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’ is at the heart of Catholicism, and the number three is special in many religions. ‘Faith, hope and charity’ is a familiar Christian adage and we are told the most important of these is charity. The feeding of the birds by the speaker’s father can be seen as an act of charity.

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The poem uses alliteration to give a very pleasing effect as seen in the lively phrases ‘back / in the boxroom’ (lines 3–4) and ‘first frost’ (line 15). Onomatopoeia adds to the lyrical effect of the language; the horse’s ‘whinny’ (line 3) and ‘Bottles chinked’ (line 7) are just two examples here. Also note the lovely internal rhyme in the phrase ‘the slates of the estate’ (lines 16). The use of place names is common in Meehan’s poetry and shows how much she values the Dublin she grew up in. Place names also ground the poem in real time and space. ‘Dubber Cross’ and ‘the ditches of the North Road’ are mentioned in stanza 3 and, after the magical transformation of her father, we are reminded in the final line of the very ordinary place where this magic occurs: ‘in a Finglas garden’.

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Questions a) In your own words, what sights and sounds are described in the first stanza? b) Why, do you think, does Meehan mention these particular sights and sounds? What atmosphere/ setting is she seeking to create?

What is the father doing in stanza 2? How does this link to the descriptions in stanza 1?

How does the speaker link her father to the landscape in stanza 2?

How does the speaker convey that her father is ageing?

What is the speaker puzzled about at the end of the second stanza?

How does Meehan convey the vast quantity and variety of birds that come to feed in the garden?

What effect does the sun have on the scene described in the final stanza?

Why is the speaker’s father like St Francis? Consider the image of St Francis on page 266 in your answer.

What, do you think, does Meehan mean by the phrase ‘made whole, made young again’ (line 36)?

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What is meant by the term ‘juxtaposition of incongruity’ and how is it used in the poem?

‘Although the poem is written in blank verse and straightforward language, the poet manages to make the poem sound poetic.’ Discuss this statement, referring to the various sound effects and techniques used in the poem (such as onomatopoeia, rhyme, internal rhyme, sibilance, assonance, repetition, trios and alliteration).

What is the theme of this poem in your opinion? You can choose from the following list or put forward your own ideas: ■ Conservation ■ Love and admiration ■ Daily suburban life ■ Transformation through nature ■ The ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Choose three phrases that really stood out for you in this poem and explain how and why they caught your attention.

Compare the portrayal of the poet’s father in this poem with the one in ‘Hearth Lesson’.

Ed upwo

In pairs or small groups, create a story board that maps out the action of the poem. Write a corresponding line or phrase from the poem under each image. For example:

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It was the piebald horse in next door’s garden

frightened me out of a dream

You may even like to make a short film or simple animation to depict this.

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Hearth Lesson

Before you read G

What do the phrases ‘money ro r upwo to burn’ and ‘money burning a hole in your pocket’ mean to you? Discuss them in pairs or small groups and then give feedback to the class as a whole. If you are not sure, have a guess!

I am crouched by the fire in the flat in Sean MacDermott Street while Zeus and Hera battle it out:

for his every thunderbolt she had the killing glance; she’ll see his fancyman and raise him Cosmo Snooker Hall; he’ll see her ‘the only way you get any attention around here is if you neigh’; he’ll raise her airs and graces or the mental state of her siblings, every last one of them.

Even then I can tell it was money, the lack of it day after day, at the root of the bitter words but nothing prepared us one teatime when he handed up his wages.

She straightened each rumpled pound note, then a weariness came suddenly over her, she threw the lot in the fire.

I’m net, umpire, and court; most balls are lobbed over my head. Even then I can judge it’s better than brooding and silence and the particular hell of the unsaid, of ‘tell your mother …’ ‘ask your father …’.

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Either phrase will bring it back – money to burn, burning a hole in your pocket.

The flames were blue and pink and green, a marvellous sight, an alchemical scene. ‘It’s not enough’ she stated simply. And we all knew it wasn’t. The flames sheered from cinder to chimney breast like trapped exotic birds; the shadows jumped floor to ceiling, and she’d had the last, the astonishing word.

Glossary Title

Hearth: floor of a fireplace

Zeus: Greek god of sky and thunder; king of the gods

Hera: Greek goddess of marriage; queen of the gods

fancyman: boyfriend (often used in the context of an affair)

airs and graces: notions of superiority

alchemical: involving a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation or combination

cinder: small piece of partly burned coal or wood that has stopped giving off flames but still glows with heat

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Guidelines

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‘Hearth Lesson’, from the collection Painting Rain (2009), recounts the speaker’s memories of her parents’ arguments and of one particular occasion when her mother had the last word.

Commentary

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Lines 1–2

The poem begins with a two-line introduction. It tells us that whenever the speaker hears the phrases ‘money to burn’ or ‘burning a hole in your pocket’ she is reminded of the childhood memory she describes in the rest of the poem.

Lines 3–14

The speaker recalls being a young child ‘crouched by the fire’ as her parents ‘battle it out’ in their tenement flat. The verb ‘crouched’ denotes fear. Her parents are likened to the king and queen of the Greek gods, Zeus and Hera. Her father’s words are a ‘thunderbolt’ (the weapon Zeus and Hera of Zeus), while her mother’s response is described as a ‘killing Book I of Homer’s Iliad ends with a quarrel glance’. He seems to accuse her of being unfaithful, referring to between the king and queen of the gods, her ‘fancyman’, and she criticises him for wasting time in the local during which Hera accuses Zeus of going behind her back and Zeus responds with a snooker hall and paying too much attention to horses (perhaps he threat to strangle her. The couple often argued, gambles?). He suggests that she believes she is above him (‘airs usually about her keeping secrets from him or and graces’) and he asserts that her family is mentally unstable.

his constant infidelity.

Lines 15–19

The speaker feels caught in the crossfire. She likens her parents’ rows to a tennis match. She does not always understand the real meaning of the words: ‘most balls / are lobbed over my head’. She prefers the rows, however, to the sullen silences during which her parents communicate through her by saying ‘tell your mother’ or ‘ask your father’.

Lines 20–27

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It was clear to the child that the cause of every argument her parents had was money, specifically ‘the lack of it’. This point leads the speaker to recall the most memorable row of all, which began with her father handing her mother some housekeeping money. The mother straightened out the creased notes and, realising there was not nearly enough, seemed to resign herself to having nothing: ‘a weariness came suddenly over her’. Shockingly, in a display of contempt for the measly offering, she then ‘threw the lot in the fire’.

Lines 28–35

The child is captivated by the colour of the resulting flames. It is as if the money is being transformed into magic: ‘The flames were blue and pink and green, / a marvellous sight, an alchemical scene.’ The fireplace and room beyond are also transformed by the flames, which are compared to ‘trapped exotic birds’, but even more amazing is that, at last, the mother has ‘had the last, the astonishing word’.

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Themes and imagery

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Money and fire combine to convey a scene of marital discord. The poem opens from a position of hindsight; the speaker tells us that whenever she hears certain phrases, she is reminded of her parents’ rows over money and of one row in particular. It is clear that poverty is putting huge pressure on this family.

The first image of her parents is a classical allusion as this poverty-stricken couple in a Dublin tenement are likened to Zeus and Hera on Mount Olympus, whose quarrelling was legendary. Her father’s insults are like a ‘thunderbolt’ and her mother scowls a ‘killing glance’ (lines 6–7).

Classical allusions Meehan uses classical allusions to elevate an everyday occurrence to the grandeur and scale of ancient myth and legend. You can see similar techniques in the work of other poets,

including

Seamus

Heaney’s

‘The

Underground’.

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The next extended image to represent their arguments is of a tennis match, an odd and original choice next to a classical allusion but apt nonetheless. The insults hurled are like tennis balls and the child is stuck in the middle as indicated in the metaphor: ‘I’m net, umpire, and court’ (line 15). The idea that she may not even understand her parents’ grown-up issues is effectively conveyed by extending the metaphor further: ‘most balls / are lobbed over my head’ (lines 15–16). This remark may refer to the code-like accusations her parents hurl at each other – stanza 2 reported their talk of ‘fancyman’, ‘airs and graces’, ‘Cosmo Snooker Hall’ and having to ‘neigh’ for attention. Meehan skilfully expresses the confusion and discomfort of the child while describing the scene from a distant and adult perspective. The exchanges become ‘hell’ (line 18), a word that foreshadows the finale to come. The anecdote of her mother straightening the crumpled pound notes before flinging them into the fire in lines 25–27 brings the

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opening phrases of the poem into focus: ‘money to burn, burning a hole in your pocket’ (line 2). Now we understand why these evocative sayings about money and fire have such meaning for the speaker. The flames produced by the burning notes are elevated to something magical; it is an ‘alchemical scene’ (line 29). Ironically, alchemy is the process of turning base metals into gold; in other words, it involves making something vastly more valuable from something cheap and relatively worthless. We must think carefully about how this works here. Clearly, the burning notes do not in any real sense produce riches, but perhaps they result in something valuable that is not monetary?

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The colours of the flames are hypnotic and vivid, ‘blue and pink and green’ (line 28; a typical Meehan triple), and in a simile the speaker says they are ‘like trapped exotic birds’ (line 33). Birds are used in many of Meehan’s poems and here may be a metaphor for the notion that her parents are capable of much but are ‘trapped’ by poverty and class. Perhaps the sacrifice of this Sacrifice measly offering of a few notes to the fire was worth it to have In keeping with the classical allusions at the ‘the last, the astonishing word’ (line 35). The mother’s gesture has start of the poem, it is interesting to note that shown her husband more than any words ever could and it seems the ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped to have brought their row to an end. their gods by burning things in a ritual fire.

Form and language

The poem is a simple lyric in blank verse that uses language very effectively and sometimes playfully.

Words about fire and burning frame the poem and give it its key images. The words ‘Hearth’ in the title, ‘burn’ and ‘burning’ in line 2 and ‘fire’ in line 3 make the imagery clear from the start. The word ‘fire’ returns in line 27, when the mother throws the money into the grate to burn. A description of the flames brings the poem to a close.

Meehan often uses place names to ground her poems and add credibility to them. ‘Sean MacDermott Street’ (line 4) and ‘Cosmo Snooker Hall’ (line 9) do this effectively here. However, she also names the Greek gods Zeus and Hera, thereby creating a playful contrast between ordinary Dublin places and the classical world. The jargon associated with tennis adds to the wry and playful mood of the poem: ‘most balls / are lobbed over my head’ (lines 15–16).

Th e

We are led to the climax of this anecdote with the simple but effective teaser: ‘nothing prepared us one teatime / when he handed up his wages’ (lines 23–24). Using the adjective ‘rumpled’ (line 25) to describe the state of the notes expresses the careless nature of the husband. The wife appears to be more careful: she ‘straightened each rumpled pound note’ (line 25). Meehan then shows us a moment of quiet epiphany (an epiphany is a sudden awareness of something vital and hitherto not realised – a light-bulb moment). This woman has been worn down by ‘money, / the lack of it day after day’ (lines 20–21) and she is overcome with a ‘weariness’ (lines 26). The fight has not quite gone out of her, however, as she finds a new way to express her dissatisfaction by throwing the notes into the fire. Interestingly, the language in the final stanza becomes animated, contrasting with the exhausted mood of the speaker’s mother in the previous stanza. The flames sped around the hearth, ‘sheared from cinder to chimney breast’ (line 32) and the shadows cast ‘jumped’ (line 34) around the room. Her weary complaint, ‘It’s not enough’ (line 30), has become ‘astonishing’ and final because of the action that went with it.

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem Where is the speaker exactly at the start of the anecdote?

a) Who were Zeus and Hera in Greek mythology? b) Why, do you think, has the speaker used these names for her parents?

Examine stanza 3 and in your own words explain the various insults the parents are throwing at each other.

In what way is a row like a tennis match (see stanza 4)?

What was at the ‘root of the bitter words’ (line 22)? In other words, what was the main cause of these arguments?

Describe the moments leading up to the action of burning the money.

The last two stanzas describe the money burning. What pictures are created in your mind by these lines?

What is meant by ‘the last, the astonishing word’ in the final line of the poem?

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Thinking about the poem

What images stand out most in the poem for you? Choose two and explain your choices. Identify what kind of image each one is (simile, metaphor, symbol, etc.).

The poem is called ‘Hearth Lesson’. What is the lesson in the poem and how is it connected with the hearth?

Can you find examples of humour or playfulness in the poem? Identify and explain these.

What is the effect of using direct speech in the poem?

Imagining

Write a short story using the phrase ‘money to burn’.

The tennis match is a good analogy to describe an argument. Suggest another one that might work well.

In a piece of creative writing using lots of aesthetic language, describe a burning fire. Try to include all five senses in your description.

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SNAPSHOT ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Parents rowing Child caught in middle Poverty Tenement life Classical allusion

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Tennis analogy Synonyms for fire Accessible Sad and amusing at once Words versus actions

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Prayer for the Children of Longing Great tree from the far northern forest Still rich with the sap of the forest Here at the heart of winter Here at the heart of the city

What do Christmas trees symbolise for you? This is not necessarily a religious question; just think about the connotations they have for you in a general way.

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Grant us the clarity of ice The comfort of snow The cool memory of trees Grant us the forest’s silence The snow’s breathless quiet

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Before you read

For one moment to freeze The scream, the siren, the knock on the door The needle in its track The knife in the back

track: line on the skin caused by repeated injections

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clarity: clearness; purity; certainty

The echo of their voices through the city streets The streets that defeated them That brought them to their knees The streets that couldn’t shelter them That spellbound them in alleyways The streets that blew their minds That led them astray, out of reach of our saving The streets that gave them visions and dreams That promised them everything That delivered nothing The streets that broke their backs The streets we brought them home to

Glossary 5

In that silence let us hear The song of the children of longing In that silence let us catch The breath of the children of longing

Let their names be the wind through the branches Let their names be the song of the river Let their names be the holiest prayers

Under the starlight, under the moonlight In the light of this tree Here at the heart of winter Here at the heart of the city

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Guidelines

‘Prayer for the Children of Longing’ is from the collection Painting Rain (2009). The poem was commissioned by the community of Dublin’s north inner city to be read at the lighting of the Christmas tree on Buckingham Street in commemoration of their children who had died from drug use. It is a response to the devastating heroin epidemic that blighted Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s.

Commentary Lines 1–9

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The speaker addresses the tree, which has come from the faraway and frozen northern forests and is now lit up in Dublin’s inner city for Christmas. She asks the tree for ‘clarity’, ‘comfort’ and calm, ‘cool memory’. Nature is used to enhance the effect. The images of ice, snow and trees will combine in their coolness to allow a moment of silence. This request for tranquillity is beautifully encapsulated in the phrase: ‘The snow’s breathless quiet’. The repetition of the words ‘Grant us’ here is prayer-like and meditative.

Lines 10–17

The request for silence and calm is explained: it is to provide space for the contemplation of some shocking events. In sharp contrast to the prettiness that came before, the poem depicts a quartet of suffering, lawlessness, addiction and violence: ‘The scream, the siren, the knock on the door / The needle in its track / The knife in the back’. The suffering of inner-city Dublin is vividly conveyed in these staccato phrases. Those gathered are asked to use this moment of silence to hear the pitiful story or ‘song’ of the children affected, the ‘children of longing’. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 275

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Lines 18–29

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In a repetitive, twelve-line section, the local streets are depicted as places of cruelty and complacency that have failed, ignored, broken and destroyed these children. They are also the place ‘we brought them home to’, signifying the return of these children to be buried by their families.

Lines 30–36

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The only solace offered in the poem’s ending seems dependent on keeping the memory of these children and their sad song of violence, poverty and addiction alive. Nature imagery returns and we are asked to hear their names in the trees and rivers and to pray for their souls, just as they are remembered and prayed for at this gathering around a Christmas tree in ‘the heart of winter … the heart of the city’. The repetition of lines 3 and 4 brings closure to the poem.

Themes and imagery

Commemoration is a theme in many of Meehan’s poems, especially her elegies. This is perhaps one of the more poignant ones. It was commissioned to be read at a Christmas commemoration event for young addicts who had tragically died and their families. We must remember what happened to them if we want to stop it happening again. Christmas is a time when Christians traditionally celebrate birth, generosity, family and giving. However, death was uppermost in the thoughts of those families who had lost children. They congregated around the Christmas tree to take a frozen moment to remember their dead. Addiction, loss and longing are also evoked in the poem.

Stark and shocking images of urban suffering become even stronger when placed beside the calm and icy beauty of the frozen north. The tree is ‘rich with the sap of the forest’ (line 2) and all is serene and clear. Phrases like ‘clarity of ice’ (line 5) and ‘snow’s breathless quiet’ (line 9) create a tranquil scene of crystal beauty, which works very effectively to make the next part of the poem and its images all the more intense and shocking. ‘The scream, the siren, the knock on the door’ (line 11) – the rapid-fire speed of these phrases and sounds shakes us up and immediately tells us something is very, very wrong. The next two images are grotesque in their violence. One is self-inflicted, ‘The needle in its track’; the other is not, ‘The knife in the back’ (lines 12–13). A nightmarish existence is portrayed.

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The personification of the city’s streets as an uncaring and cruel force in the lives of children is an image powerfully evoked. The streets ‘defeated them … brought them to their knees’ (lines 19–20), denied them shelter and turned them into mindless zombie-like creatures. The streets ‘blew their minds’ (line 23) while also tempting them into lives of crime and degradation with false promises: ‘led them astray … gave them visions and dreams … delivered nothing’ (lines 24–27).

Social commentary is at play here. The poem is more than a localised lament for those who died. There is also a fierce anger that Ireland has failed these poor families through cruelty and widely celebrated in the media. Look at music videos by Duran Duran or films like Trading abandonment. Money and success were revered in the 1980s and Places or Wall Street as examples of that this stimulated the drugs culture to grow swiftly. Crime flourished money-worshipping culture. as a result, especially violent crime. Meehan came back from her travels at that time to find a Dublin, an Ireland, utterly changed from the one she had left, and it inspired her to become an activist and campaigner for social change.

Money is king

The 1980s was a decade when excess was

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Heroin addiction and crime swept through Dublin in the 1980s and 1990s.

Form and language

It is cold and dark as the poem ends. The ‘light of this tree’, ‘the starlight’ and ‘the moonlight’ (lines 33–34) offer the only comfort, but like the frozen forest of the north, it is cold comfort indeed.

Prayer-like in language and form, this elegy to Dublin’s lost youth uses lots of repetition to produce the effect of a chant. It has an eerie quality and balances the descriptions of violence and suffering in a very measured way. The repetition of ‘Grant us’ in stanza 2 and ‘Let their’ in stanza 6, along with the phrase ‘let us’ at line 16, produce a litany-like effect generally found in prayers. This sense of a mantra lulls us into a calmness whereby we can contemplate the destruction of a generation’s poor by drugs and violence. That is at the heart of what the poem asks us to do: to hear their voices, ‘The song of the children of longing’ (line 15). The repetition also emphasises this request: ‘Let their names be the wind through the branches / Let their names be the song of the river / Let their names be the holiest prayers’ (lines 30–32). There is a determination in this triple plea that makes it seem more pressing, urgent and important. We must remember these children, their experiences and their story.

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You may see similarities between this poem and ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’ in their imagery and use of repetition, the prayer-like nature of some phrases and the reference to victims who were still children.

SNAPSHOT ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Frozen north City streets Personification Repetition Secular prayer

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Violence Drugs epidemic Death Mourning Commemoration

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Exam-Style Questions Where is the tree that is addressed in the opening stanza? Describe the setting and mood that is conveyed.

Why, do you think, does the speaker want a moment of cool, calm and quiet (lines 5–10)?

How does stanza 3 contrast sharply with the first two stanzas? Give details.

We should hear the ‘song of the children of longing’ (line 15). What is this song in your opinion? What should we be trying to hear?

The streets of the city are personified in stanza 5. What do they do, and fail to do, for the children according to the speaker?

What effect does the personification of the streets have? Do they symbolise something else in the poem? In other words, who is responsible for this crisis and why are the streets used as an image to represent them?

In stanza 6 (lines 30–32), what is the speaker wishing for?

How is the poem brought full circle as it closes? Look for links to the beginning of the poem.

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Understanding the poem

Thinking about the poem

Examine the use of repetition in the poem and comment on the effects created.

What moods and atmospheres are created in the poem? These may change as the poem progresses, but there can also be an overall mood and atmosphere.

What effect did the poem have on you personally? Give reasons for your answer.

Identify the main themes in the poem and explain how they are conveyed.

What, do you think, are the children of the title ‘longing’ for? Refer to the poem in your answer.

Compare this poem to ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’ in terms of theme, language and imagery.

Write an open letter to drugs and/or addiction. What lyrics might ‘the song of the children of longing’ have?

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Imagining

Write a newspaper article covering the commemoration at which this poem was first read (perhaps research ‘Dublin drugs epidemic 1980s’ for background information).

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Paula Meehan Before you read

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Are we losing too much of our ro r upwo wildlife and wild areas to development? Brainstorm this question in small groups and then share your ideas with your classmates.

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Death of a Field

The field itself is lost the morning it becomes a site When the Notice goes up: Fingal County Council – 44 houses

Though the woodpigeons in the willow And the finches in what’s left of the hawthorn hedge And the wagtail in the elder Sing on their hungry summer song

The memory of the field is lost with the loss of its herbs

The magpies sound like flying castanets

And the memory of the field disappears with its flora: Who can know the yearning of yarrow Or the plight of the scarlet pimpernel Whose true colour is orange?

And the end of the field is the end of the hidey holes Where first smokes, first tokes, first gropes Were had to the scentless mayweed

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The end of the field as we know it is the start of the estate The site to be planted with houses each two or three bedroom Nest of sorrow and chemical, cargo of joy The end of dandelion is the start of Flash The end of dock is the start of Pledge The end of teazel is the start of Ariel The end of primrose is the start of Brillo The end of thistle is the start of Bounce The end of sloe is the start of Oxyaction The end of herb robert is the start of Brasso The end of eyebright is the start of Fairy

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Who amongst us is able to number the end of grasses To number the losses of each seeding head? I’ll walk out once Barefoot under the moon to know the field Through the soles of my feet to hear The myriad leaf lives green and singing The million million cycles of being in wing

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That – before the field become solely map memory In some archive of some architect’s screen I might possess it or it possess me Through its night dew, its moon white caul Its slick and shine and its profligacy In every wingbeat in every beat of time

Glossary

Fingal: local authority area in north Co. Dublin

castanets: handheld percussion instrument from Spain made of two small concave pieces of wood, ivory or plastic joined by a cord and clicked together by the fingers

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yarrow: wildflower with heads of multiple tiny blooms

scarlet pimpernel: small blue or pale red wildflower

tokes: smoking a cannabis joint

mayweed: common foul-smelling weed

teazel: wildflower with spiny purple blooms

myriad: countless number of

archive: collection of records

caul: amniotic membrane enclosing a foetus

profligacy: reckless extravagance; wastefulness in the use of resources

Guidelines

‘Death of a Field’, the first poem in the collection Painting Rain (2009), mourns the loss of wilderness as the field becomes a building site and eventually a housing estate.

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Commentary

Lines 1–15

As the title suggests, a field is about to disappear. It is going to be replaced with a building site where fortyfour houses will be constructed. The speaker feels that once the planning ‘Notice goes up’ the field itself is lost. Lost with it are the huge variety and quantity of plants and wildlife catalogued in lines 3–12. Also lost are opportunities to experiment and take chances for the youth of the area. The end of the field was a separate space where cigarettes, drugs and sex could be explored.

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Paula Meehan Lines 16–28

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The speaker mourns the fact that a housing estate is to replace the field. It will bring the sadness, happiness and pollution of human occupation: ‘Nest of sorrow and chemical, cargo of joy’. A repetitive stanza details the natural plants that will be lost and lists the brand names of the chemical household products that will take their place. The speaker muses that we will never be able to count the number of plants that may have grown from the seeds that will now lose their opportunity to germinate.

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Lines 29–39

The speaker determines to keep the field in her memory by Hearing through touch walking there barefoot at night. Under the moonlight, she will Synaesthesia is the production of a sense sense through her bare soles the millions of years of growth, impression relating to one sense (e.g. hearing) or decay and renewal this field has known. Its leaves and the wings part of the body by stimulation of another sense of its birds and insects will sing to her of their ‘million million or part of the body (e.g. the soles of the feet). cycles of being’. Here the history of the field as wilderness is emphasised. The speaker will possess the field or have it possess her one last time before it disappears only to exist in an old file or on the screen of a planner’s computer. The sense in the last two lines is of regret: this field could have had a future teeming with life and biodiversity, but that future has been obliterated in order to house forty-four families.

Themes and imagery

Organised through social media channels, this protest against social and economic injustice established

encampment

outside

the

Central Bank on Dublin’s Dame Street. It lasted from October 2011 to March 2012. Meehan supported the movement through her poetry and physical presence at the camp. Her work featured on social media here and abroad, especially in the United States, as the ‘Occupy’ movement became a global one.

This poem was written at a time when, despite homelessness reaching crisis point in Ireland, there were empty houses in incomplete ‘ghost estates’ all around the country following the collapse of the Celtic Tiger economy. Meehan was a strong presence in the Occupy Dame Street movement that evolved in response to this situation. One article written at the time noted:

Occupy Dame Street

The poem’s distribution through the media, mass and social, attests to Meehan’s desire to engage with and facilitate the social justice protests through media activism in a way that renews the power of words such as ‘truth’ and ‘justice’.

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This poem is a protest against the destruction of our wilderness to accommodate greed; a further tragedy is that it will cause pollution and become a ‘Nest of sorrow and chemical’ (line 18). Wildflowers and herbs will be replaced by branded cleaning products. These chemicals will sterilise, clean and order the place where nature once thrived with fecundity and variety. The phrase ‘The end of’ precedes each plant and ‘the start of’ precedes each product (lines 19–26). It is a set of images that some will find amusing but many others will find sobering as they reflect on the disappearance of such beauty. The next image is particularly thoughtprovoking. It asks us to consider if we could ever possibly fathom the plants that could have grown for the years and years ahead if this patch of wilderness was left alone. This idea is encapsulated in the form of the grasses that will be lost. Meehan often uses celestial imagery and here we see her imagine walking barefoot under the moon to capture as much of the essence of the field as she can before it is gone. Synaesthesia is used as she imagines

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listening through her feet to the song of all the plants and creatures that have existed there: ‘Through the soles of my feet to hear / The myriad leaf lives green and singing’ (lines 31–32).

The speaker imagines what is to remain of the field in our memory and decides it will become a ‘map memory’ in an ‘archive’ or in the memory of an architect’s computer (lines 34–35). There will be no commemoration of the place of vibrant life it once was. The speaker decides she must own or be owned by this field if it is not to be forgotten. She will do this by feeling its wet dew beneath her feet under the moonlight, ‘its moon white caul’ ‘caul’ (line 37). ‘Caul’ is an interesting choice of word. The overall image A caul is part of the amniotic membrane that is of the moon’s white light bathing the field in its glow, but by encloses a foetus and that sometimes covers referring to this effect as a caul, Meehan is suggesting birth and a baby’s head at birth. With less than one good fortune. She sums up what the field will always mean to her: in every 80,000 babies born with a caul, it is considered a rarity and thought to bring great its legacy will be her lasting impression of its wet shine and its luck. Why might Meehan use this image to plentiful, bountiful nature or ‘profligacy’ (line 38).

describe the field by moonlight?

Form and language

Meehan subverts language to show the unnaturalness of the entity that will replace the field. She says the site will be ‘planted’ (line 17) with houses and each house will be a ‘Nest’ (line 18). Houses are built and trees, flowers and herbs are planted. Birds nest; we do not. Using words in the wrong context is a clever way to show that what is happening in this field is also wrong.

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The way Meehan attributes feelings and emotions to plants and animals engages our sympathy even more. The yarrow yearns and the scarlet pimpernel’s ‘plight’ (line 11) is echoed by the noisy complaints of the magpies whose raucous cries resemble the staccato clacking of ‘castanets’ (line 8). Writing about the poem, Richard Tillinghast noted that it is: ‘Clear how little encouragement nature needs to flourish and to enhance our own sense of being alive. In some settings the commonest weeds or wildflowers can be as life-enhancing as a forest of rhododendrons encountered on a trek through the Himalayas.’ This idea is certainly conveyed in the language of this elegy, which expresses the infinite plenty and variety of nature through lengthy lists of plants and creatures; the rhetorical question ‘Who amongst us is able to number the end of grasses’ (line 27); words like ‘myriad’ (line 32), ‘profligacy’ (line 38) and ‘every beat of time’ (line 39); and the repetition in line 33: ‘The million million cycles of being in wing’. These words and images communicate the many plants and animals that have lived, reproduced, died and been born on this patch of

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Paula Meehan land in Fingal, Dublin since time began. Meehan’s purpose seems to be to assert the right of the field to remain and continue flourishing as it has been doing up to now. A case of squatters’ rights if you will.

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Look also at the brand names used in lines 19–26 and compare them with this idea of variety and plenty in nature for thousands of years. Why does Meehan use brand names? Why select cleaning products in particular? Perhaps she wants us to consider not only the destruction of the field but also the pollution that will follow and further harm nature through both the packaging and the chemical contents of these products.

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The closing thought reminds us that, for every second of time, birds and insects have beat their wings in this field: ‘In every wingbeat in every beat of time’ (line 39). It is a staggering idea. All in all, the language mourns the loss of this field while celebrating the life it had and in that way the poem is an unlikely but effective elegy.

Questions

When is the field lost and when is its memory lost according to the first three lines of the poem? Explain what you think the poet means in these lines.

What impression of the flora and fauna of the field is given in lines 4–12? Is it an attractive one to you? Explain your answer.

How do young people use fields like this according to the speaker in lines 13–15?

Discuss the sound effects used in line 14.

The words ‘planted’ and ‘Nest’ are used in a strange way in lines 16–18. Analyse these three lines, commenting on how and why these words are used.

Read lines 19–26. What effect do the repetition and the contrast of plant names and brand names have on you as a reader?

Words and images are used to convey variety and quantity from line 27 to the poem’s end. Pick these out and explain their context.

In your opinion, why does the speaker want to ‘walk out once’ in the field (line 29) and why at night?

The speaker says she wants to hear sounds from the history of the field through her feet in lines 30–34. Explain this section in your own words, commenting on the unusual mixing of senses here.

Looking at the final thirteen lines of the poem in detail, why might the field have a better claim to its existence than the housing estate that will be built there?

According to the poem, how will the field exist after it has been built on?

What effect did this poem have on you? Do you find it amusing, worrying, hyperbolic … or something else? Give reasons for your answer(s).

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What elements of this poem make it both a protest poem and an elegy?

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Look up and copy and paste images of the plants and flowers mentioned in the poem to help you visualise the variety of flora and fauna described. This could become a useful and attractive classroom display.

Imagine you are the architect mentioned at line 35 and have just read the poem. What are your thoughts and feelings? Note your reactions in the form of a diary entry, letter or stream-of-consciousness piece.

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Before you read

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Either in pairs or groups, ro r upwo research Countess Markiewicz and find out about any statues in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin that are connected to the 1916 Rising and Irish War of Independence.

Them Ducks Died for Ireland

“6 of our waterfowl were killed or shot, 7 of the garden seats broken and about 300 shrubs destroyed.” Park Superintendent in his report on the damage to St Stephen’s Green, during the Easter Rising 1916

Time slides slowly down the sash window puddling in light on oaken boards. The Green is a great lung, exhaling like breath on the pane the seasons’ turn, sunset and moonset, the ebb and flow

of stars. And once made mirror to smoke and fire, a Republic’s destiny in a Countess’ stride, the bloodprice both summons and antidote to pride. When we’ve licked the wounds of history, wounds of war,

we’ll salute the stretcher bearer, the nurse in white, the ones who pick up the pieces, who endure, who live at the edge, and die there and are known

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by this archival footnote read by fading light; fragile as a breathmark on the windowpane or the gesture of commemorating heroes in bronze and stone.

Glossary 1

sash window: a window of two frames, one above the other, that slide up and down

ebb and flow: rise and fall; coming in and going out

countess: reference to the republican leader Constance Markievicz (1868–1927)

bloodprice: death toll; human cost of conflict

archival: kept on record (e.g. in a museum or library)

footnote: extra piece of information printed at the base of a page; also, someone involved in but overlooked by history

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Guidelines

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Commentary

This humorously titled poem is taken from the collection Painting Rain (2009).

Title and epigraph

Written in the idiom of inner-city Dublin (‘Them ducks’), the title is inspired by a report about the impact of the Easter Rising of 1916 on St Stephen’s Green, a park in Dublin’s city centre. The epigraph is a quotation from this report.

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Lines 1–7

The sibilant opening line likens the passing of time to condensation slowly dripping down a pane of glass in a window. We appear to be looking out from one of the grand buildings that surround St Stephen’s Green, known colloquially as ‘The Green’. This setting is reinforced by mentions of a sash window and oak floorboards. The trees and plants of the park provide oxygen in this urban environment; hence the metaphor of ‘a great lung’ breathing onto the glass. Time passes and the seasons change. The position of the stars in the sky alters over time like the tide: ‘the ebb and flow / of stars’.

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In the past, this windowpane would have reflected the violence and destruction of the 1916 Rising, represented by images of ‘smoke and fire’. Ireland’s future was for it to become an independent republic. A key figure from that period was Countess Markiewicz, whose drive and determination are expressed in the word ‘stride’ – suggesting confidence and forward motion. The rebellion brought death as there was a ‘bloodprice’ to pay for Irish emancipation. The prospect of dying for Ireland inspired some to join the fight – they saw it as a ‘summons’, but it also made them humble and was ‘an antidote to pride’.

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Lines 8–14

We can now look back at the fight for Irish independence from a distance created by time: ‘we’ve licked the wounds of history, wounds of war’. We can think about the unlikelier heroes and heroines of the period, the people who carried the stretchers and nursed the injured and dying. They exist at the ‘edge’ of these tales rather than in a starring role like Countess Markiewicz. They passed away quietly and unsung, dying at the edges as well as living there. They are mentioned in the records kept about this time (albeit as a mere ‘footnote’), but any memory that remains of their selflessness is a delicate one, easily destroyed. This delicacy is conveyed in the phrases ‘fading light’ and ‘fragile as a breathmark’. Strangely, the speaker asserts that the ‘gesture’ of erecting statues ‘in bronze and stone’ to the ‘heroes’ of the Rising is also a fragile act. Is the speaker saying that we must either keep these memories alive or resignedly accept that as time passes they will also fade?

Themes and imagery

Ideas about commemorating and forgetting are explored in this poem. Humour is used at the outset, in the title and the inclusion of a quotation from one footnote in the archives about the Easter Rising. The reported destruction of shrubs, benches and even ducks was not in vain; they were casualties of war and part of the fight for Irish independence. The title may seem flippant or funny, but the poem makes the serious point that many sacrifices were made for freedom even if most go uncelebrated and have been forgotten.

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The imagery is multi-sensory and hugely evocative in this poem. The opening image is beautiful, its sibilance adding to the sensual effect as time is compared to water: it slides and pools from a window onto a floor; it also ebbs and flows through its seasons like the tides of the sea. The events of the past can seem to change as different perspectives and values come into play over time. Our grasp of the key events and those involved may be tenuous. We may forget not only the people in the margins of history like the nurses and stretcher bearers mentioned in stanza 3, but also those who had a more prominent role – those celebrated by bronze or stone statues. A statue is usually considered a permanent way of commemorating someone or something and ensuring they will never be forgotten; the speaker, however, suggests that this is not the case. She refers to such tributes as ‘fragile’ (line 13): they can disappear as easily as the condensation of one’s breath upon a windowpane (Meehan used this image elsewhere as a definition of poetry itself).

Archives

Archives are also referred to in ‘Death of a Field’, where a field is built on and the record

of its original state lies neglected in an archive or a computer file. It is a tenuous existence, easily forgotten.

The windows that overlooked the destruction the Rising brought to Dublin are still there, but their perspective has changed over time. Where there was ‘smoke and fire’ (line 5) and where the fighters paid a ‘bloodprice’ (line 7) for their cause, there are now statues to the famous. However, there are only brief references to the unsung heroes and heroines in the footnotes of the archives.

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Paula Meehan Just as the ‘breathmark’ (line 13) on a window fades, the light we read the historical records by fades too. The distance between these events and the memory of them in the present becomes ever greater.

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The overall image the reader has is of someone sitting in a room Ongoing relevance looking out onto St Stephen’s Green as the light darkens to This thought-provoking poem continues to evening. The person is reading through the archives of the Rising have relevance. The heroism and sacrifice of and meditating on how society has remembered the people frontline staff during the COVID-19 pandemic involved and the sacrifices made. It becomes clear that this is a made us look at the medical and caring professions with renewed admiration. The issue ‘fragile’ (line 13) action. Although we ‘salute the stretcher bearer, of commemoration has arisen as Ireland marks the nurse in white’ (line 9), the light we read about them by is the centenary of key historical events. The ‘fading’ (line 12) like condensation on a pane of glass. The final Black Lives Matter protests led to the removal line sums up the dilemma of the poem perfectly: ‘commemorating of many statues associated with slavery. heroes in bronze and stone’ (line 14). Commemoration is at the centre of this piece and is a concern in many of Meehan’s other poems, including ‘Cora, Auntie’ and ‘Death of a Field’. Here, Meehan has partly solved her dilemma as the poem makes the reader ponder the issue of commemoration and think about those who sacrificed so much for Ireland to gain its independence.

The poem is a sonnet made up of two quatrains and two tercets. It has an irregular rhyming pattern in the octave and a regular one in the sestet: abcabc. There is enjambment throughout, linking the stanzas and giving the poem a flow. The poem is a modern take on the sonnet form, which originally had strict rules about such matters (see Glossary of Terms for more information).

Form and language

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Portmanteau words (new words formed by combining two existing ones) such as ‘moonset’ (line 4), ‘breathmark’ (line 13) and ‘bloodprice’ (line 7) add a freshness to the poem’s language.

A statue of Countess Markiewicz in Rathcormack, Co. Sligo.

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Questions What do you notice about the phrasing of the title and what expectations did you have after reading it?

Describe the setting (time and place) created by the speaker in the first stanza.

What period of Irish history is referred to in stanza 2? What details are important here?

a) What is your understanding of the portmanteau word ‘bloodprice’ in line 7? b) Choose another portmanteau word from the poem and explain its meaning.

What heroes/heroines are praised in stanza 3 and how is their contribution to the Easter Rising described?

a) Describe how the poet returns to the setting of stanza 1 in the final stanza. b) Why, do you think, was this done? What is the effect?

What points, do you think, is Meehan trying to make about history and commemoration in the poem?

‘The imagery in the poem is vivid and skilfully created, especially the description of time passing.’ Discuss this statement, referring to different kinds of imagery (e.g. metaphor, symbol and simile) and explaining what each one represents to you.

How are sound effects used to create mood and atmosphere in this poem? Refer to some or all of the following effects: rhyme, alliteration, sibilance, assonance.

Suggest reasons why Meehan chose to use a sonnet form for this poem. Is it appropriate for the subject matter of the poem?

Are the issues raised in this poem relevant in contemporary Ireland and the world beyond? Give reasons for your answer.

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In small groups, choose an issue or event from the very recent past and decide how you think it should be commemorated in a modern way. You might include a visual representation or even a model. Then present it to your classmates.

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Paula Meehan

Exam-Preparation Questions Paula Meehan’s late great friend and colleague Eavan Boland said that she has ‘wonderful zest and warmth of tone’ and that her ‘themes are daring’. Do you agree with this analysis based on your study of the poems by Meehan on your course?

Comment on the importance of family relationships in the poems of Paula Meehan on your course.

‘Meehan writes poetry with a social conscience often exploring issues including poverty, addiction, women’s issues and conservation.’ Using this statement as a basis, write a personal response to the poetry of Paula Meehan.

Discuss how effectively Paula Meehan uses anecdote and imagery to develop her themes. Develop your response with reference to the poems by Meehan on your course.

‘Vivid imagery and effective use of language are used to great effect by Paula Meehan to convey her themes.’ Discuss this statement in terms of the poems by Meehan on your course.

‘Setting – place and time – is used by Meehan as an important base from which to explore complex ideas.’ Discuss this idea with reference to the poetry by Paula Meehan on your course.

It has been said of Paula Meehan’s poetry that ‘her verse is elegantly wrought, often magically incantatory and always accessible’ and that it ‘gives voice to her people and places’. Discuss these comments with reference to your study of Meehan’s poetry.

‘If poetry wasn’t useful it would’ve died off like our tails.’ Using this quote from Paula Meehan as your starting point, write an essay in which you argue for or against this notion in terms of your study of Meehan as a person and her work as a poet.

‘Paula Meehan – a personal response’. Using this heading, write a personal response to Meehan's poetry. Refer to at least five poems on your course and comment on the aspects of her style and subject matter that had the greatest impact on you.

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‘Meehan’s poems are a celebration of ordinary life.’ Discuss the poetry of Paula Meehan in the context of this statement and with particular reference to her use of language and imagery.

Write a profile of Paula Meehan as a poet using the poems you have studied as an insight into her personal voice, her view of life and the world around her.

‘It is the emotional intensity of a poem which enables us to engage with it most fully.’ Discuss your study of Paula Meehan and at least four of her poems in light of the statement above.

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SNAPSHOT PAULA MEEHAN

Family relationships Social justice Nature and conservation Place names Humour Multi-sensory imagery Voices of and for women

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Anecdote Celebration of ordinary life Blank verse Rich in sound effects Remembering and commemorating Accessible

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Sample Essay

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Social justice and injustices are at the heart of many poems by Paula Meehan. She tackles issues such as poverty and the misery it brings, the suffering caused by drug stance taken addiction, the plight of women and the need to preserve our heritage and landscape. She conveys these themes and issues through anecdotes and the use of vivid imagery and language. I will use the following poems to illustrate these points: ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’, ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’, ‘Hearth Lesson’, ‘Prayer for the Personal response specified in question Children of Longing’, ‘My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis’ and ‘Death of a – expect to see Field’. Meehan has said, ‘If poetry makes nothing happen, maybe it stops something plenty of personal happening, stops time, takes our breath away.’ Her poems certainly stopped me in statements, opinions my tracks and caused me to think deeply about some important issues in the world and observations today. Question addressed

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In ‘Prayer for the Children of Longing’, Meehan asks for time to mourn and remember the young people of this land who have died from drug addiction and the violence, issues addressed homelessness and criminality that goes with it. She asks a Christmas tree in innercity Dublin at night-time to ‘Grant us the forest’s silence / The snow’s breathless quiet’ so that we can ‘hear / The song of the children of longing’. The phrase ‘Grant us’ is a religious one, reflecting the notion of prayer mentioned in the title of this poem. This is a poem Uses a key term from the question with a social conscience and it uses very strong imagery to convey the horror of a life destroyed by drugs: ‘The scream, the siren, the knock on the door / The needle in its track / The knife in the back’. The language here is highly effective. The short, staccato rhythm of these clear, cold statements adds to their shocking impact on the reader. More startling It is always advisable to refer to poetic imagery and language follow as the city’s streets are personified to highlight the technique cruel abuse and neglect of ‘the children of longing’. These streets ‘defeated them’ and ‘couldn’t shelter them’, turned them into mindless zombies ‘spellbound … in alleyways’, and then ‘broke their backs’. In my view, Meehan is criticising the government here Personal response and the state’s failure to protect its children. I was impressed to discover that she Shows personal had demonstrated against homelessness on more than one occasion. engagement with the Addresses social

Introduces first poem

in terms of social

poet as well as her

conscience aspect of

Another area where Meehan felt society was letting its youth down was question the issue of teenage pregnancy. In 2012, she read her poem ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’ at an event to commemorate Savita Halappanavar, whose tragic death was associated with the anti-abortion laws of the time and helped convince the nation to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution in the hope that such a needless death would not happen here again. This is an example of poetry attempting to make a difference, something Meehan has talked about a lot. The poem was originally written about Ann Lovett, a fifteen-year-old girl, who in 1984 was secretly pregnant and who lay at the foot of this statue in Granard to give birth in the cold and dark to a baby boy. Neither survived. Meehan’s response to this has become one of her most famous poems. The plight of the girl is vividly described, ‘without midwife or doctor or friend to hold her hand … she pushed her secret out into the night’. Calling this girl a ‘child’

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poetry

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heightens the tragedy. The failure of the Virgin Mary to help her, ‘I did not move, / I didn’t lift a finger to help her’, perhaps represents the failure of society (including organised religion) to be a place where a young person in crisis can find help, support and comfort. The statue seems to assert that it is not her choice: ‘They fit me to a myth … They name me Mother of all this grief / though mated to no mortal man’. The shame that drove this girl to such an awful fate, ‘she cried out to me in extremis’, is represented by the nearby town, which could offer nothing but gossip and a cold shoulder, ‘tucked up in little scandals, / bargains struck, words broken’. I was shocked to discover the cultural context of this poem and to learn that these things happened to women, even young girls, such a relatively short time ago. Personal response

Paula Meehan

On a related note, issues such as poverty and the plight of women are very evident Linking poems can be in the poems ‘Hearth Lesson’ and ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’. A bleak more effective than existence is depicted in the latter poem as the speaker’s teacher warns her female treating each one separately pupils to work hard lest they ‘end up’ in the local sewing factory. This two-word phrase at first seems to offend the speaker, whose aunt works there along with the mothers or aunts of most of the children in the class. The words ‘end up’ ‘robbed / the labour of its dignity’. However, she confesses that she now agrees with her teacher that it is not a fate to be desired. She uses the image of a ‘trussed’ chicken to convey the restricted lives these women Point backed up with have, and of a ‘conveyor belt’ to represent the tedium and repetitive nature of their evidence from the poem = PQE (point, work. The speaker realises the power of words to reduce a person, to take away quote, explain) their dignity: ‘Words could pluck you, / leave you naked, your lovely shiny feathers Personal response all gone.’ I particularly like this metaphor because, although it is strange to compare people to plucked chickens, stuffed, bound and ready to be roasted, it is a very appropriate way to show that poverty takes away the beauty and freedom, represented by the feathers of these women, and leaves them vulnerable. ‘Hearth Lesson’ also uses original images to convey how her income, gender and class could guarantee a grim life for a woman in the past. The speaker recalls her before to show parents arguing over money and compares it to a tennis match. She is caught in the continuity of thought middle, like a tennis ‘net, umpire, and court’, as they verbally bat insults back and forth at each other. This entertaining image is typical of Meehan, who often sees the humorous side of difficult things. She compares this row to the king and queen of the Greek gods bickering: ‘Zeus and Hera battle it out’. However, the cause of their quarrel is more mundane: ‘it was money, / the lack of it day after day’. The meagre sum her mother is given by her It would be better to back this point up with father (who has seemingly gambled on horses and snooker) is thrown into the fire a quote, for example, in fury and frustration because ‘It’s not enough’. As the flames catch the banknotes ‘the only way you get they look ‘like trapped exotic birds’. I noticed that this echoed the idea any / attention around Personal response here is if you neigh’ of a bird representing entrapment and poverty (‘trussed like chickens’) in and link made between different poems ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’ and elsewhere in Meehan’s work. Each paragraph is

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linked to the one

Birds are central to the themes and imagery of this poet and are also used as symbols of freedom and nature. For example, ‘Death of a Field’ highlights the beauty and sounds of ‘woodpigeons in the willow’, ‘finches in what’s left of the hawthorn hedge / And the wagtail in the elder’, making the impending loss of this habitat all the more tragic. Demonstrates ability I can’t help but link those birds in the local field to the myriad of birds flocking to her to link ideas and poems father’s back garden in ‘My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis’, which has the

Linking of points continues

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In ‘My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis’, the poet again uses an anecdote. We have seen this already in several poems including ‘Hearth Lesson’ and ‘The Exact Moment I Became a Poet’. In this particularly endearing story the speaker recalls being puzzled by the Personal response noises her father is making so early and on such a cold morning. She is enthralled to see birds of all colours and sizes flock to her father as he scatters breadcrumbs with arms outstretched. This is a very different picture from the portrayal of her father in ‘Hearth Lesson’. In this act of kindness and this moment of harmony with nature, she sees him transformed from a stooping old man into a young saint. He is renewed and transformed, ‘made whole, made young again’. His love of nature in his garden in urban Finglas transforms him, which seems to be a lesson his daughter took to heart. In ‘Death of a Field’ she mourns the loss of nature in the form of a local field in Finglas. She makes her theme clear in the lines:

same Finglas setting. Meehan’s appreciation of nature and the need for conservation is evident in both poems. This issue is especially close to my heart also, which is why they were Personal response my two favourite poems by Meehan on the course.

The end of the field as we know it is the start of the estate The site to be planted with houses each two or three bedroom Nest of sorrow and chemical, cargo of joy

There is a restrained anger in using the sarcastic word ‘planted’ to refer to the estate being built and also in using ‘Nest’ because the only things to grow from this destruction of nature will be ‘sorrow’ and the increased use of chemicals. Meehan’s use of words from nature to describe its destruction has a jarring effect on the reader. Repetition is a technique I enjoy in Meehan’s poetry and there is a great example of her skilled use of this in another passage from ‘Death of a Field’ that juxtaposes plants such as dandelions, docks and teazel with household cleaning products such as Flash, Pledge and Ariel. In a humorous way, she contrasts the natural beauty of what is being lost against the unnatural chemicals and commercial products that will not only replace this beauty but also pollute it. The Question addressed issues of conservation, climate change, pollution and the decimation of habitats clearly and shown as for native species is something the youth of today feel incredibly strongly relevant Personal response about. Even though the subject matter is serious, I appreciated the dark humour Meehan brought to the poem. She often uses triples in her language choices and ‘Where first smokes, first tokes, first gropes / Were had to the scentless mayweed’ is one of my favourite examples. It sums up beautifully the way these spaces in nature are Personal response used by teenagers to experiment and rebel a bit! The internal rhyme (underlined above) also served to make this phrase more memorable, the lively sounds seem as daring as the activities described. There is a strong sense of nostalgia as she is not just mourning it as a valuable patch of wilderness but also regretting the loss of somewhere to explore life when young.

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Personal response

I would like to end this essay with a quote from Meehan that really struck me and which I think sums up the reason she became a poet with a social conscience. While she uses anecdotes and humour, intricate sounds and vivid original images,

Signals conclusion

Refers back to the question

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Paula Meehan This could be explained and linked

there is a practical and active point to her poetry. She occupies language to provoke the reader into thinking about crucial issues and even more importantly to paragraph more Ending shows effectively provoke us to act. These words from Meehan herself say it better than I research and engagement with poet ever could: ‘There are poems that tell stories but there are also poems that just give you a moment of vision or transcendence or colour even, or just an image that you can carry around with you. Two lines. Two lines can save a life. I believe it.’ Having studied Paula Meehan, I believe it too.

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to the introductory

ESSAY CHECKLIST Has the candidate understood the task?

No 8

Purpose

Yes 4

Has the candidate answered the question? Comment:

Has the candidate made convincing arguments? Has the candidate linked ideas?

Coherence

Has the candidate responded to it in a thoughtful manner?

Does the essay have a sense of unity? Comment:

Is the essay written in an appropriate register?

Language

Are ideas expressed in a clear way?

Is the writing fluent?

Mechanics

Comment:

Is the use of language accurate?

Are all words spelled correctly? Does the punctuation help the reader?

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Comment:

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin lC

b. 1942

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The Second Voyage

303

Deaths and Engines

308

Street*

312

Fireman’s Lift

316

All for You

321

Following

325

Kilcash

329

Translation

335

The Bend in the Road

340

On Lacking the Killer Instinct

344

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Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht

To Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia, Married in Dublin on 9 September 2009*

349

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Biography

Family life

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin was born in Cork city in 1942. She was the first of the three children born to university Professor of Irish Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin and writer Eilís Dillon. Her mother was the daughter of Thomas Dillon, a well-known republican and Sinn Féiner, and Geraldine Plunkett, a sister of the poet and 1916 leader Joseph Mary Plunkett. Both the Dillon and Plunkett families were active in national politics for many years.

Ní Chuilleanáin’s father, Cormac, was a republican and fought in the War of Independence and the Civil War. Both her parents feature in her poetry. ‘On Lacking the Killer Instinct’ recalls an incident when her father ran away from the Black and Tans; ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’ was written during her father’s illness; the library setting in ‘Following’ is drawn from her father’s life as an academic.

Ní Chuilleanáin’s mother ran the Honan Hostel, a university residence, where her husband was warden. The family lived in the warden’s house on the grounds of University College Cork (UCC). Each day, after attending to the business of the hostel, Eilís Dillon spent the morning working at her writing before resuming her duties as hostel manager. Dillon was an accomplished cellist and fluent Irish speaker. She was also a translator with a special interest in Italian. In the new Irish state, Dillon provided a model of a woman who had a successful professional life as a writer and a family with children. Eilís Dillon

Eilís Dillon published almost forty children’s

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin had a happy and comfortable childhood. books between 1948 and 1992. Among them Her family was cultured and literary. Her parents spoke both Irish were adventure stories set in Connemara and and English; her father’s letters to her were written in a mixture of the islands off its coast. Her novels helped raise the status of what we now call young both languages with some added French and Latin. Music played adult fiction. a big part in family life. Ní Chuilleanáin’s mother played with the Cork Symphony Orchestra, while her sister, Máire, went on to have a career in music, becoming the principal violinist with the London Philharmonic. Their parents were huge influences on Ní Chuilleanáin and her siblings. Eiléan’s brother, Cormac, is Professor of Italian at Trinity College, Dublin and, like his mother before him, is a writer. Eiléan also became an academic like her father and, following in her mother’s footsteps, has translated from Italian and from Irish. Eilís Dillon had an interest in folklore and fairy tales and this interest is apparent in the imagery in many of Ní Chuilleanáin’s poems. Another influence upon Ní Chuilleanáin’s early life was her father’s six sisters. None of the sisters married and three became nuns. Her interest in the work and lives of nuns finds its way into her poetry.

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Education

Ní Chuilleanáin was educated at the Ursuline College in Cork and afterwards at UCC. She earned a BA in English and History in 1962, and an MA in English in 1964. Encouraged by her father, she moved to Oxford to do further graduate work. In the same year, her parents moved to Rome because of her father’s poor health. Ní Chuilleanáin was lonely in Oxford and left in 1966, the year in which she won the Irish Times Award for Poetry. She finished an MA but did not pursue a doctorate. Instead, she accepted a position as a lecturer in Trinity College in Dublin, where she worked for the next forty-four years teaching Renaissance literature, until her retirement from full-time teaching in 2011. She is an elected fellow of the college and professor emerita

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of the School of English. Ní Chuilleanáin has combined her academic career with an active life as a poet, publisher and translator of poetry. With fellow writers Leland Bardwell, Pearse Hutchinson and Macdara Woods, she founded the literary magazine Cyphers, an important source for new work from Ireland and abroad. The magazine publishes work in translation and essays on the visual arts. Ní Chuilleanáin was married to Macdara Woods, a fellow poet and editor, who died in 2018. The couple lived in Ranelagh and have one son, Ní Chuilleanáin grew up in the warden’s house in University College Cork. the musician Niall Woods. ‘To Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia’ was written on the occasion of their son’s wedding. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Macdara Woods spent part of each year at their house in Italy. Ní Chuilleanáin was introduced to Italy by her parents in the early 1960s and went on many trips with her mother over the years. ‘Fireman’s Lift’ recalls a visit to Parma Cathedral with her mother in 1963.

Ní Chuilleanáin has published twelve collections of poetry. Her most recent, The Mother House, was published in 2019. The following year, a collected edition featuring poems from nine of her collections was published. She has won many awards for her poetry and is an elected member of Aosdána, the Irish association of artists, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the creative arts in Ireland. In 2016 she was appointed Ireland Professor of Poetry by the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins. The prestigious appointment is made every three years to a poet of honour and distinction.

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Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry is technically accomplished, graceful and sometimes mysterious, filled with speculation and questions for which there are no definite answers. It is a poetry of commemoration in which the past is never absent.

Social and Cultural Context Ní Chuilleanáin’s family history forms part of the literary and political history of Ireland since the 1916 Rising and the founding of the state. Humorously, she has described herself as a ‘Gaelic-speaking female papist whose direct and indirect ancestors, men and women, on both sides, were committed to detaching Ireland from the British Empire’. She is also a lover and student of English literature. She grew up in a Catholic, middle-class, literary family. As a feminist, she has observed the development of a Catholic Ireland and its

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

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effects on the lives of women. This is evident in ‘Translation’, the poem read at the reburial of the Magdalenes in Glasnevin Cemetery in 1993. ‘Translation’ also reflects another strand in Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry, the desire to give voice to women and their part in the history of the State. Her poem ‘Kilcash’, a translation from Irish, celebrates not only an Anglo-Norman family but also a heroic woman. In her poem, ‘Lacking the Killer Instinct’, an incident from the War of Independence is recalled but not necessarily celebrated. The actions of the ‘hero’ of the poem, the poet’s father, are placed in a family kitchen. The poem raises the question – Is it right for one person to save himself by putting others at risk? The poem provides no easy answer. Throughout Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry we see a world viewed from a feminist perspective. Even the poems about her father are written from the perspective of a female figure.

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin married poet Macdara Woods.

Themes

Many of Ní Chuilleanáin’s poems are inspired by events in her personal life. However, the personal is not always foregrounded in the writing of the poem, so that the personal stories give way to more general and mysterious patterns of meaning. Moments from the past and loved ones who have died are kept alive in the poetry, in poems such as ‘Fireman’s Lift’, ‘The Bend in the Road’, ‘On Lacking the Killer Instinct’, so that the past seems actively present in the poet’s imagination. In poems like ‘All for You’ and ‘Street’ there are as many questions as there are answers for the reader to ponder. The situation and identity of women and the nature of the lives they live is an important theme, explored in many of her poems, including ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’, ‘Following’ and ‘Translation’. In the latter, the poet bears witness to the suffering and silenced Magdalenes. This poem also touches on another theme explored by Ní Chuilleanáin – the largely feminine world of domesticity and work versus the masculine world of adventure and violence – which surfaces in ‘The Second Voyage’, ‘On Lacking the Killer Instinct’ and ‘Following’.

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Related to this are the themes of exile, flight and return in poems such as ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’, ‘The Second Voyage’, ‘Kilcash’. Rooms, doorways, ruins and churches recur in her poetry, marking the threshold between different worlds: the private and the public, the sacred and the profane, the body and the spirit, the real and the imagined, as in the beautiful ‘Fireman’s Lift’ or the mysterious ’Following’. Elements drawn from folktales are incorporated into her poems (‘Following’, ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’, ‘Street’, ‘All for You’, ‘To Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia …’). These are often used to explore female experience or to challenge a male narrative.

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Born in Cork

1964

Graduates with a Master of Arts degree from UCC; parents move to Rome; moves to Oxford

1966

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1942

Becomes a junior lecturer in English in Trinity College, Dublin; wins the Irish Times Poetry

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Award 1970

Her father dies

1972

Publishes her first book of poetry, Acts and Monuments; wins the Patrick Kavanagh

Poetry Award

Co-founds the literary magazine Cyphers and publishes Site of Ambush; mother marries writer

1975

Timeline

and academic Vivian Mercier Publishes The Second Voyage

1978

Marries the poet Macdara Woods

1981

Publishes The Rose Geranium

1989

Publishes The Magdalene Sermon; stepfather, Vivien Mercier dies

1990

Her sister dies

1992

Wins the O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the Irish American Cultural Institute

1994

Her mother dies; publishes The Brazen Serpent

2001

Publishes The Girl Who Married the Reindeer

2008

Publishes Selected Poems

2009

Publishes The Sun-Fish. Marriage of her son

2010

Wins the International Griffin Poetry Prize for The Sun-Fish

2015

Publishes The Boys of Bluehill

2016

Appointed Poetry Chair of Ireland

2018

Her husband, Macdara Woods, dies

2019

Publishes The Mother House

2020

Wins the Irish Times Poetry Now Award for The Mother House; publishes Collected Poems;

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1977

wins the 1573 International Poetry Award (one of China’s highest literary honours)

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Before you read If you were overwhelmed by events in your life and felt the need to escape, where would you go? And why might this particular place be a place of refuge?

Moon shining in silence of the night The heaven being all full of stars I was reading my book in a ruin By a sour candle, without roast meat or music Strong drink or a shield from the air Blowing in the crazed window, and I felt Moonlight on my head, clear after three days’ rain.

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Glossary

Behind me the waves of darkness lay, the plague Of mice, plague of beetles Crawling out of the spines of books, Plague shadowing pale faces with clay The disease of the moon gone astray.

I washed in cold water; it was orange, channelled down bogs Dipped between cresses. The bats flew through my room where I slept safely. Sheep stared at me when I woke.

In the desert I relaxed, amazed As the mosaic beasts on the chapel floor When Cromwell had departed, and they saw The sky growing through the hole in the roof.

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Sheepdogs embraced me; the grasshopper Returned with lark and bee. I looked down between the hedges of high thorn and saw The hare, absorbed, sitting still In the middle of the track; I heard Again the chirp of the stream running.

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Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht

Lucina … Nicht: the opening line of ‘The Birth of Antichrist’, written in the early 1500s by the Scottish priest and poet William Dunbar. The moon is personified as Lucina, the Roman goddess of childbirth and light. In the form of Diana, Lucina the goddess is also associated with the woodlands and the hunt

crazed: cracked

cresses: edible plants

mosaic beasts: image of animals made from small pieces of stones or tiles

Cromwell: Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), English soldier and politician, infamous for massacres at Drogheda and Wexford during his military campaign in Ireland. His forces plundered and destroyed Catholic churches

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Guidelines

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This poem comes from Ní Chuilleanáin’s first collection, Acts and Monuments, published in 1972. The poem has its origins in a personal event. As her father lay dying, the young Ní Chuilleanáin ran away and spent three days in a semi-derelict cottage. The same event is revisited in ‘On Lacking the Killer Instinct’.

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Commentary Stanza 1

The opening stanza paints a picture: the speaker is in a ruin, reading a book by candlelight; the night is starry and the moon is shining. Her circumstances are frugal: she has neither meat nor drink, nor much shelter from the wind. After three days’ rain she now feels the moonlight on her head. The adjective ‘clear’ suggests that both the weather and her head are clear. The account is in the past tense, so the speaker is recalling the scene sometime later.

Stanza 2

‘The disease of the moon’

Stanza 3

The speaker states that ‘the waves of darkness’ are now behind her. The surreal images of plague suggest an emotional and psychological disturbance – ‘The disease of the moon’.

The phrase refers to the belief that the changes

The speaker describes the physical conditions in which she lives. She washes in the cold water of a mountain stream. The house is open to the elements. Bats fly through her room; sheep stare at her when she opens her eyes. Despite the physical condition of the house, this is a place of shelter and sanctuary, where the speaker sleeps ‘safely’.

of the moon affect the mental health of some people and cause them to suffer manic

episodes or bouts of depression. In ancient

medicine, the moon was linked to epileptic fits.

Stanza 4

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In her place of solitude, she relaxes. She is amazed at the effect of this place upon her. She compares her amazement to that of the beasts on the chapel floor who saw the sky through a hole in the roof after the departure of Cromwell, a comparison that hints at the depths of depression she has come through and also her renewed sense of wonder. For both the speaker and the beasts, the ruined buildings offer a new view of the world.

Stanza 5

In the final stanza the speaker describes the sympathetic understanding between her and nature. The sheepdogs embrace her. Nature is described as if in springtime, with the grasshopper, lark and bee returning. As she looks down the track (that leads her back to the world from which she has fled?) she sees a hare, ‘absorbed, sitting still’. The sight is heartening. Restored, she can hear the ‘chirp’ of the running stream again. ‘Again’ may suggest that the stream is flowing again after a spring thaw. Symbolically, it suggests that the speaker has survived the winter of her distress with a renewed appreciation of the natural world.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Themes and imagery

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The setting of the poem suggests an isolated place to which the speaker has gone for solitude and restoration. As she reads her book in a ruin, the speaker is like a medieval hermit scholar. The absence of meat or strong drink suggests the fasting associated with spiritual renewal. Whatever troubles have beset her, the solitude and her communion with nature restore her, so that the ruin becomes a place of transformation and renewal.

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The poem has many concrete images but, as in folktales, these can be read in a figurative or symbolic manner. The moon, for example, represents the feminine. The book and candle represent a dedication to learning. The cold water in which the speaker washes suggests the cleansing and redemptive effect on the spirit of immersion in nature. The ‘stream running’ is the stream of life. When the speaker hears it, we know she will follow it to where it leads. Most intriguing for the reader is the presence of the ‘absorbed’ hare (line 24) and what it symbolises. In its solitude and absorption, does the hare offer a model of selfreliance and steadfastness? Does it encourage the speaker to become re-absorbed in the world she left behind, the world from which she fled?

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The situation described in the poem has a fairy tale or folkloric quality. The speaker is like a lost princess who finds shelter in a simple cottage in the woods. After a refreshing sleep, she awakes. All the creatures of the forest are in sympathy with her.

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The poem is rooted in the personal experience of the poet. However, despite the ‘I’ persona, it is not written in a confessional way. The imagery and setting cause the poem to open out towards a larger history associated with hermits’ cells and sacked churches. There is nothing in the imagery or setting that suggests the twentieth century, so that past and present seem to blur and become one in the poem.

On the relationship between what a poem means to the poet and what it means to the reader, Ní Chuilleanáin has said: I write poems that mean a lot to me but I can’t expect them to mean that to other people. What I am trying to do is […] to make it possible for somebody to pick up certain suggestions and to give things like visual clues, colours, light and darkness. Those will come together for the person, even if they don’t necessarily know the background.

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Form and language

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The poem is divided into five unrhymed stanzas of varying length. The shape of the poem follows the story the poem tells: the person reading in a ruin; the physical circumstances; her past troubles; her present state; the springlike renewal. The poem has a serene tone, with little sense of rush. There is a lovely variety of long vowel sounds through the poem. These, allied to the use of alliteration, create the impression of a speaker looking back calmly on an experience that began in distress. While there is no formal rhyming scheme, there are some half-rhymes (‘clay’, ‘astray’) and internal rhymes (‘relaxed’, ‘amazed’). A feature of Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry is the careful choice of words. The word ‘desert’ (line 17), for example, has the meaning of a place of solitude but also carries traces of another meaning, that of abandoning someone in a way that might be seen as disloyal.

Questions

Describe the circumstances of the speaker as outlined in the first two stanzas of the poem.

Based on the plague and moon imagery of the third stanza, what, do you think, were the waves of darkness which the speaker says lay behind her?

Comment on the use of the word ‘desert’ in line 17.

What was the source of the speaker’s amazement mentioned in the fourth stanza?

How does the speaker convey a sense of springlike renewal in the final stanza?

‘… the stream running.’ What is the effect of concluding the poem with these words?

Describe the character of the speaker in the poem.

The poem has its origin in a personal crisis. Is it a personal poem? Explain your answer.

The poem offers little by way of context or background for the story it tells. Does this add to or take from your enjoyment of the poem?

‘The space described in the poem is a place of renewal and healing.’ Discuss.

Read ‘On Lacking the Killer Instinct’ (page 344), where Ní Chuilleanáin revisits the subject matter of this poem. In pairs or groups, share the additional information you learned from the later poem.

The title and the translated opening lines of the poem come from a poem written 500 years ago in Scotland. Why might Ní Chuilleanáin have chosen to incorporate these into her poem?

‘Behind me the waves of darkness lay’ (line 12). Write a poem or piece of prose inspired by this line from the poem.

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The Second Voyage

Before you read

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Odysseus rested on his oar and saw The ruffled foreheads of the waves Crocodiling and mincing past: he rammed The oar between their jaws and looked down In the simmering sea where scribbles of weed defined Uncertain depth, and the slim fishes progressed In fatal formation, and thought If there was a single Streak of decency in these waves now, they’d be ridged Pocked and dented with the battering they’ve had, And we could name them as Adam named the beasts, Saluting a new one with dismay, or a notorious one With admiration; they’d notice us passing And rejoice at our shipwreck, but these Have less character than sheep and need more patience.

With a partner, have a discussion ro r upwo on the qualities that a hero of an epic tale should possess. Read the poem in light of your discussion.

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I know what I’ll do he said; I’ll park my ship in the crook of a long pier (And I’ll take you with me he said to the oar) I’ll face the rising ground and walk away From the tidal waters, up riverbeds Where herons parcel out the miles of stream, Over gaps in the hills, through warm Silent valleys, and when I meet a farmer Bold enough to look me in the eye With ‘where are you off to with that long Winnowing fan over your shoulder?’ There I will stand still And I’ll plant you for a gatepost or a hitching-post And leave you as a tidemark. I can go back And organise my house then. But the profound Unfenced valleys of the ocean still held him; He has only the oar to make them keep their distance; The sea was still frying under the ship’s side. He considered the water-lilies, and thought about the fountains Spraying as wide as willows in empty squares, The sugarstick of water clattering into the kettle, The flat lakes bisecting the rushes. He remembered spiders and frogs Housekeeping at the roadside in brown trickles floored with mud, Horsetroughs, the black canal, pale swans at dark: His face grew damp with tears that tasted Like his own sweat or the insults of the sea.

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Odysseus: hero of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, written almost 3,000 years ago. The poem tells of Odysseus’s ten-year voyage home from the Trojan Wars. In the story, the blind prophet Tiresias predicts many of Odysseus’s adventures. He also prophesies that Odysseus will undertake a second voyage after his homecoming

ruffled foreheads: the waves are like a succession of lined foreheads

Crocodiling: suggests the continuous, gliding movement of the waves

mincing: with quick, dainty movements

simmering: bubbling just below boiling point; suppressing pent-up emotions Adam named the beasts: in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, Adam, the first human being created by God, gives names to all the animals and establishes his authority over them

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Glossary

crook: bend; the pier is curved Winnowing fan: a farm implement used to separate the grain from the chaff

gatepost: a post on which a gate is hung or against which it closes; a post used to mark a boundary

hitching-post: a post used to tether or tie an animal to

tidemark: a marker showing the highest point of a tide

profound: deep

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Guidelines

The Second Voyage is the title of Ní Chuilleanáin’s 1977 collection of poems. The collection has a haunting, visionary quality. The poems feature figures from myth, history and folklore, and from the poet’s family. Each poem is itself an imaginary journey. ‘The Second Voyage’ was written during Ní Chuilleanáin’s time in Oxford. This was not a happy period in her life. She was lonely. Her parents had moved from Cork to Rome because of concerns for her father’s health. Oxford is famous for its tradition of boating on the River Thames. Ní Chuilleanáin, like many students, enjoyed taking a punt, a small, flat-bottomed boat, on the river. The poles used to propel the boats were kept in a shed with a thatched roof. One day she noticed a pole leaning against the thatched roof. The sight and the symbolism of the thatched roof (home, domesticity) and the pole (the sea, journeying) brought to mind the figure of Odysseus and the prophecy made by the blind prophet Tiresias that Odysseus, after his homecoming, would undertake a second voyage. The ideas of being all at sea and far from home link the poet’s situation to that of Odysseus. The Odysseus presented in the poem is someone who makes futile attempts to possess the sea, though in reality it is the sea that possesses him.

Commentary

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Lines 1–7

The poem brings us into the middle of things without preamble. We are shown Odysseus resting on his oar and watching the waves. The playful movement of the waves, ‘Crocodiling and mincing past’, seems to antagonise him. He rams his oar into them and looks down at them.

Lines 8–15

The poem now gives voice to the thoughts of Odysseus, who it could be said sounds more like an Irish farmer than a hero from a Greek epic: ‘If there was a single / Streak of decency in these waves now …’. The waves are described in terms which suggest unbiddable farm animals. Odysseus would like to name them and tame

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them as Adam did the animals in the Bible. The description of the waves also, indirectly, compares the waves to the Sirens, ‘notorious’ female creatures who, without a ’Streak of decency’, lured sailors to the rocky shores of their island and rejoiced at their shipwreck. It has been pointed out that Odysseus’s attitude to the wave is like that of the arrogant coloniser who believes that those whom you batter and subject to violence should, in decency, submit to your authority. However, the waves do not submit, much as he has battered them with his oar. And for all the time he has spent on the sea, he cannot decipher the ‘scribbles of weeds’ (line 5) or measure the sea’s depth. The sea is unfathomable.

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Lines 16–30

The poem now strikes a new tone and direction. Having failed to subdue the waves, Odysseus determines to leave the sea behind. Again he gives voice to his thoughts. He imagines parking his ship in a sheltered spot. He imagines travelling inland so far that when he meets a farmer, the farmer will mistake his oar for a farm implement. At that point he will use his oar to mark a boundary, the furthest point of the sea’s reach, the point where an oar is no longer recognised as an oar. And having escaped the pull of the tide, he will be free to go home and organise his house. This passage summarises a prophecy made by Tiresias, the blind prophet in Homer’s Odyssey, that Odysseus would be free to return home when he found a people who knew nothing of the sea.

Lines 31–34

The third-person narration resumes. There is an interesting ambiguity in the verb ‘held’. Is Odysseus a prisoner of the ‘profound / Unfenced valleys of the ocean’, or is he attracted by the sea, even though he cannot control or overpower it? Does he prefer the power and unpredictability of life at sea to the controlled and ordered life on land? The present tense ‘has’ brings a sense of immediacy to his situation. Odysseus is still at sea and the sea is ‘frying under the ship’s side’. He has only his oar with which to defend himself against the angry waves.

Lines 35–42

Odysseus remembers his home No mention is made in this poem of Odysseus’s

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family, even when he thinks of home. In the The poem returns to Odysseus’s thoughts. Here they are given in Odyssey, his wife, Penelope, waited faithfully the third person. On the uncontrollable and unfenced valleys of for his return. His son, Telemachus, undertook the sea, he thinks of water that is tamed and controlled on land: his own journey in search of news of his father. in ponds, in fountains, pouring from a tap into a kettle, sitting in horsetroughs or channelled in canals. He thinks of water that has been domesticated. His thoughts are memories – ‘He remembered spiders and frogs / Housekeeping at the roadside’. They are memories of home. They cause him to cry. The final two lines of the poem bring together his tears, his sweat and the sea. They represent his longing for home and his seemingly futile struggle with the sea.

Themes and imagery ‘The Second Voyage’ has been interpreted in interesting ways by feminist critics. In these readings, the poem challenges the figure of a conventional male hero and presents, instead, a conflicted Odysseus, caught between land and sea. For one critic, Geraldine Meaney, the struggle in the poem is between ‘an ordering, naming and heroic’ male and ‘an intractable feminine ocean’. The waves of the ocean refuse to be named, ordered and controlled. Interestingly, the imagery here echoes the imagery in ‘Translation’ in which the

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Magdalenes, like waves under the ground, search to escape the names they were given in the laundries. The naming of a territory is also an act of colonisation, a demonstration of authority and control; it is associated with patriarchy: in the Bible, the male God gave permission to the male Adam to name the animals and establish his dominion over them. For Patricia Boyle Haberstroh, the ramming of the oar into the waves is like an act of sexual violence against the feminine waves, designed to subdue them. For her, Odysseus chooses to turn his face from returning home because he cannot ignore the urge to control and master the sea, despite the impossibility of ever gaining that control. Despite the beautiful memories of home listed in the final section of the poem, he chooses the freedom of the sea. The sea, with its lack of boundaries and its ‘Unfenced valleys’ (line 32) has more appeal to the heroic male than the gentle and tamed countryside of home. In this reading, the male hero is a creature of will, struggle and power. He contrasts sharply with the female figure in ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’ whose house is open to the bats and the sheep, and who lives quietly amid nature. The poem seems to emphasise what Odysseus is missing in not choosing the domestic world of order and quiet. The imagery of fountains, kettles and housekeeping present an alternative to the constant struggle of his life at sea. The tears shed by Odysseus in the final lines of the poem may suggest that the sea is a place of mourning. To be on the sea is be somewhere you cannot ever possess; to be on the sea is always to be far from home, always in exile. That is the price Odysseus pays for his adventuring.

Form and language

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Ní Chuilleanáin does not use a conventional stanza form but allows the story to carry the poem forward. The long line creates an effect of unhurried storytelling. The use of enjambment and the careful punctuation control the flow of the story. Ní Chuilleanáin has a gift of The seductive waves marrying sound to meaning. The strong consonants of ‘ridged In this poem, the waves are like the Sirens who / Pocked and dented with the battering’ (lines 9–10), and the lure sailors to shipwreck with their beautiful onomatopoeic quality of the words reflect the violent action and singing. In the Odyssey, Odysseus ordered intention of Odysseus. Elsewhere, the long vowels and hypnotic his sailors to plug their ears to guard against their spell, but he wanted to hear their song repetition of sounds (‘profound’, ‘Unfenced’, ‘ocean’, lines 31–32) so he tied himself to the mast to prevent him suggest the seductive hold the sea has on Odysseus, who is following the music to his death. portrayed as being almost defenceless against it.

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Questions Based on the first fourteen lines of the poem, what kind of person do you imagine Odysseus to be?

In line 11, Odysseus says, ’we could name them’. Who is the ‘we’ here? Is it Odysseus and the oar? Odysseus and a shipmate? Explain your answer.

What declaration does Odysseus make in the second stanza?

In line 29, Odysseus says he will leave the oar ‘as a tidemark’. What, do you think, does he mean by this?

Why does Odysseus not follow through on his declaration to ‘park my ship’ (line 17)?

What is the significance of describing the valleys of the ocean as ‘Unfenced’ (line 32)?

In the final lines of the poem, Odysseus remembers. What does he remember? Who or what is notably absent from these memories?

What, do you think, is the significance of the poem’s title, ‘The Second Voyage’?

What is Odysseus’s attitude to the sea and where is his attitude most evident?

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a) At the end of the poem, were you sympathetic to the situation of Odysseus? Explain your answer. b) Do you think the poet was sympathetic to the plight of Odysseus?

Identify an interesting or unusual description in the poem and comment on its effect.

‘Neither the hero nor the life he chooses is presented in a positive light in the poem.’ Discuss.

‘What the poem presents is a female view of a traditionally male story.’ Discuss this view of the poem.

Which of the following statements is closer to your interpretation of the poem? Explain your answer. a) ‘This is a very simple poem. It describes a sailor who wants to go home but is prevented from doing so by the power of the sea.’ or b) ‘This is a very simple poem. It describes a sailor who chooses a life of adventure and danger over a life of quiet domesticity.’

‘If there was a single Streak of decency in these waves now, they’d be ridged Pocked and dented with the battering they’ve had’

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Using this voice, write a monologue in which a farmer complains about the unfenced land of his neighbour.

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Before you read

When we faced again The snow-white runways in the dark No sound came over The loudspeakers, except the sighs Of the lonely pilot.

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We came down above the houses In a stiff curve, and At the edge of Paris airport Saw an empty tunnel – The back half of a plane, black On the snow, nobody near it, Tubular, burnt-out and frozen.

Deaths and Engines

Did you ever have a frightening ro r upwo experience when travelling by plane? Share your experience and the thoughts it gave rise to.

The cold of metal wings is contagious: Soon you will need wings of your own, Cornered in the angle where Time and life like a knife and fork Cross, and the lifeline in your palm Breaks, and the curve of an aeroplane’s track Meets the straight skyline.

Glossary

Tubular: hollow, in the form of a cylinder or tube

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The images of relief: Hospital pyjamas, screens round a bed A man with a bloody face Sitting up in bed, conversing cheerfully Through cut lips: These will fail you some time. You will find yourself alone Accelerating down a blind Alley, too late to stop And know how light your death is; You will be scattered like wreckage, The pieces every one a different shape Will spin and lodge in the hearts Of all who love you.

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Guidelines

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‘Deaths and Engines’ comes from Ní Chuilleanáin’s first collection of poems, Acts and Monuments, and was written partly in response to her father’s death. The poem recalls two incidents from the poet’s life. The first was when she saw the wreckage of a plane at the edge of Orly Airport in Paris, as her plane came in to land in poor weather. The poet was travelling back from Rome, where her father was dying. The second incident involved the poet coming across an overturned car on a road in Dublin. The car belonged to friends. Later she was relieved to discover her friends recovering in hospital. These incidents form the basis of the poet’s exploration of death – our fear of it; its inevitability; the need to confront it; and the question of what will survive of us after death.

Commentary

Stanza 1

The poem opens in a dramatic fashion and the reader is brought into the middle of the action: ‘We came down above the houses / In a stiff curve’. The effect is disconcerting. As more details are added (‘empty tunnel’, ‘back half of a plane’, ‘burnt-out’, ‘frozen’) the setting could be a war zone. The fact that it is a ‘Paris airport’ adds to the sense of confusion. ‘What happened here?’ the reader asks, but there is no answer, only the stark fact of the plane, ‘Tubular, burnt-out and frozen’, ‘black / On the snow’. The scene is presented by the narrator in piecemeal fashion. The dash in line 5 and the succession of phrases separated by commas suggest that the narrator is registering individual pieces of information rather than understanding clearly what she is observing from the plane’s window.

Stanza 2

The narration continues. The tension is palpable, conveyed in the short lines, the simple words, the sense of whisper, as if no one on the plane, not even the pilot, alone in having responsibility for all the lives on board, dares to speak, as the plane lines up to make another attempt at landing in the snow. Here, as elsewhere in her poetry, Ní Chuilleanáin gives us enough information for us to understand the emotion of the situation without knowing all the background details. But we know enough to understand that in a moment like this the passengers will fear the worst and hope for the best.

Stanza 3

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Stanza 3 strikes out in a new direction. Gone is the past-tense narrative. Now the poem addresses the reader directly in the present tense. The address has a sermon-like quality about it. It is almost chilling in its certainty: ‘The cold of metal wings is contagious’. Like a parent or similar figure of authority, the speaker instructs the ‘you’ in the inevitability of death. The simple future tense admits of no doubt or uncertainty: ‘Soon you will need wings of your own’. The word ‘Cornered’ brings to mind the coursed hare of ‘On Lacking the Killer Instinct’, whose ingenuity only delays the inevitable. This is the hard lesson of life: death is not a matter of ‘if’; it is a matter of ‘when’. And the speaker tells the ‘you’ that death will be ‘Soon’.

Stanza 4

The harsh logic of the poem continues into the fourth stanza. The stanza consists of one sentence. The first and last line carry the weight of meaning: ‘The images of relief … These will fail you some time.’ Whatever lucky escapes we have, whatever feelings of relief we feel for friends who survive car accidents, the time will come when there will be no escape and no lucky survivor, ‘Sitting up in bed, conversing cheerfully’. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 309

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Stanza 5

The relentless voice of the speaker continues, forcing the ‘you’ to face up to the moment of death. There are two parts to the final stanza. The first describes the moment of death:

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You will find yourself alone Accelerating down a blind Alley, too late to stop And know how light your death is

The imagery and situation call to mind the crashed plane of the first stanza. Here, however, death is like a car crash, the driver alone, the car accelerating, out of control. The sounds and tone of line 29 are gentle, almost reassuring: ‘And know how light your death is’. It is as if the moment of death will pass lightly.

The second part of the stanza describes the aftermath of death. It pulls no punches: ‘You will be scattered like wreckage’; death shatters a life, splinters it into pieces and sends it spinning. There is some comfort, however, in the final lines. The speaker tells the ‘you’ that the pieces ‘scattered like wreckage’ will ‘lodge in the hearts/ Of all who love you’.

Themes and imagery

The poem is a bleak meditation on the theme of the inevitability of death. The imagery of wreckage suggests that death shatters life. What remains are fragments that lodge in the heart of those who love us. This imagery calls to mind the fairy tale, ‘The Snow Queen’, where the fragments of the shattered mirror are sent into the world to lodge in the heart and cause pain. But the wreckage injures not only the loved ones. As the critic Guinn Batten suggests, death may cause the ‘the dismantlement’ of a person’s legacy, its scattering into different pieces, as much as its preservation. The image of the black, burnt-out plane on the white snow is startling and stark. Like death, there is no denying it or avoiding it. The critic Peter Sirr suggests that the imagery of the poem, in its randomness – a plane torn in two, snow, cutlery, lifelines, hospital pyjamas – is ‘assembled from the wreckage of its own parts’.

Form and language

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The poem is composed of five unrhymed stanzas of varying length. The logic of the poem dictates the division of the poem into stanzas. In contrast to ‘The Second Voyage’, the lines are short. This, and the brilliant use of punctuation, adds to the drama and tension of the poem. For example, the enjambment between lines 17 and 19 ensures that the verbs – ‘Cross’, ‘Breaks’, ‘Meets’ – placed at the start of each line loom up and strike us forcefully. The change of tense, from past to present to future, is dramatic and sums up the relationship between death and time. Death will come and time will be frozen. The repetition of ‘You will’ in the final stanza emphasises the inescapable nature of what is to come, while the simplicity and strength of the language has the force of a fearful prophecy: ‘You will be scattered like wreckage’ (line 30). Line 7 – ‘Tubular, burnt-out and frozen’ – is an example of Ní Chuilleanáin’s skill in building phrases that are visually and aurally arresting. Note the sounds which echo between the four words: the vowels ‘u’ and ‘o’ and the consonants ‘t’, ‘b’, ‘n’. Elsewhere there is alliteration and assonance that create the sounds of silence (line 6) and consonance that mirrors the sounds of a crash (line 5).

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Questions What experience is recounted in the first two stanzas of the poem?

What details are most effective in capturing the shock experienced by the speaker?

Why, in your view, does the speaker describe the pilot as ‘lonely’ (line 12)?

In stanza 3, the poem moves from storytelling to reflection. What is the tone of the speaker in addressing the ‘you’ in this stanza?

Comment on the use of the word ‘cheerfully’ (line 23) in the fourth stanza.

Examine the different kinds of wreckage referred to in the poem. What is their relationship to the theme of death?

Look at the last four lines of the poem. Do you think these lines offer any hope or consolation? Explain your answer.

Ní Chuilleanáin writes lines that are beautiful but mysterious. Offer your interpretation of the following lines: ■ ‘The cold of metal wings is contagious’ (line 13) ■ ‘Soon you will need wings of your own’ (line 14) ■ ‘And know how light your death is’ (line 29).

Which of the following is closest to your view of the speaker in the poem? ■ The speaker is cold and remote. ■ The speaker is honest and uncompromising. ■ The speaker is sad and fearful. ■ The speaker is preachy and relentless.

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Explain your choice, considering each point of view in your answer.

What kind of afterlife, if any, is imagined in the poem? Explain your answer.

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To what extent does your view of death correspond to the view presented in the poem? In pairs or groups, share and discuss your answers.

What differences, if any, exist between the world of this poem and the worlds of ‘The Second Voyage’ and ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’?

Suggest an alternative title for the poem and explain your choice.

You have been asked to create a video that parallels the mood and theme of the poem. Describe the images, sound effects and music you would choose. Explain how you would edit the film and any other features (colour scheme, camera angles, documentary footage, etc.) you would use.

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Before you read

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A mysterious girl; a dripping knife; ro r upwo an infatuated boy; an open door; stairs; footprints outlined in blood. In what kind of world would you expect to find this mix of ingredients? Share your thoughts.

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He fell in love with the butcher’s daughter When he saw her passing by in her white trousers Dangling a knife on a ring at her belt. He stared at the dark shining drops on the paving-stones.

Glossary 6 10

shambles: butcher’s slaughterhouse tread: flat upper surface of a step

One day he followed her Down the slanting lane at the back of the shambles. A door stood half-open And the stairs were brushed and clean, Her shoes paired on the bottom step, Each tread marked with the red crescent Her bare heels left, fading to faintest at the top.

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Guidelines Ní Chuilleanáin spoke of two sources of inspiration for this poem: the first was a beautiful young woman she encountered working in a butcher’s shop; the second was her memory of reading Joseph Conrad’s final novel, The Rover. The novel features Arlette, a mysterious, beautiful and disturbed young woman. When she is first introduced, she is described as wearing a striped white and red skirt. Later in the novel her aunt says of her: ‘Death seems to cling to her skirts. She has been running with it madly. Let us keep her feet out of more human blood.’ From these two sources, Ní Chuilleanáin creates a perfect Gothic mystery.

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Commentary Stanza 1

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As in a fairy tale, the story is told in the third person. The reader is given no background information. We are simply told that the unnamed ‘he’ fell in love with the unnamed ‘butcher’s daughter’. This happened ‘When he saw her passing by’. We are told what she wore – ‘white trousers’. And then in the same deadpan tone we are told that she carried ‘a knife on a ring at her belt’. The blood that has dripped from her knife onto the paving stones seems to have mesmerised him.

Stanza 2

In the second stanza the narrative continues without comment. We are told that he followed her down the lane at the back of the slaughterhouse. There is a half-open door. Inside the door there are stairs brushed clean. Her shoes are placed on the bottom step. The half-moon shape of her heels are visible on the treads of the stairs. The marks have been made by the blood on her feet. The marks are faintest at the top of the stairs.

Themes and imagery

The world of the poem is familiar in that we recognise the elements of fairy tale, but it is also mysterious in that we have no idea who the characters are or how the story will end. Is the blood from the dripping knife animal blood or human blood? Who or what has the girl butchered? Is the girl enticing the ‘he’ with her dangling knife? Is he wise to follow her down the ‘slanting lane’ (line 6)? Why is the door half-open? What lies at the top of the stairs? Will he mount the stairs to find out?

The short poem incorporates mystery, romance and danger. The imagery is strong. It is the kind we associate with fairy tales or their modern equivalent, the horror movie: a dripping knife; white trousers and dark blood; the half-open door; the stairs. The details of the brushed and clean stairs and the neatly arranged shoes suggest order and domesticity. This impression is undone by the beautiful, sinister detail of the red prints on each tread, formed by the blood of her bare feet.

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Each image has a symbolic value – red symbolising passion and danger; white symbolising innocence; the knife symbolising violence, sacrifice and death; the half-open door and the stairs suggesting points of no return, mystery and adventure. Both the stairs and the half-open door can be interpreted as equally inviting or forbidding. Do the stairs lead to something domestic and ordinary or something horrifying and violent? Is ‘the butcher’s daughter’ (line 1) a simple working girl, or a femme fatale, an enchantress? Is the ‘he’ an innocent or someone attracted to blood and danger? There is no way of answering these questions and therein lies the power and impact of the poem.

Form and language This eleven-line poem is composed in two stanzas. The language is simple, unadorned. The poem is pure narrative, with no comment or psychological insight into the nameless characters beyond the suggestion of enticement in the verb ‘dangling’ (line 3) and the suggestion of infatuation in the verb ‘stared’ (line 4). The use of the archaic noun ‘shambles’ (line 6) suggests a setting in the past, but there is no attempt in

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the poem to specify a place or time. This is the realm of ‘Once upon a time’.

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The opening three lines have a pleasing, unhurried rhythm. The careful wording of the fourth line, with its precise-sounding words and succession of long vowels, slows the rhythm and emphasises the mesmeric effect of the ‘shining drops’ of blood ‘on the paving-stones’. The tempo of the poem increases in the opening line of stanza 2: ‘One day he followed her’. This statement is immediately followed by a long line where the alliteration, ‘s’ sounds and long vowel sounds emphasise the slow journey down the long lane, and increase the tension, the ‘Where is this leading?’ question in the mind of the reader. This long line is followed by a short dramatic one: ‘A door stood half-open’ (line 7). The last four lines of the poem are beautifully controlled, the information coming slowly, in hushed, exact phrases. Ní Chuilleanáin uses long vowel sounds, consonance, alliteration and the finality of ‘t’, ‘d’ and ‘p’ sounds to build up a quiet feeling of expectation that is deliciously sinister.

Exam-Style Questions 1

Thinking about the poem Based on the first stanza, do you have any idea why the boy/man fell in love with the butcher’s daughter? What do we learn about the butcher’s daughter from the first stanza?

What, in your view, is the effect of the use of the verb ‘Dangling’ (line 3)?

What does the verb ‘stared’ (line 4) suggest about the boy/man? Explain your answer.

‘Down the slanting lane at the back of the shambles’ (line 6). How do you visualise this lane?

What do the ‘paired’ shoes ‘on the bottom step’ (line 9) suggest to you?

Do you like the way the poem ends? Explain your answer.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

What is the most interesting detail in the poem? Explain your choice.

In your view, what does the dripping knife hanging from the belt of the girl symbolise? Does it symbolise: ■ Power ■ Violence ■ Confidence ■ Mystery? Explain your answer.

Which of the following words best describes the atmosphere of the poem: ■ Sinister ■ Mysterious ■ Intriguing ■ Surreal?

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Understanding the poem

Explain your choice, considering each point of view in your answer.

The poem gives us no clue to the physical appearance of the characters. Does this fact add to or take from your enjoyment of the poem?

‘There is nothing in the poem to explain the actions or motivations of the two characters.’ Discuss.

The poem works by arousing our curiosity. What in your opinion are the most intriguing aspects of the story it tells?

Suggest another title for the poem and explain your suggestion.

Imagining upwo

The unnamed man is standing at the bottom of the stairs. He is looking at the prints left by the girl’s feet on the treads. Continue the story.

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You have been asked to turn the poem into a short film. Working in groups or pairs: a) Make a record of each image in the poem and then write a list of shots you would use. For example, you could say: ‘The opening shot is a close-up of white material.’ b) Write up character notes for the ‘he’ and the ‘butcher’s daughter’. The notes should refer to the appearance and psychological characteristics of both. ro

SNAPSHOT ■ ■ ■ ■

A story of love and mystery Elements of fairy tale and horror Cinematic Atmospheric

■ ■ ■ ■

Controlled language Third-person narrative No explanations Open-ended

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Fireman’s Lift

Before you read k

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I was standing beside you looking up Through the big tree of the cupola Where the church splits wide open to admit Celestial choirs, the fall-out of brightness.

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‘Nurses who work with the dying are ro r upwo angels.’ Have a class discussion on this idea before you read the poem.

Back, as the painter longed to While his arm swept in the large strokes. We saw the work entire, and how the light

The Virgin was spiralling to heaven, Hauled up in stages. Past mist and shining, Teams of angelic arms were heaving, Supporting, crowding her, and we stepped

Melted and faded bodies so that Loose feet and elbows and staring eyes Floated in the wide stone petticoat Clear and free as weeds.

This is what love sees, that angle: The crick in the branch loaded with fruit, A jaw defining itself, a shoulder yoked,

The back making itself a roof The legs a bridge, the hands A crane and a cradle.

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Their heads bowed over to reflect on her Fair face and hair so like their own As she passed through their hands. We saw them Lifting her, the pillars of their arms

(Her face a capital leaning into an arch) As the muscles clung and shifted For a final purchase together Under her weight as she came to the edge of the cloud. Parma 1963 – Dublin 1994

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Glossary

cupola: the dome of a building, in this instance the dome of Parma Cathedral

splits: the dome is positioned in the centre of the two arms of the church

Celestial: heavenly petticoat: underskirt. Ní Chuilleanáin explained: ‘I use the image of a church’s cupola resembling a stone petticoat, leading to the idea of churchgoers enclosed like children under their mother’s skirts’

crick: a muscular strain; the branch is straining under the weight of the fruit it supports

yoked: here, pulled or strained

capital: the top or head of a column or pier

purchase: here, grip together in order to lift

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Fireman’s Lift: Ní Chuilleanáin explained the title in an interview: ‘It’s the way of lifting a disabled person of which I was reminded when I saw the nurses lifting my mother in her final illness. They were all young and pretty and she loved them’

Ire

Title

Guidelines

Stanza 1

Commentary

‘Fireman’s Lift’ is the opening poem in Ní Chuilleanáin’s 1994 collection, The Brazen Serpent, published three months after the death of her mother. In an interview Ní Chuilleanáin said she ‘absolutely knew’ that her mother would want her to write a poem about her dying. The poem recalls a visit to the cathedral in Parma that the poet made with her parents in 1963. Specifically, it recalls mother and daughter standing side by side looking up to view Correggio’s ‘Assumption of the Virgin’, the extraordinary painting that fills the massive dome of the cathedral. In the painting, angels and saints surround Mary and assist her in her ascent into heaven. To Ní Chuilleanáin, the young nurses who cared for and lifted her mother in her final illness were like the angels and saints in Correggio’s painting. Interestingly, Ní Chuilleanáin makes no mention of the figure of Christ, whom Correggio placed in the apex of the dome, descending to meet Mary, his mother. For Ní Chuilleanáin, the focus is on the figure of Mary, as she is helped towards heaven by ‘Teams of angelic arms’.

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In the first line the speaker, in this case the poet, addresses a ‘you’, the poet’s mother, and recalls them standing side by side viewing Correggio’s painting in the cathedral of Parma, in 1963. Even though thirty years have passed, the speaker captures the excitement of the moment. The dome is like a tree through which light pours into the church. The church itself seems to split open as the heavenly choirs and an extraordinary brightness fall out of the opening in the roof, an effect of the natural light within the dome and the light of heaven in the painting.

Stanza 2

The second stanza describes the details the poet remembers of the painting. In her memory, Mary is ‘spiralling to heaven’, ‘Hauled up in stages’. Past the mist and clouds in the painting, ‘Teams of angelic arms were heaving, / Supporting, crowding her’. The verbs in the stanza suggest the movement and energy in the painting, as well as the physical energy and determination it takes to lift Mary towards heaven. The stanza captures Ní Chuilleanáin’s first impression of the painting, when she saw it in 1963; she says she ‘could only concentrate on one aspect, the way it shows bodily effort and the body’s weight’. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 317

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Stanzas 3 and 4

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The speaker continues her recollection, recalling how ‘we’ – mother and daughter – ‘stepped / Back’ to view the ‘work entire’, as she supposes the painter longed to do while he worked, ‘his arm’ sweeping in ‘large strokes’. However, paradoxically, what they see is less the work in its entirety than disconnected body parts (‘Loose feet and elbows and staring eyes’) seeming to float free, like weeds in water, as the light ‘Melted and faded’ the bodies of the saints and angels in the painting. The shape of the dome is compared to a ‘stone petticoat’, which establishes an interesting set of ideas, including that of the maternal church sheltering her children under her skirt.

Correggio’s ‘Assumption of the Virgin’, Cathedral of Parma, Italy.

Stanzas 5 and 6

Stanza 4 ends on a full stop. It marks a break or transition in the poem, from the cathedral in Parma in 1963 to the hospital in Dublin in 1994. The fifth stanza opens with the achingly beautiful declaration: ‘This is what love sees’. The statement has the force of wisdom, born out of grief and love. As the poet goes on to elaborate what love sees and the angle of its vision, she refers to a branch straining to support the fruit it carries (the image may come from the frescoes in the cathedral in Parma). The noun ‘crick’ sets up a series of images of strain as individuals bear the weight of another human being. One person sets their jaw; another’s shoulder is pulled. Just as in the frescoes in Parma, the description of the nurses working together to lift the poet’s ailing mother creates an architectural image as compelling as that made by Correggio: ‘The back making itself a roof / The legs a bridge, the hands / A crane and a cradle.’ Here the human bodies working together provide the strength, structure and care to support the dying woman. This is the fireman’s lift of the title.

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Stanzas 7 and 8

The final two stanzas continue to describe ‘what love sees’ (line 16). Now the nurses and the angels are one; as her mother ‘passed through their hands’, their ‘Fair’ features reflect hers. Like the angels in the painting (or Ní Chuilleanáin’s memory of the painting), the nurses lift the poet’s mother towards her destination: ‘We saw them / Lifting her’. In this reading, the ‘we’ is no longer the mother and daughter, it is the ‘we’ of the family looking at their mother. The reference to ‘the pillars of their arms’ and the muscles clinging and shifting, in the words of Patricia Boyle Haberstroh, ‘connect the nurses to the cathedral pillars and the angels in the cathedral dome, while highlighting the bodily strength of the nurses’ arms’. And it is these arms and this strength that

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin ‘Under her weight’ lift the poet’s mother ‘as she came to the edge of the cloud’. The poem ends at the edge of the cloud. This is a threshold and, like the stairs in ‘Street’, we have no way of knowing what lies beyond.

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Themes and imagery

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The poem is extraordinarily rich in symbolism and meaning. It is an elegy written by a daughter for a beloved mother. It commemorates her mother’s journey to the edge of the clouds, as Correggio commemorated the Virgin’s Assumption. The poem begins by describing a shared experience between mother and daughter, but, by the end, it is the daughter who is left to give witness to ‘what love sees’ (line 16). The opening stanzas describe a magnificent painting that seeks to portray the light and the glory of eternal life, and also celebrate the weight and cooperative effort involved in achieving it. In the fresco, the spiritual Assumption of the Virgin Mary depends on the human body – the fragmented and faded bodies of the angelic and saintly helpers working together. It is an interesting mix of the spiritual and the physical.

In the second half of the poem, the emphasis shifts to the burden of sickness and dying and the effort and teamwork required to support the dying person towards death. The journey of the Virgin Mary, like the journey in ’The Second Voyage’, is physically demanding. So, too, is the journey of the dying woman, as it is for the nurses who care for her.

The poem explores the relationship between the details and the whole, in both art and life. Here it is love that allows the poet to understand and see her mother’s death more fully: not just the sickness, or the helplessness, but also the moments they shared together; the human goodness of the nurses; and her mother’s final moments imagined, through the lens of Correggio’s painting, as an ascent to heaven. In this poem what love sees is the power of art to represent our deepest human experiences in a way that is elevating and profound.

The imagery in the poem adds to its symbolic richness. For example, the imagery around the ‘Melted and faded bodies’ (line 12) reduced to ‘Loose feet and elbows and staring eyes’ (line 13) surely references the fading body of the poet’s ailing mother, who, as she approached death, lacked the strength to bear her own weight.

The imagery is complex, suggesting an interrelationship between the architecture of the cathedral, the figures in Correggio’s painting, the poet’s mother and the nurses who care for her. More simply, the poem places a female presence at the centre of a sacred space and a sacred experience.

Form and language

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The poem is composed in four- and three-line stanzas (quatrains and tercets). There is no formal rhyming scheme, but throughout the poem there are many instances of near rhyme – ‘up’ and ‘cupola’ (lines 1–2), internal rhyme – ‘splits’ and ‘admit’ (line 3) and other forms of sound correspondences, such as alliteration and assonance. The poem is carefully crafted, the phrases linked together into long flows of narrative (lines 1–3), or stopped and checked by the punctuation (lines 16–21), as meaning demands. The final sentence, spread over two stanzas and six lines, ends with the beautiful image of the poet’s mother and the Virgin Mary being lifted ‘to the edge of the cloud’.

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Questions Based on the first stanza, what impression did the painting make on the poet the first time she saw it?

‘Where the church splits wide open’ (line 3). What is the effect of this description?

According to stanza 2, what were the teams of angels doing in the painting?

What is the effect of the light coming into the cathedral on the viewer’s perception of the figures in the painting (stanza 4)?

From the mother and daughter’s vantage point on the ground, what seems to float in the dome ‘Clear and free as weeds’ (line 15)?

Consider the various ideas suggested by the petticoat imagery in the poem.

‘This is what love sees’ (line 16). Comment on this line and its placement in the poem.

‘As she passed through their hands’ (line 24). Does this line refer to the Virgin Mary, or the poet’s mother, or both?

How is the physical effort of the nurses captured in the final stanzas of the poem?

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‘as she came to the edge of the cloud’ (line 29). How do you interpret the ending of the poem?

What is the significance of the dates and places at the end of the poem?

Explain as clearly as you can the importance of Correggio’s ‘The Assumption of the Virgin’ to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.

Based on the poem, is it possible to say what kind of relationship existed between Ní Chuilleanáin and her mother? Explain your answer.

Do we get a sense of the poet’s mother from this poem? If so, where and how?

‘Fireman’s Lift’. Comment on the title of the poem.

Which of the following statements is closest to your understanding of the poem? What love allows the poet to see is: ■ The effort and strain needed to support a loved one ■ The whole of a life and not only the sickness at the end ■ That death is not the end, but the beginning of eternal life ■ The loving care of the nurses who tended to her mother ■ That art can speak about death in ways that are dignified and uplifting.

Explain your choice, considering each point of view in your answer. Ní Chuilleanáin described ’Fireman’s Lift’ as a ‘cheering-up’ poem. What, do you think, did she mean?

‘This is what love sees’. Write a poem inspired by this line.

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upwo

Identify a work of art (in any art form) that you think is memorable. In pairs or groups, share and explain your choice.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Before you read

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All for You

Have you ever dreamed that ro r upwo you came to a strange house? Share your dream and say what meaning or significance, if any, it had for you.

The great staircase of the hall slouches back, Sprawling between warm wings. It is for you. As the steps wind and warp Among the vaults, their thick ribs part; the doors Of guardroom, chapel, storeroom Swing wide and the breath of ovens Flows out, the rage of brushwood, The roots torn out and butchered.

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Once beyond the gate of the strange stableyard, we dismount. The donkey walks on, straight in at a wide door And sticks his head in a manger.

manger: trough or box for feeding animals

wings: sections of the house on either side of the staircase

warp: twist, turn

brushwood: branches and twigs

It is for you, the dry fragrance of tea-chests The tins shining in ranks, the ten-pound jars Rich with shrivelled fruit. Where better to lie down And sleep, along the labelled shelves, With the key still in your pocket?

Glossary

Guidelines

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‘All for You’ comes from Ní Chuilleanáin’s 1994 collection, The Brazen Serpent. She has said a number of interesting things about the inspiration for the poem. The first is her irritation and dislike for the way in which ‘You’ is used in advertisements (‘Twenty classic love songs you will want to have’), with the presumption that advertisers know what ‘You’ need or want. The second is the fact that the house where she grew up, the warden’s house of the Honan Hostel in UCC, appears in her dreams. The house had a staircase and a storeroom. The storeroom was unlocked only once a week and this made it ‘special and mysterious’. The poet has also referenced the Gothic novel Jane Eyre in relation to the poem. In the novel, a young woman comes to work as a servant in an isolated manor house. It is a house with secrets and locked doors. The novel creates an atmosphere of suspense and terror. Ní Chuilleanáin has described ‘All for You’ as a ‘girl’s dreamlike poem’. These remarks do not explain or interpret the poem, but they do offer some interesting lines of enquiry for the reader.

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Commentary Stanza 1

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As in ‘Street’, the reader is brought into the middle of the action, without background or context. An unidentified speaker describes dismounting from a donkey in a ‘strange stableyard’. The speaker is not alone. (At least) two people – ‘we dismount’ – have ridden on the donkey. The donkey is coming back to familiar surroundings and walks straight to the manger to feed after the journey. The reader is like a detective trying to read the clues to piece the story together. Has the speaker been summoned or fetched to this place? Who or what is the relationship between the people in the stanza? The inspiration for the poem may have come in part from Ní Chuilleanáin’s satirising of modern advertising, but the poem does not have a modern setting. The references to a stableyard, donkey and manger suggest an unspecified time in the past, the kind of setting found in fairy tales or in dreams.

Stanza 2

The poem now moves from an exterior to an interior setting. The building, like the protagonists in the poem, remains unnamed; it is impressive and comfortable, with its ‘great staircase’, ‘warm wings’, ‘guardroom, chapel, storeroom’, ‘ovens’ and vaulted ceilings. The list of rooms and architectural features suggests this is a medieval castle or manor house. As in ‘Street’, there is an underlying sense of unease generated in the poem. Who or what says the words ‘It is for you’? Are they spoken aloud? Are they a suggestion in the speaker’s mind? Does the house speak them?

As in a fairy tale or a horror story, the house seems to have a personality of its own. The staircase ‘slouches back’ and sprawls. The description suggests indolence. It does not convey a wholesome or welcoming attitude to the speaker. As in ‘Fireman’s Lift’, there is a blurring between the architectural features of the building and the human body. The supporting pillars of the vaults are described as ribs, as if the building were a person. There is a surprising ferocity in the description of the heat coming from the ovens, as ‘the rage of brushwood’ protesting at being Buildings in Gothic tales ‘torn out and butchered’. In Gothic fiction and horror stories, the building in which the story is set often functions as a

character in its own right. Frequently, a house serves as a metaphor, with hidden rooms and

Stanza 3

The third stanza begins with a repetition of the words ‘It is for you’. As before, we are unsure who or what speaks the words, or whether they are spoken at all. We are also unsure if the voice of stanza 3 is the same as the voice in stanzas 1 and 2. The setting is indoors, but it has a different feel compared with the setting of the previous stanza. For one, the space seems confined. From the list of contents – ‘tea-chests’, ‘tins’, ‘jars’, ‘shelves’, the setting is a kitchen storeroom or larder. This is a place of good housekeeping. The shelves are ‘labelled’; the tins are placed ‘in ranks’. The food items are of good quality, kept in good order and in optimum conditions. This is a place of abundance. There are chests of tea, ‘ten-pound jars’ of ‘Rich’ fruit. The question which closes the poem – ‘Where better to lie down / And sleep, along the labelled shelves, / With the key still in your pocket?’ – suggests that the person addressed (though it is unclear who asks the question) may be a housekeeper or someone charged with looking after the storeroom. Is this the explanation of the poem’s narrative? Is it the story of someone brought to work in the kitchen of a great but mysterious house and offered the key of the

locked doors representing dark and secret

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places of the human mind.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin storeroom to tempt them to stay? Is the key a symbol of the authority the person will have in the household, as well as a guarantee of security and freedom? The poem invites us to create such narratives, to speculate and wonder.

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Themes and imagery

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As in ‘Street’, the poem creates an atmosphere of suspense and mystery. This is the world of fairy tales, ghost stories and Gothic novels. There are hints and suggestions of seduction or persuasion in the repeated ‘It is for you’, the dangerous idea of being offered something you seemingly cannot refuse. There are elements of the uncanny in the description of the house; it seems to have a personality of its own. There is a suggestion of rage or pent-up anger flowing from the ovens. The word ‘butchered’ (line 11) causes the same unease as the butchering imagery in ‘Street’.

As in Gothic novels, images of unease and the uncanny sit side by side with images of home comfort and security. Ní Chuilleanáin has said that she associates the storeroom with childhood and with the maternal body. The storeroom, like the womb, becomes a site of warmth, sustenance and security. However, the idea that desires and wants can be satisfied by locking oneself in a cupboard, no matter how well stocked, serves to highlight the lack of opportunities available to the unnamed protagonist in the poem. It is a bleak future if self-imposed imprisonment is the best life can offer.

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Ní Chuilleanáin’s style of composition is cinematic in character. As in a TV advertisement, the reader is brought on a guided tour of the castle with the words ‘It is for you’ repeated on the soundtrack. Everything in the poem is visual and descriptive and from the details we try to form a coherent narrative. But, as in advertisements, or folktales, or Ní Chuilleanáin’s poem ‘Street’, we are given no background story or insight into the situation, psychology or motivation of the characters.

Form and language The poem is written in three stanzas of irregular length. As in ‘Street’, the form of the poem follows the content. Stanza 1 is set outside the building in the stableyard. Stanza 2 moves indoors and describes the grandness of the building. Stanza 3 focuses in on a kitchen storeroom. In comparison with ‘Street’, the language is ornate, especially in the first two stanzas. The stableyard is ‘strange’ (line 1). The staircase is described as

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slouching and ‘Sprawling’ (line 5). There is something extravagant in these descriptions, accentuated by the use of alliteration and long vowel sounds. Steps are said to ‘wind and warp’ (line 6). This is typical of the overstatement in the poem, which gives a sense of something being not quite right, of language which is not to be trusted, not sincere. This impression is reinforced by the repetition of ‘It is for you’, as if someone untrustworthy is whispering in another’s ear. There is a difference in the language in stanza 3: the descriptions are more precise, more exact, as if that which is offered is more real or the words are spoken by another voice.

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Questions What do we learn about the speaker and the setting of the poem in stanza 1?

What details in stanza 2 suggest that the ‘we’ of line 1 have arrived in a great house?

How is an underlying sense of unease created in stanza 2?

Comment on the effect of the words ‘rage’ and ‘butchered’ in the final two lines of the second stanza.

What kind of space is described in stanza 3? How is it different from the space described in the second stanza?

a) Who, do you think, asks the question which ends the poem? b) Do you think this question points to a fulfilled life? Explain your answer.

Choose your favourite descriptive detail from the poem and explain your choice.

What elements in the poem suggest that the ‘you’ (lines 5 and 12) is being seduced or persuaded into staying?

The reader is given no background information or psychological insight into the characters in the poem. Is this a source of attraction or frustration for you? In pairs or groups, discuss.

r upwo

‘In “All for You” Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin has created a tale of mystery which appeals to the imagination of the reader.’ Discuss this view of the poem.

Various suggestions have been made for the identity of the ‘you’ in the poem: a servant girl arriving in her new place of work; a young woman entering a convent; a child coming to claim an inheritance. Imagine two scenarios – one benign and one malevolent – which, in your view, fit the details in the poem.

‘Exhausted, she lay down along the labelled shelves’. Write the dream that the ‘you’ of the poem had as she lay in the unfamiliar room.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Following

Before you read

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Ire pa

She comes to where he is seated With whiskey poured out in two glasses In a library where the light is clean, His clothes all finely laundered, Ironed facings and linings. The smooth foxed leaf has been hidden In a forest of fine shuffling, The square of white linen That held three drops Of her heart’s blood is shelved Between the gatherings That go to make a book – The crushed flowers among the pages crack The spine open, push the bindings apart.

Until she is tracing light footsteps Across the shivering bog by starlight, The dead corpse risen from the wakehouse Gliding before her in a white habit. The ground is forested with gesturing trunks, Hands of women dragging needles, Half-choked heads in the water of cuttings, Mouths that roar like the noise of the fair day.

So she follows the trail of her father’s coat through the fair Shouldering past beasts packed solid as books, And the dealing men nearly as slow to give way – A block of belly, a back like a mountain, A shifting elbow like a plumber’s bend – When she catches a glimpse of a shirt-cuff, a handkerchief, Then the hard brim of his hat, skimming along,

Do you have a favourite fairy tale ro r upwo or folktale? What is it about the tale that appeals to you? Share your thoughts with the class.

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Glossary

dealing men: men doing business or trading at the fair

wakehouse: a house where a body is waked or watched over prior to burial

white habit: a dress-like garment worn by religious orders; traditionally, a dead person was dressed in a habit in preparation for burial

facings: the cuffs, collar and lapels of a jacket

foxed leaf: a page discoloured with brownish marks as in an old book

shuffling: the page is lost among many others

spine: the part of a book cover that hides where the pages are held together and gives details of author and title; it is usually placed facing out on a shelf

bindings: inner coverings and glue that hold the pages of a book together

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Guidelines

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‘Following’ comes from Ní Chuilleanáin’s 1994 collection, The Brazen Serpent. The collection has many poems with elements of folklore as well as poems dealing with memory and family. All three elements combine in ‘Following’. The poem has a number of sources of inspiration. The first comes from the poet’s memories of her father: following him as a child; that he always wore a suit and a hat; his work as a professor and academic. The second source of inspiration appears to be Pádraic Colum’s poem ‘She Moved through the Fair’. In the poem, a young man describes his last glimpse of his bride-to-be walking through a fair before she dies. The young woman appears to her lover in a dream and tells him it will not be long till their wedding day. More generally, the poem draws from folktales, folklore and myth in which individuals embark on perilous journeys to find their way home or be reunited with a loved one.

Knowing some of the background to the writing of the poem is helpful but it does not offer an interpretation of the poem. This can only come from careful, patient reading.

Commentary

Stanza 1

The poem opens with the word ‘So’, suggesting a whole series of events that occur before this moment when the ‘she’ of the poem follows her father’s coat through the fair. It is not easy to follow the trail, to walk in his footsteps. There are obstacles: ‘beasts packed solid as books’; ‘dealing men nearly as slow to give way’. The men are big, with big bellies and backs and elbows, all of which block the girl’s progress. The imagery suggests that the fair is really crowded and the girl is small. However, in lines 6–7, there is enough space for her to catch a glimpse of more than the back of his coat. She sees ‘a shirt-cuff, a handkerchief, / Then the hard brim of his hat’. They are surprising details, not the soft caps and work clothes of ‘dealing men’ and farmers. His clothes set her father apart. Nor is he stopping, waiting for her to catch up. No, he is ‘skimming along’.

Stanza 2

The narrative continues in stanza 2. The opening word ‘Until’ suggests that following her father’s trail has brought her to this new place, a ‘shivering bog by starlight’. Now she is following a trail of ‘light footsteps’, but her father is not in sight, he is somewhere ahead of her. A ‘dead corpse’ glides ‘before her in a white habit’. This trail leads to the afterlife. There are obstacles here in her path: the ground is ‘forested with gesturing trunks’, ‘Hands’, ‘Half-choked heads’, ‘Mouths’ of souls in distress, stuck, unable to move, in the ‘shivering bog’.

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Stanza 3

The narrative continues. The girl follows the trail and ‘comes to where he is seated’. He is awaiting her ‘With whiskey poured out in two glasses’. The journey has led her to a library, where ‘the light is clean’. Everything is ordered; her father’s clothes have been laundered. In this new place, her father has arranged his books. The gifts she has given him (‘The smooth foxed leaf’, ‘The square of white linen’, ‘The crushed flowers’) have been placed in the books in the library. All seems in order, though the final two lines suggest that the emotions of the occasion may not be kept in check.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Themes and imagery

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The poem is a memory poem and a commemorative poem. It is a poem about following in the footsteps of one’s parents and how, even after death, our loved ones live through us. At heart, the theme is simple – a daughter’s wish to stay connected to her father, even after death. It is a poem about the unbreakable bonds of family love. It is the same theme found in Virgil’s Aeneid, where the hero, Aeneas, seeks permission to visit the underworld to see his dead father one more time. What loving child has not imagined such a reunion with a dead parent? What loving child has not imagined their parent living in happiness after death, doing the things that gave them most pleasure in life?

In ‘Fireman’s Lift’, which commemorates her mother, the poem stops at the edge of the cloud, at the moment of death. Ní Chuilleanáin makes no attempt to imagine the otherworld, the afterlife. In ‘Following’, however, the daughter follows her father through life and into the afterlife. It is an affectionate visualisation of her father’s heaven: his books around him; a clean light; a glass of whiskey; his clothes freshly laundered. It is a vision of him in eternity drawn from the place where he was happiest in life – his library. Many of the details in the final stanza are personal ones but, by writing in the third person and creating her own version of a folktale, Ní Chuilleanáin gives universal significance to the journey of the daughter in the poem.

This poem is a journey poem. It begins in daylight in a forest of people and animals; moves through a nighttime forest of distressed souls; and ends amid a forest of books. The world of the first stanza is a world of men and animals and trading, a world that has little regard for a young girl trying to make her way through the bodies crowding around her. The world of the second stanza is a world between worlds, a dark place which separates the living from the dead. It is a place which the dead corpse, risen from the wakehouse, must cross to get to the otherworld. Not all the dead make it across. Some are stuck. They have been there for so long that they have become one with the bog – hands, heads, mouths are indistinguishable from tree trunks and flowers, their bodies dissolved and faded. Like the dead in Greek mythology who have not received a proper burial, these souls cannot pass into the otherworld, cannot follow the corpse in a white habit making her/ his way there. These souls are like the Magdalenes in ‘Translation’, locked away and buried in secret. (The reference in line 13 to ‘dragging needles’ links these women to the domestic world of the Magdalenes.)

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The world of the third stanza is a world of order, cleanliness, books and what books contain. The father’s clothes are ‘finely laundered’ (line 19), the phrasing suggesting that some invisible hands have done the work. In another poem, Ní Chuilleanáin says that as a boy her father never learned to set a table, ‘though books lined up at his command’. His sisters made his world clean and comfortable. Heaven, it seems, has the same gender divide. The last nine lines of the poem refer to her father’s books and what they contain and hold. Here, as elsewhere in the poem, the meaning shifts between the mythic and the real. In real life, Ní Chuilleanáin inherited many of her father’s books. In all collections of books, there are little secrets or surprises: pages inserted by the reader, passages of text highlighted. Ní Chuilleanáin encapsulates this idea in three such mementoes: a ‘foxed leaf’ (line 21); some flowers; and a square of linen with drops of blood. All three mementoes are kept or stored between the pages of books. The leaf may be a real leaf, or the stained leaf of an old book, with a passage marked or an inscription written on it. The handkerchief with the three drops of her heart’s blood, like the one given by the mother to her daughter to protect her on her journey in the Grimms’ fairy tale ‘The Goose Girl’, symbolises the bond between parent and child and the sacrifice

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each will make for the other. What these objects suggest is the idea of memories and feelings stored and put away. But the fact that they are out of sight does not mean that they are inert. Memories can surface at any time and, as the crushed flowers in the book crack open the spine and push the bindings apart, memories can break the heart, bringing to mind the ones we love while simultaneously reminding us of their absence.

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The poem is composed of a series of contrasting images drawn from real life and from folklore. There are images of the living and the dead; of male and female; of ease and distress; of day and night; of heaviness and lightness. It is a poem which places the poet at its heart as she undertakes the quest of following her father beyond this world into the world on the other side of death.

Form and language

The poem is composed of three stanzas of varied length. Each stanza is linked to one of the settings in the story the poem tells. The first two stanzas are written in long lines that allow the story to unfold. The physicality of the world of the fair and the effort required by the poet to find her way through it is reflected in the hard sounds of ‘packed’, ‘books’, ‘block’, ‘back’ in the first stanza, and the alliteration of line 4: ‘A block of belly, a back like a mountain’. Verbs like ‘Shouldering’ and ‘shifting’ capture the movement of the crowd. The change of location in stanza 2 is reflected in the whispering alliteration of ‘footsteps’, ‘shivering’ and ‘starlight’. The verbs ‘tracing’ and ‘Gliding’ suggest that we have left the physicality of the fair behind. In the second half of the stanza, the language is harsher. The phrase ‘Half-choked heads’ is onomatopoeic in effect. The language of the third stanza is less dramatic than stanzas 1 and 2. The girl has arrived at her destination. The scene is described in well-balanced phrases: ‘a forest of fine shuffling’; ‘The square of white linen’. The composure and balance of the language comes under strain in the final two lines, in the verb ‘crack’ and the image of the bindings coming ‘apart’.

Questions

What kind of world is described in the first stanza? What details are most vivid?

To what extent are the father and daughter part of the world of the fair?

Describe the location of the second stanza. In one word describe the atmosphere of this stanza.

Who, do you think, are the female figures described in lines 12–15?

In stanza 3, the daughter arrives in the land of the dead. What kind of place is it?

How is the daughter greeted by the father? Comment on the imagery of ‘heart’s blood’ and ‘crushed flowers’ in the final stanza.

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The last word of the poem is ‘apart’. What, in your view, is the significance of this?

Consider all the meanings of ‘following’ suggested in the poem.

Ní Chuilleanáin said of this poem, ‘I suppose I am really trying to bring my father back to life.’ Do you think she succeeded in this poem?

Ní Chuilleanáin’s father collected folklore. Given this fact, do you think ‘Following’ is a suitable poem written in his memory?

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The poem is rich in imagery and symbolism. Working in groups, prepare a storyboard for ‘Following’ that does full justice to the visual aspects of the poem.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Kilcash

Before you read

From the Irish, c.1800

Cutting down forests – a sign ro r upwo of progress or an act of barbarism? Share your thoughts with a partner before reading ‘Kilcash’.

It’s the cause of my long affliction To see your neat gates knocked down, The long walks affording no shade now And the avenue overgrown, The fine house that kept out the weather, Its people depressed and tamed; And their names with the faithful departed, The Bishop and Lady Iveagh!

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What will we do now for timber With the last of the woods laid low – No word of Kilcash nor its household, The bell is silenced now, Where the lady lived with such honour, No woman so heaped with praise, Earls came across oceans to see her And heard the sweet words of Mass.

Even the deer and the hunters That follow the mountain way Look down upon us with pity, The house that was famed in its day; The smooth wide lawn is all broken, No shelter from wind and rain; The paddock has turned to a dairy Where the fine creatures grazed.

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The geese and the ducks’ commotion, The eagle’s shout, are no more, The roar of the bees gone silent, Their wax and their honey store Deserted. Now at evening The musical birds are stilled And the cuckoo is dumb in the treetops That sang lullaby to the world.

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Mist hangs low on the branches No sunlight can sweep aside, Darkness falls among daylight And the streams are all run dry; No hazel, no holly or berry, Bare naked rocks and cold; The forest park is leafless And all the game gone wild.

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And now the worst of our troubles: She has followed the prince of the Gaels – He has borne off the gentle maiden, Summoned to France and to Spain. Her company laments her That she fed with silver and gold: One who never preyed on the people But was the poor souls’ friend.

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My prayer to Mary and Jesus She may come home safe to us here To dancing and rejoicing To fiddling and bonfire That our ancestors’ house will rise up, Kilcash built up anew And from now to the end of the story May it never be laid low.

Glossary

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Title

Kilcash: castle (now ruined) and lands in south Tipperary, near Ballydine, that once belonged to a branch of the powerful AngloNorman Butler family

timber: the forests around the castle were famous. The last of the trees were sold off in 1803 by the Butler family

lady: Margaret Butler. Although her husband was a member of the Church of Ireland, she was Catholic, as were other members of the Butler family

The Bishop: Christopher Butler (1673–1757) of Kilcash, who was Catholic Archbishop of Cashel and brother-in-law to Margaret Butler. He is buried in the churchyard at Kilcash

Lady Iveagh: Another name for Margaret Butler, the lady of the poem. She died in 1744 and is buried in the churchyard in Kilcash. The title, Lady Iveagh, comes from her first marriage

the gentle maiden: possibly referring to Margaret Butler. In many poems of the period, Ireland is presented as a young woman

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Guidelines

The penal laws The penal laws form the historical background to the original poem. These laws, introduced

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‘Kilcash’ comes from Ní Chuilleanáin’s 2001 collection, The Girl in 1695, forbade Catholics from buying land, Who Married the Reindeer. It is a translation from Irish of a poem attending mass, educating their children as first written down in the mid-nineteenth century but probably Catholics, and standing for elected office. A woman like Margaret Butler, who defended dating from the late eighteenth century. The translation is based Catholicism, earned the affection and respect on a version of the poem edited by Professor Dáithí Ó hÓgáin. of the Catholic community. ‘Caoine Cill Chais’ is a lament for Margaret Butler and the decline of the family estate at Kilcash. As the poem tells us, the great house stands empty, its woods have been cut down and the old values and way of life have disappeared. Margaret Butler is remembered as a woman of honour and generosity, and as a defender of the Catholic faith during a time of legally sanctioned discrimination against and persecution of Catholics. Butler came from an established Anglo-Norman family who, after being in Ireland for centuries, were considered more Irish than the Irish themselves. Under their leadership, the countryside flourished. Now, the speaker looks around, sees a devastated countryside. In the final stanza they pray that the old order might be restored.

Commentary

Stanza 1

The poem opens with a question posed by the unnamed speaker:

What will we do now for timber With the last of the woods laid low – No word of Kilcash nor its household, The bell is silenced now

The speaker uses the collective ‘we’ as if speaking as the representative of all the people of Kilcash. The woods have been cut down and the family has left the estate. With their departure, ‘the sweet words of Mass’ are no longer heard. The sense of loss and desolation is palpable. The speaker goes on to single out the lady of the house, Margaret Butler, and refers to her honour and the praise she earned. There is pride in the claim that earls came across the seas to visit her. She is remembered as a defender of Catholicism, the religion of the ordinary people of the land, during a time of religious persecution.

Stanza 2

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The voice of the poem becomes more personal as the speaker refers to ‘my long affliction’. The speaker’s affliction is caused by seeing the once elegant and cared-for house and grounds suffer neglect, disrepair and deliberate destruction. The ‘neat gates’ have been ‘knocked down’ and the avenue is now ‘overgrown’. With the felling of the trees, the long walks have no shade. The house has been allowed to deteriorate so that now it is subject to wind and rain. The two people most associated with protecting the Catholics of the area, Lady Iveagh and Archbishop Butler, are now dead. All the people associated with the house (servants, workers, tenants) are described as depressed. The speaker also refers to them as ‘tamed’, as if the destruction of the house, and what it stood for – a strong, vibrant Catholic culture and an honourable and generous way of living – has knocked the spirit out of the local people. The community now submits to the new order of things.

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Stanza 3

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The sense of mourning and desolation evident in the poem is now expressed in terms of the birds and the bees on the estate. The farmyard fowl have disappeared, as has the eagle that once nested in the woods. The swarms of bees have departed and the song birds stay silent in the evening. The image of the silent birds encapsulates the sense of loss that hangs around the estate.

Stanza 4

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According to the speaker, the pitiable state of the once great estate arouses the sympathy of both the deer and the hunters looking down upon it from the mountains. What they see is a formerly smooth lawn ‘all broken’, and that the paddock once reserved for the horses of the estate is now a dairy.

Stanza 5

The speaker now describes how the natural order seems to have been overturned in Kilcash and the natural fertility of the land has dried up. It is as if a spell hangs upon the land. We are told that ‘Mist hangs low on the branches’, so that ‘Darkness falls among daylight’. The streams now run dry; there are no leaves on the trees and no fruit or berries. The game which provided meat for the estate has run wild.

Stanza 6

This poem strikes out in a different direction in stanza 6, suggesting that the ‘worst of our troubles’ is that ‘She has followed the prince of the Gaels’ to Europe. Margaret Butler’s first husband, Brian Magennis, Lord Iveagh, was a prince of the Gaels; he left Ireland after the defeat at the Battle of the Boyne to serve as a soldier in the Catholic armies of Europe, and was killed in battle in 1703. But it was only after his death that his widow married into the Butler family and settled in Kilcash, so the historical sequence is out of kilter in the poem. However, the ‘She’ of this stanza is perhaps less the person of Margaret Butler and more the spirit and values that she represents: she was a leader who spent her wealth to feed her people and was a friend to the poor. This spirit has left the country.

Stanza 7

The poem concludes with a personal prayer from the speaker to Mary and Jesus, to bring Lady Iveagh home or to bring home the spirit that she represents. The final stanza has a biblical quality. Just as Christians believe that Christ will come again in all his glory, the speaker prays that Lady Iveagh will return and her return will be marked with ‘dancing and rejoicing’. On her return, the ancestral home of Kilcash will rise up to its former glory and will ‘never be laid low’.

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Themes and imagery The poem is a lament for an individual woman who was generous and honourable, and for a way of life which brought prosperity to the community. In celebrating Lady Iveagh, the poem acts as a reminder of some of the unsung and forgotten women of Irish history. During a time of religious, social and political upheaval, the poem looks back to a golden age and longs for its return. For the speaker, the decline of Kilcash is symbolic of the effects of English colonisation and seizure of Irish lands. The values represented by Margaret Butler – generosity, order and care for people – contrast with those who sell the natural resources of Kilcash for their own gain, without regard to the people who live there. (Ironically, the woods were sold off by members of the Butler family.)

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

The poem was originally composed in Irish to commemorate a woman who came from an English–Norman family, the Butlers, one of the families who came to be regarded as ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’. Two hundred years later it is translated into English by a writer whose father was Professor of Irish at UCC. Ní Chuilleanáin spent her career teaching English Renaissance literature in Trinity College, Dublin, which, when it was established, was intended to strengthen the Protestant Reformation in Ireland; during her lifetime, the Catholic Margaret Butler would not have been permitted to enter the then Protestant university. The very act of translating the poem testifies to the complicated richness of what it means to be Irish.

The images in the poem, apart from the ‘sweet words of Mass’ (stanza 1) and the celebratory images of the final stanza, are those of decay, ruin, deterioration, silence and disorder. The image of the silence of the birds (stanza 3) is a particularly evocative image of loss.

Form and language

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‘Kilcash’ is unique among this selection of Ní Chuilleanáin’s poems in that it is written in eight-line stanzas that use rhyme and have a regular metre. In this it follows the original Irish poem. The strong rhythm, with three stresses in each line and two or three unstressed syllables between them, has a lilting quality which is somewhat at odds with the bleak tone of the lament. The strong rhythm of the poem is reinforced by the almost complete absence of enjambment (line 21 is an exception) and the succession of long vowel sounds. The poem follows a regular rhyme scheme with one rhyme occurring between the second and fourth lines of each stanza, and another between the sixth and the eight lines (abcbdefe). The rhymes are mostly half-rhymes (‘praise’/‘Mass’; ‘stilled’/‘world’; ‘cold’/‘wild’), which contributes to the mournful tone of the speaker. The language is generally plain and unadorned. The use of the word ‘affliction’ in line 9 is a traditional usage for such lament poems. In the final stanza, as the speaker imagines Kilcash being ‘built up anew’, there is a lift in the language and energy of the poem. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 333

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Questions The poem opens with a reference to the cutting down of the trees around Kilcash. In your view, what does the felling of the trees symbolise for the speaker of the poem?

Based on the poem, describe the life lived at Kilcash when the estate was thriving and Margaret Butler lived there.

Outline all the negative consequences for Kilcash which followed after the departure of the Butler family.

a) Comment on the phrase ‘the sweet words of Mass’ (line 8). b) To what extent would you describe ‘Kilcash’ as a Catholic poem?

The fifth stanza paints a particularly bleak picture of the estate at Kilcash. Comment on the imagery and its purpose in the poem.

Identify what you consider to be the most striking image in the poem. Explain your choice.

Which of the following statements captures the mood of the speaker of the poem: ■ The speaker feels abandoned ■ The speaker feels helpless ■ The speaker feels despair ■ The speaker feels lost ■ The speaker feels anger ■ The speaker feels hopeful?

Explain your choice(s).

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Comment on the prayer in the final stanza of the poem. Does this prayer change the mood of the poem?

‘Although the poem celebrates one person, the reader gets no sense of the real Margaret Butler.’ Give your response to this statement.

Ní Chuilleanáin has said that history is alive for her and that the past lives on in the present. Does she succeed in bringing history alive in this poem?

‘The problem with poems which celebrate a golden age is that they are unreliable. They tend to paint too rosy a picture of the past and too bleak a picture of the present.’ Discuss in relation to ‘Kilcash’.

The original Irish poem was composed over two hundred years ago. It laments a once-great house standing empty, its woods cut down, and the disappearance of the values and way of life that the house once supported. Does the translation of this poem have any relevance for a contemporary Irish audience?

Find some online images of Kilcash as it now stands. Write a short poem in response to these images.

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Working in pairs, decide on two pieces of music that you think capture the spirit of the poem. Share your choices with the class.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Translation

Before you read G

White light blinded and bleached out The high relief of a glance, where steam danced Around stone drains and giggled and slipped across water.

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The soil frayed and sifted evens the score – There are women here from every county, Just as there were in the laundry.

A report by Amnesty ro r upwo International into religious-run and state institutions in Ireland in the twentieth century stated that the residents were made invisible, turned into outsiders by their own society, and abandoned to multiple abuses and experiences of exploitation. Share your knowledge of the Magdalene institutions and then read this poem.

for the reburial of the Magdalenes

As if, when water sank between rotten teeth Of soap, and every grasp seemed melted, one voice Had begun, rising above the shuffle and hum

Assist them now, ridges under the veil, shifting, Searching for their parents, their names, The edges of words grinding against nature,

Until every pocket in her skull blared with the note – Allow us now to hear it, sharp as an infant’s cry While the grass takes root, while the steam rises:

Glossary

Washed clean of idiom • the baked crust Of words that made my temporary name • A parasite that grew in me • that spell Lifted • I lie in earth sifted to dust • Let the bunched keys I bore slacken and fall • I rise and forget • a cloud over my time.

Title

Translation: a word with multiple meanings; in the Catholic Church, the transfer of the remains of a saint from one resting place to another

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Dedication Magdalenes: the name given to inmates of institutions originally established as a place of refuge for so-called ‘fallen women’. The women who lived there were required to work in the laundries attached to the institutions. Many of the women were unmarried mothers whose babies were taken from them. Others were women, not necessarily unmarried mothers, who were punished for what was considered immoral sexual behaviour. More were poor or orphaned. The institutions gave effect to the repressive social policies of the Irish State and the Catholic Church towards women, their reproductive rights, and children. Many of the women were incarcerated in the laundries for the ‘crime’ of having a child. At the same time they were legally prevented from availing of contraceptive services. Over 30,000 women were detained in Magdalene institutions between 1922 and 1996, when the last of the laundries closed. In 2013, then Taoiseach Enda Kenny apologised to the victims of these institutions on behalf of the Irish State 1

frayed: loosened

evens the score: compensates for; evens the scored or cut earth

idiom: the expressions used by a particular group of people

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Guidelines

Mary Magdelene Mary Magdalene was a revered saint for many

the Magdalene homes were first established in Ireland, they were set up as places of refuge for ‘fallen women’ like the Mary Magdalene of popular tradition. However, they soon became places of confinement, with prison-like rules

and conditions.

disciple of Jesus. She was the first person to whom the Resurrection was revealed. When

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This poem comes from Ní Chuilleanáin’s 2001 collection, The Girl Who Married the Reindeer. It was written for a public ceremony in which the remains of one hundred and fifty-five women who had lived and died behind the walls of the Magdalene laundry in Drumcondra, in Dublin, were reburied in Glasnevin Cemetery. The women had been buried in unmarked graves. The remains came to light when building work began on the site in 1993. The poem bears public witness to the lives of these women and the losses they suffered.

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Catholics. According to tradition (though not the New Testament), she was a prostitute,

Commentary

Stanza 1

The poem opens in the present, at a ceremony in Glasnevin Cemetery. Just as there were women from every county ‘in the laundry’, women have come ‘from every county’ in Ireland for the reburial of the Magdalenes. This community of women, gathered in solidarity with the Magdalenes, unites past and present. The opening line – ‘The soil frayed and sifted evens the score’, speaks of the painstaking task of sifting through the soil to discover the remains: the soil had to be loosened and examined. The speaker suggests that the difficulty of this work might, somehow, even the score on behalf of the Magdalenes: here was someone else using their hands on behalf of the women who spent their lives doing domestic chores, sewing frayed cloth, sifting flour, scoring bread. The dash at the end of line 1 leaves the idea in mid-air. Nothing can really restore to the women what has been lost. The score will never be settled for them, even if the earth that was scored, or cut, for their grave is now smoothed over and made even.

Stanza 2

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The poem moves to the past and to a Magdalene laundry. The poem paints a scene of blinding ‘White light’ and steam, where there is no relief from the work, not even a quick glance upwards towards the light to ease out stiffness in one’s back. Happiness and innocent fun are forbidden in this place, so that it is only the steam that dances and the water that giggles. The verbs ‘danced’ and ‘giggled’ remind the reader what life could have been like for the Magdalenes had a more humane regime existed in the institutions. But like the stains on the clothes, humanity has been ‘bleached out’ of the laundry.

Stanza 3

The nine lines of stanzas 3–5 form a prayer offered on behalf of the Magdalenes – ‘Asist them now … Allow us now to hear it’ – though it is not clear to whom the prayer is addressed; it could be us, the readers, or it could be God. According to these stanzas, the women and girls of the laundries are, in death, moving under the earth. They are ‘Searching for their parents, their names’; searching to reclaim their identities, their reputations, searching to belong. The search will not be easy: the sharp ‘edges of words’ have been used against them, ‘against their nature’, against who they are. Silenced for so long, even approaching ‘the edges of words’ will be painful.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Stanzas 4 and 5

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Now, to speak, to raise their voices, to find words will be as difficult as holding on to the bits of soap, pitted and yellow, like rotten teeth, that melted in their grasp. In spite of the difficulties, the poet imagines ‘one voice’ rising above ‘the shuffle and hum’ of the laundry room, rising above the enforced silence, finding not words, but a ‘note’, a cry, as ‘sharp as an infant’s’, a cry of anguish and protest, a cry that fills every part of her, ‘every pocket in her skull’, and echoes through her skull after death; a cry that rises through the steam in the laundry room, that rises through the mist of history, that rises from the damp soil of a cemetery. It is a cry of one voice, but a voice that represents all the Magdalenes. The poet asks now that we hear the cry and translate it.

Stanza 6

The voice speaks in a series of linked phrases like incantations or, as Patricia Boyle Haberstroh suggests, a prayer or a litany recited in a church. Having spent a lifetime in the laundry, the speaker – this voice from the grave – feels ‘Washed clean’ of the language of that place, the words that were like a ‘baked crust’ on her skin; words that made the ‘temporary name’ she was given feel like a parasite eating away at her true self and her good name. Now that she has died and lies ‘in earth sifted to dust’, the evil spell of the laundry has been ‘Lifted’. She wishes that ‘the bunched keys’ she ‘bore’, that she carried around in memory, will ’slacken and fall’ away and she will be free. Plainly and simply she says: ‘I rise and forget’. Her rising is like a resurrection. In the six lines of the stanza, the word ‘I’ is used three times along with the pronouns ‘me’ and ‘my’. Their use suggests a Magdalene finding her voice, claiming her identity, speaking on her own behalf. Like the steam in the laundry, her spirit rises like ‘a cloud over my time’. The cloud is a visual representation of the resurrection of the Magdalene. However, the cloud also represents a shameful, dark period in recent Irish history.

Alternative interpretation of stanza 6

Not all critics agree on how to read the final stanza. Patricia Coughlan suggests that the final stanza is spoken by the Reverend Mother and that the ‘bunched keys’ belong to her. In this reading, the single voice rising above the hum is her voice, horrified at her part in the mistreatment of the Magdalenes; the ‘temporary name’ is the name she took on entering the convent. You might consider whether this reading is supported by the poem and whether it increases or lessens the force of the poem.

Themes and imagery

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This multi-layered poem explores a complex of related themes. The first is the right to a proper burial that acknowledges a person’s existence and grants them the respect due to every human being. The Magdalenes were shown little respect in their lives and in the manner of their original burial. The title ‘Translation’ suggests that the reburial ceremony marks the movement of sacred remains to a proper resting place. The importance of language is emphasised in the poem. The Magdalenes were deprived of the right to speak and had words used against them as weapons. The poem seeks to restore to them their right to speak and the right to use the name they were given by their families, and their right to a good name. The writing of the poem for a public ceremony is a form of protest against the repressive policies and attitudes of the Catholic Church and the Irish State towards these women. The poem itself symbolises the ‘speaking out’ that is needed to redress historical wrongs and injustices done to women. In this sense the poem might be described as both a political and a feminist poem.

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The imagery in the poem is rich in symbolism. The sifted soil, for example (lines 1 and 19), refers to the excavation of the remains and the reburial of the Magdalenes, but also suggests the sifting of flour and the unpaid domestic work undertaken by the women in the institutions. This work is captured in a series of references: bleach, steam, water, soap and drains. The imagery of washing is linked to the Catholic teaching that penitential work washes away sins. In removing the stains from the laundry, the Magdalenes were considered, by those who held them captive, to be cleaning their own souls. More chilling are the references to ‘my temporary name’ (line 17) and ‘an infant’s cry’ (line 14), which refer to the more acute suffering of the Magdalenes, many of whom had both their names and their infants taken from them.

The reference to the blinding light in the laundry that ‘bleached out / The high relief of a glance’ (lines 4–5) may well, as one critic suggests, refer to the way the cruelty of the laundries had been whitewashed out of Irish history, out of our collective consciousness as a nation. The Magdalenes are described as ‘ridges under the veil’ (line 7). The word ‘veil’ has many connotations in the context of the poem: the way the ‘sinful’ bodies of the Magdalenes were covered in the laundries; the way their lives and working conditions were veiled in secrecy; the way society put a veil of silence over their existence; the way the nuns who guarded them were veiled.

The title of the poem, ‘Translation’, suggests it is about not only the moving of sacred remains, but also the translation of the women’s anguished cry into words; the finding of words for the silent and for things which were never spoken.

Form and language

The poem is written in five carefully phrased tercets (three-line stanzas) and a concluding sestet (six-line stanza). There is a change of voice from the tercets to the sestet, shifting from the voice speaking on behalf of the women who have gathered for the reburial to the voice of a resurrected Magdalene, speaking in the first person. The tercets are composed with lines of consistent length, but there is no regular metre or end rhyme. However, the five stanzas are rich in sound. Note, for example, how the same vowel sound is repeated in line 4 in the phrase ‘White light blinded’. Note, too, the repetition of the ‘n’ sound in the phrase ‘Around stone drains’ (line 6). There is also internal rhyme in ‘glance … danced’ (line 5), and half-rhyme (‘county’/ ‘laundry’; ‘cry’/‘rises’).

Th e

The final section of the poem looks and sounds different from the preceding stanzas. One critic suggests that the rhythm echoes that of prayers and religious litanies. The lines are of equal length. There is rhyme and near-rhyme (‘crust’/‘dust,‘ ‘name’/‘time’, ‘spell’/‘fall’). The first person pronoun ‘I’ is used three times in the last three lines, insisting on the right of the speaker to have her say. Individual lines are carefully assembled, as in, ‘Lifted • I lie in earth sifted to dust’ (line 19). The long vowel sounds, the alliteration, the internal rhyme, the choice of words, and the balance in the phrasing all give the line a dignity and beauty. The language in the poem is multi-layered. For example, the opening line, ‘The soil frayed and sifted evens the score –’, suggests that the excavation of the remains (the soil frayed and sifted) has brought a measure of justice (settled the score) for these forgotten women. However, the phrase ‘evens the score’ can also mean that the loosened soil has evened out the ridges or marks left by scoring or cutting the earth to make a new resting place for the cremated remains of the women. At the same time, ‘frayed’, ‘sifted’ and ‘score’ are all words related to domestic chores. The frayed edges of cloth have to be sown; flour has to be sifted to make bread; loaves have to be scored before they are baked. The line both states and suggests. Here, as elsewhere in the poem, the different meanings are folded into each other.

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Questions The speaker tells us that women gathered ‘from every county’ (line 2) of Ireland for the reburial of the Magdalenes. In the context of the poem, what is the significance of the fact that it was women who gathered?

Comment on the use of the verbs ‘giggled’ and ‘danced’ in stanza 2.

The Magdalenes are described as ‘ridges under the veil’ (line 7). Consider the various meaning of the word ‘veil’ in the context of the poem.

What is the effect of the use of the word ‘skull’ (line 13)? Explain your answer.

Which of the following statements is closer to your understanding of the final stanza of the poem? a) ‘The voice of the final stanza is that of a nun, a person of authority, expressing her sorrow and regret at her part in the suffering of the Magdalenes.’ or b) ‘The voice of the final stanza is the voice of a Magdalene finding expression after decades of silence, rising above her history.’ Explain your choice.

What is the effect of the repeated use of ‘I’ in the final stanza?

‘The final stanza contains images of release and resurrection.’ Discuss.

The word ‘translation’ is used in the Catholic Church to describe the moving of sacred remains from one place to another. Is this a good way to describe the reburial of the remains found in the grounds of the Magdalene institution? Explain your answer.

Would you describe ‘Translation’ as an angry poem? Explain your answer.

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Does the poem succeed in translating the silence of the Magdalenes into speech? Explain.

Both ‘Kilcash’ and ‘Translation’ involve the act of translating and are also poems about Catholic Ireland. Compare them.

a) Re-read the second stanza of ‘Following’. How might this stanza be read in the light of ‘Translation’? b) Compare the cloud imagery in ‘Fireman’s Lift’ to the image of the cloud and the steam in ‘Translation’.

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Th e

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‘Allow us now to hear it’ (line 14). Do you think Irish society has now heard the voices of the Magdalenes? Discuss in class. You have been asked to compose a short video to mark the reburial of the Magdalenes at Glasnevin Cemetery. You can use words and phrases from the poem as text in the video. Describe the film and the key choices you would make (selection of images, colour design, sound track and music, style of shooting and editing) in creating it.

Using evidence gathered from survivors, the theatre group ANU created a play which was staged in the former Magdalene Laundry in Gloucester Street in Dublin. The play opens with the words: ‘Inside there are two rooms. You are in one. Holding your dirty laundry. They are in the other. Waiting for you.’ Write the monologue of the young girl arriving in the Magdalene Laundry.

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Before you read

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This is the place where the child Felt sick in the car and they pulled over And waited in the shadow of a house. A tall tree like a cat’s tail waited too. They opened the windows and breathed Easily, while nothing moved. Then he was better.

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The Bend in the Road

Before reading ‘The Bend in the ro r upwo Road’ think of one place that you associate with your childhood. What makes this place so special? If you were to go to this place today, what feelings would it provoke? Share your thoughts with a partner.

Over twelve years it has become the place Where you were sick one day on the way to the lake. You are taller now than us. The tree is taller, the house is quite covered in With green creeper, and the bend In the road is as silent as ever it was on that day.

Th e

Piled high, wrapped lightly, like the one cumulus cloud In a perfect sky, softly packed like the air, Is all that went on in those years, the absences, The faces never long absent from thought, The bodies alive then and the airy space they took up When we saw them wrapped and sealed by sickness Guessing the piled weight of sleep We knew they could not carry for long; This is the place of their presence: in the tree, in the air.

Glossary 13

cumulus cloud: cloud with a flat base and masses of round clouds heaped on top of each other, giving the appearance of cotton wool

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Guidelines

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‘The Bend in the Road’ comes from Ní Chuilleanáin’s 2001 collection, The Girl Who Married the Reindeer. The poem was inspired, in part, by a painting by the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. The painting shows a bottle on a shelf. Looking at the painting, Ní Chuilleanáin says that she thought to herself: ‘Where is the other bottle? Just as one asks of a bend in the road, where is it going? I thought I would make a subject of absence.’ The finished poem is a meditation on absence and death. Ní Chuilleanáin has also spoken of her thoughts during her sister’s final illness: ‘When my sister was ill, when I saw her sick in her dressing gown in her house in London, I realised that there is a space that’s going to be empty.’

The poem is set in Italy, a special place for Ní Chuilleanáin and her family. Her parents took her to Italy for the first time in 1955 when she was just twelve. She has a house there. In an interview prior to her husband’s death, she explained how they ‘had been renting a house from Italian friends since 1980 along with my mother and stepfather and my sister and her husband’. She went on to say: ‘Our lives there have been marked too by changes, the deaths of my sister and my mother and her husband, the death of our great friend Paul Cahill who had lived in Umbria for many years. These are the penalties of really getting to know a place, that you miss the people with whom you spent time there.’

Commentary

Stanza 1

Th e

The first stanza opens with ‘This is the place where’, the kind of statement a tour guide might make to a busload of tourists passing an otherwise undistinguished point on a road leading to the tour’s real destination. The point on the road is not associated with anything remarkable, just a child feeling sick. Nothing happened there. A child felt sick; the family – ‘they’ – stopped and waited; and ‘Then he was better’ and they moved on. The incident, the event, had no real significance for the family was not in any way remarkable. The story is narrated in the third person, in the simplest language: place – child – car – house – tree. There is nothing to distinguish any of these elements, save that the tree was tall and was shaped like a ‘cat’s tail’. There is a humorous touch in the idea that the tree ‘waited too’. There is nothing in the description to suggest that this insignificant event, marked by silence, waiting and immobility, Ní Chuilleanáin on writing in Italy at an unremarkable place, will play any part in the future lives of ‘I think I would never manage to write finished those involved. It is just one of the countless minor things that poetry without that interval of escaping from happen in the course of a life. The blank language, and the Dublin.’ simple third-person, past-tense account suggest that this will be soon forgotten.

Stanza 2

But the event is not forgotten. ‘Over twelve years’ the place has become a landmark of sorts in the life of the family, ‘the place / Where you were sick’. Like the oar that Odysseus imagined planting in the earth as a marker in ‘The Second Voyage’, this place marks a moment in the family’s history, a place in time from which other events might be viewed and changes noted: the boy taller; the tree taller; the house seemingly abandoned. This is no longer an anonymous place but one named by the family and claimed as their own. It is a place of ‘you’ and ‘us’. And there is continuity, ‘the bend / In the road is as silent as ever it was on that day’. However, it is still a bend in a road, a point from which it is impossible to see what lies ahead. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 341

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Stanza 3

Everything about the poem changes in stanza 3: the language, the syntax, the emotions, the imagery. The real significance of ‘the place / Where you were sick one day’ (lines 7–8) becomes apparent. This spot has become a sacred place, where the loved ones they have lost since that insignificant moment twelve years before are remembered and are felt as being present, ‘in the tree, in the air’. The memory of ‘all that went on in those years’ is beautifully expressed. The memories are like gifts, carefully wrapped and piled one on top of the other, like ‘one cumulus cloud / In a perfect sky’. This is not a dark cloud. These memories are light and uplifting. They are not heavy with sorrow, even if they recall sorrowful things. The memory of loved ones ‘wrapped and sealed by sickness’ is a tender description, as is the reference to ‘the airy space they took up’. For the sick person, life had become a heaviness ‘they could not carry for long’. Here, as in ‘Death and Engines’, death is associated with lightness, and the dead are not absent but present.

Th e

Themes and imagery This poem is a meditation on time, death and memory. It establishes a relationship between landscape and memory, the way a particular place becomes associated with the memory of our loved ones who have died, one where we feel their presence. The nondescript bend in the road of the first stanza has, by the third stanza, become a sacred space, a place where the dead are remembered with love and affection; a place of silence and presence, where the accumulated memories of the poet are gathered together. The ideas of airiness and lightness inform the imagery of the third stanza. The cloud represents the way our memories are stored, piled one on top of the other, a cloud of lightness floating above our lives. The cloud also symbolises the presence of the dead. Here, as in ‘Fireman’s Lift’ and ‘Translation’, clouds are associated with the life after death. The white cloud in a perfect sky carries the feeling in the poem, which is no weight to carry.

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Form and language

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The poem has three stanzas. The first two are composed of six unrhymed lines of unequal length. The language of these stanzas is simple, plain and conversational, with little or no colour or detail. It is simple story-telling, with repetitions of the kind you find in a children’s story: ‘You are taller… / The tree is taller’.

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The third stanza is different. Its nine lines form one complex sentence, with ideas intricately linked together and expressed in elaborate imagery. The alliterative and assonantal sound patterns are also elaborate. The effect is moving and elevating. Here is an eloquent expression of sorrow at the loss of loved ones that insists on ‘their presence: in the tree, in the air.’

Questions a) What kind of scene does the poet paint in stanza 1? b) How is the childlike quality of the scene achieved?

‘The family in stanza 1 stop at a point in the road where nothing much happens.’ Discuss.

Comment on the use of the third person ‘they’ and ‘he’ in the first stanza.

a) ‘Over twelve years’ (line 7), how has the family come to describe this bend in the road? b) In the twelve years, what changes, if any, have taken place since the family first stopped there? Are they important changes?

In the final stanza the bend in the road is now associated with many family memories. a) Does this make the place one of sorrow for the poet? Explain your answer. b) Are the memories of the poet a burden to carry?

Explain the cumulus cloud imagery of the final stanza.

Lines 16–20 refer to death, sickness and dying. Describe the tone of these lines.

What is the effect of the final line of the poem? Explain your answer.

Which of the following statements is closest to your own view of the poem? ■ This is a poem about shared experience. ■ This is a poem about love and memory. ■ This is a poem about sacred places. ■ This is a poem about loss and absences.

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Explain your choice, considering each point of view in your answer.

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Do you think ‘The Bend in the Road’ is a good title for the poem? Discuss, in groups or pairs.

Based on this poem, what kind of person do you imagine Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin to be?

Look at the cloud imagery in ‘Fireman’s Lift’. How does it compare to the imagery in this poem?

Sacred Places. Write a short poem or piece of personal writing inspired by this title.

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On Lacking the Killer Instinct

Before you read

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One hare, absorbed, sitting still, Right in the grassy middle of the track, I met when I fled up into the hills, that time My father was dying in hospital — I see her suddenly again, borne back By the morning paper’s prize photograph: Two greyhounds tumbling over, absurdly gross, While the hare shoots off to the left, her bright eye Full not only of speed and fear But surely in the moment a glad power,

Share with your class any family ro r upwo stories that you have heard from older relatives about the War of Independence and the Civil War.

Th e

Like my father’s, running from a lorry of soldiers In nineteen twenty-one, nineteen years old, never Such gladness, he said, cornering in the narrow road Between high hedges, in summer dusk. The hare Like him should never have been coursed, But, clever, she gets off; another day She’ll fool the stupid dogs, double back On her own scent, downhill, and choose her time To spring out of the frame, all while The pack is labouring up. The lorry was growling And he was clever, he saw a house And risked an open kitchen door. The soldiers Found six people in a country kitchen, one Drying his face, dazed-looking, the towel Half covering his face. The lorry left, The people let him sleep there, he came out Into a blissful dawn. Should he have chanced that door? If the sheltering house had been burned down, what good Could all his bright running have done For those that harboured him? And I should not Have run away, but I went back to the city Next morning, washed in brown bog water, and I thought about the hare, in her hour of ease.

Glossary Title 16

Killer Instinct: a ruthless streak; ability to take action to achieve an advantage without considering the potential harm to others coursed: hunted (by hounds using sight rather than scent)

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Guidelines

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The poem comes from Ní Chuilleanáin’s 2009 collection, The Sun-Fish. The poem revisits events that she wrote about in ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’, though the poems were written more than thirty years apart. In an interview given while she was writing ‘On Lacking the Killer Instinct’, Ní Chuilleanáin explained some of the background to the poem. As a young man her father joined the IRA and fought in the War of Independence.

I have a story which my father told me about running away from the Black and Tans when he was, I suppose, about twenty or twenty-one … He had described to me what it felt like running away from their lorry, and he ran into a house and the lorry came and pulled up alongside the house. He had bolted into the kitchen and he saw a towel and some water. He picked up the towel and put it up to his face and looked as bleary-eyed as he could. And they looked around the kitchen and those there said they hadn’t seen anybody and the lorry went on. He said he never felt so well in his life as when he was running, so I’ve been trying to put that into a poem.

Commentary Lines 1–10

Lines 11–14

The poem opens with the image of a hare ‘absorbed, sitting still’. The speaker tells us she saw this hare many years earlier when she fled ‘up into the hills, that time’ when her father ‘was dying in hospital’. She thinks of the hare when she sees a photograph in a newspaper of two greyhounds chasing a hare at a coursing meeting. The speaker’s sympathy is with the hare: the greyhounds are described as ‘absurdly gross’; the hare’s bright eye is full of ‘speed and fear’ but also ‘a glad power’. The speaker imagines the hare, fully alive and alert, experiencing a pleasurable thrill in her own power and cleverness. The opening line of this poem echoes line 24 from Ní Chuilleanáin’s poem, ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’, written over thirty years earlier. Ní Chuilleanáin on her interest in history ‘I think I have been captivated by history, in

Th e

The speaker now makes a connection between the hare and her a way that the majority of Irish people have a certain historical bent, even if it is only father. She says that the hare’s ‘glad power’ was similar to that of going back to the discovery of secrets about her father when he was ‘running from a lorry of soldiers / In nineteen neighbours.’ twenty-one’. Her father told her he had never experienced ‘Such gladness’ as he did running to escape his pursuers. The situation is sketched with admirable economy: ‘the narrow road’, ‘high hedges’, ‘summer dusk’. The phrase ‘Such gladness’ expresses a paradoxical idea: the young man running to save his life never felt such happiness in being alive as he did when his life was most in danger.

Lines 15–21

The speaker comments directly on the situation of both the hare and the man: ‘The hare / Like him should never have been coursed’. It is a statement of judgement, but there is no further explanation. Looking at the photo in the paper, the poet imagines how the story ends. The hare is ‘clever’ and ‘she gets off’, springing away ‘out of the frame’ of the photograph, away from ‘the stupid dogs’.

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Lines 22–29

The narrative switches back to the story of the poet’s father. Just as the hare was pursued by the dogs, he is pursued by the ‘growling’ lorry. But he is clever, like the hare. The story is told briskly, reflecting the speed of the chase and her father’s quick thinking: slipping into ‘an open kitchen door’, snatching a towel, pretending to dry his face, the entering soldiers not recognising him and leaving. It is all narrative, pure storytelling with no comment offered. ‘The people let him sleep there’. And in the morning he emerges ‘Into a blissful dawn’. The reader has to read between the lines. Was the dawn blissful because he was still alive and he was exhilarated that his ‘glad power’ had prevailed?

Lines 29–32

Th e

The phrase ‘blissful dawn’ is followed by two questions which interrogate the action of the young man in taking shelter in the house and putting the occupants at risk. Had the house been burned down by the Black and Tans, ‘what good / Could all his bright running have done’? What is not altogether clear is whether these questions were asked by the poet’s father of himself. In the clear light of the ‘blissful dawn’, did he question the morality of what he had done? Did he question his right to put others at risk in order to save himself? Is this an explanation of the title? In questioning his own action, does the young man show he lacked ‘the Killer Instinct’? Or are the questions posed by the speaker of the poem, the poet, the young man’s future daughter? Is it she who questions the actions of the clever young man?

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Lines 33–36

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Having raised the two troubling questions, the poet turns her attention back to where the poem began – the sighting of the hare when she ‘fled’ (line 3) to the hills as her father was dying in hospital. She identifies with her father. If his actions might be considered selfish in putting the family at risk, then her actions might be seen as selfish, too, in leaving him as he lay dying. Simply, eloquently, she states: ‘And I should not / Have run away’. But she did run away, as her father ran away and as the hare ran away; each running from that which they feared, that which threatened to overwhelm them. And the running away was pure instinct.

Ire

But no harm came to the family through her father’s actions, and the poet ‘went back to the city’ to her responsibilities. The reference to washing ‘in brown bog water’ suggests a cleansing and bracing experience, a preparation for the grief and suffering she will endure in seeing her father die. But this is not the final image of the poem. The final image is of the ‘hare, in her hour of ease’. The sight is heartening for the poet. Like the calm after the storm, the hare represents a calm steadfastness, prepared and ready for whatever may come.

Themes and imagery

The poem has the quality of a folktale. The animals are given human characteristics – the hare is ‘clever’ (line 17) and possessed of a ‘glad power’ (line 10). The pursuing dogs are ‘stupid’ (line 18). The young man, like a hero in a folktale, uses his cleverness to outsmart a stronger opponent. The young woman, like the heroine in a folktale, escapes into nature from a frightening situation. The themes, too, are similar to those in a folktale: themes of danger, flight, escape and return. There is excitement, too, an excitement that goes hand in hand with the danger, the ‘glad power’ experienced in a race for survival. However, the poem introduces an element of moral reflection not found in a folktale.

In the clear light of ‘a blissful dawn’ (line 29), the ‘hero’ questions his right to place a family at risk in trying to save himself. And the poet acknowledges that she should not have put her need to escape above her father’s need for care. The moral questions raised in relation to the young man’s actions address broader issues related to the conduct of war and the rights of those engaged in conflict to put the lives of others at risk. In its own quiet way, the poem questions the way stories of Irish nationalism have been framed.

The poem begins and ends with the image of the hare, sitting still and absorbed ‘in her hour of ease’ (line 36). The hare is admired by the poet, and heartens her too. The poet has carried this image of the selfpossessed hare with her for nearly forty years.

Form and language

Th e

The language of the poem is plain, unadorned. The poet concentrates on telling her linked stories and moving the action forward. The enjambment and punctuation control the drama and flow of each story, speeding it up or slowing it down, with one sentence running over fourteen lines and another taking up half a line. The themes of flight and pursuit are reflected in the choice of verbs: ‘fled’, ‘tumbling’, ‘shoots off’, ‘running’, ‘cornering’, ‘spring out’. The poem has a conversational quality but the language is heightened with alliterative runs – ‘paper’s prize photograph’ (line 6), consonance – ‘cornering in the narrow road’ (line 13), and the poet’s ear for the music of words ‘the hare, in her hour of ease’ (line 36).

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Questions How are the hare and the dogs portrayed in the poem?

What connections does the poem make between the hare and the poet’s father?

What do you understand by the term ‘glad power’ (line 10)?

In a few sentences, describe how the father escaped from his pursuers.

a) What questions are posed about the morality of the father’s actions? b) Who, do you think, asks these questions?

How might the action of the poet in fleeing to the hills be compared to the action of her father in taking shelter in a country kitchen?

The poem begins and ends with the image of the hare. What, do you think, does it mean to the poet?

There is great energy and movement in the poem. How is this achieved?

Look at the arrangement of the poem on the page. Suggest a different grouping of the lines. Explain your suggestion.

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Which of the following statements is closest to your understanding of the poem? ■ The father is presented as a heroic figure whose cleverness outwitted his enemies ■ The father is presented as a reckless figure who endangered the lives of an innocent family ■ The father is presented as someone who acted instinctively and then questioned his actions

Explain your choice, considering each point of view in your answer. Does the poet succeed in linking the three stories – the hare’s, her father’s escape, her flight? Explain your answer.

How do you understand the title of the poem? To whom might it refer?

Imagine you are the poet. Write two short monologues: one describing your thoughts and feelings as you fled to the hills; the other describing your thoughts and feelings when you saw the hare on your way back to the city.

Th e

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Does the poem have anything to say to modern Ireland? Discuss in pairs or groups.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Before you read r

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To Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia, Married in Dublin on 9 September 2009

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A parent speaking at a wedding: what should he or she say? Share your ideas on what you think should be included in their speech.

Leave behind the places that you knew: All that you leave behind you will find once more, You will find it in the stories; The sleeping beauty in her high tower With her talking cat asleep Solid beside her feet – you will see her again.

When you look out across the fields And you both see the same star Pitching its tent on the point of the steeple – That is the time to set out on your journey, With half a loaf and your mother’s blessing.

When the cat wakes up he will speak in Irish and Russian And every night he will tell you a different tale About the firebird that stole the golden apples, Gone every morning out of the emperor’s garden, And about the King of Ireland’s Son and the Enchanter’s Daughter.

Th e

The story the cat does not know is the Book of Ruth And I have no time to tell you how she fared When she went out at night and she was afraid, In the beginning of the barley harvest, Or how she trusted to strangers and stood by her word:

You will have to trust me, she lived happily ever after.

Glossary Title

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Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia: the bridegroom is the poet’s son; note the date of the wedding: 09/09/09; the couple met when they were sixteen and married when they were twenty-six steeple: church tower or spire Book of Ruth: a Bible story from the Old Testament

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Guidelines

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The poem comes from Ní Chuilleanáin’s 2009 collection, The Sun-Fish. The poem was completed so close to the publication date of the collection that it is not listed in the contents page, but instead appears on the dedication page at the start of the book. The poem was written on the occasion of the marriage of her son, Niall Woods, to his long-time girlfriend, Xenya Ostrovskaia. The couple were married in a civil service. As a parent of the bridegroom, she was invited to speak for two minutes. Instead of a speech, she wrote this poem, including references to the folktales and fairy tales she had read to her son when he was a child and also honouring her own parents’ love of folktales. And, in a touch of sly humour, she included a reference to the story of Ruth from the Bible, introducing a touch of religion into the proceedings.

Commentary

Stanza 1

The poem is a blessing and a wisdom-poem addressed to the newly married couple. The poem imagines their new life as a journey to be begun when they both ‘see the same star’, setting out on their adventure with ‘half a loaf and your mother’s blessing’. There is humour in the reference to the loaf and the mother’s blessing, given that the poem is spoken by the bridegroom’s mother. In the folktale ‘The Red Ettin’, from which the references come, the hero respects his mother and is generous to strangers. It is these qualities which help him to succeed and find love. There is a message here for the young couple. In this stanza, the world of love is an enchanted one of fields, stars, steeples, journeys and blessings.

Stanza 2

Stanza 3

The mother, speaking as a wise woman, tells the couple to leave the places they know as they set out on their journey because they will find again all that they leave behind. This is the kind of riddling wisdom found in folktales. It may suggest that the stories you carry with you contain the wisdom and values of your people as well as the memory of those who told the stories to you in the first place: in carrying your stories, you carry your culture, your identity and your family. The speaker assures the couple that the things they have known and loved in stories, such as the talking cat in ‘Sleeping Beauty’, they will see again. The repetition of ‘you will find once more’ and ‘you will see her again’ suggests the speaker’s certainty.

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In the third stanza the speaker imagines the young couple as characters in their own fairy tale. Now the sleeping cat is theirs and he speaks to them in Irish and in Russian and tells them a Russian tale and an Irish tale. Both tales end with a young couple living happily ever after. In choosing these two tales, Ní Chuilleanáin shows a shared concern for the search for love across both the Irish and Russian folktale traditions.

Stanza 4

With some sly humour, Ní Chuilleanáin suggests that the talking cat of the young lovers’ fairy tale will not know the story of Ruth (because this is a story from the Bible and the wedding is a non-religious one). And she suggests she does not have the time to tell the story (because she is limited to speaking for two minutes!). However, she sketches some important details: Ruth’s initial fear; her trust in the kindness of strangers; her integrity. The implication is clear: the young couple may sometimes be afraid, but she encourages them to trust and to have integrity.

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Line 22

Ruth Ruth was from Moab, a land close to Israel. After her husband died, Ruth accompanied Naomi, her mother-in-law, to her home in Bethlehem, saying: ‘Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.’ Although she was in exile, Ruth found love and happiness in her new home.

In the final, uplifting line, the mother invites the young couple to trust her when she tells them that Ruth lived ‘happily ever after’. There is a gentle humour in Ní Chuilleanáin’s choice of the story of Ruth. In that story, Ruth makes a commitment to her mother-inlaw and it is this which ultimately leads to her happiness. The story is also one of exile. In a country far from home, the exiled Ruth makes a commitment to her new family, and the family welcomes this woman from a different country.

Themes and imagery

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The poem is a mother’s blessing. Ní Chuilleanáin assumes the persona of the wise old woman of folktales, speaking with authority. The couple’s new life is imagined as a journey, an adventure, and as its own folktale. All the tales mentioned or referenced in the poem (‘The Red Ettin’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘The Firebird’, ‘The King of Ireland’s Son’ and the ‘Enchanter’s Daughter’, ‘Book of Ruth’) involve a test of some kind and the overcoming of adversity. All end with a loving couple living happily ever after. In the folktales, the hero or heroine triumphs because they are trusting, generous, loving and loyal. These are the qualities that Ní Chuilleanáin wishes for the happy couple. The poem refers to the past, the present and the future; to stories from Russia and from Ireland; and moves between the real and the folkloric. In offering it as a wedding gift to the young couple, Ní Chuilleanáin professes her belief in the power of folktales to unite people and offer timeless wisdom. Marriage is a journey with many twists and turns, but if the couple are generous, trusting, loyal and committed they will live happily ever after.

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Form and language

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The poem is composed in four stanzas with a single line to conclude. The stanzas are reasonably uniform, with no formal rhyming. Because the poem is composed as a blessing the language is lyrical and dignified, in the manner of a prayer or a folktale. As in all her poetry, Ní Chuilleanáin is alert to the music in words, and the poem is beautifully composed. For example, lines 19–21:

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When she went out at night and she was afraid, In the beginning of the barley harvest, Or how she trusted to strangers and stood by her word

Everything is balanced in these lines. Sounds echo across lines and between lines, ‘harvest’, ‘trusted’. There is the hushed effect of the repeated ‘s’ sounds; the alliteration; the long vowel sounds; the ‘d’ and ‘t’ sounds at the end of words. This is a poet offering a gift to her son and his bride and it is beautifully made.

Ní Chuilleanáin takes on the persona of the wise woman of folktales: her tone is confident; her statements are clear – ‘That is the time to set out’ (line 4), authoritative – ‘Leave behind the places that you knew’ (line 6), prophetic – ‘All that you leave behind you will find once more’ (line 7). There is also humour: ‘I have no time to tell you how she fared’ (line 18) reminds the guests that she has only two minutes to speak. Above all, the tone is affectionate, hopeful and loving.

Understanding the poem

Exam-Style Questions

According to the first stanza, what is the sign that will tell the young couple it is time to set out on their journey?

Which do you think would be better: a full loaf and no blessing or half a loaf and a mother’s blessing? Explain your answer.

What does the speaker advise the couple to leave behind?

Where, do you think, will the couple find the stories mentioned in line 8?

What does the speaker tell the couple they will see again? In the third stanza the speaker imagines the young couple in their own fairy tale. Who will entertain them? What form will the entertainment take?

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Why would the talking cat not know the story of Ruth?

What parts of the story of Ruth did you learn from the fourth stanza?

Do you think the final line of the poem is a good way to end the poem?

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Thinking about the poem ‘All that you leave behind you will find once more’ (line 7). What do you think this means?

In what way might the story of Ruth be relevant to the young couple? Does it have particular relevance for Xenya?

To whom do you think the final line is addressed – the couple or just the bride? Explain your answer.

Choose three words to describe the last six lines of the poem. Explain your choice.

Is the poem what you would expect a parent to say to a newly married couple as they start their life together? Explain your answer.

From your reading of the poem, what sort of mother do you imagine the poet to be?

Do you think that folktales and fairy tales say important things about life and how it should be led?

‘The poem is a beautiful wedding present – full of wonder, wisdom, humour and love.’ Give your response to this view of the poem.

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Imagining

Imagine you are the bride, Xenya Ostrovskaia. Write a two-minute response to the blessing you have received from your groom’s mother.

Write your own folktale with: a hero or heroine; a villainous adversary; a spell that seems unbreakable; a test of courage; an unlikely helper; true love; and a happy-ever-after ending.

upwo

In pairs, create a magical audio-visual presentation to accompany a reading of the poem. The presentation should reflect the imagery and references in the poem.

■

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■ ■ ■ ■ ■

All the stories mentioned have happy endings Emphasises the importance of story Highlights qualities of trust and integrity Affectionate and loving Beautifully phrased

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■

SNAPSHOT

Written to celebrate a wedding Dedicated to the poet’s son and his bride Speaker assumes the persona of a wise woman Speaker imagines their marriage as a fairy tale Refers to Irish and Russian folktales

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Exam-Preparation Questions ‘Striking imagery and a flair for narrative are characteristics of Ní Chuilleanáin’s exploration of a theme.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry on your course.

‘Ní Chuilleanáin explores the history of Ireland from unusual perspectives in poems of great artistry and skill.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry on your course.

‘Ní Chuilleanáin often lands a reader in the middle of a scene without any clear sense of where we are or what is going on. This makes her work both exciting and challenging to read.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry on your course.

‘Though often inspired by personal events, Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry is neither personal nor moving.’ Discuss this view, supporting the points you make with reference to the poems on your course.

‘The influence of folktales and fairy tales is evident in Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry.’ Discuss this statement with reference to the themes and style of Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry.

‘Memorable images and sophisticated ideas characterise Ní Chuilleanáin’s poems of loss and mourning.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin on your course.

‘Women are foregrounded in Ní Chuilleanáin’s work as subjects and/or as speakers, in poems that are strange and haunting.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin on your course.

Give your personal response to the poetry of Eiléan Ni Chuilleanáin, describing the impact of the poems upon you. Support your answer with quotations from the poems you have studied. Your answer might consider some of the following: ■ The range of her themes ■ The influence of folklore and fairy tales ■ The music of her poetry ■ The persona and voice of the poet.

‘Ruins, doors, thresholds and boundaries are recurring images in Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry and serve an important thematic purpose.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin on your course.

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‘In communicating her insights into human experience Ní Chuilleanáin uses language that is complex and challenging.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin on your course.

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SNAPSHOT EILÉAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN

■ ■ ■ ■

■ ■ ■

Family relationships Poetry often rooted in personal experiences Importance of family Poems move between worlds of the living and the dead Importance of remembrance Presence of women in the poetry Rich connection to the past

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Strong sense of place and mystery Striking images and symbols Poems make use of folklore, myth and fairy tale Rarely uses conventional stanza forms Richly patterned language Punctuation and enjambment control flow

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Sample Essay

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‘Ní Chuilleanáin’s subject matter and style can prove challenging to a reader.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin on your course.

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I agree with the statement that Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry can be challenging. She herself has said, ‘I write poems that mean a lot to me but I don’t expect them to mean that to Introductory paragraph other people.’ On first reading, some of the poems baffle me. Even after multiple refers to the question asked and offers a readings, there are passages that I do not fully understand. But the challenge stance in relation to it is part of the attraction of reading Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry. In my experience, a willingness to read one of her poems with patience and care is rewarded by discovering layers of meaning that are not obvious at first sight. Reading a Ní Chuilleanáin poem is to The paragraph undertake a journey of discovery. It is not always easy, but it is exciting, as I hope identifies the poems to demonstrate in my discussion of two of Ní Chuilleanáin’s most mysterious texts: to be discussed. Is the ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’ and ‘Following’. I will also include a short candidate wise to limit his/her discussion to discussion of ‘Street’ by way of comparison.

only two/three poems?

‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’ gives an indication of the kind of challenges facing a reader coming to Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry for the first time. The opening stanza Good point. The candidate needs to throws the reader into the middle of affairs without a preamble or an explanation. develop it The persona of the poem states: ‘I was reading my book in a ruin / By a sour candle, without roast meat or music’. The reader has no way of locating the place or the time or why the speaker is in this situation. The second stanza provides more information but not much enlightenment. The speaker tells us that he/she ‘slept safely’, though ‘bats flew through my room’ and ‘Sheep stared at me when I woke’. The difficulty here is not with the language, which is crystal clear, but with the context: who is this speaker; why the reference to ‘safely’? The poem raises questions but offers no clear answers. Is this a problem? Is this the The candidate has outlined some of the challenge at the heart of Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry: questions to which there are no challenges in reading answers? For this reader, this riddling quality in Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry is part of its the poem fascination. The poet encourages the reader to read between the lines, to imagine a back story, to create a context in which the words spoken by the persona of the poem make sense. You read to find suggestions and hints that help you in this task.

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In ‘Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht’, the startling opening line of stanza 3 is rich in suggestion: ‘Behind me the waves of darkness lay, the plague’. The surreal imagery of the stanza and the hint at some form of madness (‘The disease of the moon gone astray’) suggest trauma and emotional turmoil. This line helps me to make sense of the earlier stanzas and the reference to sleeping ‘safely’. The speaker has come through some traumatic experience but feels safe in this ruin. I am not sure if this reading will be supported by the rest of the poem, but I read on in the hope that it will be. The fourth stanza clarifies the context of the poem a little more for me, but it also throws up some intriguing questions. The speaker says she relaxed. (I find myself using the pronoun ‘she’. I sense that the persona is feminine, but I have no way of verifying it. It is another of those unanswered questions that arise in reading a Ní Chuilleanáin poem.) She professes amazement at this. This seems to confirm the trauma/recovery narrative I have been framing from the HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 355

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evidence of the poem. However, the simile she uses to express her amazement surprises me. The speaker says she is as amazed as ‘the mosaic beasts on the chapel floor / When Cromwell had departed, and they saw / The sky growing through the hole in the roof’. Where has this come from? Are we in the seventeenth century? Is the speaker someone who has survived an attack on a monastery? Does this explain the candle and book reference in the first stanza? I do not know, and now I am at a crossroads in reading the poem. I am not Candidate is honest sure if the number of unanswered questions is beginning to frustrate me. Is the poet in his/her response. asking too much of me? The subject matter is undoubtedly interesting, but I need Discussion shows to feel less lost. detailed knowledge of Expresses personal

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response

the poem

I read on and am rewarded for my perseverance. The final stanza is beautiful: the images of the grasshopper, lark and bee; of the sheepdogs embracing the speaker; of the stream running; all suggest new life and energy and joy. Whatever darkness had engulfed the speaker, she has emerged from it now. And if these images were not enough reward for staying with the poem, there is the image of the ‘hare, absorbed, sitting still’. I close my eyes and imagine her, sitting there. It is a heartening image. I know that my mysterious speaker is on the road to recovery.

summary

The experience of reading ‘Street’ was less rewarding. There are similarities in style between the two poems. I experienced a similar feeling of disorientation Good link between the in reading ‘Street’ as I did in reading ‘Lucina’. The opening sentence grabs your poems attention: ‘He fell in love with the butcher’s daughter’, but you want to scream at the poet to stop right there: Who are these unnamed people? Where are we? When is this story set? But I have read ‘Lucina’, so I know something of the poet’s technique. I know she is unlikely to provide these details; she will leave it to me to do so from my own imagination. I suspect she will reveal enough to keep me reading but not enough to satisfy all I want to know.

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Introduces second poem

I re-read the poem and notice things I had missed the first time: the image of the moonlight on the speaker’s head, ‘clear after three days’ rain’. Does this suggest that the speaker has come to the ruin to clear her head? I add this idea to my version of the story that this poem tells; I think it makes sense. I notice other things – Ní Chuilleanáin’s facility with language: her ability to make beautiful phrases – ‘Behind me the waves of darkness lay’; the whispering effect of Quotations interspersed through the ‘s’ sounds and the fade-out on the last vowel, which gives the line a haunting answer quality. Is there something haunting the speaker? I think this makes sense, too. But I am not sure. I am not sure, either, if my interpretation would mean much to the An interesting reading poet. But I do not think that is the point. The point is that Ní Chuilleanáin’s speaker of the poem that is honest about the has told me enough for me to make sense of what she is saying and put a narrative difficulties it presents frame on it but not enough to make me feel that I have understood all the meanings for the reader. Good behind her words. And the words say important things about recovering from a dark use of quotation. period. The poem is demanding in terms of style and content, but it is a rewarding Returns to the question in the short poem to read and one to which I will return again and again.

Shows good

knowledge of the poem

And so it proves. We are given intriguing details: a dangling knife, dripping blood, a seemingly mesmerised youth who stares ‘at the dark shining drops on the pavingstones’. In the second stanza the narrative continues without comment. The poem Effective summary of poem’s style is pure story – actions (‘he followed her’) and images (‘A door stood half-open’). The poem ends with the young man standing at the bottom of stairs that are marked with the blood

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from the girl’s feet … But for me, there is no real reward in reading the poem, in following the trail to the end. The fact that ‘Street’ is written in the third person means that I have no sense of who these characters are. When I read ‘Lucina’, I felt the poem was addressed to me. I wanted to know more about the person speaking. I empathised with her. But the Good reasons offered for not investing in characters in this short poem do not engage me. I recognise the combination of poem mystery, romance and danger that the poem is intended to evoke. But the absence of any psychological insight into the characters and their motivation means that they remain vague and blank. In this instance, the poem does not offer me enough to want to invest in it. I think it lacks the psychological and emotional depth of Ní Chuilleanáin’s best poems. Clear statement of

For me, ‘Following’ is one of her best poems. It is a challenging read and moves between different worlds. It demands total engagement from the reader and, unlike ‘Street’, it offers rich rewards for this investment. The greatest challenge in reading the poem is to find a reading strategy that helps you make sense of the jumps and changes between the Keeps terms of question in mind stanzas of the poem.

preference

In the case of ‘Following’, the best strategy is to look outside the poem to help understand what is happening inside it. For example, our class had studied Eavan Boland’s poem ‘Love’. Our teacher told us of Boland’s interest in Book VI of the Aeneid, where Aeneas goes Explains how one text helped in the reading to the underworld to visit his dead father. The idea of undertaking a journey to the of another world of the dead was the key that helped me unlock ‘Following’. Interpretation based

When I read ‘Following’ for the first time, I looked carefully to see if I could make a connection between the three different scenes it describes – the fair, the ideas drawn from strange bog and the bright library. The first breakthrough was looking at the first other texts few words in each stanza: ‘So she follows … / Until she is tracing … / She comes to where …’ The structure seemed simple enough – a little girl follows her father ‘through the fair’ until she is tracing his footsteps ‘Across the shivering bog’ and then she comes to the place where he is waiting for her, ‘With whiskey poured out in two glasses’. I held on to what I felt was a breakthrough. on close reading

within the text and

Student reads closely and makes

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A second breakthrough came in thinking about the use of the word ‘forest’ in the connections within the second and third stanzas. It struck me that the little girl was also in a forest of sorts poem in the first stanza, a forest of people. In the second stanza she crosses a nightmarish ‘forested’ bog and then she lands in a forest of books in the final stanza. It is a strange world but it has its own logic. Another breakthrough was in remembering the film Labyrinth, where a girl goes on a quest to another world to rescue her little brother and has to cross a nightmarish bog to find him. I began Student uses the motif to understand ‘Following’ as a quest poem, where the real and the otherworld exist of a quest to further side by side. And then I remembered the quest/journey of Aeneas. Suddenly the the interpretation of poem was making sense: a little girl follows her father through life, and then across the poem that dark place which separates the world of the living from the dead, a ‘dead corpse’ ‘Gliding before her’. She arrives in a kind of heaven, ‘a library where the light is clean’ a heaven of books for a father who was an academic, as Ní Chuilleanáin’s father was. Did that explain, in part,

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I began to think about the use of the third person – maybe that was because this poem was so personal that Ní Chuilleanáin felt it was easier to talk about the death of her father in terms of quests and myth rather than in ordinary language? I do not feel I fully understand the poem yet. For example, is the bog of the second stanza the place where tormented souls got stuck between the world of the living and the dead? What is the significance of the ‘white linen / That held three drops / Of her heart’s blood’ in the final stanza? I do not think I will find the answers only in the text. As with Aeneas, it may be that I will have to go outside the Interesting text to make sense of something within it. But for ‘Following’ I am prepared to do interpretation of the poem; and that because it is a strange, beautiful, haunting poem where the meaning and the demonstrates an emotions ‘push the bindings apart’. enthusiasm for it

the title, ‘Following’? Was it about following him in life and in death? Is that what the ‘So’ at the beginning of the poem means – something she had to do, something that was inevitable, following her father?

There are challenges in reading Ní Chuilleanáin’s work: confusing scenarios; a sense of being thrown into the middle of things; jumps between worlds; strange images that are not always understandable. But when you set these against the kinds of themes she explores – personal trauma and the death of a parent – then you realise that the subject matter demands a challenging style. I have been challenged in reading Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry, but Answer grounded in personal response I have been amply rewarded in the effort I have made in rising to that challenge.

Returns to question

ESSAY CHECKLIST

No 8

Has the candidate understood the task?

Purpose

Yes 4

Has the candidate responded to it in a thoughtful manner?

Coherence

Comment:

Has the candidate answered the question?

Has the candidate made convincing arguments?

Has the candidate linked ideas?

Does the essay have a sense of unity?

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Comment:

Language

Is the essay written in an appropriate register? Are ideas expressed in a clear way? Is the writing fluent?

Comment: Mechanics

Is the use of language accurate? Are all words spelled correctly? Does the punctuation help the reader?

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Sylvia Plath

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1932–1963

Sylvia Plath

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The Times Are Tidy

372

Morning Song

375

Finisterre

379

Mirror

384

Pheasant

389

Elm

393

Poppies in July*

400

The Arrival of the Bee Box*

405

Child*

410

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Black Rook in Rainy Weather

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Biography

Parents and early childhood

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Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts on 27 October 1932. Her father, Otto Plath, was a forty-sixyear-old biology professor at Boston University when he met the twenty-two-year-old Aurelia Schrober, a student of his. Plath’s father was from Grabow in Germany, a place Plath would refer to in her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar as ‘a manic depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia’. He had been married before, to Lydia Clara Bartz, but this ended in divorce after only three weeks. Otto was a confirmed pacifist and left the Lutheran ministry where he was training when the beliefs he was studying became totally incompatible with his interest in Darwin’s theories of evolution. This resulted in Otto being shunned by his family. He was investigated and cleared by the FBI of ‘pro-German leanings’ and became entranced by zoology while a student at Harvard University. He particularly enjoyed the study of bees and wrote a book on the subject called Bumblebees and Their Ways, showing a clear talent for creative writing: ‘it is a delightful thing to pause and watch these queens clad in their costumes of rich velvet’. Plath would later dramatically recreate the queen bee image for herself in ‘Lady Lazarus’: ‘With her lion-red body, her wings of glass? Now she is flying / More terrible than she ever was, red / Scar in the sky, red comet’. Plath was later to write bee poems, including ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ and ‘The Beekeeper’s Daughter’, as well as a short story entitled ‘Among the Bumblebees’. Plath described Otto as a bad father and husband: he could be extremely tyrannical at home and was ‘a stickler for order and a lover of logic’, according to Plath’s biographer Andrew Wilson; but she also talked of her idyllic childhood. Such seeming contradictions were typical of Plath.

Aurelia, Plath’s mother, was extremely well read and interested in her children’s education and progress. Plath became a sister with the birth of Warren in 1935. The two were fiercely competitive for Aurelia’s love and approval. Aurelia recorded Plath’s development in minute detail, a trait Plath would also develop. For example, while away at camp one summer Plath wrote down everything she ate and even the number of paces she walked.

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Plath’s father developed diabetes and later pneumonia and Plath cared for him continually at the time, even dressing in a nurse’s costume. He became very depressed at his ill health and died of an embolism in hospital on 5 November 1940. The young Plath announced, ‘I’ll never speak to God again’; she had been praying nightly for his recovery. The following day she wrote ‘I promise never to marry again’ on a piece of paper and made her mother sign it. Aurelia would not allow her children to attend their father’s funeral, something Plath never forgave. Plath explored this grief and anger in many poems, most famously ‘Daddy’: ‘I was ten when they buried you. / At twenty I tried to die / And get back, back, back to you. /… A man in black with a Meinkampf look // And a love of the rack and the screw.’

A young writer and troubled youth In 1942 the Plaths moved to Wellesley, away from Sylvia’s beloved sea. ‘Finisterre’ and ‘Morning Song’ reference this. Her mother worked hard to send Plath to the prestigious Wellesley College. A friend recounts that Plath tried to cut her throat at age ten, and that ‘achievement was central to her world’. Plath began avidly collecting Girl Scouts badges, including one for creative writing, which led to the publication of a story she had written in The Townsman, a local newspaper. Plath was exhilarated to see her work and name in print

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Sylvia Plath

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and it was something she yearned for ever after; but even though she published many stories and poems, she was always deflated by the rejections she received. As Andrew Wilson says, ‘her drive was phenomenal, her ego extreme, her vision quite clear’.

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Plath was a hugely sensitive youngster and called herself ‘an ugly introvert’ in her journal, as she suffered from acne. Worries about popularity, money and fitting in with the wealthy social circles of her schoolmates plagued Plath, and she became obsessed with the poetry of Sara Teasdale, who had ended her life by overdosing on sleeping pills. Her talent impressed her English teacher, who advised she apply for an English scholarship. Her talent was further nurtured at Gamaliel Bradford High School, where Mr Crockett, the English teacher, was a major influence on Plath, giving her vast reading lists and reciting her poems to the class. Upon reading her poem ‘I Thought That I Could Not Be Hurt’ he told her that she had ‘a lyric gift beyond the ordinary’, a comment that meant a huge amount to the young writer. She continued to publish poems and stories, finally having the short story ‘And Summer Will Not Come Again’ Plath attended Smith College in Massachusetts. published in national teen magazine Seventeen. It was a landmark moment in the young writer’s life.

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In 1951 Plath won scholarships to the exclusive Smith College for Women in Massachusetts, and had work published in the upmarket magazine Mademoiselle, a publication she would later edit briefly. In 1953 Plath’s application to attend a Harvard writing course run by Frank O’Connor was rejected, sending her into a tailspin of despair. The treatment for this was electroshock therapy, which only made things worse, culminating in a suicide attempt from which Plath took six months to recover: Plath took an overdose and hid in the crawl space beneath the porch; police and media were involved in the search. After two days, Plath was discovered by her brother, Warren. She had slipped into a coma and vomited the pills. Her biographer Anne Stevenson comments: ‘brought up in a privileged society, protected by a tightly knit family that closed in about her (as families will) after her father’s death, cosseted by her teachers, laden with scholarships and honours, she rebelled in some deep part of herself against the very image she labored to create’. This conflict and contrast is at the heart of Plath’s poetry: the tension between how things seem and what is really happening, between light and dark, hope and despair, love and hate. In 1954 Smith College awarded Plath a scholarship, allowing her to complete her degree, and she graduated with distinction. She relentlessly submitted her poetry and stories for publication and literary prizes. She was regularly successful but received many rejections also.

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Cambridge and Hughes

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In 1955 Plath won the prestigious Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson scholarships, facilitating her move to Cambridge University, England. Plath had won first prize at the Glascock poetry competition, which introduced her to the poet Marianne Moore, who was a friend and mentor of the poet Elizabeth Bishop and who would later review some of Plath’s poems as ‘too grisly and unrelenting’. Plath wrote to her mother that she had earned four hundred and seventy dollars from awards and prizes for her writing.

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Plath loved the relative freedom of Cambridge, unaware that many of her contemporaries there found her unsophisticated and spoiled. The winter weather depressed her so much that she sought the help of the university psychologist. She found she missed her mother terribly – ‘someone to bring me hot broth and tell me they love me’.

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Plath’s poetry had received a negative review by Daniel Huws, a friend of Ted Hughes, some of whose poetry Plath had read and memorised. Plath met them at a party, ‘dressed in the reds and blacks she favoured for sexual conquest’. She had drunk a lot of whiskey, and challenged Huws about his mocking review. She then noticed Hughes, ‘that big, dark, hunky boy’, and recited some of his poetry to him; ‘then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth … when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek’ (Hughes later said that Plath’s account was exaggerated). The pair were soon in a relationship, sharing a passion for art and literature. Plath said that Hughes ‘even fills somehow the huge, sad hole I felt in having no father’. They married secretly on 16 June 1956, Bloomsday – a tribute to James Joyce, the subject of Plath’s thesis.

Plath with her husband, Ted Hughes.

Plath taught in Smith College in Massachusetts for a year (instead of the minimum two years she was expected to complete) but found the pressure of the job and the faculty there hard to cope with. This negative experience inspired ‘The Times Are Tidy’. Ted’s work was becoming successful largely thanks to Plath’s support; she typed out and sent his poetry to various contests and publications. They began to move in increasingly literary circles in the USA and England, meeting and entertaining the likes of Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot and Robert Lowell.

Before returning to England the couple lived at Yaddo, an artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, thanks to a fivethousand-dollar grant awarded to Hughes by the Guggenheim. They both wrote prolifically and explored the work of other artists and poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, whose work Plath said had a ‘fine originality, always surprising, never rigid, flowing’.

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Back in England Plath gave birth to the couple’s first child, Frieda, on 1 April 1960. Only twenty days later, she brought her baby daughter to watch the Aldermaston anti-nuclear march – ‘an immensely moving experience’. Plath had an increasing fear of nuclear war. Following a miscarriage in the spring of 1961, Plath wrote ‘Morning Song’ celebrating Frieda but also expressing the pain and loss Plath felt at the time. She was plagued by nightmares and many of her poems have a nightmarish quality. Supporters of Hughes suggest that he was a doting husband and that Plath was often overcome with intense and irrational jealousy. For example, when Hughes was late home from a meeting with a BBC producer which ran overtime, he arrived to find Plath had torn up his most precious books and his current writing projects. This seems to have been a turning point for Hughes, who up until then seemed to have borne his wife’s mood swings patiently. When asked why he did not ‘put his foot down’ more with Plath by their friends the Merwins, Hughes answered ‘she couldn’t be helped that way’. Some critics take a more critical view of Hughes’s behaviour as a husband.

Final years

Plath wrote her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar between March and May 1961. She had her poetry collection The Colossus published in the UK and anticipated its US release in the spring of 1962. It contained a lot of the poetry she had written at Yaddo and was the only collection of her poetry to be published in her lifetime. Sylvia and Ted decided to leave London and write in the idyllic setting of Devon. They sold their flat in Chalcot Square to David Wevill and his wife, Assia (who would later become Ted’s lover), and bought an old thatched rectory near Dartmoor called Court Green with the help of a loan from Ted’s mother. They moved in on 31 August 1961. Plath was pregnant with the couple’s second child. Some of Plath’s most disturbing poetry was written here, including ‘Finisterre’ and ‘Mirror’, with their underlying atmosphere of menace.

In January of 1962 Plath gave birth to Nicholas, but by the summer of that year her marriage to Hughes was in serious trouble. He had become involved with Assia Wevill and moved out of Court Green. Hughes and Plath had taken a holiday in Ireland in an attempt to save their relationship, but it had failed. Plath’s depression spiralled. She wrote forty of the poems that make up her most famous collection, Ariel, during this time, but her depression and ferocious work rate, coupled with raising two small children, took its toll on the poet’s health.

Ariel Ariel is a character from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play Plath’s mother brought her to see when she was a child in Boston, and which influenced much of Plath’s work, especially her poem ‘Full Fathom Five’. Ariel is a spirit trapped in a pine tree until Prospero frees her. Read ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ for a similar scenario.

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Plath moved back to London in November and lived at 23 Fitzroy Road, the street where Yeats had once lived. Despite the publication of The Bell Jar, she was plagued by depression and illness and felt cut off from the world. The lack of a phone made this worse. January brought some of the worst weather London had seen for years and Plath wrote ‘Child’ during this time, revealing a wish to die. Plath saw a doctor, who arranged a session with a psychiatrist and a course of anti-depressants, but Plath took her own life on Monday 11 February 1963. She was expecting a nurse to call that morning and seems to have thought her neighbour would let the nurse in. However, the nurse, receiving no answer, enlisted the help of a builder working nearby to break into Sylvia’s flat, where they discovered the poet sprawled on the floor with her head in the oven of the gas cooker. The children were found upstairs in their room crying. Many think Plath meant to be discovered before the gas could fully take effect, and that her suicide had been intended as a cry for help.

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In response to his wife’s poetry and suicide, Ted Hughes wrote a collection of poems, Birthday Letters, which were thirty years in the making. In the particularly moving ‘Last Letter’, he recollects the moment he heard of Sylvia’s suicide: ‘Then a voice like a selected weapon / Or a measured injunction, / Coolly delivered its four words / Deep into my ear: “Your wife is dead’’. Hughes died in 1998 and ten years later their son, Nicholas, took his own life. Their daughter, Frieda, is a poet and artist.

Feminism and Plath’s legacy

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Many feminists viewed Plath’s suicide as being the result of patriarchal oppression, as manifested in her father’s tyrannical nature and her husband’s imagined selfishness; they championed Plath as a victim. However, many biographies counter this view, noting in particular that Ted Hughes was a patient and protective husband and father. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Frieda Hughes said of her mother: ‘It was quite a shock to find that she wasn’t angelic because that was how my father presented her.’ Frieda has also hit out at representations of her mother in film and in other media. In a poem called ‘My Mother’, she writes of ‘Their Silvia Suicide Doll, / Who will walk and talk / And die at will’.

Plath’s legacy is so much more than being a famous suicide or a feminist icon; she speaks to the dispossessed, the depressed (often with a wry wit), lovers of nature and those in love with words and sound, as those who take the time to study and read her work will find.

Social and Cultural Context

The society into which Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, in 1932, was a male-dominated one. Her father ruled the family and her mother was wife and homemaker, although both were highly Her biographer Anne Stevenson says of the letters Plath wrote to her mother, which were educated and passionate about learning and culture. Plath published together in a volume entitled Letters wanted to achieve and to be a perfect American girl. She put Home: huge pressure on herself to do this. Many feel this was to please ‘Letters Home can be seen as one long her parents and Plath’s letters to her mother, written throughout projection of the ‘desired image’ (the required her life, attest to this. Magazines like the Ladies’ Home Journal image) of herself as Eve – wife, mother, defined this ideal. A woman should be a wife, a homemaker and home-maker, protector of the wholesome, the a mother, but she was not expected to be a professional or to good and the holy, an identity that both her have her own career. She was to be ‘respectable’. In this middleupbringing and her own instinctive physical being had fiercely aspired to.’ class culture there was a tolerance of male promiscuity but girls were expected to be modest and virginal; not to marry was to risk being labelled ‘unfeminine’. Throughout her life, Plath struggled to escape this ideal of perfection, yet at the same time seemed to emulate it. This conflict led to much of Plath’s anxiety and depression. Her letters to her mother are full of references to her attempts to make a home for herself and Ted Hughes and to win her mother’s approval. She was conscious of this tendency in herself, noting in her journal: ‘Old need of giving mother accomplishments, getting reward of love.’

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Letters Home

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Sylvia Plath

Themes

Search for an identity

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Much of Plath’s poetry can be seen as a struggle to create a new identity for herself that transcended the cultural limitations imposed upon women. Given society’s view of women, Plath found it difficult to find acceptance as a writer outside of women’s books and magazines. In her lifetime, her work won serious admiration from only a small number of people. She was more famous for being the wife of the poet Ted Hughes than for being a talented, ambitious and dedicated poet, novelist and short-story writer in her own right.

Plath’s desire to fit in at school and be an ‘all-American girl’ was deepened by her consciousness of her German ancestry. Plath’s use of Holocaust imagery and her reference to her father as a Nazi in her poem ‘Daddy’ indicate a feeling of displacement, a fear that she might, somehow, be tainted by her origins. She also employed Holocaust imagery to speak of the suffering of women. More than is sometimes acknowledged by critics, Plath was attuned in a personal way to the major historical issues of her time. She lived during the period of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear warfare between the USA and the USSR. She was conscious of the dangers of a nuclear conflict and concerned for the future safety of her children. In a letter to her mother in December 1961, Plath wrote of these fears:

… I simply couldn’t sleep for nights with all the warlike talk in the papers … I began to wonder if there was any point in trying to bring up children in such a mad, self-destructive world. The sad thing is that the power for destruction is real and universal.

‘Don’t talk to me about the world needing cheerful stuff! What the person out of Belsen – physical or psychological – wants is nobody saying the birdies still go tweet-tweet, but the full knowledge that somebody else has been there and knows the worst, just what it is like. It is much more help for me, for example, to know that people are divorced and go through hell, than to hear about happy marriages.’ 21 October 1962

The fears expressed here are active in the terrifying imagery of her final poems. ‘Elm’ is a particularly strong example of this with its nightmarish litany of fear and suffering until the violent and very final ending: ‘That kill, that kill, that kill.’

From Letters Home

Displacement

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For Plath, the opportunity to live and study in England was a partly liberating experience. From England she could view with clarity the consumerism and militarism of American culture, something she criticised in ‘The Times Are Tidy’. However, she did not always feel at home in England and disliked the shabby inefficiency which she saw in English life. By the end of her life, Plath was caught between the two cultures, feeling ambivalent towards both. Her feelings of displacement are important in shaping the poetry she wrote. There is often a distance in her work that reflects this displacement, especially in the poems which feature her children, such as ‘Morning Song’ and ‘Child’.

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Timeline Born 27 October in Boston, Massachusetts

1940

Father, Otto Plath, dies; Sylvia declares: ‘I’ll never speak to God again’

1950

Seventeen magazine publishes her story ‘And Summer Will Not Come Again’

1951

Wins a scholarship to the exclusive Smith College for Women to study English and Art

1953

Wins guest editorship at Mademoiselle magazine; attempts suicide after failing to gain a place

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1932

on a writing course at Harvard Graduates with distinction from Smith College

1955

Wins prestigious Fulbright Scholarship and attends Cambridge University; meets fellow poet

1954

Ted Hughes Marries Hughes on Bloomsday, 16 June

1960

Gives birth to Frieda Rebecca Hughes, the couple’s first child; publishes first collection,

1961

The Colossus

Moves to Devon; writes with great energy in her first months there; concerned by talk of

nuclear warfare 1962

1956

Gives birth to Nicholas; Plath and Hughes separate; writes over forty poems in October and

November

Publishes semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar ; commits suicide in February

1965

Ariel, a collection of her last poems, is published

1998

Ted Hughes publishes Birthday Letters, a collection of poems written in response to his wife’s

1963

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poetry and suicide

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Sylvia Plath Before you read

When you are feeling down, what things help to make you feel better? It might be a thought, a memory, something you do or see, or something else. Make a list.

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Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent

On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain. I do not expect a miracle Or an accident To set the sight on fire In my eye, nor seek Any more in the desultory weather some design, But let spotted leaves fall as they fall, Without ceremony, or portent.

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Black Rook in Rainy Weather

By bestowing largesse, honour, One might say love. At any rate, I now walk Wary (for it could happen Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical, Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook Ordering its black feathers can so shine As to seize my senses, haul My eyelids up, and grant

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Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then – Thus hallowing an interval Otherwise inconsequent

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Of sorts. Miracles occur, If you care to call those spasmodic Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again, The long wait for the angel, For that rare, random descent.

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A brief respite from fear Of total neutrality. With luck, Trekking stubborn through this season Of fatigue, I shall Patch together a content

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desultory: without pattern, randomly changing

Glossary portent: an omen, often a sign of something negative

backtalk: cheeky banter

mute: unable to speak, silent

incandescent: glowing, luminously shining

celestial: heavenly, to do with stars and planets, etc.

obtuse: annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand

hallowing: allowing a space for something holy or sacred

inconsequent: unimportant

bestowing: giving as a gift

largesse: generosity

Wary: careful, on the lookout

sceptical: suspicious, doubting

politic: sensible in a self-serving way

respite: a break; a rest from

neutrality: a feeling of nothingness, of being unimportant and worthless

Trekking: making a long, hard journey

spasmodic: in sudden brief spells that cannot be predicted

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Guidelines

This poem is from The Colossus (1960), and was first published in the English journal Granta while Plath was a student at Cambridge University. Written in the mid-1950s, this poem explores the randomness of poetic inspiration and the power of that inspirational moment to transform ordinary things. The poem also describes the bleakness of Plath’s depression. Contrast, nature, weather and colour are all used to great effect and will be regular features in Plath’s work. The poem is intense: both nightmarish and dreamlike in its mood.

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Sylvia Plath

Commentary Lines 1–10

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‘Stiff’, ‘Hunches’, ‘rain’, ‘desultory’, ‘spotted’; these words set the tone for the opening of the poem: it is bleak, constrained and low-key. The speaker notices a black rook preening on a branch in the rain. It is at the mercy of the elements, just as the speaker is at the mercy of her depression. There is an air of resignation and fear, the poet does not dare to hope that the light of inspiration will descend on her, she accepts the random nature of things: ‘let spotted leaves fall as they fall’. Here ‘spotted’ suggests decay, while the leaves fall without ‘ceremony, or portent’. The word ‘portent’ implies a bad omen. A black rook was often perceived as such in superstition. The use of these words and images and Leaves and the Sibyl their connotations give the poem an ageless feel. The poet must In book six of Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid be passive and await her inspiration patiently. the Sibyl appears. She made prophecies by arranging leaves, but the wind would blow and

Lines 11–22

scatter them. The ancient Greeks also believed in watching the behaviour of birds as a way to

The poet is not totally resigned though; she will ‘admit’ to hoping predict the future. that the heavens may give her a sign: ‘I desire, / Occasionally, some backtalk / From the mute sky’. She pokes gentle fun at herself here, and then the energy of the poem picks up as she tells us that she is inspired sometimes. She describes poetic inspiration as a ‘certain minor light’ that seems to make ordinary objects glow with significance, ‘As if a celestial burning took / Possession of the most obtuse objects’. These moments when the muse is upon her give her a break from the ‘inconsequent’ dullness of everyday life, and she feels very blessed by these moments of epiphany, ‘bestowing largesse, honour, / One might say love’. Religious words filled with light and love lift the mood dramatically from the darkness of the first two stanzas, but these moments are out of the poet’s control.

Lines 23–32

Dark and light combine and contrast in the rest of the poem. The speaker is on the lookout for these moments as she passes through the bleakness of her days, ‘this dull, ruinous landscape’. However, she is also suspicious of and may be oblivious to ‘whatever angel may choose to flare / Suddenly at my elbow’. What she is sure of is that when she is inspired, the transformation which occurs makes her look up, be alive and awake to the beauty of the world, momentarily feeling good about herself, and energised: ‘seize my senses, haul / My eyelids up, and grant / A brief respite from fear / Of total neutrality’. She momentarily escapes her depression. This poem is the product of one of those moments; she has seen the wet rook and the ‘shine’ of its feathers has lifted her into the rapture of creativity.

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Lines 32–40

The mood falls a little here as the poet expresses a half-hearted hope that she might be able to bear the slog of waiting for the next moment of inspiration. The line ‘Trekking stubborn through this season / Of fatigue’ sums up the determination of the speaker to persevere but also expresses how hard life is for her when she is not writing poetry. As she nears the end of the poem she settles down to wait for the next ‘miracle’: ‘The wait’s begun again, … For that rare, random descent.’ The alliteration of the ‘r’s and consonance of the ‘g’, ‘n’ and ‘m’ sounds (‘–gun’, ‘–gain’, ‘ran–‘, ‘–dom’, ‘–ent’) emphasise the possibly long wait ahead. Without these moments of creativity her life would be intolerable; she is overcome by fatigue yet tentatively optimistic.

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Themes and imagery

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Depression, which manifests as a fear of feeling ‘total neutrality’ (line 32), i.e. nothing, is a strong theme. This contrasts sharply with the theme of poetic inspiration, the exhilaration the speaker feels when moved to create art. Fear and hope are major themes intrinsically linked to these first two. The poet fears that she will have to wait a long time to be inspired and creative but is hopeful about this also. The speaker’s existence seems a worryingly random mix of the two and she feels she lacks any control over her life.

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The exterior world is strongly connected to the poet’s interior world, her psyche. The darkness and light she perceives and interprets around her affect her mood profoundly. Plath uses contrast effectively: words such as ‘black’, ‘rain’, ‘fall’, ‘minor’, ‘inconsequent’, ‘dull’ and ‘ruinous’ convey the struggle and desperate dullness of her life, which thankfully is punctuated by ‘spasmodic’ moments of light – ‘fire’, ‘miracle’, ‘celestial’, ‘incandescent’, ‘angel’. Nature and religion are used extensively as important symbols. The imagery of the dark rainy day sets the background mood of despondency. Obviously the rook is an important symbol here, a token of ancient superstition but also symbolic of how nature’s beauty can comfort and inspire. The rook could also represent Plath herself as a poet, someone battered by the rain of depression, yet she continues to put a brave face on things and keeps going just as the rook preens despite the rain.

Form and language

The personal pronoun ‘I’ pervades the poem, creating an intensely personal and intimate atmosphere, which can seem claustrophobic at times. Internal rhyme is used effectively in the echo of ‘ow’ in stanza 6: ‘Suddenly at my elbow. I only know’ – the effect created by this rhyme and assonance emphasises the speaker’s yearning for the moment of poetic inspiration to occur again. There is much uncertainty in her world, but what she does know is that moments of beauty, though rare, are deeply moving for her.

The poem is constructed of eight unrhymed stanzas, a form Plath used often (‘The Times Are Tidy’ has three; ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ consists of seven). This form allows for flexibility in rhythm and pacing, and this poem is full of intricate sound patterns which reflect the mood of the speaker.

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The stanzas consist mostly of short lines, but in each there are one or two long lines, as if the emotion felt by the speaker has slipped from the rigid grasp of the strict format and spilled over. The overwhelming feeling is of someone on the edge of breaking down, someone holding on to whatever she can to keep her from this fate, yet feigning detachment. Look at this pattern in the poem: do you agree with this analysis or do you have a different opinion?

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Religious words signal relief and elation, while an almost post-apocalyptic landscape is created by the use of phrases such as ‘dull, ruinous’, ‘total neutrality’ and ‘season / Of fatigue’, giving us a representation of the poet’s general state of mind. Archaic words mix with much more modern ones (‘portent‘ / ‘backtalk’) to emphasise the randomness of it all and the never-endingly relentless cycle of depression punctuated by brief moments of epiphany. This combination of old and new gives the poem a timeless quality. Plath’s language also creates a middle ground of doubt and sceptical optimism: these moments of light might be ‘miracles’ or they might be ‘Tricks’; she is fearfully non-committal. A hidden rhyming scheme perhaps suggests that life may not be as random and unpredictable as the speaker first thinks it is. Look for words ending in ‘t’ for this.

Questions

Describe the setting created in the first two stanzas. What strikes you as the overall mood of this section of the poem? What details create this mood?

Do you agree that the next two stanzas are more positive? Back up your opinion with reference to this part of the poem.

What is happening to ordinary objects in stanzas 3 and 4? What is causing this transformation in your opinion? Look especially at references to light.

Why does the poet ‘now walk / Wary’ (lines 22–23)?

What effect does the light shining on the rook’s feathers have on the poet’s mood (stanzas 6 and 7)?

‘A brief respite from fear / Of total neutrality’ (lines 31–32). What is the speaker’s opinion of herself judging by this phrase?

Read stanza 7. What are the speaker’s hopes for the future? Do you find this viewpoint optimistic or pessimistic in the light of what she has said so far?

‘Miracles occur’ (line 36). Suggest what these miracles might be.

‘The wait’s begun again’ (line 38). What is the poet waiting for? What is her tone here?

Comment on the poet’s use of contrast and antithesis in the poem. Focus especially on references to light and dark, hope and despair. Following the death of her father, Plath said, ‘I’ll never speak to God again’. List the references to religion or a higher power in the poem and, in pairs or groups, discuss them in the light of this statement.

In this poem Plath seems to believe that the poetry she creates has nothing to do with her own talent and intelligence. This tells us a lot about her self-esteem. Read her biography and timeline up to 1955. Now write a letter to Plath in which you respond to the persona she portrays in this poem.

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Before you read

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There’s no career in the venture Of riding against the lizard, Himself withered these latter-days To leaf-size from lack of action: History’s beaten the hazard.

Unlucky the hero born In this province of the stuck record Where the most watchful cooks go jobless And the mayor’s rôtisserie turns Round of its own accord.

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The Times Are Tidy

Who, do you think, are the heroes of ro r upwo today and why? Was the past a more heroic place than now? Discuss these questions with a partner.

The last crone got burnt up More than eight decades back With the love-hot herb, the talking cat, But the children are better for it, The cow milks cream an inch thick.

stuck record: when a vinyl record is scratched and the needle keeps skipping to play the same part of the music over and over again; metaphor for something that is not moving on/making progress

watchful cooks: from the Middle Ages onwards the poisoning of food was common in attempts on the lives of the powerful, thus cooks had to be vigilant

rôtisserie: an apparatus consisting of a rod upon which meat is impaled and then rotated over heat to cook it

lizard: here, a dragon

hazard: risk, adventure

crone: witch, hag

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Glossary

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Guidelines

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This poem is from The Colossus (1960) and was written in the summer of 1958 after Plath had resigned from her job teaching in Smith College. Plath was disenchanted with her former teachers and the pressure of the job pushed her physical and mental health to its limit: ‘they deal in inference, hint, threat, double entendre, gossip, I’m sick of it’.

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Unusually for Plath, there is no ‘I’ persona here. It is a straightforward social commentary on the sameness of modern culture compared with the more magical fairy-tale world of the past. Plath’s German background was important to her and her family, who read German fairy tales and studied much of German culture, for example Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the composer Wagner. She and Hughes were interested in ouija boards, tarot cards and horoscopes, which may link to the notion of magic in the poem.

Commentary

The title is laced with irony; modern times are too neat and safe for the poet.

Stanza 1

Plath uses the metaphor of a ‘stuck record’ to convey the blandness of the world she lives in and suggests that those born into it are ‘Unlucky’, as there is so little opportunity for adventure. Plath’s tone is scathing when she contemplates how the best people are unrewarded: ‘the most watchful cooks go jobless’, while society is repetitive and boring: ‘the mayor’s rôtisserie turns / Round of its own accord’. In this prosperous ‘province’, the hero and the skilled cook have been replaced by the lazy mayor and his automated rôtisserie.

Stanza 2

More dark, wry criticism dominates the second stanza as Plath asserts that knights battling dragons would be idle today; the dragon is reduced to a ‘lizard, / Himself withered’. With ‘History’s beaten the hazard’, Plath laments that time has moved on and daring, heroic deeds are no more. At the time Plath wrote this poem, the USA was the most wealthy and powerful nation, the only world superpower, and had possibly grown comfortable and complacent.

Stanza 3

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Plath says that the last witch was burned eighty years before, along with superstitious beliefs in magic such as ‘the love-hot herb, the talking cat’; she is sarcastic when she says ‘the children are better for it’. The thick cream is a reference to a superstition that if the cow’s milk was not creamy a witch had cursed it. It is obvious that Plath does not think modern sanitised consumer culture is any match for the more heroic and mystical times past. Like the dragons, the witches are no longer a threat to the province’s cattle and children.

Themes and imagery Mystery and wonder have disappeared for the young. Plath is frustrated and bitter about the lack of imagination and heroism in modern life. She may have believed that the culture Hughes grew up with in Yorkshire, where superstition and folktales were still going strong, was preferable to the urban culture of the USA. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 373

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The monotonous circular images of the ‘stuck record’ (line 2) and the constantly rotating rôtisserie are symbolic of the banal, safe world the poet sees around her, and contrast sharply with images of the fantastic past such as dragons, heroes, witches, magic spells and talking animals. This contrasting imagery suggests the theme of a better, more heroic past and an unexciting present. It seems Plath’s experience of teaching at Smith College made her cynical about education and American society in general. Interestingly, Plath would later describe teaching as ‘a public-service Vampire that drinks blood and brain without a thank-you’.

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Form and language

The poem shows Plath’s attention to the craft of poetry. In each of the three five-line stanzas there are interesting patterns of sound. Look, for example, at how the assonance of ‘o’ and ‘u’ sounds are woven into stanza 1. The alliterative ‘k’ sound in the first word of the poem is repeated at intervals and concludes the poem. The stanzas and rhymes are carefully worked. Some do not rhyme fully, such as ‘lizard’ (line 7) and ‘hazard’ (line 10). Listen to these rhymes as you read stanza 2 fully. Does this rhyme work? If not, why not? The regular structure reflects the regular, predictable society that is being satirised in the poem. Plath’s voice here is quite different to her other poems; the surreal imagery and intensity of her work is absent in this dry, witty critique of 1950s American society.

Questions

Where or what is the ‘province of the stuck record’ (line 2), and why does Plath use this metaphor here?

Why is the ‘hero’ born in this province unlucky?

What details in the poem suggest that the past was better than the present?

‘the venture / Of riding against the lizard’ (lines 6–7). What does the poet mean here, do you think?

What has happened to the lizard in ‘these latter-days’ (line 8)?

What, do you think, does Plath mean in the line ‘History’s beaten the hazard’ (line 10)?

In your opinion, does the speaker believe that the gains referred to in the last two lines of the poem compensate for the losses mentioned in the rest of the poem? Support your answer by reference to the poem.

Suggest an alternative title for the poem and justify your choice with reference to the poem.

Describe the tone and mood of the poem and the attitude it expresses towards the contemporary world. You may wish to consider some of the following options, or your own choices: frustration, anger, amusement, sarcasm, pessimism, disillusionment.

How does this poem differ to others you have studied by Plath?

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Choose the two images that appealed to you most in the poem and give reasons for your choices.

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Write a personal essay where you agree or disagree with Plath’s opinion in this poem, or hold a class debate on the issue.

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Sylvia Plath

Morning Song

Before you read G

Think of some similes you could ro r upwo use to describe a new baby: ‘A new baby is like a …’. Jot down three or four and then explain to a partner why you think they are suitable.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral In my Victorian nightgown. Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Glossary 2

midwife: nurse who helps to deliver a baby

elements: earth, air, water and fire; something fundamental

Effacement: gradual erasing of something

15 11

flat pink roses: patterned wallpaper

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try Your handful of notes; The clear vowels rise like balloons.

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Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements.

Guidelines

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Plath wrote this poem in the spring of 1961, ten months after her daughter’s birth. She had recently suffered a miscarriage. The poem was published in the Observer newspaper that year, and after her death in her collection Ariel. In these six unrhymed three-line stanzas or tercets, Plath examines the mix of feelings she is experiencing as a mother; there is deep love and affection for the child but at the same time a feeling of disorientation and distance. The title refers to the early morning cries of her child. By using the word ‘Song’ in the title, Plath seems to celebrate her baby.

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Commentary Stanzas 1 and 2

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The poem opens on a positive note with the word ‘Love’. Love is what created the child, who is compared to a ‘fat gold watch’, suggesting a chubby, precious baby. Gold watches are often given as presents so perhaps Plath feels the child is a gift. The ticking of the watch is like the heartbeat of the child, who is now a living person who will eventually die. At the child’s birth the midwife slapped her feet and she cried for the first time. This cry seemed so raw and honest that Plath describes it as ‘bald’, pure enough to be elemental; as if being, or perhaps having, a baby is the most natural and fundamental thing possible to humanity.

Plath now imagines her baby as a museum exhibit, like a ‘New statue’ around which people stand discussing it like a work of art, at a loss to explain it: ‘We stand round blankly as walls.’ The child’s ‘nakedness / Shadows our safety’. This ambiguous observation suggests how vulnerable and innocent the child is, but it also casts a shadow on the security of the adults present: a new baby will always mean worry and a duty to protect where before life may have been more carefree. The second stanza Baby brother has a stilted feeling to it; lots of punctuation emphasises this When Plath’s brother was born she resented effect and suggests the speaker is finding aspects of being a new him deeply, and later wrote about this saying, ‘A parent hard. museum mammoth. Babies!’ Does this correspond to the tone or imagery in

baby, I hated babies … I would be a bystander, a

Stanzas 3 and 4

Plath feels estranged from her baby: ‘I’m no more your mother / Than the cloud’. She feels that she is now reduced, less of a real person. She likens herself to a cloud reflected in the puddle it has created, and made smaller by this act of creation: gradually what remains is blown away by the wind. Feelings of inadequacy are a feature of many of Plath’s poems. She strove to be perfect in her academic and personal life, putting on a show of coping admirably, but her journals and poems tell a very different tale. Many of Plath’s friends and relatives were shocked by her suicide and her struggle with depression, saying that they had no idea she was so tormented.

the second stanza?

The poet is a reflection of her child, but she feels distant and drained. She feels that motherhood is slowly erasing the essence of who she was before. This sensation is not uncommon in new parents, who are often overwhelmed by caring for an infant. A similar feeling, a fear of disappearing, is described in ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’. Mirrors, reflections and pools are recurring images in Plath’s poetry.

Th e

The narrator lies awake listening to her child breathe. The use of the word ‘moth’ effectively captures the soft, quiet breathing of the child, and combined with ‘Flickers’ suggests fragility, like the flame of a candle that could easily be snuffed out. The sound reminds Plath of the gentle waves of the sea (Plath grew up by the sea and missed it terribly when the family moved after her father’s death). Thus, the baby calms and worries her at the same time.

Stanzas 5 and 6

The distance Plath has been feeling closes as her child cries out. Straightaway Plath is up to tend to the infant. She is self-deprecating here as she describes herself as ‘cow-heavy and floral / In my Victorian nightgown’, wryly referring to her milk-heavy breasts and frumpy night attire. The pattern on her nightdress echoes the rose-patterned wallpaper in stanza 4 and the simile at the end of stanza 2. Plath seems to feel that she

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is in the background rather than the central figure in this child’s new life. She dehumanises herself with the phrase ‘cow-heavy’; she has lost her femininity, her sexuality, but there is a light-hearted tone here too, and the poet is able to poke fun at herself.

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The child’s open mouth as it wails is ‘clean as a cat’s’, the crisp alliteration here suggesting the urgency of the infant’s cries, and the image conveys the poet's engagement and fascination with her child. It is as if activity has broken the dark spell of her night-time fears. Dawn breaks as Plath feeds the baby; ‘The window square // Whitens and swallows its dull stars’ as the child swallows her mother’s milk.

The mood lifts further at the poem’s end. Plath admires her daughter’s seemingly deliberate attempt to sing, to make herself heard: ‘you try / Your handful of notes; / The clear vowels rise like balloons.’ As the room becomes lighter so does Plath’s heart, and it seems to swell with love for the child in this final uplifting and celebratory simile.

Themes and imagery

The emotional rollercoaster of being a new mother is central to the poem as the poet tries to deal with the negative effects it has had on her self-image and self-esteem. She is disoriented by the experience and struggles to come to terms with being secondary, with feeling different physically, and with the responsibility of parenthood. This is countered, however, by the clear love and affection Plath feels for her little girl. The imagery in the final stanza – ‘stars’, ‘notes’ and ‘rise like balloons’ – coupled with ‘Song’ in the title make the poem ultimately a celebration of motherhood.

Th e

Unusual comparisons give this poem energy. Plath needs to find utterly new ways to describe this infant and how it makes her feel: ‘fat gold watch’, ‘New statue’, ‘moth-breath’, ‘clean as a cat’s’. Aural images permeate the poem – the ‘bald cry’; the poet hears a ‘far sea’; the child’s ‘moth-breath’, ‘handful of notes’ and ‘clear vowels’ combine to create the ‘Song’ in the title.

The imagery is vivid and symbolic: the balloons of the final line are a particularly strong representation of celebration. The cloud image in stanza 3 is complex and reflects effectively the evolving mother–daughter relationship. The personification in stanza 5 of the window swallowing stars as the infant feeds shows Plath in harmony with her surroundings; physical contact with the child has dispelled the emotional estrangement she had felt earlier.

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Form and language

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There is a strong, steady metre in stanza 1 emphasising the ticking of the ‘fat gold watch’ and the rhythmic breathing of the baby. ‘Bald’ is an adjective Plath was using in many of her poems at the time. It works on various levels here, an adjective describing the head of the baby, the starkness of the sound the baby’s cry makes, and how elemental and pure our first noise is, unchanged through the ages.

Ire

Plath controls the pace of this poem rigidly. It is halting and stilted when she feels disoriented and distant: ‘Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect’ (line 8); and becomes smoother when the poet connects with her child: ‘your moth-breath / Flickers among the flat pink roses’ (lines 10–11). The alliteration of the ‘f’ and ‘th’ sounds creates a harmonious flow. The word ‘Love’ begins the poem and, despite the poet’s struggles with motherhood, love is the prevailing mood.

The poem is written in three-line unrhymed stanzas, creating a more immediate and narrative tone. The first line has ten syllables, which is the standard line length in English poetry (e.g. Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter). What is interesting in the poem is how Plath breaks the line to achieve certain effects. Look, for example, at how the short line 10 creates a space that is filled by ‘Flickers’ on line 11, so that we almost hear the child’s breath in the sound and rhythm of the stanza.

What is the mood of the first stanza and how is this mood created?

Why, do you think, does Plath compare the child to a ‘New statue’ in the second stanza? How do the adults seem to feel in this stanza?

‘Your nakedness / Shadows our safety’ (lines 5–6). What, do you think, does Plath want to convey here?

Explain the image of the cloud reflected in the puddle in stanza 3.

Plath feels distant from her child at times in the poem. Find examples of this.

Trace the mood of the speaker as the poem progresses. Overall, do you find the mood positive? Why or why not?

The poem contains a number of unusual comparisons. Choose the two you like most, explaining what they represent and why you like them.

‘Although tender in tone, the poem is clear-sighted and unsentimental.’ Discuss this view of the poem.

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Questions

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The opening and closing stanzas are more positive than the others. In pairs or groups, discuss, offering an opinion, if you agree, as to why this may be so.

‘The tenderness “Morning Song” evinces for the baby acts at a distance … [a] chill, beautiful poem.’ Do you agree with Anne Stevenson’s opinion of this poem? Explain.

Imagine you are a friend of Plath, and write the dialogue of a conversation you both have about motherhood.

Frieda Hughes, Plath’s daughter, is also a poet. Assuming Frieda’s voice, write an answering poem using details from ‘Morning Song’. You could begin with the line: ‘You were the first to hear my handful of notes’. What title would you give your poem?

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Sylvia Plath

Finisterre

Before you read

Our Lady of the Shipwrecked is striding toward the horizon, Her marble skirts blown back in two pink wings. A marble sailor kneels at her foot distractedly, and at his foot A peasant woman in black Is praying to the monument of the sailor praying. Our Lady of the Shipwrecked is three times life size, Her lips sweet with divinity. She does not hear what the sailor or the peasant is saying – She is in love with the beautiful formlessness of the sea.

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Glossary 3

Admonitory: warning, reprimanding, advising

trefoils, stars and bells: wildflowers, identified by shape rather than name

paraphernalia: miscellaneous items, bits and pieces

conches: large seashells

One: as in, a person

Ire

The cliffs are edged with trefoils, stars and bells Such as fingers might embroider, close to death, Almost too small for the mists to bother with. The mists are part of the ancient paraphernalia – Souls, rolled in the doom-noise of the sea. They bruise the rocks out of existence, then resurrect them. They go up without hope, like sighs. I walk among them, and they stuff my mouth with cotton. When they free me, I am beaded with tears.

This was the land’s end: the last fingers, knuckled and rheumatic, Cramped on nothing. Black Admonitory cliffs, and the sea exploding With no bottom, or anything on the other side of it, Whitened by the faces of the drowned. Now it is only gloomy, a dump of rocks – Leftover soldiers from old, messy wars. The sea cannons into their ear, but they don’t budge. Other rocks hide their grudges under the water.

As part of a scene in a horror or sci-fi film, you are to imagine and describe a place that is ‘Land’s End’ – the last place in the world. What would it look like? What atmosphere would you create and how?

Th e

Gull-colored laces flap in the sea drafts Beside the postcard stalls. The peasants anchor them with conches. One is told: ‘These are the pretty trinkets the sea hides, Little shells made up into necklaces and toy ladies. They do not come from the Bay of the Dead down there, But from another place, tropical and blue, We have never been to. These are our crêpes. Eat them before they blow cold.’

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Guidelines

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This poem comes from a group of poems Plath wrote in autumn 1961. It was inspired by a trip the poet took with Ted Hughes during which they stopped at Berck-Plage on the Normandy coast, a seaside resort where they saw the sanatoria for soldiers who had been wounded in the Algerian war (referred to in line 7 of the poem). Many were amputees, which resonated with Plath, whose own father had had a leg amputated due to diabetes. There is a famous statue there called ‘Our Lady of the Shipwrecked’ (line 19), which commemorates those lost at sea. A companion statue depicting a sailor kneels at her feet.

Finisterre is located at the westernmost part of Brittany, France. Its name means ‘land’s end’, from the ancient belief that the horizon marked the end of the created world. Its dangerous waters were the scene of so many shipwrecks that locals came to call it ‘The Bay of the Dead’.

Commentary

Stanza 1

Stanza 2

The poem opens on a statement – ‘This was the land’s end’ – referring to the meaning of Finisterre, but also perhaps foreshadowing the destructive erosion of the coastline by the crashing waves of the sea. This process is described by the poet in terms of a military conflict, and the rocks that lie in the seabed are likened to casualties of war. The description of the landscape creates a ‘gloomy’, bleak atmosphere from the first line, which contains the words ‘end’, ‘last’ and ‘rheumatic’. The ‘Admonitory’ cliffs warn of the dangers of the sea and perhaps scold it for its relentless attack. The cliffs and submerged rocks are depicted as victims of this conflict; they are gnarled arthritic hands or stubborn casualties of war hiding their ‘grudges under the water’. A chilling note is struck with Plath’s mention that in the past the water was ‘Whitened by the faces of the drowned’. Finisterre was a notorious place for shipwrecks. The power of the sea is clear; it explodes and the crashing of the waves is like the roar of cannons which further torment the rocks it has hacked from the ever-diminishing coastline. The sea beyond seems endless: ‘With no bottom, or anything on the other side of it’. The overall effect is of a post-apocalyptic wasteland reminiscent of the ‘dull, ruinous landscape’ Plath spoke of in ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’.

Th e

Nothing thrives in this godforsaken place; even the little clifftop flowers Plath describes as ‘trefoils, stars and bells’ are so small they could be something ‘fingers might embroider’, and they are ‘close to death’. The ‘mists’ that hardly bother with the flowers consist of the souls of the drowned coming from the dark past of this place, ‘part of the ancient paraphernalia’. These mists obscure and then clear away as if they have a godly power: ‘They bruise the rocks out of existence, then resurrect them.’ Despair pervades as ‘They go up without hope’. The nightmarish imagery now takes a surreal turn as the speaker enters the mist as if she wishes to be a formless dead soul too. The experience produces the terrifying feeling that ‘they stuff my mouth with cotton’. Perhaps Plath is remembering the electroshock therapy she endured in the 1950s, which involved having a sponge placed in her mouth. She is left with remnants of the mist condensing as drops on her face, which she describes as ‘beaded with tears’. She is clearly deeply upset.

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Sylvia Plath

Stanza 3

Stanza 4

Plath now describes the statues: ‘Our Lady of the Shipwrecked’, who seems to be ‘striding toward the horizon’ oblivious to the ‘marble sailor’ praying for protection from the sea; and the ‘peasant woman in black’ (the colour of mourning), who kneels there also. Despite her holy nature, ‘Her lips sweet with divinity’, Our Lady does not listen to the woman’s prayers; she is too mesmerised by the ‘beautiful formlessness of the sea’, much as Plath was entranced by the ghostly mists in the previous stanza.

Th e

The locals have set out their stalls for tourists like Plath, displaying white ‘Gull-colored’ lace, postcards, shell necklaces and little effigies of women also made of shells. Are these ‘toy ladies’ like the statue in stanza 3 or like Plath herself in any way? The locals weigh down their wares with conch shells. One stallholder is anxious to distance the merchandise from ‘the Bay of the Dead down there’, assuring the narrator that originally these shells came from a warmer, prettier place that is ‘tropical and blue’. There is a note of regret as the peasant admits ‘We have never been to’ this faraway paradise. Thus, the note of hope we feel when hearing that there is a happier realm is tempered by its far distance from this bleak and unforgiving place. All the trader can offer now is sustenance from their local food: ‘These are our crêpes.’ The swirling wind will soon chill them, so Plath is advised to ‘Eat them before they blow cold’. The message here is ambiguous: on the surface the meaning is a simple ‘hurry up and eat before it’s cold,’ but could there be other connotations? Perhaps the message is to embrace life because death comes soon. The image also links to that of the souls who earlier filled the speaker’s mouth ‘with cotton’ (line 17).

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Themes and imagery

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Plath once wrote in her journal of ‘the potently rich sea of my subconscious’; the stormy sea and windy coastline reflect the speaker’s inner turmoil. Terror and mental anguish are forcefully conveyed in the bleakness of the setting, the violence of the sea and the nightmarish image of dead souls cramming the speaker’s mouth. Against this terror, there is little or no consolation. Does religion provide any comfort? Our Lady of the Shipwrecked is deaf to the prayers of those she should protect, her pink ‘marble skirts’ (line 20) blown back by the wind as she seems to stride determinedly towards the sea. (Remember eight-year-old Plath’s declaration ‘I’ll never speak to God again’ upon her father’s death.) Our Lady is supposed to be the supreme mother in the Catholic faith, yet here she neglects her flock to pursue what fascinates her. Does Plath identify with this statue? Does she feel she has neglected her duties as a mother to pursue her art? The image of the shell dolls – literally the shell of a woman – may contribute to this idea also.

The central image is the sea, representing the themes of decay and destruction. The effect is twofold: to convey death and war. As a twelve-year-old, Plath saw Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play that begins with a shipwreck. Later she associated Ariel’s song – ‘Full fathom five thy father lies; / Of his bones are coral made’ – with her own dead father. Plath often used the sea as a metaphor and it was often strongly linked to her father, whom she regularly depicted as a sea-god. Plath would have seen many wounded soldiers on her trip to ‘Finisterre’, perhaps inspiring this comparison. The personification of the sea and rocks emphasises the idea of ‘messy wars’ (line 7) as they battle eternally; ‘messy’ dismisses these conflicts as ultimately futile yet harmful. It is worth remembering that Plath was terrified of nuclear conflict, which loomed large as the USA and USSR engaged in the Cold War.

The poem’s surrealist imagery is in part influenced by Plath’s interest in art, particularly the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico.

Form and language

Th e

At one level, ‘Finisterre’ is a description of a seaside resort: the rocky shoreline and the cliffs that surround the bay known as the Bay of the Dead, the mists that rise from the sea, the statue of Our Lady of the Shipwrecked, a memorial to the sailors who died at sea. It concludes with a description of the stalls and the trinkets sold by the local peasants. On another level, ‘Finisterre’ is a symbolic poem, in which the meeting of ocean and land is presented in terms of the recurrent drama of death and rebirth, of entrapment and freedom, and of form and formlessness. These contrasts pervade the language of the poem. As with other Plath poems, the symbolic language sends the reader’s thoughts in many directions. Thus, ‘Finisterre’ can support different interpretations. The poem consists of four nine-line stanzas. This gives the poem a definite shape, a form to contrast with the ‘formlessness’ that is strongly represented in the imagery of the poem. The structure of the poem, like the cliffs and rocks, seems firm and fixed. However, the notion of permanence is undermined as these structures are eroded by the elements which ravage them, and the fragility of the flowers that ‘fingers might embroider’. Perhaps there is a message that what we imagine to be solid and permanent may not be quite so; everything is subject to change.

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Sylvia Plath

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The language of the poem is rich in sound effects. Plath plays with rhyme; for example ‘budge’ and ‘grudges’ in stanza 1 create an echo, the halting sound of ‘dge’ emphasising the stubbornness of the rocks. Alliteration is used effectively also: ‘Her marble skirts blown back’ (line 20). The alliterative ‘b’ and ‘t’ sounds suggest the power of the wind. Look for examples of sibilance also, and note the internal rhyme between ‘pink’ and ‘wing’.

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Questions

Plath describes the cliffs as ‘Admonitory’ (line 3). Look at the glossary for the poem, and choose which meaning of admonitory you think Plath intends. Give reasons for your choice.

Describe the setting created in stanza 1. What atmosphere is created here?

How are the flowers and mists in stanza 2 linked to death?

What, do you think, is happening to the speaker in the last four lines of stanza 2?

Look at the depiction of ‘Our Lady of the Shipwrecked’ in stanza 3. What impression do you get of this statue? What is her relationship to the sea?

What representations of the sea are conveyed in the final stanza? How is it personified here and in the poem as a whole?

Do you find the ending of the poem hopeful or despairing? Explain. What is your understanding of the last line?

In your view, is the speaker of the poem attracted to the sea? Plath regarded the sea as an image of the artist’s subconscious. What does the description of the sea in the poem suggest about Plath’s subconscious and its concerns? r

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In pairs or groups, choose the two images you found most striking in the poem and explain your choices.

Comment on the poet’s use of sound effects in the poem.

Contrast the notions of permanence and chaos in the poem.

Does the tone of the poem change as it progresses? Trace the poet’s tone through the poem.

Describe a contrasting place – somewhere full of life and joy and growth. How would it look? What might the statues there depict? What might the stalls sell?

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I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful – The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Write a riddle where the answer is ‘a mirror’. As you read the poem look for any similarities between your riddle and the description of the mirror in the poem.

Mirror

Before you read

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Glossary

1 preconceptions: ideas or opinions formed in advance without basis in real knowledge or experience

3 unmisted: not fogged up; unobscured

14 agitation of hands: hand-wringing; a similar symbol of distress is used in ‘Child’ to convey the speaker’s anguish

Th e

Guidelines

Plath wrote ‘Mirror’ in 1961 just before her twenty-ninth birthday, while pregnant with her second child, Nicholas. The Hughes family had recently moved to Court Green in Devon where Plath would write some of her most intense and surreal poetry. Mirrors and reflection are recurring images in Plath’s work. She had become fascinated with the work of the artist Leonor Fini, who exhibited a collection full of paintings of masks, doubles and divided selves. Plath often spoke about finding her double or other self in her close friendships (these often failed after a time due to Plath’s high standards, moodiness and possessiveness).

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Commentary Stanza 1

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The mirror describes itself: it is ‘silver and exact’. ‘Exact’ is ambiguous; it may mean ‘precise’ or have a darker connotation: ‘to exact’, meaning to elicit payment forcibly. The mirror tells of its unbiased and faithful nature, but the reader must decide how accurate or truthful the mirror is. The mirror becomes like a mouth, swallowing whatever it sees and internalising this. It presents back an ‘unmisted’, unobscured mirror image without emotion, ‘love or dislike’, or bias: ‘I am not cruel, only truthful –’. Consider why Plath places the dash here. Does it imply deception? Look at the slightly smug statement in the very next line: ‘The eye of a little god’. Is a god impartial or unbiased?

The mirror passes most of its time observing the ‘pink’, speckled wall opposite, which it has become so familiar with that now ‘it is a part of my heart’. The mirror’s assertion that it has a heart not only further develops this personification but also suggests that it is subject to emotion and bias, despite its earlier statements to the contrary. The only ‘flickers’ that obscure the pink wall are the darkness of the night and the faces which look into it; both of these images will be explored further in the second stanza.

Stanza 2

The mirror becomes more fanciful in its description of itself: ‘Now I am a lake.’ A lake can reflect just like a mirror but often distorts that reflection, as its surface is not always even. The faces mentioned in stanza 1 become a woman who ‘bends over me’. The woman is ‘Searching’ the mirror to find out ‘what she really is’, just as poets often use their poetry to explore and interpret the deepest parts of their own psyche.

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Plath felt enormous pressure throughout her life to maintain a double standard of the outer socially acceptable mother/wife/ daughter, and the inner poet/independent woman/depressive. Perhaps unhappy with the reflection she sees in the mirror, or divided by this double life, the woman often turns to the night, ‘to those liars, the candles or the moon’ to examine herself. Is she afraid of the harsh light of day, preferring the softer, more flattering flicker of candles?

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Note Plath’s use of the word ‘flickers’ in line 8 and also in ‘Poppies in July’. The mirror sounds stung by the woman’s disloyalty; ‘those liars’ sounds vitriolic, full of jealousy and bitterness. However, the mirror stays true, and when the woman returns, it reflects her ‘faithfully’. She ‘rewards’ the mirror by honestly showing her distress: ‘tears and an agitation of hands’. Is this an ironic use of the word ‘rewards’? The mirror concludes that it is ‘important’ to the woman.

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Every morning the woman notes the changes in her wrought by time: ‘In me she has drowned a young girl’. There are a number of interpretations possible here. In one sense the poet might think of her bygone youth as a drowned girl. She herself could be responsible for the drowning, or it could be the fault of her mother; Plath often blamed her mother for her father’s death and for not allowing her to grieve properly for him: she would not let Sylvia attend his funeral. Plath often depicted her father as ‘drowned’ and part of the waterworld, like a sea-god. She also used water regularly as a symbol for her mental state; in this sense the young girl drowns in the anxiety of the woman. The image could also refer to the toll motherhood has taken on Plath. The image of the lake is continued here as old age looms inexorably, ‘like a terrible fish’, a frightening creature of the deep which lurks beneath, ready to rise up and destroy or devour.

largely American literary phenomenon where often a persona at the heart of the poem shares a personal experience (usually a negative one). The tone is confidential and confessional

and the poetry tends to be deeply personal in subject but set apart from the poet, providing

distance through the use of this persona.

The confessional poetry movement was a

Mental anguish and the woman’s attempts to explore this are central in the poem; her ‘tears’ and ‘agitation of hands’ (line 14) convey deep suffering, which in her own life Plath kept hidden from her friends and family. She tried to deal with her depression by writing about it in her journals and her poetry; these were her confessionals. Plath was influenced by the US poet Robert Lowell and attended a seminar given by him; he was one of the ‘confessional’ poets where the poet’s real experiences and fears are dealt with directly or indirectly in their poetry.

Confessional poetry

Themes and imagery

Creating poetry may itself be a theme also. Plath attended psychiatrists during her life and became fascinated with the ideas of the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who examined the depths of the subconscious in the belief that by releasing repressed memories and anxieties they could help the sufferer cope with their current depression. Perhaps the relationship between the poet and the mirror is a reflection of the relationship between analyst and patient, or writer and poem.

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The poem deals with relationships on a number of levels. The mirror’s relationships dominate the poem: with the wall, the night and the woman. The wall inspires a feeling of kinship and affection in the mirror – ‘part of my heart’ (line 8) – whereas it seems jealous of the night and ‘those liars, the candles or the moon’ (line 12). The relationship with the woman is more complex: she uses the mirror to search herself but at other times neglects it, and yet the mirror is always there, faithful and unswerving in its loyalty. Reading the image another way, there is the sinister idea of the mirror swallowing and drowning its subjects, and the future it presents for the woman, ‘like a terrible fish’ (line 18), is a frightening one. On a deeper level, the poem explores the way in which we relate to ourselves through the act of examining ourselves in a mirror; the implication that we can see through the reflection into the inner self (the psyche, the emotions) makes this poem far more complex than it seems on the surface.

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Sylvia Plath

Water Water is a recurring image in Plath’s poems and

often

represents

her

subconscious.

In ‘Finisterre’, the poet’s deepest fears are

powerfully evoked by the sea; she is almost

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suffocated by its mists. It batters the cliffs like Plath’s depression has battered her

emotionally. In ‘Mirror’, the mirror likens itself

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to a lake that drowns the speaker’s youth and threatens her future like a ‘terrible fish’ (line 18). It ‘swallows’ her as she desperately searches its reaches to find out who she truly is. Plath

in her poetry seems to be enacting just such

Water is an important image and theme in Plath’s poetry. It often suggests death or escape, as in ‘Finisterre’, and Plath uses the sea, a lake and even a puddle (‘Morning Song’) to convey reflection, self-doubt, fear and longing. The mirror is also clearly symbolic and it, too, reflects a dense complex of associations: the dark and fearful inner life of the poet, the deep act of making poetry itself, or even those females closest to Plath, her mother and daughter. The world the mirror and woman inhabit is unstable – the exactness of the mirror’s action contrasts with the darkness, the unstable sources of light such as ‘candles or the moon’, and the wallpaper that ‘flickers’. The ‘speckles’ (line 7) suggest the pink wall is mildewed; this idea of decay may echo the images of ageing at the end of the second stanza.

a desperate search for identity, coming up with multiple personas all speaking to and of

different aspects of her psyche. Her poem ‘Full

Form and language

Fathom Five’ is a deep meditation on this and is worth reading for comparison.

Two nine-line stanzas reflect each other much as the mirror reflects the woman in the poem. The structure of the poem is therefore catoptric, i.e. it reflects itself. If indeed the mirror symbolises poetry and how poems reflect their writer, it is doubly reflective. The speaker of the poem is the mirror, which describes itself and its relationships. As in ‘Elm’, the poet gives voice to an object and dramatises its situation to convey her own fears and insecurities. In ‘Finisterre’, Plath also used nine-line stanzas, their length giving room to explore an image or concept in detail. The opening line of this poem sounds like an old-fashioned riddle, where an object describes itself and we must guess the answer. Without the title, do you think you would guess that a mirror was the speaker here?

Reflection Plath’s

poetry is

reflection of

herself

encompassing the different sides of this complex

poet:

wife,

mother,

depressive,

creative, nature-loving, fearful, anguished, etc. In ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, the rook mirrors the poet, battered and beleaguered by rain and self-doubt. ‘The Times Are Tidy’ reflects her dissatisfaction with teaching and American society. In ‘Morning Song’, the poet imagines she is a cloud disappearing while being reflected in the puddle (her baby daughter) it has distilled. In ‘Child’, her son’s eye is a ‘Pool in which images / Should be grand’ and she

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worries about what sights her child’s eye will Harsh consonant sounds in the first stanza, as well as the words reflect as it grows. She is reflecting herself as themselves, create a coldness: ‘exact’, ‘dislike’, ‘cruel’, ‘speckles’, a nervous mother who feels totally inadequate. ‘darkness’. The terseness in the short but complete lines creates The image of herself at the end of ‘Child’ reflects a controlled accuracy, suggesting someone who is afraid to her deep depression and lack of self-worth and unleash their emotions freely. There is a sense that, just as under in it she fears she will block her child’s reflection the lake a threat awaits, under the surface of the poem dark of what is good and worthy in life, she is a ‘dark / Ceiling without a star’. ‘Mirror’ centres on and violent emotions lurk. An ‘atmosphere of weird threat’ is reflection, like her poetry the mirror sees and something several critics have noticed in Plath’s poetry. One interprets her, often bleakly and unkindly. of Plath’s biographers ascribed this to ‘the deep self full of violence and fury she was suppressing under her poised and capable appearance’ (Stevenson). This is countered by the tenderness the mirror feels for the wall, which is undemanding, constant and stable.

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Questions What details are we given about the mirror in lines 1–5?

Describe the relationship between the wall and the mirror.

What are the only things which obscure the mirror’s view of the wall? How, do you think, does the mirror feel about these interruptions?

‘I am not cruel, only truthful’. Is the mirror as unbiased and neutral as it suggests in stanza 1?

Why and how does the woman use the mirror? Describe the relationship between the woman and the mirror in stanza 2.

How can we tell that the woman is suffering? Why, do you think, does the mirror call her display of ‘agitation’ a reward in line 14?

What is your interpretation of the last two lines of the poem?

Read the poem aloud. Look for examples of rhyme in the poem. Which words echo each other and what is the effect of this? For example, consider the rhyming effect of ‘I see’ and ‘immediately’ (line 2). Keep in mind the rhymes are not necessarily at the end of the lines.

Comment on the symbolism of the mirror, the wall, the night and the lake. What interpretations are possible for these images?

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Comment on how the form and structure of the poem echo its subject and themes.

Discuss the voice of the mirror: What personality is conveyed? Is it masculine or feminine, caring or cruel? Is it the woman’s inner voice, and is the voice of the poem an aspect of Plath’s own voice? Or should we keep a distance between the poet and the speaker of the poem? Explain.

Do you agree that this poem has an ‘atmosphere of weird threat’? Explain.

Write an answering poem or narrative paragraph entitled ‘Woman’ or ‘Wall’, where the one you choose describes themselves and their relationship to the mirror.

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Find pictures to accompany and illustrate the various ideas and images in the poem, and set these to music that you think suits the mood.

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Sylvia Plath Before you read

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Pheasant

Through the uncut grass on the elm’s hill. It is something to own a pheasant, Or just to be visited at all. I am not mystical: it isn’t As if I thought it had a spirit. It is simply in its element.

That gives it a kingliness, a right. The print of its big foot last winter, The tail-track, on the snow in our court –

The wonder of it, in that pallor, Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling. Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.

It is such a good shape, so vivid. It’s a little cornucopia. It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud, Settles in the elm, and is easy. It was sunning in the narcissi. I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.

Glossary 3

jut of that odd, dark head: description of the jerking fashion in which the pheasant moves its head as it walks about

our court: Court Green is the name of the house in Devon where the poem is set; also suggests a royal court, picking up on the reference to the kingliness of the bird

pallor: an unhealthy pale appearance

crosshatch: shading effect in art using intersecting lines; here, it describes the pattern of the prints left by the pheasant overlapping those left by other birds

cornucopia: a Roman symbol of plenty depicting a horn out of which limitless food tumbles; here, it represents treasure

narcissi: daffodil-like plants but smaller and highly scented, with white or yellow flowers; they were planted in their thousands around Court Green

But a dozen would be worth having, A hundred, on that hill – green and red, Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!

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You said you would kill it this morning. Do not kill it. It startles me still, The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing

Discuss an experience you ro r upwo have had (real or imaginary) when you were able to observe a rare or unusual animal at close quarters.

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Guidelines

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Sylvia Plath wrote ‘Pheasant’ in April 1962, during a period of enormous creativity in which she wrote a number of fine poems within days of each other. The poem had its origins in Plath’s glimpse of a pheasant standing on a hill at the back of her house. Some critics read the poem in terms of the relationship between the speaker of the poem and the person she addresses. The poem expresses Plath’s love of nature as the speaker becomes fascinated with a pheasant seen in her garden.

Stanzas 1 and 2

Hunting

Commentary

Stanza 1 opens dramatically: ‘You said you would kill it this morning.’ The repeated ‘you’ is sharply accusatory. This is quickly the act to writing poetry, saying, ‘This is hunting followed by the speaker’s command, ‘Do not kill it.’ But she gives and the poem is a new species of creature, a new specimen of the life outside your own.’ a strange reason for wanting to keep it alive: ‘It startles me still’; ‘still’ suggests that the bird has been seen before. Plath was Poetry in the Making, 1967 often fascinated by things that shocked her, such as the mist in ‘Finisterre’ and the flowers in ‘Poppies in July’. She finds the movement of the bird – ‘The jut of that odd, dark head’ – captivating, and feels privileged to ‘be visited at all’ by such a beautiful creature as it paces through the long grass on the hill where an elm tree grows. She feels it is hers: ‘It is something to own a pheasant’.

Ted Hughes was a keen hunter and once likened

Stanzas 3, 4 and 5

With ‘it isn’t / As if I thought it had a spirit’, the speaker denies that she believes there is a magical or special relationship between herself and the bird, or that it has a soul, but this denial could be a defence against accusations of irrationality. The speaker appreciates how the bird fits into its setting; it belongs in nature: ‘It is simply in its element.’ The pheasant has ‘a kingliness, a right’. This is its territory; it was in the garden ‘last winter’ and she recalls the impressions its feet and tail made in the snow. What amazes her most is how ‘rare’ it is to see the pheasant, compared to more common birds like ‘sparrow and starling’. She is struck by its larger, more majestic footprints through the tiny crosshatch pattern the footprints of these more ordinary birds create in the snow’s ‘pallor’.

Stanzas 6, 7 and 8

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The tone grows in excitement as she imagines ‘a dozen’ or even ‘A hundred’ pheasants ‘on that hill – green and red’ as they cross and re-cross the grass. This would be ‘a fine thing!’ The exclamation mark here emphasises her joy at this imagined scene. The shape of the pheasant reminds the poet of ‘a little cornucopia’, an ancient symbol of nature’s plenty, as it ‘Settles in the elm’ tree to safety. Just before this ‘It was sunning in the narcissi’, until the poet had disturbed it. She seems annoyed at herself for having disturbed the bird, ‘stupidly’. The final line may be an admonishment to herself to leave the bird alone or a repetition of her instruction in the first stanza not to kill the bird: ‘Let be, let be.’

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Sylvia Plath

Themes and Imagery

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The beauty and wonder of nature is clearly a theme here. Plath celebrates the rarity of the pheasant and ends by asserting its right to inhabit her garden. Plath is also saying that what is rare is wonderful; the sparrows and starlings do not fascinate the poet like the pheasant does because they are common, everyday birds. The effect of the pheasant on the speaker is reminiscent of ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, where the poet is fascinated by the beauty of the rook preening on the branch of a tree.

For some critics, the plea is not for the pheasant but for the poet herself. Plath wrote ‘Pheasant’ during a tense period in her marriage with Ted Hughes. In this reading, Plath is the narrator and Hughes is ‘you’. The pheasant represents the marriage itself, under threat from the male. It is he who is intent on destroying it. The female pleads for it; she pleads for its beauty and wonder, and for the life and passion which animate it. The fact that it is the female who makes the plea suggests that the relationship of power is an unequal one, with the male possessing the authority to take or spare life as he wills. (In ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’, the narrator says she will be ‘sweet God’ and spare the lives of the bees.) For the critic Linda Wagner-Martin, ‘Pheasant’ rests on the fear that the male will not listen to the female’s plea for the life that deserves to exist.

The image of the pheasant dominates the poem, symbolising what is rare and beautiful in nature. It has lifted the poet’s spirit, and her excitement grows as she continues to observe it and then imagine many of them in her garden. Although a positive poem in many ways, the rapturous description of the bird is framed by a threat to it: ‘Do not kill it /… Let be’. There is a loneliness despite the admiration the poet feels for the kingly pheasant; the bird, the poet and even the elm tree seem solitary figures. The elm tree is explored deeply in our next poem, ‘Elm’.

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Form and language ‘Pheasant’ is a beautifully achieved poem. It has a conversational quality. Plath uses a nine-syllable line, and there are subtle rhymes and half-rhymes throughout the poem. The rhyme scheme is a version of terza rima, a form in which the last word in the middle line of each stanza provides the rhyme for the next stanza. What is so impressive about ‘Pheasant’ is the way Plath follows a strict form while never losing the conversational feel of the poem. The use of ‘You’ and ‘I’ in the poem creates a distance between the two parties in the first stanza; there is no ‘we’. In her language about herself Plath is defensive and self-critical: ‘I am not mystical’ (line 7), ‘I trespass HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 391

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stupidly’ (line 24). This contrasts strongly with the effusive praise she gives the pheasant: ‘rare’ (line 15), ‘kingliness’ (line 10), ‘The wonder of it’ (line 13). Can you find other examples of Plath being self-deprecating in her poetry?

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The repetition at the end of the poem is often a feature in Plath, and can be compared to ‘colourless’ in ‘Poppies in July’ and ‘that kill’ in ‘Elm’. Observe, too, the effect of the extra syllable in the final line. What is achieved by this elongation of the line?

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Questions

What is happening in the first two lines of stanza 1? What scene do you imagine when you read it? Imagine the tone, body language and facial expressions of the speaker delivering these lines.

What are the speaker’s feelings towards the pheasant in the first two stanzas?

Reading stanzas 3 to 5, what attributes does the pheasant have? What are the speaker’s reasons for wanting the bird to be spared?

Read lines 15 and 16: ‘Is it its rareness then? It is rare. / But a dozen would be worth having’. How does the poet contradict herself here?

Write a description of the pheasant based on the information given in the poem.

Has the position of the speaker and the bird switched as the poem moves from the opening to the end? Think in terms of who the ‘intruder’ seems to be.

Which of the following readings of the poem is closest to your own? a) ‘The difference between “Pheasant” and “Black Rook in Rainy Weather” is that in the former there is no movement from the outside to the inside. It is the bird, rather than the poetic persona, who is the centre of the poem.’ or b) ‘In “Pheasant”, the poetic persona pleads for herself in pleading for the bird.’ Support the points you make by reference and quotation from the poem.

In writing about ‘Pheasant’, Ted Hughes speaks of Plath achieving a ‘cool, light, very beautiful moment of mastery’. Write a note on the kind of mastery achieved by Plath in ‘Pheasant’. You might like to consider some or all of the following in your answer: ■ The choice of verbs and their effect ■ The descriptions of the pheasant ■ The dramatic language ■ Line length and syllable count ■ The stanza form. In considering the above, be alert to the sounds of the poem and their effect.

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If, as some critics suggest, the poem describes the relationship between the poet and her husband, what kind of relationship is portrayed? In your opinion, does the poem support this reading? Write a dialogue between the ‘you’ and ‘I’ where the fate of the pheasant is decided.

Have a class debate on the rights and wrongs of hunting. r

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Sylvia Plath Before you read

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Elm

What are the different sounds a ro r upwo tree makes? Think of the different parts of a tree and how different kinds of weather can affect it. Share your ideas with the class and see if any of the sounds are similar to the ones described in the poem.

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for Ruth Fainlight

Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse. All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Echoing, echoing.

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush. And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the root My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

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Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. A wind of such violence Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me Cruelly, being barren. Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her. I let her go. I let her go Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

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I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?

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I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches? – 40

Its snaky acids hiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

Glossary

the bottom: the furthest point that can be reached; in this context, it is the subterranean world

1 1

tap root: the main root that goes deep into the soil

voice of nothing: absence of inspiration arsenic: a deadly poison

atrocity: an extremely wicked, violent or cruel act or event, often causing death on a large scale

filaments: fine wires like those in a light bulb or electric wire

clubs: stout-ended sticks used as weapons

malignity: evil

15 16

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Guidelines The elm of the title is a wych elm, a large deciduous tree with convoluted branches which Plath described as an ‘Intricate nervous system’. It was often used to make coffins. One grew on a prehistoric mound in the garden of Court Green in Devon and is the tree described in ‘Pheasant’ where the bird roosts at the end of the poem. The ease described at the end of ‘Pheasant’ is replaced by deep anguish and unease in this poem.

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Sylvia Plath Ruth Fainlight Ruth Fainlight was a close friend of Plath’s in the final years of her life and a fellow poet with similar ideas and themes. A. S. Byatt said her poems ‘give us truly new visions of unusual and

Plath wrote the poem in April 1962 as her marriage to Ted Hughes was breaking up. Plath often gave voice to inanimate objects to describe her emotions and thoughts. The ‘you’ persona is addressed by the ‘I’ of the tree, but their voices become tangled towards the end of the poem, like the branches of the elm tree.

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mysterious events’. Fainlight said of herself,

Commentary

‘I am a poet who is a woman, not a woman poet.’

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Stanza 1

The elm tree addresses the ‘you’ persona, saying ‘I know the bottom’. The tree has dark, deep knowledge and knows the very essence of things; it knows that ‘the bottom’ is what the ‘you’ fears most. Perhaps this ‘bottom’ is the deepest darkest recess of the true self. The poem explores various fears and traumas, perhaps suggesting that our deepest fears and the pain we have suffered are what truly define us. The tree asserts that it has explored this and is unafraid.

Stanza 2

The tree wonders whether the sound of the wind in its leaves reminds the ‘you’ of the sea and ‘Its dissatisfactions’. Plath used the sea extensively in her poetry to represent her childhood before her father’s death (as in ‘Morning Song’), and also to symbolise formlessness and death (as in ‘Finisterre’). The sea seems to frighten and fascinate Plath in equal measure. The tree suggests that it may remind the ‘you’ of ‘the voice of nothing, that was your madness’. The mocking, dispassionate tone echoes the voice of the mirror in ‘Mirror’. Silence – the absence of inspiration – was the cause of severe depression in Plath. She constantly feared that her poetic gift would desert her; this was eloquently written about in ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’.

Stanzas 3 and 4

Here the focus turns to the heartbreak the ‘you’ has endured, with the elm asserting that ‘Love is a shadow’, something intangible and dark that cannot be captured. As night comes, the elm continues to mock, saying, ‘How you lie and cry after it’. Note the pun on the word ‘lie’. The elm compares the harsher sound of the wind in its branches to the noise of hooves, in a metaphor likening the poet’s love life to a bolting horse which will ‘gallop’ away from the listener. Plath’s marriage break-up could be the theme here, and perhaps the comparison of the head to a stone conveys the numbing, heavy despair she was feeling at the time. The sound of fleeing love seems to haunt the listener in the effective repetition of ‘Echoing, echoing’.

Stanza 5

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The third sound made by the elm may remind the ‘you’ of ‘the sound of poisons’ as the rain falls through its boughs. The movement of thought from unattainable love to poison and oblivion is similar to the movement in ‘Poppies in July’, whereby numb nothingness is presented as an alternative to a life of intense feeling. It is a quiet but insidious sound, ‘this big hush’, and the white berries on the tree are like deadly arsenic, suggesting death.

Stanzas 6 and 7

The intensity of the elm’s descriptions is heightened further as it boldly states ‘I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets’, which is reminiscent of the flash and blast of an atomic bomb exploding. The experience has scorched its roots, burning them. Plath had a dread of nuclear warfare, and the reference to ‘red filaments’ and ‘wires’ reminds us of the botched ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) Plath suffered in her early twenties, HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 395

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which led to a suicide attempt. The elm now seems to suffer as much as the ‘you’ persona, unlike earlier in the poem when it seemed aloof and unscathed by suffering. It is attacked by a storm, which seems to have been gathering as the poem has progressed, and it is broken into ‘clubs’ which will harm any bystander. Maybe the poet is saying that the intense heartbreak and rage that her mental health issues have caused threaten those closest to her. The violence of these two stanzas reaches a climax in the elm’s anguished plea: ‘I must shriek’. The imagery, with its references to suffering – ‘Scorched’, ‘wires’, ‘violence’, ‘shriek’ – suggests the suffering endured by Plath’s body in the ECT she received. From this point on, the narrator seems identifiable with the poet herself.

Stanzas 8 and 9

The moon There are sixty-one references to the moon in

Plath’s poetry and none are benevolent.

Night is just as difficult for the elm as the sunset; the moon ‘drags’ it, mocking its lack of fertility with its lunar glow, and its ‘radiance scathes me’. Notice the moon is referred to as ‘Her’.

The elm seems confused and its voice becomes increasingly confused with the ‘you’ persona. It thinks it may have caught In classical mythology the underworld had an the moon and so releases her, leaving her ‘Diminished and flat, entrance hall called ‘Orcus’ where all of the evils as after radical surgery’. This shocking image seems to imply a of mankind dwelled. At its centre was a huge double mastectomy. Line 27 is an important one. Here the elm elm tree where nightmares slept beneath the accuses the narrator, asserting that it is her nightmares which leaves waiting to fly out at night to haunt the dreams of sleeping people. possess the tree and make her what she is: ‘How your bad dreams possess and endow me.’ From this point on, the voices of elm Virgil, Aeneid Book VI and narrator merge. In ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’, Plath says that the trees of the mind are black. The elm is black and expresses some of the dark, incomprehensible fears that occupy the narrator’s mind.

‘your bad dreams possess and endow me’

Stanzas 10 and 11

The speaker continues to list her nightmares: at night something awakens inside her, trying to get its claws into her, ‘Looking … for something to love’; but this love is twisted and dark and it terrifies her. She feels it sleep in her like a roosting bird, possibly an owl given its nocturnal nature, and she can feel its evil ‘malignity’ like a cancer inside her.

Stanzas 12–14

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There follows a brief moment of calm (perhaps wrung-out exhaustion following the intensity of emotion that has gone before). Time goes by: ‘Clouds pass and disperse’, their pale forms reminding the speaker of the faces of those she has loved, ‘those pale irretrievables’. She feels she will never recover their affection, for they have dispersed like the clouds. The sense of loneliness and abandonment is striking. She wonders whether their fickle attentions were worth her spent passion – ‘Is it for such I agitate my heart?’ Suddenly she notices a face, ‘So murderous in its strangle of branches’. This is a sinister image that seems to contain a paralysing and ultimately deadly poison. The final sound of the tree is a ‘snaky … hiss’ that ‘petrifies the will’. This reminds us of Medusa in classical mythology, a gorgon monster who had snakes for hair and eyes that turned people who gazed upon her to stone. The numbing poison is like the oblivion-bringing opiates in ‘Poppies in July’. All of these fears and terrible traumas are ‘the isolate, slow faults’ which act like poisons to eventually destroy the speaker – ‘That kill, that kill, that kill’.

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Sylvia Plath

Themes and imagery

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Mental anguish in an uncaring world is the theme here. The speakers in the poem express their deepest fears and sufferings with no sense or hope of escape. It is incredibly dark and dramatic. The fears expressed include true self-knowledge, insanity, rejection and lost love, the poisoned atmosphere of nuclear fallout, violence, cancer, nightmares, infertility and night terrors.

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Suffering and rejection are at the heart of the surreal set of images used by Plath to convey these themes. The cruel and taunting voice of the elm offers no consolation, empathy or understanding – ‘I do not fear it’ (line 3), ‘How you lie and cry after it’ (line 8) – reflecting a world that does not care about the mental torment the ‘you’ persona endures, and even jeers her for it. Is this how Plath felt the world viewed her poetry, or herself, with disdain and a lack of compassion?

The need for love, its absence, and a destructive inner force are dominant themes in the second part of the poem where the voices meld into a single anguished lament. The speaker has been abandoned; the dispersion of ‘those pale irretrievables’ (line 35) is the final straw in this litany of grief. With ‘I am incapable of more knowledge’ (line 37), she declares that she can take no more. And yet another horror lurks, the murderous face in the ‘strangle of branches’ (line 39). The shocking imagery of violent death, and the darkness and suffering endured, is relentless.

Each set of torments is associated with a sound made by the effect of the weather on the tree: the sea in rustling leaves, horses’ hooves in the strong wind, a hush of poisons in rain, and the sharp hiss of ‘snaky acids’ (line 40). The final image is reminiscent of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as well as the Medusa reference mentioned previously. The ‘shriek’ of the elm in line 21 becomes all-encompassing seven lines later – ‘I am inhabited by a cry’. We get the sense that reality, fear and nightmare are blurring into one tormented existence. (Read Emily Dickinson’s ‘I Felt a Funeral in My Brain’ for a similar experience.)

A sunset and a night that grow steadily stormier and stormier dominate the imagery, causing the tree to eventually break into ‘clubs’ (line 19) that will hurt anyone near, perhaps a reflection of Plath’s state of mind and how it may affect others. Part of the night imagery concerns the moon, which is associated with women but does not harbour life. ‘Barren’ is an adjective Plath uses often to suggest a strong dislike or horror of someone. A barren woman is, Plath suggests in another poem, like an empty museum.

Artemis and the owl Artemis was the Greek goddess of the moon, night and chastity. She was a hunter whose sacred bird was the owl, a creature suggested in lines 28 to 33: ‘this dark thing / That sleeps in me; / All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings’. Artemis

was

often

cruel

and

vengeful,

particularly to women who fell in love.

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Form and language

The poem is written in fourteen tercets of irregular length. It becomes darker and more upsetting until the black finality of the final line: ‘That kill, that kill, that kill’. The triple repetition mirrors the tercets that comprise the poem.

Repetition and internal rhyme are used effectively to create the nightmarish, surreal atmosphere of the poem. Look at how ‘I’ and ‘know’ are repeated in stanza 1 and think about the effect this has. Is it sinister, arrogant, or something else?

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Questions What impression of the elm is created by the statements in the first stanza? How would you describe the tone here?

Why, do you think, did Plath make the persona of the elm female?

Examine the questions posed by the elm in stanza 2. What do they suggest about the elm and the person she addresses?

What image of love is created in stanzas 3 and 4? Is the elm comforting or cruel in these stanzas? Explain your answers.

Stanzas 5 to 9 describe the elements of rain, sun, wind and moon in their relationship to the elm. What aspect of each is emphasised? How does each affect the elm? What, in your view, is the most striking image in these stanzas? Why?

What is the elm’s attitude to the moon? Where is this attitude most apparent? Comment on the images of infertility and disfigurement in this part of the poem.

What do stanzas 5 to 9 suggest about the nature of the elm’s existence? Select the words or phrases that strike you most forcefully.

‘How your bad dreams possess and endow me’ (line 27). What relationship is suggested between the elm and the ‘you’ of the poem, in this statement? The line can be read as either the elm addressing the woman or the woman addressing the elm. What is the effect of each reading? Which do you agree with?

The last five stanzas are rich, complex and difficult. How does the speaker view herself? What images strike you as particularly disturbing or vivid?

What is your reaction to the use of the word ‘faults’ in the final stanza? What is the tone of the poem’s extraordinary last line?

‘In “Elm”, the boundary between outside and inside is blurred. It is as if the “You”, the poetic persona, takes the elm into herself.’ What effect does this create in the poem? If we read the poem as a description of Plath’s mental state, what is revealed to us?

Plath’s choice of words and phrases in the poem are especially striking and startling. Take, for example, ‘atrocity of sunsets’ (line 16). Explain what you think she means by this phrase and choose three others that particularly caught your attention, explaining the reasons behind each choice.

‘“Elm” vividly conveys suffering, self-doubt and despair.’ Give your response to this assessment of the poem, supporting the points you make by quotation from the poem.

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‘Elm’ is a poem with many striking visual images. You might like to offer your own creative response to, or interpretation of, the poem, in visual form.

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Sylvia Plath 15 upw

There is no single reading of ‘Elm’ that will do justice to its rich complexity. Here are three of the many readings proposed for the poem. Working in small groups, share your opinion of each.

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a) ‘The poem’s narrator confesses that she is searching desperately for someone to love. Because of this hysteria, she realises that some deadly force within her has been triggered into action by the loss of love. The disintegration of love, the poem says, is a sure death warrant for the speaker.’ Paul Alexander

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b) ‘“Elm” describes the effects of nuclear and chemical damage upon a tree and a woman. “I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets”, the speaker explains, and further, “My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.” … “Elm” is one of the many poems in which Plath explores the consequences of isolation, and argues against the impulse to hold oneself as separate from the rest of the world.’ Tracy Brain

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c) ‘In the poem, originally titled “The Elm Speaks”, wych elm becomes witch elm, a frightening mother-double of the poet, who offers death as the only possible love substitute. Between the taproot of the tree and the murderous face of the moon, the poet, “incapable of more knowledge”, is forced into a terrible acknowledgement of “faults” – suddenly a new word in Sylvia’s poetic lexicon. The poem suggests them as somehow built into her nature, bent like a crooked tree by traumatic childhood events: “These are the isolate slow faults / That kill, that kill, that kill.”’ Anne Stevenson

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Before you read

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Brainstorm the title ‘Poppies in ro r upwo July’. What do you expect a poem with this title to be about? What general mood and atmosphere would you expect to encounter?

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Poppies in July

Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.

A mouth just bloodied. Little bloody skirts!

And it exhausts me to watch you Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

There are fumes that I cannot touch. Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep! – If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

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Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule, Dulling and stilling. But colourless. Colourless.

Glossary 10

opiates: a class of drug; heroin and morphine are opiates; opium comes from an unripe poppy seed

nauseous capsules: tablets causing the taker to feel they want to vomit

liquors: liquid solutions of a drug or chemical

glass capsule: a bell jar, the kind used in scientific experiments or to hold a specimen; Plath wrote an autobiographical novel called The Bell Jar

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Sylvia Plath

Guidelines

Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes was breaking up, and Hughes was having an affair, when she penned this poem in 1962. In the poem Plath subverts the usual symbolism associated with poppies – remembrance, peace and the warmth of summer – and instead makes the poppies a dark and threatening presence that might hurt or numb the poet. Writing under the pseudonym ‘Victoria Lucas’, Plath published her autobiographical novel

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The Bell Jar in 1963. The protagonist, Esther

Greenwood (representing Plath), becomes a guest editor, has ambitions to be a published poet, is rejected when she applies to join a creative writing class, has a breakdown

Between the end of September and 1 December 1962, Plath wrote forty of her Ariel poems in an ‘astonishing blaze of creativity’ (Stevenson). In a letter to her friend Ruth Fainlight she wrote, ‘the muse has come to live here, now Ted has gone’. Stevenson says ‘Poppies in July’ is Plath ‘At the manic extreme’ where there were ‘great storms, projected outwards in vituperative exorcism of ferocious tirades’.

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The Bell Jar

and undergoes electroshock therapy. These experiences lead to suicide attempts and

closely mirror Plath’s life.

Commentary Couplet 1

The affectionate ‘Little’ at the beginning of the poem describing the poppies quickly darkens as ‘Little poppies’ become ‘little hell flames’, suggesting suffering and torment. When the speaker asks ‘Do you do no harm?’, the accusatory tone suggests that the poppies have deceived her. They seemed harmless and sweet, but they are actually destructive ‘little hell flames’. The poet’s anguish is clear; perhaps they have deceived her like she felt her husband had. The vibrant red poppies were in abundance in the English countryside during July, and the poet projects her torment and pain onto them. She is going through ‘hell’ and so sees the world around her in these terms.

Couplet 2

The speaker extends the flame image by comparing the movement of the poppies’ delicate, papery petals flapping in the breeze to the flickering of flames, but when Plath tries to touch these ‘flames’, ‘I cannot touch you’ and ‘Nothing burns.’ These last two words should be a positive thing, yet they sound rueful, as if she is disappointed not to be burned. Perhaps she is so numb that she is incapable of feeling. This is a state Plath feared above all else, as far back as ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, with the poet’s fear ‘Of total neutrality’.

Couplets 3 and 4

Betrayal

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The speaker can only watch the poppies ‘Flickering’ and even this Plath had recently discovered love letters from ‘exhausts’ her. The broad vowel sounds in this part of the poem Assia Wevill, her husband’s lover, in Hughes’s emphasise this extreme lethargy: listen to the ‘au’, ‘ou’ and ‘oo’ attic study, and had intercepted a call from Wevill to Hughes. She took the letters to the sounds of these four lines. This lethargy soon turns to vitriol when garden, where she burned them on a bonfire, Plath rails against the poppies as if disgusted by them, for they relating directly to the imagery of flames in the are like ‘the skin of a mouth’. Is the sensual connotation of a red poem. She declared that she had ‘given her mouth negated or simply twisted by the next line? Does ‘A mouth heart away and could never get it back’. just bloodied’ suggest that the mouth has been punched? The shape of the poppy flower when upside down is like ‘Little bloody skirts!’ This disturbing image is ambiguous; it could allude to Hughes’s lover Assia Wevill, Plath herself, menstrual blood or even miscarriage. Sexuality

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and suffering in women combine in this metaphor, just as blood and fire combine in this stanza to produce dramatic and unsettling images.

Couplet 5

Plath next considers the product of the unripe poppy seed, opium, a drug that she later describes as ‘Dulling and stilling’ at line 14. Just as the flames do not ‘touch’ her, neither do the fumes of the burning poppy seeds. Nothing brings relief or release. Her tone in the questions of line 10 is manic in its desperate yearning: ‘Where are your opiates’. She is prepared to suffer the ‘nauseous’ side-effects of the drug if it will help her.

Couplet 6

The speaker’s anguished state becomes even more intense in her futile plea for pain or oblivion: ‘If I could bleed, or sleep! –’. The exclamation mark and dash here intensify the desperation and despair expressed in this wish for some extreme of agony or unconsciousness. ‘If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!’ increases her desperation further. It is a startling line combining the rage, violence and sexuality pervading the poem. Perhaps Plath is reminded of her first meeting with Hughes at a Cambridge party, where she famously bit him on the cheek, drawing blood. She wrote in her journal that she left him with ‘a swelling ring-moat of tooth marks’. It is as if she is both fascinated and appalled by the intensity of the raging passion she is feeling. The poem reaches its emotional climax here.

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Bell jars

The image of the ‘glass capsule’ (bell jar) is a

recurrent one in Plath’s work. References to bell jars and liquor suggest hospital and museum

specimens kept in chemical solutions. Plath

witnessed such specimens when she posed as

Couplet 7

The speaker’s mood deflates as she becomes exhausted and more passive in her desires – ‘Or your liquors seep to me’. She addresses a ‘glass capsule’ or bell jar, which, if the contents are ingested, she hopes will be ‘Dulling and stilling’.

a medical student and observed an anatomical dissection. The experience proved traumatic. In line 13, the imagery suggests that the speaker sees herself as trapped in a glass jar, like an exhibit in a museum or a laboratory.

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Sylvia Plath Line 15

The last line stands alone, as if she is too exhausted to complete the couplet. What she craves is to be ‘colourless. Colourless.’ Is this a death wish where the speaker rejects the blood and fire in favour of a colourless fume which will bring on oblivion? Consider the manner of Plath’s suicide (see page 363).

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Themes and imagery

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The poppies of the title are clearly the central image in the poem and take on very original and powerful symbolism at the hands of the poet. They represent the relief she longs for, but this relief is destructive. The poppies are the fire, blood and numbness she desperately craves to escape her unbearable reality.

Blood and fire dominate the first part of the poem, inspired by the vivid red of the poppies’ petals. Poppies are a very delicate flower with petals so fragile they are almost transparent – ‘clear red’ (line 6) – but Plath’s poppies are fierce and powerful ‘flames’ (line 1), a ‘bloodied’ mouth (line 7) and a powerful drug. By addressing them directly – ‘Do you do no harm?’ (line 2) – Plath personifies the poppies. Colour is often an important aspect of Plath’s symbolism; red is the colour of danger and passion, ‘the blood and pain of continuing life’ according to one biographer, but the poet is done with these things. What she longs for most by the end, with ‘colourless. Colourless’ at line 15, is to be nothing, to feel nothing.

Form and language

Short statements create drama; there is a bare, terse effect as if the poet is struggling to express her pain. The balance of short and long lines in unrhymed couplets, and careful punctuation, emphasise this struggle further and contrast all the more starkly with the lone last line. Look at how question and exclamation marks are used to intensify the drama and longing the speaker wishes to convey, for example ‘If I could bleed or sleep!’ (line 11). For such a short poem, the range in tone is broad: at first affectionate, then harsh, accusatory, observant, longing, exhausted, fascinated, disgusted, repulsed, frustrated, anguished and, at the end, a mix of resignation and yearning. Examine the use and effect of sound, for example the soft sibilance and long vowels emphasise the longing in line 10: ‘Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?’

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This poem is a lyric, which is a formal type of poetry expressing personal emotions or feelings, usually written in the first person. Carrying the image of the mouth from the third to the fourth couplets makes this the most passionately intense section of the poem – ‘Little bloody skirts!’ (line 8). The pun here on ‘bloody’ means Plath can express a lot in a short line. Think about the variety of interpretations this line might have.

SNAPSHOT ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Misleading title Unusual symbolism of poppies Short dramatic statements and questions Personification Startling imagery

■ ■ ■ ■

Contrast between strong emotion and exhaustion Colour and lack of it Intricate sound patterns Concludes with wish for annihilation

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Exam-Style Questions How are the poppies personified in the first couplet and how does the speaker feel towards them?

Despite thinking that the poppies will burn her, the speaker longs to touch them. Why, do you think, is this?

Read lines 5–8 again and explain the comparisons Plath uses here. What is your interpretation of each comparison/image?

Why, do you think, does the speaker question the poppies about their ‘opiates’ in line 10?

Explain the wishes the speaker expresses in the sixth and seventh couplets.

What is the wish expressed by the speaker at the end of the poem? How does the wish make you feel? Comment on the effect of the repetition here.

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Understanding the poem

Thinking about the poem

Choose the two images from the poem which you found most striking and explain why you chose them.

What sound effects did you notice in the poem; briefly comment on the effect of some of them.

Complete the statement below that is closest to your own feelings for the speaker of the poem and explain your choice: ■ I admire the speaker because … ■ I pity the speaker because … ■ I am fascinated by the speaker because … ■ I can/cannot relate to the speaker because …

In your opinion, what is the theme of this poem?

Find and read Plath’s poem ‘Poppies in October’ and compare it to this poem.

Imagining

Imagine you are Plath’s friend or husband and have read the poem. Write a letter to her in response to it.

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Find, describe or draw images to accompany each couplet and combine them into a format for display.

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Sylvia Plath Before you read

I ordered this, this clean wood box Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift. I would say it was the coffin of a midget Or a square baby Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous. I have to live with it overnight And I can’t keep away from it. There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there. There is only a little grid, no exit.

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The Arrival of the Bee Box

I put my eye to the grid. It is dark, dark, With the swarmy feeling of African hands Minute and shrunk for export, Black on black, angrily clambering.

What things are you most afraid ro r upwo of? Do you think people should face their fears? Why or why not? Have you had experience of this? Discuss this with a partner and feed back your ideas to the class.

I lay my ear to furious Latin. I am not a Caesar. I have simply ordered a box of maniacs. They can be sent back. They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are. I wonder if they would forget me If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree. There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades, And the petticoats of the cherry.

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How can I let them out? It is the noise that appals me most of all, The unintelligible syllables. It is like a Roman mob, Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

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They might ignore me immediately In my moon suit and funeral veil. I am no source of honey So why should they turn on me? Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

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The box is only temporary.

din: loud noise swarmy: moving together in large numbers

clambering: climbing awkwardly

laburnum: tree with long bunches of yellow flowers

colonnades: rows of columns

petticoats of the cherry: tree with full pale pink blossoms which are compared to an oldfashioned type of underskirt

moon suit: astronaut’s spacesuit, which looks like a beekeeper’s protective clothing

Glossary

Guidelines

In 1962, Plath and Hughes had decided to take up beekeeping, but they split up shortly before this poem was written. Hughes had had an affair, and although the couple tried Pandora to repair the damage done with a holiday in Ireland in September, by October they had separated. Plath was devastated and felt The poem reminds us of the legend of Pandora’s Box, which Pandora was told never to open, deep anger, confusion and depression. Her father, Otto, was an but driven by curiosity she opens the box and expert on bees and had even written a book on the subject. This releases all of mankind’s evils onto the world. is one of a sequence of five bee poems which explore themes of The only thing which remained inside was hope. fear, identity, entrapment, freedom and control.

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Commentary

Stanza 1

‘I ordered’ opens the poem with an integral concept: control or the lack of it. Plath has ordered a bee box, though now it has arrived she seems surprised and hesitant about it, as conveyed in the repetition of ‘this, this clean wood box’. The language and imagery is at first straightforward and conversational; ‘Square as a chair’ makes the box seem ordinary, domestic, a simple object. The poet imagines what this might be – ‘the coffin of a midget / Or a square baby’ – giving the poem a nightmarishly surreal quality. Death is clearly suggested here – the death of someone small. ‘Din in it’ has an onomatopoeic quality, conveying the furious buzzing of the confined bees. This noise builds as the poem progresses, forcing the poet to make a decision.

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Sylvia Plath Stanza 2

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The speaker is conflicted, and she dances between fear and fascination. ‘The box is locked, it is dangerous’, with ‘no exit’, creating a hugely claustrophobic sense of confinement like a windowless prison cell, yet she ‘can’t keep away from it’. The poet is captivated by the noise and by curiosity, much like Pandora (see page 406).

Stanza 3

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A dark sense of desperation dominates here. The bees are like exported African slaves, ‘angrily clambering’, their entrapment causing them to panic and trample each other. The repetition of ‘dark’ and ‘black’ emphasises this mood. She has ordered the bees so that they will make honey for her, just as slaves were forced to work by their white ‘owners’. Plath had an interest in African sculpture and folktales but has been criticised by some commentators for using this metaphor.

Stanzas 4 and 5

Now the bees are compared to a ‘Roman mob’, which was a powerful force in classical times. Mobs often rioted, causing mayhem and killing those in power – ‘How can I let them out?’ Plath is most disturbed by the noise, which might represent the thoughts swarming in her own mind. She would like to release this noise (these thoughts) but knows she cannot control them once they are out; she fears their wrath and collective force: ‘Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!’ ‘Unintelligible syllables’ echoes how impossible it is for Plath to interpret the ‘furious Latin’ of the bees. ‘I have simply ordered a box of maniacs’ is wryly humorous; although she is growing more exasperated, she sees the funny side. She realises she cannot command them, so her only alternatives are to return them or to starve the bees to death. The box will become the coffin she imagined in stanza 1. Only for a moment does she consider adopting the role of a Caesar or slave owner, with the power of life or death.

Stanzas 6 and 7

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Immediately Plath’s humane, nurturing side rejects the idea of starving the bees ‘I wonder how hungry they are.’ Calmer now, she begins to explore how to release the bees without incurring harm to herself: ‘If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.’ Here she evokes the myth of Daphne, who in Greek mythology was turned into a tree after begging the gods to save her from the god Apollo’s relentless amorous pursuit. The pretty, feminine description of the laburnum and cherry trees contrasts with the much darker imagery used earlier, and lightens the previously heavy atmosphere. The speaker hopes the bees ‘might just ignore’ her, as she is ‘no source of honey’. She makes her decision: ‘Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.’ Despite the air of determination here, there is also hesitancy as the speaker postpones any immediate action.

Final line

The last line is left on its own, emphasising its significance – the bees will not remain in the box for long as it is only ‘temporary’. There are a number of possible interpretations in terms of the poem as a whole: ■ The speaker will soon release the bees but fears they will harm her. ■ We cannot repress our feelings forever, they must be released – Plath does this by writing the poem. Does she plan a more final release for her inner turmoil? ■ The beekeeper opening the box is like someone venting their inner turmoil, like a poet exploring painful and dark themes: the process may be harmful to the poet. Thus, the poem is about the kind

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■

of poetry Plath writes – deeply personal and often exploring difficult memories and experiences. She is appalled by what she has been through but is compelled to investigate it further. If poetry is ‘the box’ that Plath uses to express her emotions, its cathartic effects do not last. Soon the darkness will come again. This is an idea explored in ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’ also.

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Themes and imagery

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On the surface the poem explores the arrival of the bee box and the speaker’s mixed emotions of fear and fascination. She considers ideas of power and control over the bees while seeing herself in different roles: as a Caesar, an owner, a tree, an astronaut, a mourner and even God, thus exploring identity. The poem is about not only control and entrapment, but also poetry itself, which is an attempt to master and shape an outpouring of thoughts and emotions. In this reading, the bees are the speaker’s heart and mind while the box is her outer self, and the poet explores how the inner world takes form through communication, sometimes to create a socially acceptable ‘I’. On this deeper level we can interpret the poem as highly symbolic. The ‘swarmy’ bees represent the tumultuous emotions and thoughts inside the speaker who is trying to decide how best to deal with her feelings.

Plath uses highly original imagery rooted in nature. The box itself is described with surreal dark humour as ‘the coffin of a midget / Or a square baby’ (lines 3–4). The bees are personified: as tiny Africans, and later as Roman mob to convey their angry sound. The trees are metaphorically a colonnade (linking them to the simile of a Roman mob) and petticoats, as if the frilly blossoms of the cherry tree are underwear! The poet juxtaposes two ideas when she compares her beekeeping attire to a ‘moon suit and funeral veil’ (line 32), suggesting adventure and exploration on one hand, and death on the other.

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Form and language This poem is written in eight stanzas: seven containing five lines each and a single final line, which is left alone like an afterthought or perhaps to signal a new beginning, a fresh start. The line lengths vary from four to sixteen syllables and it is written in free verse (no rhyming scheme or regular metre). Thus, a tension between looseness and constraint is created in the poem’s form, echoing the tension in its imagery and language.

The poem makes direct references to language. The speaker notices the ‘din’ in the box (line 5), which she later decides may be ‘furious Latin’ (line 21) as it seems to comprise ‘unintelligible syllables’ (line 18). This

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Sylvia Plath strategy anthropomorphises the bees, which in turn seems to make the speaker more kindly disposed towards them.

Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Forge’ Compare the imagery in this poem with that in Heaney’s ‘The Forge’. How do the two poems

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The ‘I’ of line 1 sounds fearful and lacks confidence: ‘I ordered explore through metaphor the craft of poetry? this, this clean wood box’ (notice the hesitancy in the repetition of ‘this’). As the poem continues, there are harsh sounds in phrases like the ‘box is locked’ (line 6) and ‘Black on black’ (line 15). In the final line, however, the long vowel sounds indicate a more relaxed and assured voice: ‘The box is only temporary’ (with the internal echo of ‘only’ and’ temporary’ adding to the sense of calm). The speaker seems much less ill at ease. It is as if the decision made in the final lines has taken the tension out of the situation.

Questions

How is the bee box described and what is the speaker’s initial attitude towards it in the first two stanzas?

The bees are compared to tiny Africans and a Roman mob. What does each comparison demonstrate about the bees?

The speaker is unsure what to do with the bees. What options does she consider in stanzas 5 and 6?

‘I am the owner’ (line 25). Are you convinced by the speaker’s determination here? Explain.

What decision is made in the last stanza 7?

Why does Plath leave the final line on its own, do you think?

In your opinion, is the ending of the poem a positive one?

Which of the following statements best describes the theme of the poem? ■ It is a poem about bees. ■ It is a poem about inner turmoil. ■ It is a poem about writing poetry.

Explain your choice with reference to the poem as a whole. Trace the tone of the poem as it progresses. Where does the tone change? How does it change and why? Write a note about the imagery the poet uses and the effect these images have.

Plath once said, ‘I think I would like to call myself “The girl who wanted to be God.” … But, oh, I cry out against it’. Discuss Plath’s statement in response to ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’.

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What impression of Plath have you formed from reading this poem? What aspects of the poem created this impression for you? In pairs or groups, share your thoughts.

Write two diary entries for the speaker, one on the day that the bee box arrives and another for the following day.

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Imagine you are the parent of a newborn baby. What hopes and dreams do you think you would have for the child?

Before you read

Whose names you meditate – April snowdrop, Indian pipe, Little

Stalk without wrinkle, Pool in which images Should be grand and classical

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill it with colour and ducks, The zoo of the new

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Child

Not this troublous Wringing of hands, this dark Ceiling without a star.

Glossary

meditate: reflect upon, think deeply about

snowdrop: small plant with drooping bell-like white flowers, often the first flower of spring

Indian pipe: small woodland flower that feeds on rotting plants troublous: agitated, unsettled, disturbed

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Guidelines ‘Child’ is from the collection Winter Trees (1971), published eight years after Plath’s death. The poem was written at the end of January 1963, just after her son’s first birthday and less than two weeks before Plath’s suicide at the age of thirty.

The poet expresses her hopes and dreams for her child and describes her own feelings about being a mother.

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Sylvia Plath

Commentary Stanza 1

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The opening line of the poem is a statement of pure love and adoration. To the speaker, the child’s eye is perfection: it is ‘clear’, in other words pure, untainted and full of innocence. It is the ‘one absolutely beautiful thing’. The speaker wants the child to see only beauty in the world, to ‘fill’ the eye of her child with ‘colour and ducks, / The zoo of the new’. Perhaps the speaker means the beauty of nature here or may even be thinking of the toys and teddy-bears a child would have. Either way, the child should see only lovely things that will entertain and inspire them.

Stanzas 2 and 3

The speaker imagines the child becoming fascinated by the names of things in the natural world – ‘April snowdrop, Indian pipe’ – which are both woodland flowers. It is worth noting that snowdrops are delicate and pretty white spring flowers that suggest birth, purity and innocence. ‘Indian pipe’, however, lives in darker parts of the woods and feeds on the rotting matter of other plants. The name is unusual though and will perhaps be amusing for the child. Plath clearly would like her own fascination with words and her love of nature to pass on to her child, who is a ‘Stalk without wrinkle’; like the delicate snowdrop it is fresh, new and beautiful, unspoiled by life’s trials and tribulations. The child’s eye is a ‘Pool in which images / Should be grand and classical’; the speaker wishes her child to see only beauty and culture. ‘Should’ here is less certain than ‘I want to fill it’ from line 2. There is an uncertainty here and a foreshadowing of the darkness to come.

Stanza 4

The speaker does not want her child to see the ‘dark / Ceiling’ that is his mother. The last stanza is the opposite of the hope-filled first three in its despair and negativity. The speaker sees herself reduced to a ‘troublous / Wringing of hands’, a gesture of deep agitation and hopelessness. The speaker feels that her presence will only bring darkness to her son’s life, and he would be better off without her. It is deeply sad that such a gifted poet with a brilliant mind felt this way about herself. That she sees herself as a ‘dark / Ceiling without a star’ is an absolutely desolate statement which is heartbreaking for the reader.

Themes and imagery

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Motherhood is a recurring theme in Plath’s poetry. ‘Morning Song’ is another example. Both poems celebrate the child but have a darker side where the mother feels displaced, or in this case considers herself an obstacle to her child’s happiness. The further tragedy is that Nicholas would go on to take his own life (at the age of forty-seven) just as his mother had. The theme of hope is expressed; the first three stanzas list the speaker’s hopes and dreams for the child. The wishes expressed are for the child’s eye to be filled with colour, nature, culture and everything that is beautiful and edifying in the world. The theme of love is strong and the first three stanzas are an outpouring of this fierce love, which contains her hopes and dreams for the child as he grows. Then there is the absolute lack of love or regard the speaker has for herself, which is a strong and heartbreaking contrast in the poem.

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The child’s eye is the key image here. It is ‘clear’ (line 1); in other words, absolutely new and free from any taint the challenges of life could cause; there is a strong sense of potential and possibility as the speaker tells the infant all of the things she wants them to experience. The child’s eye is compared to a pool to be filled with beauty. Pools and mirrors that reflect are featured in many of Plath’s poems; in the poem ‘Mirror’, the eye or pool can absorb what it reflects and be affected by that. For this reason, the speaker does not want herself to be reflected in her child’s eyes. ‘Colour and ducks’ (line 2) are childlike, fun and carefree, while ‘grand and classical’ (line 9) images are more grown up. Thus, the two sets of images communicate the speaker’s hopes both for the younger child and a more grown-up person.

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‘This troublous / Wringing of hands’ (lines 10–11) is a startling image; the speaker has reduced her whole being to a single anxious gesture. She describes herself as a ‘dark / Ceiling’ (lines 11–12), in sharp contrast to the bright and colourful imagery of the previous stanzas. This suggests that the speaker sees herself as blocking the child, hindering their enjoyment of life. To further emphasise this, the final words ‘without a star’ convey utter despair. There is no ray of hope. If we compare ‘Child’ with ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, the fear that the ‘light’ of relief and inspiration may strike at any time seems to have been replaced with the certainty that the ‘light’ has disappeared forever.

Form and language

The poem’s title, language and form are stripped back to brief simplicity. ‘Child’ is at once an affectionate dedication of the poem to her son but the title conversely suggests distance too, unlike for instance if she had used ‘My Child’ or the baby’s name. Is Plath just making the title more universal, accessible and therefore more relevant to her readers? Or does this title reflect the distance she feels in terms of her emotional connection to the child? The language is straightforward and even playful, for example the ‘zoo of the new’ rhyme (line 3) could be from a children’s verse. It is as if the speaker really wants the child to understand what she is saying.

This simplicity is echoed in the structure of the poem, which consists of four unrhymed tercets. The first line is the longest and is effusive in its enthusiasm for the striking beauty of the child’s ‘clear eye’. It is a contained sentence while the rest of the poem forms the second sentence; the speaker becomes carried away by the list of things she is eager for this child to experience, until she turns her gaze inward and regards herself, which brings the poem to an abrupt end.

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The phrase ‘Wringing of hands’ in line 11 echoes ‘agitation of hands’ from Plath’s poem ‘Mirror’. It is perhaps a gesture she associates closely with herself. It also suggests the idea of the child as a mirror of the mother – this would explain the poet’s fear of becoming a ‘dark / Ceiling without a star’ (lines 11–12) in the child’s eyes.

■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT

Mother caught between love and despair Simple yet lyrical language Lack of confidence that speaker can create joy for child

■ ■ ■ ■

Hopes and dreams for child Carefully phrased and controlled poem Playful humour in imagery Troubled ending

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Sylvia Plath

Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem What is the tone of the first line?

List in your own words the things the speaker wishes the child to experience. Are they typical of what most parents would wish for their baby? Explain.

Comment on the effect of the references to flowers and plants in lines 5–7.

What is the effect of the metaphor where Plath compares the child’s eye to a pool? Have you seen this idea elsewhere in Plath’s work? Where?

‘Clear’, ‘zoo’ and ‘Little’. Comment on Plath’s use of these words in the context of the poem.

How did reading the last stanza make you feel?

What is the speaker trying to say through the imagery she uses in the last stanza?

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Thinking about the poem

‘The poem presents a speaker who has lost confidence in her ability to create joy.’ Do you agree with this interpretation of the poem?

Compare the end of this poem to the endings of ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ and ‘Poppies in July’. How is the end of each poem similar or different?

Choose two images that you particularly like or dislike in the poem. In pairs or groups, explain why you chose them.

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Which of the following statements is closest to your own view of the poem? ■ It is a poem about love. ■ It is a poem about despair. ■ It is a poem about innocence.

Explain your choice with reference to the poem as a whole.

Imagining

Imagine and write the letter or poem the grown-up child might write in response to this poem.

If this poem were depicted as a photograph, what would it look like? Where would the child and mother be? In what place? In what position?

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Exam-Preparation Questions Andrew Wilson said, ‘Plath, as a child, as a woman and as a poet, was constantly in search of an overarching metaphor that would capture her strange complexity.’ Do you agree with this assessment of Wilson’s in the light of the poetry on your course by Sylvia Plath?

‘Most of us who knew Sylvia knew a different Sylvia.’ How true is this assessment by her friend Clarissa Roche when applied to the different voices, personas and perspectives you have encountered in Plath’s poetry? Did you find that her poetry is a reflection of her different ‘selves’?

Anne Stevenson said of Sylvia Plath, ’Haunted by a fear of her own disintegration, she kept herself together by defining herself, writing constantly about herself, so that everyone could see her there, fighting and conquering an outside world that forever threatened her frail being.’ Discuss this analysis in the light of the poetry you have studied by Plath.

What aspects of Sylvia Plath’s style most captured your attention and why? In your answer you may refer to some of the following or other aspects you have chosen: ■ Form and structure ■ Recurring images ■ Sound effects ■ Use of personas ■ Contrast

If you had to choose one poem which you found to be most typical of Sylvia Plath to include in an anthology, which would it be and why is it typical of her work? You should refer to her other poems on your course to back up the points you make.

Write a personal response to Sylvia Plath’s poetry with regard to the effect her work has had on you, your opinion of her as a person and a poet, and which poems you liked or disliked most and why.

In your opinion is Sylvia Plath a feminist poet, a political poet, or neither? Explain your views with reference to at least five poems by Plath on your course.

Do you agree with Sylvia Plath’s teacher who said she had ‘a lyric gift beyond the ordinary’? Explain your answer with reference to the poems you have studied.

‘Conflict and contrast is at the very heart of Plath’s poetry: the tension between how things seem and what is really happening, between light and dark, hope and despair, love and hate.’ Discuss the above statement with reference to the poems of Sylvia Plath which you have studied.

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Analyse images of water and reflection in the poetry of Sylvia Plath.

Use of personas Confessional poet Central image highly symbolic and indicative of poet’s inscape Importance of water and reflection Love of nature evident Struggles with self-doubt and depression

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■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT SYLVIA PLATH

■ ■ ■

■ ■ ■ ■

Balance of opposites: hope and despair, light and dark, etc. Explores extreme emotions and states of mind Influence of childhood experiences and break-up of marriage Original and powerful imagery

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Sylvia Plath

Sample Essay

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‘Plath’s provocative imagery serves to highlight the intense emotions expressed in her poetry.’ To what extent do you agree or disagree with this assessment of her poetry? Support your answer with suitable reference to the poetry of Sylvia Plath on your course.

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The startling imagery I encountered in the poetry of Sylvia Plath provoked many Defines terms of question by listing strong reactions in me including sympathy, shock, admiration, amusement and fear, reactions provoked by because her images powerfully convey her intense feelings. The phrase ‘this dark / imagery Ceiling without a star’ is a good example of this startling imagery. In ‘Child’, Plath is expressing her immense despair and fear. In this powerful image she depicts Intense emotions herself as an obstacle to her young son’s happiness. She feels that she obstructs mentioned in response to image and reaction her child’s chance of seeing beauty and having a happy life. I found this image provoked explained striking; I felt deep sympathy for the speaker in the poem as she uses this simple yet thought-provoking metaphor to convey her sense of inadequacy and her self-loathing. I pitied this talented woman and longed to tell her how gifted she clearly was and how much I had enjoyed studying her work. In her poetry Plath’s imagery was extremely provocative Stance in response to question clearly taken and highlighted clearly the intense emotions she expresses in her work, the most common of which I found to be fear. Link to previous point

Fear is overwhelmingly present in Plath’s imagery – fear of not being a good enough mother, in ‘Child’; fear of losing her poetic gift, which is at the very heart of the poem introduced and point developed beautiful poem ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’. Here Plath is apprehensive about Personal response inspiration deserting her, even though she is inspired at the time to write this poem. I felt frustrated that she was so full of self-doubt and really pitied Plath her insecurity. In the poem she nervously wonders when her next inspired moment will occur and uses the beautiful image of a ‘wet black rook / Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain’, which can ‘so shine’ that they lift her senses and make her feel alive, thus giving her ‘A brief respite from fear / Of total neutrality’. I found this image provoked a strong reaction in me. Like Plath I am struck by the beauty of nature and the transformative power of light, ‘As if a celestial burning took / Possession’, but I felt an undercurrent of fear, and I worried for Plath too. The bleakness of the poet’s world when not inspired seemed frightening to me in its almost apocalyptic emptiness – ‘this dull, ruinous landscape’, ‘season / Of fatigue’. Plath uses images of light and Like the ‘rook’ image earlier in the paragraph, dark skilfully in the poem to convey the same contrast in her life, the ‘celestial burning’ imagery of light and she feels when the muse is upon her contrasts starkly with the pathetic fallacy of the dark explored rainy, dull day, the ‘desultory weather’ and the decaying ‘spotted leaves’. These descriptions speak so strongly of how bleak her world is when she does not feel inspired. My admiration for her beautiful writing and sympathy for this tortured soul were provoked.

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clearly made as new

‘Finisterre’ is another poem expressing Plath’s intense fear, and her imagery reflects this. She depicts the cliffs of this dangerous French bay as ‘knuckled and rheumatic, / Cramped on nothing. Black’. As in ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, the landscape is bleak. Perhaps Plath is using descriptions of nature to convey her inner landscape, which Intense emotion conveyed through seems to be fearful, anguished and stark. Ghostly mists, possibly the souls of

Consistency of approach

imagery

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drowned sailors, ‘stuffs’ the poet’s mouth ‘with cotton’, and she is deeply shaken by Provocative – student’s reaction provoked by the experience – ‘beaded with tears’. I was startled by this frightening image. Plath image addressed seems to fear and yet be fascinated by the sea in equal measure. In ‘Finisterre’, Plath also comments on ‘the beautiful formlessness’ of the sea and I was interested to see Plath again use water as an image to convey her intense feelings of fear and her thoughts of death and annihilation. In ‘Morning Song’, Plath compares herself to a cloud whose dispersal into nothingness is reflected in the puddle it has distilled. In ‘Mirror, she uses the persona of a silver mirror which compares itself to a lake in which has ‘drowned a young girl’; ‘an old woman / Rises … day after day, like a terrible fish’. It seems to me that in these images Plath fears she will disappear unnoticed and in awful pain. I felt great sympathy for her; if only she knew just how successful she would become after her death and how much comfort her work Personal response has given to fellow sufferers of depression.

Intense emotions In all of the poems discussed so far there is a nightmarish intensity to many of the images, especially those involving water, and I feel that Plath is conveying panic and fear. The effect on me was startling. Her poems are so intense the reader cannot help but be captivated and affected deeply. I was filled with admiration for her poetic talent and her Strong engagement as response provoked honesty. This empathy and intensity is perhaps strongest in the poems ‘Poppies by image explained in July’ and ‘Elm’. In ‘Poppies in July’, Plath compares the vibrant red flowers to ‘hell flames’, ‘A mouth just bloodied’ and ‘bloody skirts’. I found her imagery here hugely original, such a different take on pretty, delicate summer flowers. Plath uses these images and comparisons to express her anger and hurt at her husband’s affair and his desertion of her. Plath’s rage and longing to escape from her emotions struck me. The intensity she builds up in the poem dissipates abruptly as she instead yearns for oblivion, symbolised by the narcotic effect of the poppies – she longs for their ‘nauseous capsules’ to dull and still her torment. She ends the poem on almost an ‘anti-image’, longing to be ‘colourless. Colourless.’ I found this poem captivating in its passion and heartbreaking in that Plath was so hurt that she wished to be nothing. It struck me that the ‘fear / Of total neutrality’ she depicted in ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’ had now become an anguished longing for just that. This tragic idea, as if Plath has totally given up on herself, leads eventually to her image at the end of ‘Child’, where she reduces her whole self to a ‘troublous / Wringing of hands’ and a ‘dark / Ceiling without a star’.

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‘Elm’ is equally disturbing and its imagery is arguably the darkest of any of her poems. The elm tree and the ‘You’ persona in the poem list their fears and suffering in a litany Use of personas acknowledged and of surreally nightmarish images to convey the intense despair and fear Plath feels. effective synopsis The poem made me feel I had an insight into why someone so gifted might feel of poem compelled to loathe themselves and wish to take their own life. Love is compared to a bolting horse – ‘How you lie and cry after it / Listen: these are its hooves’. The image that most struck a chord with me was quite obscure; ‘I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me’ is an effective way to represent that indefinable gnawing anxiety most people suffer at one time or another, like a feathery creature inside us which twists and turns, poisoning us with ‘its malignity’. The fear of not being good enough has reduced Plath to seeing herself as a collection of ‘isolate, slow faults’ which will ultimately destroy her: ‘That kill, that kill, The imagery in this that kill’. Plath’s imagery here shocked me. I wished she had never suffered as she poem could have been expanded on in much did; she should have seen how talented she was. I felt deeply that a terrible irony more detail

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Sylvia Plath Final statement conveys strong engagement with poems and poet and ‘star’ comment sums up overall reaction provoked by Plath’s

was at work – if Plath had not suffered from such mental torments, would her poetry have been as powerful? Her true legacy, however, is to have written honest, original and unsettling poetry with consummate skill. She is so much more than a ‘dark / Ceiling without a star’, and I am grateful that that star shone on after her death enough to allow me to explore and admire her work.

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poetry on the course

Purpose

Has the candidate understood the task?

Yes 4

No 8

ESSAY CHECKLIST

Has the candidate responded to it in a thoughtful manner?

Has the candidate answered the question? Comment:

Has the candidate made convincing arguments?

Coherence

Has the candidate linked ideas?

Does the essay have a sense of unity? Comment:

Is the essay written in an appropriate register?

Language

Are ideas expressed in a clear way?

Comment:

Is the writing fluent?

Mechanics

Is the use of language accurate?

Are all words spelled correctly? Does the punctuation help the reader?

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Comment:

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1865–1939

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W. B.Yeats

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425

September 1913

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The Wild Swans at Coole*

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Easter 1916

437

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death*

444

The Second Coming

448

Sailing to Byzantium

453

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree*

from Meditations in Time of Civil War: VI The Stare’s Nest by My Window

459

In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz

463

Swift’s Epitaph

468

An Acre of Grass

471

Politics

474

from Under Ben Bulben: V and VI

476

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W. B. Yeats

Biography

Family and childhood

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William Butler Yeats was born on 13 June 1865 in Sandymount, Dublin. His father, John Butler Yeats, was an artist from an Anglo-Irish Protestant family that had come to Ireland from the north of England in the seventeenth century. He was sociable, free-thinking, a great reader and talker, and encouraged his children’s creativity. W. B.’s mother, Susan, came from the wealthy Pollexfen family, who were merchants in Sligo. They were practical, hard-headed people, not given to showing emotion. Yeats always believed that the contradictions he saw in his own nature came from the conflict of those two very different family influences.

Much of Yeats’s childhood was spent in London, where his father was trying to make a career as an artist. He had no great success as he found it hard to bring himself to finish a painting, so the family was always short of money. They spent holidays – and the children often longer periods – with the Pollexfens in Co. Sligo. Though Yeats was not always happy there, he came to love the place. The family left London for Dublin in 1881, where Yeats attended first High School and then the Metropolitan School of Art.

Becoming a poet

Yeats was writing poetry and plays from his teenage years, with his father’s encouragement. As a young man he became deeply involved in two areas that were to be constant throughout his life.

The first was mysticism and the occult. His father’s atheism had undermined any Christian faith in him, but Yeats always felt a strong hunger for the spiritual, and he joined mystical orders and spiritualist groups in Dublin and in London. Eventually he developed his own occult philosophy and mythology, discussed below (page 423).

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The second was Irish nationalism. Yeats was in his twenties at an exciting time in Ireland. Charles Stewart Parnell had helped to make Home Rule for Ireland the dominant political issue in Britain and Ireland. Yeats’s main influence here was John O’Leary, the Fenian leader, whom he met in 1886. Yeats joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, of which O’Leary had been an influential member, and O’Leary encouraged Yeats to understand the importance of Ireland’s Maud Gonne. cultural heritage of myth, poetry and folktales in helping forge a new Irish identity. Throughout his life, as poet, theatre manager and senator, Yeats was always concerned with the ways in which art and literature could help to shape modern Ireland. The Yeats family moved back to London in 1887, and it was there in 1889 that Yeats met Maud Gonne. It was the moment when, as he said, ‘the troubling of my life began’. She was tall and strikingly beautiful and he fell utterly in love with her. They became close friends, but she did not want the relationship to go any further. He proposed marriage several times, but she always turned him down. Her passionate Irish nationalism spurred his own political interests, although they often disagreed. She inspired his poetry and he wrote the play The Countess Cathleen for her to star in. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 419

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contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation, by hushing us with an alluring monotony, while it holds us waking by variety, to keep us in that state of perhaps real trance, in which the mind liberated from the pressure

seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of

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‘The purpose of rhythm, it has always

The poetry he wrote in these early years is dominated by Celtic myths, melancholy and unrequited love. There is a rich play of sounds and hypnotic rhythms, and the poems make use of striking, sometimes mysterious, adjectives. ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ is the only poem of this period included in the selection we are studying.

Maturity

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Yeats on rhythm

of the will is unfolded in symbols.’

Yeats continued to spend periods of time in London, but it was back in Ireland in 1896 that he met Lady Augusta Gregory, whose Coole Park estate in Co. Galway was to become a refuge and an inspiration to him over many years. She encouraged his interest in Irish folktales, and he wrote many of his finest poems while he was a guest in her house, where he often stayed for long periods. They also collaborated in setting up the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1905, for which Yeats wrote many plays. In 1917 Yeats bought Thoor Ballylee, an old Norman tower close to Lady Gregory’s estate.

Yeats, ‘The Symbolism of Poetry’ (1900)

The publication of the collection Responsibilities in 1916 was a landmark. The poems in it (including ‘September 1913’) were less elaborate than his early work and more engaged with public life. The title of the volume hints at Yeats’s new sense of what he felt a poet should be. But although he was now an established writer, he was in his fifties and still single. The poem ‘Wild Swans at Coole’ is full of the loneliness he felt. He was determined to marry.

Yeats again proposed to Maud Gonne, whose estranged husband, Major John McBride, had been executed for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916. When he was turned down, he proposed to her daughter, Iseult, and was refused by her also. In September 1917 he proposed to Georgie Hyde-Lees, who was twenty-five. She accepted him and they were married the next month. They had two children: Anne, born in 1919, and Michael, born in 1921.

Settling into old age

These were years when Yeats came into his power. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, he was made a senator and bought a house in Dublin’s Merrion Square. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. ‘I feel I have become a personage,’ he remarked.

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He was also writing his finest poetry. His marriage gave him renewed energy, and although his body was getting weaker, his mind and his passions were unflagging. His poetry became more vigorous and assured, stripped of the adjectives and rich sound patterns that marked his earlier work. The collections The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair (1933) are generally considered his greatest achievements. He said himself, reflecting on the melancholy and weariness felt in his early poems, that when he was young his Muse was old, but as he grew older, his Muse grew younger.

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W. B. Yeats

The Irish Literary Revival

Yeats was at the centre of a movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to revive interest in Ireland’s heritage of myth, folklore and fairy tale, and to renew the sense of a culture that was specifically Irish. As a young man, he helped to set up Irish literary societies in both Dublin and London. John O’Leary was an inspiration, and in 1893 Yeats published The Celtic Twilight, a collection of folklore and fairy tales from the west of Ireland, which gave the movement the nickname by which it was often known. It was the same impulse to create a specifically Irish culture that was behind the establishment of the Irish Literary Theatre, which led to the founding of the Abbey Theatre.

taken from the ground and his bones put in

an ossuary (bone house) along with those of

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many others. It has recently been revealed that the French diplomat who was sent to collect Yeats’s bones on behalf of the Irish

government declared that it was impossible to

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know for certain which bones belonged to the

poet, but a skeleton was assembled and the coffin sealed shut to be taken to Ireland.

Irish revival The Irish Literary Revival with which Yeats was involved was an English-language movement. It ran in parallel with other movements aimed at reviving the Irish language and culture, such as the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association. There was often hostility between the two camps. Patrick Pearse said the Irish Literary Theatre should be ‘strangled at birth’.

years after Yeats was buried, his remains were

Social and Cultural Context

In accordance with local French custom, a few

Yeats became ill in the south of France and died on 28 January 1939. He was buried in France, but after the Second World War his remains were taken back to Ireland and buried, as he had wished, in Drumcliff Churchyard, Co. Sligo.

Yeats’s bones

During the 1930s he spent more time abroad, in Italy and France especially, for the sake of his health. In 1934 he had what was known as a Steinach operation – a partial vasectomy that was meant to increase the patient’s energy. Yeats certainly believed that it worked for him. He kept on writing to the end of his life. His final, posthumous Last Poems (1940) are full of passion and rage – which he calls in ‘An Acre of Grass’ ‘an old man’s frenzy’. They are also more frankly sexual than anything he had written before.

Irish history

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Yeats came to manhood and lived most of his adult life in exciting but turbulent times for Ireland. As noted above, the question of Home Rule and Irish independence dominated politics until he was well into his fifties. He was a committed nationalist but distrusted the use of violence and the idea of ‘blood sacrifice’ that lay behind the Easter Rising of 1916. He distanced himself from organised politics, and was saddened when Maud Gonne and other friends threw their energies into it so completely. When the First World War ended in 1918, the violence of the War of Independence (1919–1921) was followed by that of the Civil War (1922–1923). These events all had a profound effect upon Yeats’s mind and his poetry. Some of his finest poems were written in response to the upheavals of these years, and he found a way of writing about public events that did not put his poetry at the service of any political grouping. Instead, he wove these events, and those who took part in them, into a new mythology of Ireland. As a renowned Irish poet, and as someone who had always looked to explore and encourage a specifically Irish culture, he believed he had a responsibility as a shaper of modern Ireland. His verdict on the Easter Rising in ‘Easter 1916’ – ‘A terrible beauty is born’ – did much to determine how that event was understood. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 421

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Ben Bulben – Yeats spent his childhood summers in Co. Sligo.

Anglo-Irish heritage

Yeats’s reactions to political events in Ireland were complicated by the fact that, although he was a nationalist himself, he was the product of a Protestant Anglo-Irish culture whose values, and even existence, were threatened by the nationalist tide.

Th e

As a young man his Anglo-Irish roots had not been of particular interest to him. Although the Yeats family claimed distant relationship with the Dukes of Ormonde, they were not part of the wealthy land-owning elite. However, Yeats got a glimpse of that life as a young man at Lissadell in Co. Sligo (see ‘In Memory of Eva GoreBooth and Con Markiewicz’), and as a guest and close friend of Lady Gregory at Coole Park he experienced the country-house life and came to cherish the values it stood for and the culture of which it was part. He was proud of the part that the Anglo-Irish had played in Irish history: not only Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmett and Edward Fitzgerald (see ‘September 1913’), but also Parnell, as well as Maud Gonne and Con Markiewicz. He felt that the Anglo-Irish had contributed a great deal to Irish culture, and that that contribution should be acknowledged and respected, rather than swept away in the new, post-independence Ireland. In his later years he came especially to value the contribution of eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish writers and thinkers, Jonathan Swift in particular. He believed they were the founders of Irish thought, and that modern Ireland needed some of Swift’s clear thinking and sense of right and wrong.

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W. B. Yeats

Personal mythology

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Yeats’s interest in mysticism and ‘esoteric’ philosophy (one that ‘Gyres’ is meant to be shared and understood only by a small group) Yeats saw individual lives, human character continued throughout his adult life, and he spent a lot of time and human history as being subject to cycles. writing and reworking a book in which he set out his personal The image he used to explain this was the system of beliefs, which he called A Vision. In it Yeats describes ‘gyre’, which is an expanding spiral in the shape theories of cyclical human history based on periods of two of a cone. He imagined opposite forces at work thousand years. Those periods are further subdivided into in the world in terms of interlocking gyres. twenty-eight eras based on the phases of the moon. Human personalities, he believed, could also be categorised according to the phases of the moon. His poems are full of images that derive from his system of beliefs, but it would be impossible to try to explain all Yeats’s theories here – nor is it necessary. His poems can be understood and enjoyed without this knowledge.

Yeats uses many symbols in his poetry. He believed that there exists a universal store of symbols developed through human history; he calls this ‘Spiritus Mundi’ (the spirit of the world) in ‘The Second Coming’. But he also has his own system of personal symbols or ‘emblems’, built up and often explained in the course of his mature poetry.

Themes

Many of Yeats’s poems, especially his earlier ones, are love poems, and love in its different forms is a theme that runs throughout his work, although none of the poems in this anthology is a simple love poem. Celtic myth and legend is the other major theme of his early poems. In his middle period (from about 1909), public events in Ireland become a more important subject, and the upheavals that followed the 1916 Rising, including the War of Independence and the Civil War, are reflected and considered in his poetry. He was also interested in the relationship between the private individual and public life, and the distance that always exists between them. Different aspects of that theme are explored in ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, ‘Easter 1916’, ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’ and ‘Politics’.

Th e

The tension between private and the public is one of the driving forces in Yeats’s poetry. There are many other pairs of opposing forces active in his work: nature and art, the body and the soul, youth and age, passion and detachment. He saw the world in terms of these conflicting opposites, as is clear from his personal mythology in A Vision. Many of his poems are written in the form of dialogues between characters or abstractions that represent opposing viewpoints or forces. In his later poetry, especially from The Tower (1928) onwards, Yeats develops a network of symbols, many of which are derived from the philosophy he describes in A Vision, and the world view he sets out there is also a subject of his poetry, notably in ‘The Second Coming’. But the details of his own life also become part of that network. Thoor Ballylee, with its winding stair, the river running by it, even the starling’s nest by his window, are woven into the mythology that his poems create. His friends too become part of that mythology. Con Markiewicz and Eva Gore-Booth, John O’Leary, Lady Gregory and her son Richard, and especially Maud Gonne, all feature in his poems and are given their place in his personal mythology.

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Timeline Born on 13 June in Sandymount, Dublin

1867

Yeats family moves to London

1881

Family moves to Dublin

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Attends Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin

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1884–5

1865

Meets John O’Leary

1889

Publishes The Wanderings of Oisín and Other Poems; meets Maud Gonne

1896

Meets Lady Gregory

1904

Abbey Theatre founded, with Yeats and Lady Gregory as founder members

1916

Responsibilities published

1917

Publishes The Wild Swans at Coole; buys Thoor Ballylee; marries Georgie Hyde-Lees

1919

Birth of daughter Anne; revised version of The Wild Swans at Coole, including ‘An Irish

1886

Airman Foresees His Death’

Birth of son, Michael; publishes Michael Robartes and the Dancer

1922

Made a senator

1923

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature

1926

The first version of A Vision published

1928

Publishes The Tower

1933

Publishes The Winding Stair

1934

Undergoes the Steinach operation

1939

Dies in the south of France

1921

Last Poems published

1948

Body reburied in Drumcliff, Co. Sligo

Th e

1940

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W. B. Yeats Before you read

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Do you ever want to ‘get ro r upwo away from it all’? Where would you go? What do you imagine yourself doing? Discuss in pairs or small groups.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

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The Lake Isle of Innisfree

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

Glossary Title

Innisfree: an island in Lough Gill, Co. Sligo

wattles: woven strips of wood

glade: open area in a wood

linnet: small bird known for its trilling song

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

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Guidelines

Yeats wrote the first version of ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ at the age of twenty-three when he was living in London. The impulse for the poem came when he was walking down a busy shopping street and heard the sound of water from a fountain in a shop window. The sound suggested the lapping lake water described in the poem, and woke in him an urge to escape the city for a simple life in a place he knew and loved from his Sligo childhood. The poem was altered and first published two years later in the National Observer. It has always been one of Yeats’s most popular poems.

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Commentary

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The prose meaning of the poem is easy to summarise. The poet is in the city – ‘on the pavements grey’ (line 11) – and declares that he will leave it and go and live a simple life alone in a cabin on the isle of Innisfree. He describes the peaceful life he imagines for himself there, and tells us, in stanza 3, that he is always drawn to the idea of this place. The fact that the poem can be so simply summarised is a good indication that the lasting appeal of this poem is due less to what it says than the way in which it is said.

Walden Yeats was influenced by a book by the American writer Henry Thoreau called Walden, first published in 1854. In it Thoreau describes the life he led for more than two years alone in a cabin he had built in the woods. He was looking for a simpler life, closer to nature, so that he could understand the world and his own

The poem belongs in a long literary tradition with the theme of retreating to a simpler country life, which is described in traditional pastoral terms with its ‘small’ cabin made of ‘clay and wattles’ (line 2), the rows of beans, the bees, birds and crickets. There is a dreamlike quality to the description. We are given impressions rather than clear images: ‘midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow’ (line 7). Sounds are important too: the ‘bee-loud glade’ (line 4), the cricket singing, and above all the ‘low sounds’ of the lapping water (line 10). The peace and beauty of Innisfree is a bewitching alternative to the roadways and grey pavements of London. The very name of the island, which contains the word ‘free’, adds to the meaning of the poem.

self more clearly. As a teenager, Yeats dreamed

idealised version of country life.

that graze in fields (pasture). In literature, it is the name given to a tradition that portrays an

To do with the countryside, particularly animals

The main theme of the poem is the desire to escape to an idealised pastoral world. This desire is a reaction to the poet’s circumstances in London, and expresses a longing rather than a concrete plan or even possibility. Innisfree is a real place, and one that Yeats knew and loved, but the rural haven that the poet dreams of is a romantic Ireland of the imagination.

Pastoral

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Themes and imagery

of imitating Thoreau, and imagined Innisfree

in Sligo, which he had known as a boy, as the

place he would retreat to. It never became more

Speaking poetry

than a dream.

As a young man, Yeats composed by reciting his poetry out loud. At home his sisters would

always know when he was working on a poem because they would hear him murmuring, then, as he grew more excited, chanting his lines, until they had to ask him to ‘stop composing!’

Th e

The spoken word rather than the written was always uppermost in his mind. You can hear Yeats himself reading

upw

Form and language The poem is written in four-line stanzas, rhyming abab. The first three lines in each stanza are longer, with a distinct caesura (midline break) in each one, while the fourth is shorter and slower. It is hard to pin down the metre of the poem. It is largely iambic (dee-DUM, dee-DUM), but Yeats called it ‘my first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music’.

‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ on various

sites on the internet – search for ‘Yeats

reading The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. Listen to the recording in class, and discuss what we can learn about the poem from the poet’s manner of reading it.

Notice how the long lines with the caesura have a relaxed backand-forth rhythm. Does it remind you of breathing in and out? Or the swash and backwash of waves, like the ‘lake water lapping’ described in line 10?

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W. B. Yeats

la n Ire of ny pa om

The language of the poem has a somewhat heightened tone that is in part borrowed from the Bible. Its opening declaration, ‘I will arise and go now’, carries an echo of the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:18): ‘I will arise and go to my father’. The solemnity is reinforced by the repetition of the words ‘go’ (line 1), ‘peace’ (line 5) and ‘dropping’ (lines 5–6), and the inversion of words in ‘will I have’ (line 3) instead of ‘I will have’. The ‘I’ of the poem is conscious of its own dignity.

Notice too how the shorter final lines of each stanza slow down the movement and bring it to stillness. The three stressed long vowels that end the first and third stanzas (‘bee-loud glade’ and ‘deep heart’s core’) are particularly striking, and characteristic of this poem’s special music.

Th e

What drives the language of the poem, though, is the sounds the words make. The calm and beauty that Yeats imagines is conjured by the lapping rhythms and the patterns of sound – not just alliteration and assonance, but a seductive mixture of light, short sounds and long, slow ones. Look, for instance, at the pattern of ‘n’, ‘b’, ‘h’, and then ‘l’ and ‘d’ sounds, together with the long vowels which almost rhyme in lines 3– 4 : ‘Nine beanrows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, / And live alone in the bee-loud glade.’

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT The desire to escape to a simpler world Draws on a tradition of pastoral poetry Images drawn from the natural world Rich pattern of sounds Heightened language and dignified tone Written when Yeats was living in London

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem What, in your own words, does the poet say he wants to do in the first stanza?

Why, do you think, does Yeats specify ‘nine’ bean-rows, rather than eight or ten or some other number?

What positive qualities does he imagine life in Innisfree will have? Mention three.

What does the third stanza add to your understanding of Yeats’s desire to go to Innisfree?

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Thinking about the poem

What is the effect of writing ‘arise’ in line 1? How would the poem be different if Yeats had written ‘get up’?

Why, do you think, does Yeats mention linnets in line 8? How would the poem be different if the wings had been the sparrow’s wings, for instance?

Did Yeats think of going to Innisfree as a real possibility, do you imagine? What in the poem leads you to this belief?

Why, do you think, has this poem been so popular ever since it was written?

Comment on the use of repetition in the poem.

‘Sound is more important than sense in this poem.’ Do you agree with this point of view? Why or why not?

Below is the first version of ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ (with Yeats’s spelling).

I will arise and go now and go to the island of Innis free And live in a dwelling of wattles – of woven wattles and wood work made, Nine been rows will I have there, a yellow hive for the honey bee And this old care shall fade

There from the dawn above me peace will come down dropping slow Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the household cricket sings. And noontide there be all a glimmer, midnight be a purple glow, And evening full of the linnets wings.

Th e

In what ways is the final version an improvement on the first one? Choose three points of difference and explain what the changes do for the poem. You might consider rhythm, sound, diction, phrasing and tone.

1 2

Imagining upwo

Do you think this poem is relevant in a world where farming is big business and efficiency and profit are everything? Does this model of self-sufficiency appeal to you? Discuss in small groups.

Where would you like to escape to? Write a piece of prose or poetry about your ideal refuge, how you imagine it would be and what you imagine you would do there.

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W. B. Yeats

September 1913

Before you read k

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What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone? For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

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Yet they were of a different kind, The names that stilled your childish play, They have gone about the world like wind, But little time had they to pray For whom the hangman’s rope was spun, And what, God help us, could they save? Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

1913 was a year of unrest ro r upwo in Ireland. In groups or as a class, gather what you know or can find out about the events of that year. Bear them in mind as you read the poem. In what ways are any of them reflected in it?

Was it for this the wild geese spread The grey wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolf Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Th e

Yet could we turn the years again, And call those exiles as they were In all their loneliness and pain, You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair Has maddened every mother’s son’: They weighed so lightly what they gave. But let them be, they’re dead and gone, They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

Glossary 5

dried… bone: allowed life to dry up; lost all human feeling

O’Leary: John O’Leary (1830–1907); see page 430

wild geese: Irish soldiers who served in foreign armies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Edward Fitzgerald: Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1763–1798) was one of the leaders of the 1798 Rebellion, and died of wounds sustained while he was being arrested

Robert Emmet: Robert Emmet (1778–1803) was an Irish revolutionary leader hanged in September 1803 following the failure of the rising he led

Wolf Tone: Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) organised a French military expedition to Ireland in support of a planned revolution; he was condemned to death as a traitor but died by suicide in prison while waiting to be hanged

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Guidelines

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The writing of ‘September 1913’ was sparked by the debate about a collection of paintings owned by Sir Hugh Lane. Its publication in The Irish Times on 8 September 1913 meant that it became part of that debate. It was collected in Responsibilities (1916).

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The Hugh Lane Bequest

Hugh Lane, nephew of Yeats’s friend Lady Gregory, was an art collector who offered his collection of Impressionist paintings to Dublin on the condition that a suitable gallery was built to house them. There was a good deal of resistance to his plans from Dublin Corporation, which was expected to come up with much of the money, and from the public, many of whom considered some of the paintings obscene. Yeats was angered by what he saw as the ignorance of those who would not seize the chance to have a great collection of modern art in Dublin.

The controversy surrounding the paintings went on long after Hugh Lane’s death in 1915, but most of the collection can now be visited for free in the Dublin City Art Gallery (pictured above) on Parnell Square.

Stanza 1

Commentary

The first question to ask is who is the ‘you’ of the first line: who is the poem addressed to? It is clear that, although the poem was first published in The Irish Times, whose readers were largely Protestant and unionist, they are not the ‘you’ of the poem. Rather, Yeats is addressing the Catholic middle classes, whose main concerns are money and religion – ‘pence’ and ‘prayer’. Their attitude is seen as petty and small-minded: the till is ‘greasy’, the coins are small and the prayers are ‘shivering’. John O’Leary

O’Leary was a passionate nationalist who was

Th e

imprisoned and exiled for his involvement with the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He was

a strong believer in the importance of Irish

Against this the speaker sets ‘Romantic Ireland’, represented by the Fenian John O’Leary. As the speaker tells it, the people have ‘come to sense’ by rejecting the heroic ideals of ‘Romantic Ireland’, but the tone is bitterly ironic.

culture as an essential part of Irish nationalism.

He was a powerful influence on the young

Yeats, who came to know him well in the 1880s. His ideas shaped Yeats’s thinking about Irish

Stanza 2

In contrast with the ‘you’ described in the first stanza, the speaker now presents ‘they’ – the heroes who fought and died for the cause of Irish independence, whose names ‘stilled your childish play’. In other words, when they were children, those who now dominate Ireland would have heard those names with awe. But now, as the speaker asks, what is there left to save? The tone of the refrain carries an added bitterness after this question.

politics and culture. He died in 1907.

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W. B. Yeats Stanza 3

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The speaker goes on to specify some of the names of those he referred to as ‘they’ in stanza 2: Fitzgerald, Emmet and Wolfe Tone. He sums up their acts as the ‘delirium of the brave’; ‘delirium’ is not meant to imply that they were mad, but rather that their actions were emotional rather than rational. They were idealists and dreamers, rather than merchants. The whole stanza is governed by the despairing question with which it starts: ‘Was it for this …?’ Was their sacrifice worthwhile if all it produced was the petty modern Ireland described in stanza 1?

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Stanza 4

In the final stanza the speaker asks us (‘we’, not ‘you’) to make a personal connection with those ‘exiles’ and to imagine that we could see them in life, ‘In all their loneliness and pain’. He declares that the modern Irish ‘you’ would think that what those exiles did was motivated by a mad passion such as one would have for a woman, not understanding the true motive of their heroism.

What is the tone of the refrain now? Resigned? Scornful? What do you think?

Themes

The main theme of this poem is an argument over Irish identity – what it means to be Irish and what it could and should mean. The central contrast is between the petty, penny-pinching modern Irish middle classes who are dominated by a small-minded religion, and the nationalist heroes of the past.

Yeats on the middle class In a note he added to ‘September 1913’ Yeats wrote: ‘we have but a few educated men and the remnants of an old traditional culture among the poor. Both were stronger forty years ago, before the rise of our new middle class.’

By publishing this poem in The Irish Times, Yeats was deliberately entering a national debate concerning the Hugh Lane bequest, which was in essence about the nature of Ireland’s past, present and possible future. Yeats saw that he was living at a key moment in Irish history, ‘when it is plastic, when it is like wax, when it is ready to hold for generations the shape that is given to it’, as he said in a speech at that time.

Although Yeats famously wrote that ‘We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry’, there is no doubt that this is a powerfully rhetorical poem with a point to make. The scornful dismissal of ‘Romantic’ Ireland as ‘dead and gone’ (line 7) is ironic. It is meant to goad the reader into considering what has apparently been lost, and so what might be needed in the coming times.

Th e

As noted above, ‘September 1913’ was first published in the largely unionist and Protestant newspaper, The Irish Times, but primarily addressed to Catholics. It is noticeable, too, that all the heroes named in the poem were Protestants from the Anglo-Irish ‘Ascendancy’ classes. What is the significance of this? You could argue that Yeats was inviting his (Protestant) readers to share his scorn of the Catholic merchant classes. But Yeats was no unionist; he was a dedicated nationalist and had been a member of the IRB. Is the poem, then, also a reminder to its Protestant readership of the heroic acts of eighteenth-century Protestants in the cause of Irish independence, and perhaps a spur for future ones? Certainly, whatever Ireland was to be forged in the future, Yeats wanted to stake the claim of the Anglo-Irish for a share of that Irishness. ‘September 1913’ is not rich in poetic images, but its central conflict is captured in the contrast between the close-up, sordid physical imagery in stanza 1 of those who ‘fumble in a greasy till’ and add ‘prayer to HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 431

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shivering prayer’, and the wild, natural forces used to depict the self-sacrificing heroes: those who ‘have gone about the world like wind’ (line 11), the ‘wild geese’ (line 16) with their brave ‘delirium’ (line 22).

Form and language

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The poem is written in eight-line stanzas of iambic tetrameters (four beats in a line), rhyming ababcdcd. The language is generally plain, sometimes very colloquial (‘God help us’, line 14), with some poetic phrase-making: ‘All that delirium of the brave’ (line 22). But above all, the language is driven by rhetoric. It asks questions – ‘What need you …?’; ‘what … could they save?’; ‘Was it for this …?’ – and answers them with a bitter dismissal of the hopes of ‘Romantic Ireland’. That dismissal is ironic, however – another rhetorical device. The repetition of the refrain makes the reader question the absence of ‘Romantic Ireland’ and all that the phrase implies.

Notice, too, how the sounds of the words help to channel the emotion of the poem. The hard consonants in the first stanza (‘pence’, ‘prayer’, ‘bone’, ‘born’) and again in the refrain (‘dead and gone’) carry anger and bitterness. Contrast those effects with the slow, long monosyllables of ‘wild geese spread / The grey wing’ (lines 17–18), which help to suggest the sense of freedom and exhilaration associated with the heroic acts being described.

Questions Who is the ‘you’ in line 1?

How does Yeats convey in the first stanza what he sees as the absence of human feelings and idealism in Ireland in 1913?

Who are the ‘they’ in line 9?

What impression is given of the heroes of the past in stanzas 2 and 3? How does Yeats create that impression?

‘Was it for this …’ (line 17). What does Yeats mean by ‘this’?

Yeats lists a number of patriots in the poem. What did they have in common?

In stanza 4 Yeats imagines being able to bring those ‘exiles’ back to life. How does he imagine they will be? And what does he believe a modern Irish person would think of them?

Irony plays a significant part in the poem, with one thing being said but another meant. Give examples of this feature. Is it an effective device?

How would you describe the tone of this poem?

What is the central contrast in this poem? Show how Yeats manages this contrast.

This is a poem of protest and complaint. What exactly is Yeats complaining about?

Does Yeats present an ideal for his readers’ approval? If so, how can it be described?

What does ‘Romantic Ireland’ mean in the context of this poem?

What in modern Ireland makes you angry? Discuss in pairs or small groups. G

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Write a letter – or a poem – protesting about what makes you angry. Use irony if you can.

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W. B. Yeats

Before you read

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What do you think of when ro r upwo you think of swans? What qualities do you associate with them? What might a swan be a symbol for? Discuss in pairs.

ny om

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings.

The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans.

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The Wild Swans at Coole

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread.

Glossary 20

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Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water, Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake’s edge or pool Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day To find they have flown away?

Title

Coole: Coole Park was the country home of Lady Gregory

5 brimming: filled to the limit 12 clamorous: noisy 13 brilliant: bright, shining (because they are white)

21 Companionable: friendly; where the swans can enjoy each other’s company

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Guidelines

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Yeats completed the first version of this poem in early 1917. It became the title poem of the collection first published in November that year. Its setting is Coole Park, Co. Galway, the home of his great friend and patron Lady Augusta Gregory, where he had often been a guest for almost twenty years. It was written when Yeats was fifty-one, still unmarried, and concerned about the effects of old age on his creative powers.

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Commentary

Lady Gregory was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, both as a collector and

‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ is a deceptively simple poem, and it is not hard to follow its surface meaning. Its power and beauty come from the images of the swans and all they suggest or symbolise, and from their relationship to the speaker.

publisher of folktales and as one of the moving

an important role in everything she did. With its large library and significant art collection, it became a place where many of the leading literary and artistic figures of the era would gather at Lady Gregory’s invitation to share ideas, write, paint or just relax. For Yeats, it was

In the first stanza, Yeats sets the scene in simple, descriptive phrases: it is autumn, evening (twilight); there is the wood, the lake, and on the lake, fifty-nine swans. As the title tells us, the setting is Coole Park, and in the second stanza the poet remembers the first time he visited the place and counted the swans, nineteen years before. Then, while he was still counting (‘before I had well finished’), they took to the air and circled, ‘wheeling in great broken rings’.

a refuge and an inspiration for much of his life.

Stanzas 1 and 2

Theatre. Her great house at Coole Park played

Society, which eventually founded the Abbey

spirits behind the Irish National Theatre

Lady Gregory and Coole

Stanza 3

Stanza 4

In the third stanza he thinks about the differences in himself between when he first saw and heard the swans, when he was younger and happier and ‘Trod with a lighter tread’, and the present: ‘now my heart is sore’. The fact of seeing ‘those brilliant creatures’ again has brought home to him how much he has changed.

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In the fourth stanza he contemplates the apparently unchanging nature of the swans. They are ‘Unwearied’ and apparently youthful: ‘Their hearts have not grown old’. They are associated with ‘Passion or conquest’ and have the freedom to ‘wander where they will’. Unlike the unmarried poet, they are in loving pairs, ‘lover by lover’; even the streams they paddle in are ‘Companionable’.

Stanza 5

The final stanza returns to ‘now’, and ends with a question that looks to the future: where will the swans go when the poet wakes up one day ‘To find they have flown away’? The tone is hard to pin down. Yeats imagines – and expects – a day when the swans will have left him. There is a sense of loss, but at the same time the swans will not vanish completely; they will still ‘Delight men’s eyes’ – other men in another place.

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W. B. Yeats

Themes and imagery

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Perhaps the primary theme of the poem is the passing of time. The central contrast is between the ageing poet and the apparently ageless swans. Where the speaker is alone and lonely (‘sore’ of heart , line 14), the swans are in pairs, ‘lover by lover’ (line 19), and ‘Their hearts have not grown old’ (line 21). The poet is subject to time and change, whereas the swans are the same ‘brilliant creatures’ (line 13) still.

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But the beauty of this poem is that it cannot be reduced to a single, straightforward meaning. Rather, it focuses on a vivid image and a moment of vision, evoked with simple clarity in the first stanza. It is a moment of clarity that seems held in time. The sky is ‘still’; in fact, the word ‘still’ (line 4) is used four times in the poem. The water is ‘brimming’ (line 5), as if the lake is as full as it can possibly be, just as the moment seems full of meaning.

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The meaning – or rather, the complex of meanings – of the poem is carried above all in the images. The autumn evening setting is important, not least because the poet has arrived at the autumn of his own life. But it is the swans that stay in the memory. There is no doubt that the swans were real, but in Yeats’s description of them they take on symbolic significance. We have already noted their apparent agelessness and vitality; their wheeling flight also suggests the circle that for Yeats represented eternity. They belong both to the water where they swim and the air where they fly. To the poet, they represent youth, vigour, passion, freedom – things he desires for himself. They are, as the poem’s title tells us, wild. It is an easy step to see them as symbolising the poet’s creative energies, and perhaps that is what is uppermost in his mind in the final stanza when he considers the time ‘when I awake some day / To find they have flown away’. Is he thinking of the loss of his poetic inspiration? Or of his death – awaking to an afterlife? Or both? It is one of the great achievements of the poem that all these possibilities are gathered and held and contribute to its effect.

Form and language The poem is written in six-line stanzas rhyming abcbdd. The final couplet at the end of each stanza helps to create the sense of stillness and balance that pervades the poem. Longer tetrameters (four beats in a line) alternate with shorter trimeters (three beats).

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The language of the poem is mostly spare and simple. The image of the first stanza, for example, is built out of short, plain, descriptive phrases. There are moments when Yeats uses the sounds of the words to add a dimension to the description, such as the long vowel of ‘wheeling’ (line 11) to suggest the big circles in which the swans fly, or the alliteration of ‘The bell-beat of their wings’ (line 17). But in general Yeats trusts that clear images and carefully chosen words will have the resonance he wants them to have without the poetical fireworks of, for example, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’.

Understanding the poem

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Exam-Style Questions The poem is set in autumn. Why, do you think, is that important?

What meaning or meanings do the swans have for the poet? Mention as many as you can.

The poem centres on a contrast between the poet and the swans. In what ways do they contrast?

Why is the poet troubled as he contemplates the swans?

How do you respond to the ending of the poem? Is it entirely sad or is there some optimism in it?

Thinking about the poem

How does the language of this poem differ from that in ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’?

Is the number of the swans significant, do you think? If so, in what way?

Choose your favourite image from the poem, and explain why you have chosen it.

The word ‘still’ is used four times in this poem, and in two different senses. Explain the two meanings, and say why they are both so central to the poem.

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You have been asked to make a short film to accompany a reading of this poem. Say how you would use music, sound effects, images and colour to convey the atmosphere of the poem.

Write about a moment when you became aware that something important in your life had changed.

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Imagining

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SNAPSHOT

Autumn evening setting Sense of sadness and loneliness in the poem Poem about the passing of time Swans give the illusion of immortality Contrast between the poet and the swans Swans represent freedom, passion, youth, creative vitality Hope or despair in the ending?

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W. B. Yeats

Easter 1916

Before you read

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I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a mocking tale or a gibe To please a companion Around the fire at the club, Being certain that they and I But lived where motley is worn: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

In pairs or groups discuss ro r upwo what you know about the Easter Rising and its leaders. What would you expect to find in a poem called ‘Easter 1916’?

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That woman’s days were spent In ignorant good-will, Her nights in argument Until her voice grew shrill. What voice more sweet than hers When, young and beautiful, She rode to harriers? This man had kept a school And rode our wingèd horse; This other his helper and friend Was coming into his force; He might have won fame in the end, So sensitive his nature seemed, So daring and sweet his thought. This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vainglorious lout. He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart, Yet I number him in the song; He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

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Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream. The horse that comes from the road, The rider, the birds that range From cloud to tumbling cloud, Minute by minute they change; A shadow of cloud on the stream Changes minute by minute; A horse-hoof slides on the brim, And a horse plashes within it; The long-legged moor-hens dive, And hens to moor-cocks call; Minute by minute they live; The stone’s in the midst of all.

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Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? That is Heaven’s part, our part To murmur name upon name, As a mother names her child When sleep at last has come On limbs that had run wild. What is it but nightfall? No, no, not night but death; Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said. We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse — MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

September 25, 1916

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W. B. Yeats Glossary 2

vivid: bright-coloured; full of life

Eighteenth-century houses: much of central Dublin was built in the Georgian period (1714–1830) gibe: insulting comment

motley: multi-coloured costume worn by a fool in a play

That woman: Constance Markiewicz (1868–1927), a Volunteer officer in the Rising, who was condemned to death by the British but not executed because she was a woman; see also ‘In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz’

harriers: hunting dogs

This man: Patrick Pearse (1879–1916), one of the leaders of the Rising, who was executed for his part in it

wingèd horse: Pegasus, associated with poetic inspiration; Pearse was also a poet

This other: Thomas MacDonagh (1878–1916), writer and teacher, who was also executed for his part in the Rising

This other man: Major John MacBride (1868–1916), the husband of Maud Gonne, though they had separated; he was executed for his part in the Rising

vainglorious: proud and boastful

plashes: splashes

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moor-hens … moor-cocks: females and males of a black bird that lives in rivers and lakes England may keep faith: the British government had agreed to grant Home Rule, which would have satisfied many Irish nationalists; the outbreak of the First World War meant that it was postponed

Bewildered: confused

Connolly: James Connolly (1868–1916), a socialist leader whose Irish Citizen Army took part in the Rising; he was severely wounded, and was executed despite being in a wheelchair

green: the colour most associated with Ireland, as in patriotic songs like ‘The Wearing of the Green’

Guidelines

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This poem was written in response to one of the central events of Irish history, the Easter Rising of 1916. Yeats was in England when the Rising happened, and he was both shocked by the news and disapproving at first of what had happened. Though he was an Irish nationalist, he did not believe in using violence for political ends. He had known many leaders of the Rising, and did not have a high opinion of some of them, but when the British started to execute them public opinion shifted and they were seen as martyrs and heroes. Yeats’s feelings changed too. As he said at the time, ‘I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move me’. ‘Easter 1916’ is the poet’s attempt to understand the impact the events of the Rising had on him, and to understand its place in the history of Ireland. Yeats wrote the poem in 1916 and circulated it among his friends, but it was not published until 1920, and it later appeared in the collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921).

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Commentary Stanza 1

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Yeats starts by giving his impressions of the rebel leaders (‘them’). He knew them enough to exchange ‘polite meaningless words’ with them, but for him they were figures of fun – people to make jokes about (‘a mocking tale or a gibe’) with his friends. He believed, as he wrote in ‘September 1913’, that ‘Romantic’ Ireland – the patriotic heroism of the old Fenians – was ‘dead and gone’. He thought that all the plans of the new generation of rebels would come to nothing, just as he did not expect his own engagement with Irish culture to change the political system. He was ‘certain that they and I / But lived where motley is worn’. In other words, they were like characters in a comic play, not tragic or heroic figures.

The final two lines of the stanza not only declare that everything has changed, but also change the tone of the poem: ‘All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.’ The phrase ‘terrible beauty’ resonates through the poem. It contains in itself the central tension of the poem: the Easter Rising, as far as Yeats is concerned, was both beautiful and ‘terrible’ – not in its usual modern meaning of something bad, but in its original sense: something frightening; something that causes terror.

Stanza 2

Yeats now considers some of the rebel leaders he knew. The first is Constance Markiewicz, a friend whose fierce republican politics had spoiled her, as far as the poet was concerned. This is described in terms of her voice, which had been ‘sweet’ when she was a beautiful young woman, but which has grown ‘shrill’ from arguing her political convictions.

The next two rebel leaders are Patrick Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh, both teachers and poets and both associated with Pearse’s school, St Enda’s. There is a sense of regret in Yeats’s description of MacDonagh’s ‘sensitive’ nature and ‘daring and sweet’ thought that is absent from the mention of Pearse. Yeats did not like Pearse and his ideas of ‘blood sacrifice’.

The fourth rebel leader is John MacBride, Maud Gonne’s estranged husband. It is clear that Yeats had, for personal reasons, a very low opinion of the man he had believed to be a ‘drunken, vainglorious lout’. But, like the others, MacBride can no longer be seen as an ordinary figure; he ‘has resigned his part / In the casual comedy’ and been ‘Transformed utterly’.

Stanza 3

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In this stanza Yeats contemplates the contrast between the stone-like nature of ‘Hearts with one purpose alone’ and the ever-changing life of the world around them – the ‘living stream’ where horses and riders, birds and clouds are always moving and changing. It is not, however, a simple antithesis between the living and the lifeless. The ‘stone’ may ‘trouble’ the stream, but the final line of the stanza suggests that the stone is also an essential part of this world: ‘The stone’s in the midst of all.’

This stanza has been seen as part of an ongoing argument with Yeats’s great love, Maud Gonne. He felt she had given too much of her energy to politics, and lost a precious part of herself by doing so.

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W. B. Yeats

Stanza 4

Yeats’s conflicted feelings about the Rising are felt most strongly in the final stanza. He starts by throwing light on his own image of the stone in the previous stanza: ‘Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart.’ It is those who have sacrificed their lives – not only through execution but in their long-term dedication to their cause – whose hearts have turned to stone. The poet’s agonised question, ‘O when may it suffice?’, has no answer that he can give.

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Yeats grapples with the gap between his doubts about the Easter Rising and the historical and symbolic meaning of it. ‘Was it needless death after all?’ he asks. He cannot be sure that what the rebels did was worthwhile because ‘England may keep faith’ and bring in Home Rule, as had been promised. He wonders, too, whether he had judged the rebels correctly. He questions whether it was a matter of dedication turning their hearts to stone, or an extreme form of love that ‘Bewildered’ them. He does not try to answer his own question. The doubts are left unresolved. In the end, he can only do what he indicated earlier in the stanza: ‘murmur name upon name’.

This final part of the poem carries great power, whatever Yeats’s private doubts. The names of some of the rebel leaders are written out, along with a statement of faith – that ‘Wherever green is worn’, they are ‘changed utterly’. Though he hated MacBride and despised Pearse, he saw that something had happened that was more important than his personal feelings or even his views on the rights and wrongs of the rebellion. In fact, in writing ‘Easter 1916’ Yeats helped to create the national significance of the event whose importance he had recognised, captured above all in the repeated line that ends the poem: ‘A terrible beauty is born’. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 441

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Themes and imagery

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The primary theme of the poem is, of course, the 1916 Easter Rising and the contrast between the ordinary, flawed men and women involved in it and the symbolic meaning of what they achieved. Notice, though, that Yeats makes use of the Christian symbolism of Easter to underpin contemporary events. The sacrifice and death of the rebel leaders parallels Christ’s crucifixion, and the ‘terrible beauty’ that is born from those deaths hints at the resurrection of Christ. Perhaps Yeats is also suggesting that just as the crucifixion brought about a new world order, the events of Easter 1916 had produced a new Ireland where all is ‘changed utterly’.

There is a theatrical metaphor in the first stanza of the poem, where the poet thinks of the rebels and himself as wearing ‘motley’ (line 14) – the dress of a fool in a comic play. The image is taken up in the second stanza, when Yeats says that MacBride ‘has resigned his part / In the casual comedy’ (lines 36–37), as if he had been acting a role.

The central image of stanza 3 is the stone in the living, changing stream, which Yeats uses as a metaphor for the sacrifices made out of political commitment, creating an association with the hardening of intent of the revolutionaries.

In the final stanza the main image is of a mother soothing her tired child by murmuring its name. Do you think the image carries a suggestion of the traditional figure of Mother Ireland?

Yeats has moulded the form of this poem to its

‘Easter 1916’ is written in short lines with three stresses (trimeters), in stanzas of 16 or 24 lines rhyming ababcdcd, etc. The short lines have a somewhat troubled nervous energy, but Yeats can also use the strong accents to create an impressive, stately power. This is particularly true of the (varying) refrain – ‘All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.’ – where the stresses are reinforced with alliteration on ‘ch’, ‘t’ and ‘b’.

subject with unusual care in one respect. The

Form and language

Numerology

Rising took place on 24 April 1916. The stanzas have either 24 or 16 lines, and there are four

of them. April is the fourth month, so the short form of the date (24/4/16) is embedded in the

the power of numbers

poem. Yeats was fascinated by numerology –

Tone and mood

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In ‘Easter 1916’ Yeats is aware that he is writing about an important historical event. Although he expresses personal doubts and reservations, he strives for a tone which creates an impersonal detachment from events rather than an individual’s emotional reaction to them. For example, there is a distance in describing the rebel leaders he mentions in stanza 2 as ‘That woman’, ‘This man’, ‘This other man’. He is trying to find the proper role of the poet faced with such dramatic events. In the troubled questioning of the fourth stanza, he falls back on the idea of what is ‘our part’ – the response of a group rather than an individual. Who, do you think, is he thinking of when he writes ‘our’? The Irish people? Poets? Certainly, he is conscious of his role as poet when he writes of himself writing: ‘I write it out in a verse’ (line 74).

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W. B. Yeats

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The poem draws to an end by naming some of the executed leaders, and makes a statement about their place in Irish history. Here, the steady, simple beat of the rhythm helps to create a solemn atmosphere. It is like an incantation (magic spell) or a prayer. The final restatement of the poem’s crucial phrase – ‘A terrible beauty is born’ – is a plain declaration which rises above any purely personal response and seems to carry authority. But the opposing meanings of the oxymoron ‘terrible beauty’ are held in balance, unresolved. It is up to the reader to imagine exactly what that terrible beauty might be, and what sort of future might be contained within it.

Questions

What is Yeats’s attitude to ‘them’ (line 1) – the rebel leaders? What do we learn about them in the first stanza?

What impression do you get of the speaker, ‘I’, in the first stanza?

Discuss the ways in which Yeats’s attitude to the leaders of the 1916 Rising changes in the course of the poem.

What, do you think, is the purpose of stanza 3, which does not mention Easter 1916 and its participants at all?

Why does Yeats repeat the line ‘A terrible beauty is born’? What does this beauty consist of? In what way is it terrible?

Does ‘Easter 1916’ achieve a resolution of the conflicts and doubts it contains?

What is the effect of the final seven lines of the poem, where the leaders are named? How would you describe the tone?

What is the effect of Yeats’s use of the word ‘vivid’ in line 2?

Comment on Yeats’s use of active verbs in stanza 3.

What is the effect of the image of the mother and her child in stanza 4?

In the last stanza the poet asks a number of questions. List these questions. What do they suggest about his attitude to his theme?

Imagine you had been involved in the Rising yourself. Write a letter to Yeats to tell him what your feelings were when you read this poem.

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Before you read This poem is about an Irishman who volunteered to fight with the British in the First World War. He was one of more than a hundred thousand Irishmen who joined the British forces in the course of the war. Find out what you can about why so many joined, and about the people who encouraged them to do so.

tumult: a state of chaos and uproar; here, presumably, the speaker’s death in an aeroplane

Kiltartan Cross: place in Co. Galway near Coole Park, where the Gregory family lived

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Guidelines

Glossary

I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

This poem, first published in the second version of the collection The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), was written in 1918 as a response to the death of Robert Gregory, son of Lady Gregory, who fought for the British Army in the First World War. He later joined the Royal Flying Corps, and was mistakenly shot down by an Italian pilot in January 1918.

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Commentary

Lines 1–8

The speaker has a premonition of his own death – his ‘fate’ – in the air, and considers how he stands in relation to the war in which he is fighting. He does not hate the enemy, nor love the country he is fighting for. His loyalty is to Kiltartan Cross – the place he comes from – and the people there. The result of the war (the ‘end’, line 7) is not going to make any difference to them. Personal and local loyalties are more important to him and them than national or political ones.

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W. B. Yeats Lines 9–16

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The speaker goes on to consider his reasons for fighting. He is not fighting because he has been forced to do so by law (conscription was brought in during the First World War, though it was not imposed in Ireland). It was not a sense of duty to his country that led him to enlist, nor was it the rhetoric of politicians stirring up crowds to persuade men to join the army. Instead, he was driven by a ‘lonely impulse of delight’ to his fate – the ‘tumult in the clouds’. The motivation is personal and internal, emotional rather than rational, and, in some sense, joyful.

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In the final four lines the speaker explains his thinking. It is all about balancing opposites. Both the future and the past seem a ‘waste of breath’. The death he foresees seems to balance his life, and is therefore appropriate. Rather than horror or fear, there is calm acceptance.

Themes

This poem is sometimes described as an elegy for Robert Gregory. A traditional elegy, however, celebrates the virtues of the dead person and laments their death. Yeats wrote another poem, ‘In Memory of Major Robert Gregory’, in this form. ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’ does something different. In it Yeats imagines being in the position of Robert Gregory in order to write a poem about (among other things) the individual and society, and the nature of heroism.

Although it is generally accepted that this poem is ‘about’ Robert Gregory, the speaker identified in the title is something else: ‘An Irish Airman’. This means that the speaker is not a particular individual, however remarkable, but an anonymous voice that expresses a state of mind (and a dilemma) that Yeats wanted to explore. By using a voice that is not his own, Yeats gives himself the freedom to write about an attitude without committing himself to that attitude.

What, then, is Yeats interested in here? The poem presents the inner workings of the mind of an individual in the face of a great public event – the Great War. The poem was written at a time when the war was still raging, and Ireland was bitterly divided in its attitude to it. To go back to the title, note that the speaker is an Irish airman. The poem is intensely personal, but it is not simply an account of an individual’s detachment from the war; it also reflects on the relationship of Ireland to a war fought by Britain.

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The speaker is not impressed by the ‘public men’ (line 10) who might have urged him to fight. His loyalty is to his townland, and not to some notion of nationality, either British or Irish. Like Yeats, Gregory was from an Anglo-Irish family – a group often regarded by Irish nationalists as not ‘properly’ Irish. In light of that, the speaker’s isolation, and his attachment to the local area rather than the nation, might suggest another aspect of the underlying debate about nationality and identity. In that view, the speaker’s isolated and uneasy relationship to his ‘country’ reflects that of the Anglo-Irish community. A related theme of the poem is the nature of heroism and self-sacrifice. The speaker exhibits a combination of two opposed attitudes: the detachment shown in his distance from the demands of society on him, and the passion shown in his motive to action – the ‘lonely impulse of delight’ (line 11). The phrase – and the attitude – calls to mind the nationalist heroes of ‘September 1913’, who ‘weighed so lightly what they gave’. That balance of detachment and passion was also regarded by Yeats as the mark of a true artist, so the fact that Robert Gregory was himself an artist can be no coincidence. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 445

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Form and language

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The language of the poem is plain, made of direct statements rather than poetic images. The overwhelming impression is of poise and balance, and the form of words always reinforces this. To take one small example, in line 9, instead of ‘Neither law nor duty’, which would be the normal informal phrasing, the more formal ‘Nor law, nor duty’ creates a verbal parallel which adds to the sense of careful balancing that runs through the poem. The comma between the two parts of the phrase, which is not grammatically necessary, adds to that poise.

The poem is written in iambic tetrameters (four stresses per line) that have a simplicity and regularity that matches the direct language used. Although it is not separated into stanzas on the page, the poem can be divided into quatrains (four-line units), rhyming abab. The argument of the poem follows these divisions precisely. The poem consists of two sentences, each exactly eight lines long; within the two halves a semicolon separates the quatrains.

Technically, this is an extremely accomplished poem. The form of it mirrors in detail what it describes – the act of balancing one thing against another and finding an equilibrium. Lines 3 and 4, for instance, work in parallel to summarise the speaker’s attitude to the two sides in the war. In line 10 he uses the caesura (mid-line break) to create a similar balance within a single line: ‘Nor public men, nor cheering crowds’, where the comma divides the line into two parallel phrases. The lines are mostly end-stopped, and it is significant that the only real enjambment (where the statement runs over the end of the line) comes between lines 11 and 12, which describe the one moment – the ‘lonely impulse of delight’ – that breaks through the careful, detached poise of the rest of the poem.

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The final four lines demonstrate Yeats’s mastery of his art. Line 13 describes the act of balancing, and is itself balanced by the caesura at the comma; the repetition of ‘all’ reinforces this balance. Lines 14–15 are a good example of antithesis (see Glossary page 600), precisely mirrored across the line break, with ‘The years to come’ at the beginning, ‘the years behind’ at the end, and ‘waste of breath’ repeated in between. The final line expresses the poem’s central balancing act, between life and death, held in equilibrium by the parallel phrasing: ‘this life, this death’.

Imagery

This poem works by means of its balanced phrasing and plain language rather than its images. Even the ‘impulse of delight’ that drives to the ‘tumult in the clouds’ (lines 11–12), which is the central active moment of the poem, is something that cannot be clearly pictured. It is both vivid and open to the reader’s imagination at the same time. 446 / DISCOVERY: POETRY ANTHOLOGY

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W. B. Yeats

Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem What do we learn from the poem about who the speaker is and what motivates him?

What is the speaker’s attitude to the war?

What impression do you get of the sort of man the speaker is? Does he come across as self-centred or even selfish? Give reasons for your answer.

How would you describe the tone of the poem? For example, do you think it is: ■ Defeatist ■ Heroic ■ Joyful?

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How would you describe the language of the poem?

Thinking about the poem

Can you suggest another word to use? 5

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What do you understand by the phrase ‘A lonely impulse of delight’ (line 11)?

Is this a political poem? In what ways? Give reasons for your answer.

This poem has been described as a work of ‘pure joy’. Would you agree with this description? Explain your answer.

The idea of balance is central to the poem. Discuss some of the ways in which Yeats creates a sense of poise and balance.

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Does the speaker of the poem remind you in any way of a modern ‘suicide bomber’? How is he similar or different? Discuss in pairs or small groups.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT

Speaker takes a balanced view of the war Balance is reflected in the poem’s form Speaker is not motivated by patriotism Poem reflects on the nature of patriotism and nationality Theme of heroism and self-sacrifice

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Write your own epitaph for the Irish airman of the poem.

Imagining

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Before you read

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Does the phrase ‘the ro r upwo second coming’ have any associations for you? If so, what does it suggest? Discuss in pairs.

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Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

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The Second Coming

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Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Glossary Title

Second Coming: the phrase is usually associated with the Second Coming of Christ to judge humankind, as predicted in the Book of Revelation

gyre: a spiral that expands as it goes up; see also ‘Personal mythology’, page 423

Mere: here, pure or total

loosed: let free

Spiritus Mundi: literally, the spirit of the world; a store of images and symbols built up in the course of human history that are the shared inheritance of all humans

Reel: fall back and away, with a spinning motion

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W. B. Yeats

Guidelines

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‘The Second Coming’ was written in early 1919, soon after the end of the bloody conflict we now know as the First World War, and at the point where a war for independence from Britain was starting in Ireland. Yeats had been shocked, too, by the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was not the only writer to feel that Western civilisation was in crisis, but his expression of that feeling evokes a particular horror and fascination, and has held a grip on the world’s imagination throughout the hundred years since it was written.

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Commentary

Lines 1–8

The first eight lines of the poem describe in plain, declarative sentences the current state of the world as it appears to the speaker. The first image is taken from falconry: instead of returning to the falconer who should be controlling the bird, the falcon is circling ever further away in a ‘widening gyre’. Then, in a bold, bare statement which seems unremarkable, but which is the poem’s most famous line, the speaker declares, ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’. The image of the falcon is still there, but the implications are much wider. As the fourth line makes clear, the whole world is caught up in what is happening – the outbreak of ‘Mere anarchy’. Lines 5 – 6 introduce the half-hidden metaphor of a flood: the ‘blood-dimmed tide’ could be thought of as a tsunami, full of the blood of war, overwhelming and drowning the ordered life – the ‘ceremony of innocence’ – that had previously existed. The next two lines declare that the ‘best’ (best in what way, we might ask) have no strong beliefs, whereas the ‘worst’ are ‘full of passionate intensity’. In a world where people are killing themselves and others almost every day out of a passionate belief in a cause, it is not hard to understand the dangers of ‘passionate intensity’.

Lines 9–22

The tone changes in the second part of the poem, which is an attempt to understand and interpret the state of the world described in the first part. A different, more excited, more emotionally involved voice is heard. Instead of the impersonal, descriptive statements of the first part, there is now an uncertain ‘I’ struggling to come to terms with what he has observed, and the ‘vast image’ that ‘Troubles my sight’.

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The mentions of ‘revelation’ and the ‘Second Coming’ at first Book of Revelation suggest a Christian context. The Book of Revelation in the Bible This book in the New Testament predicts and tells of the Second Coming of Christ to judge the world at a time depicts the Apocalypse – the end of the world of terrible devastation. But there is no sign of Christ arriving in this as we know it. It describes signs or portents poem. Instead, the speaker is granted a vision, an image ‘out of of the end, including Seven Seals and Four Horsemen, and also the appearance of a Spiritus Mundi’. Notice that the vision is something that happens number of ‘beasts’, one with seven heads and to the speaker, not something that he conjures up: it ‘Troubles ten horns, and one with two horns, a lamb’s my sight’. What is this vision? It seems to come from far away – head, a sheep’s body, a tail like a wolf, feet like ‘somewhere in sands of the desert’ – and long ago: the ‘shape a goat, and a speaking voice like a dragon. The with lion body and the head of a man’ suggests the Sphinx, culmination is the Second Coming of Christ. known from ancient Greek and Egyptian mythologies. The vision is indistinct. We see certain attributes – the blank gaze, the ‘slow thighs’ – rather than a clear image of the whole. Even the desert birds are known by their shadows, which ‘Reel’, implying a spinning motion like that of the falcon in the first two lines. And what birds are they? Vultures perhaps? And why are they ‘indignant’? The vision is as full of mystery as it is of horror. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 449

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It is only a glimpse before ‘The darkness drops again’, but the speaker regards it as a true and reliable vision, not a delusion. It has told him something: ‘now I know …’. What has it told him?

That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle

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Yeats believed that history worked in 2000-year cycles, and that the change from one cycle to the next would always be violent and chaotic. The ‘twenty centuries of stony sleep’ are usually interpreted as the 2000 years since the birth of Christ, but they can also be understood as the 2000 years before the birth of Christ, in which case the ‘rocking cradle’ is the manger where the baby Jesus was laid. His birth – and violent crucifixion – ushered in a new era. Now, in 1919, another 2000 years have almost passed and another era is about to begin. The final two lines ask what sort of era it will be, and suggest answers. It is not the ‘Second Coming’ of Christ that he expects, but the birth of a ‘rough beast’. The verb ‘Slouches’ tells us a great deal about the beast that is preparing to be born. What does that word suggest to you?

Themes

‘The Second Coming’ presents a vision of the collapse of civilisation and the approach of an ominous new world order. It is, in part, a response to the violence and upheavals of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. It uses Christian terminology to suggest a world view which is far from the traditional Christian one. Yeats lost any active belief in Christianity early in his life, but his understanding of the world was always, as he insisted himself, a religious one. Indeed, he developed his own religious philosophy, set out in A Vision (see

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W. B. Yeats ‘Personal mythology’ page 423), which involved the 2000-year cycles of history, the image of the gyres, and theories of personality according to the phases of the moon.

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Yeats was, however, careful to ensure that his poems could stand on their own. Although his theories underpin the vision in this poem, and knowledge of them adds to an understanding of it, it is not necessary to study those theories in order to experience the power and meaning of this poem.

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Form and language

The poem is written in iambic pentameters with no rhyme scheme, though with occasional use of half-rhyme. Yeats uses the metre with great flexibility and much variation. The first syllable of a line or phrase is often stressed, against the basic metre, as in the first line of the poem: ‘Túrning …’. Sometimes there are extra unstressed syllables in a line (e.g. line 13); and sometimes there are extra stresses, most notably in line 5, where we cannot help stressing all three monosyllables of ‘blood-dimmed tide’, which gives a slow weight to the phrase that is heightened by the repetition of the ‘d’ sounds. The metre is not obtrusive, but it is always present, underpinning and giving power to the images.

The language is blunt, but the words are very carefully chosen. The poem works by plain, bold statement, especially in the first section: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’ (line 3). We have already touched on the resonances of the verb ‘Slouches’ (line 22). Consider, too, the effect of the choice of apparently unobtrusive adjectives: ‘Mere’ (line 4), ‘blank’ (line 15), ‘slow’ (line 16), ‘indignant’ (line 17).

Imagery

We have looked at the individual images Yeats uses in the course of the Commentary above. They are multiple, powerful and often horrific. They come from very different sources: the Bible (Second Coming, Bethlehem, the ‘blood-dimmed tide’ of line 5, and the beast perhaps from the Book of Revelation); ancient mythology (the Sphinx); falconry; Yeats’s own private mythology (the gyres, Spiritus Mundi). They are images that have the power to trouble the reader’s imagination, just as they trouble the speaker’s sight (line 13).

The impact of the poem

Why is this poem so powerful? Why is it so well known that many other writers have taken phrases from it as titles for their own books? Is this popularity proof of the power of Yeats’s prophecy?

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One answer might lie in Yeats’s mastery of his craft – the rhythms and sound choices of words that pack a punch and stay in the memory. Another might be found in the voice of the speaker of the poem. The pronouncements of the first part carry conviction – they are plain and bald and sure of themselves. The certainty of ‘now I know’ at line 18 is also compelling. Yeats speaks to us as a prophet as well as a poet, and he was not (in this poem, at least)

Quotations as titles The great Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe called his first novel Things Fall Apart (1958); the American writer Joan Didion wrote a book of essays called Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), which is also the title of a song by Joni Mitchell; Robert B. Parker wrote a detective story called The Widening Gyre (1983); Woody Allen published a collection of his comic essays called Mere Anarchy in 2007; and a 2013 album by the metal band Whelm is titled A Gaze Blank and Pitiless as the Sun. You can find many other ‘Second Coming’ titles online. The poem certainly makes an impression on people!

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afraid of the idea that a poet could and should have access to a special truth and knowledge. To tell the truth as he saw it, like a prophet, was, for Yeats, a proper function of a poet.

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Beyond that, though closely connected to it, Yeats believed in the Spiritus Mundi – the store of shared images common to all humanity. His revelation, he declares, comes from that common store. It is easy to dismiss the image as a piece of old-fashioned nonsense. A lion’s body with a man’s head? But perhaps Yeats was right. Is it possible that the power of the image does come from a source that is deep in the unconscious of all of us? Certainly the fear – even the premonition – of an apocalypse, of the end of the world, is something that has been evident again and again in human history, and has often been seen as something to be desired as much as feared. ‘The Second Coming’ taps into these fears and desires in all of us.

Questions

In your own words, explain the image of the falcon in the first two lines of the poem.

What is the effect of the repetition of ‘loosed’ in lines 4 and 5?

Comment on the contrasts in sound and meaning of the phrases ‘blood-dimmed tide’ and ‘ceremony of innocence’ (lines 5 and 6).

Why, do you think, do the ‘best’ ‘lack all conviction’ (line 7)?

Why, in your opinion, might ‘passionate intensity’ (line 8) be a negative thing?

Is there a difference in the speaking voice between the first stanza and the second? If so, can you describe that difference?

Comment on the description of the desert birds as ‘indignant’ (line 17).

What has changed in the speaker after ‘The darkness drops again’ in line 18?

‘What rough beast’ (line 21). How do you imagine this beast? Or does the poet wish us to imagine it at all?

Why, do you think, does Yeats refer to Bethlehem in the final line of the poem?

In ‘The Second Coming’, Yeats presents his ideas in terms of images. Describe the kinds of images that dominate the poem and discuss their effect on the reader’s imagination. It has been said that ‘The Second Coming’ has elements of a horror film. Can you identify any such elements?

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How does Yeats’s vision of a world heading towards chaos strike you now, nearly a hundred years after it was written? Is it relevant today? Discuss in small groups.

Why, do you think, is this one of Yeats’s best-known poems?

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W. B. Yeats Before you read Go online or find a good book on art history to find images of the wonderful works of art that came from the Byzantine civilisation. Look especially for the mosaics. This will give you an idea of what Yeats was thinking of when he wrote the poem.

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I That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees – Those dying generations – at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.

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Sailing to Byzantium

II An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.

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III O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. IV Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

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Glossary Byzantium: ancient city which had been part of the Greek and then the Roman empires; later known as Constantinople, now as Istanbul, in Turkey commend: recommend as good begotten: brought into existence by means of sexual reproduction

sensual: to do with physical pleasures

paltry: pathetic; insignificant mortal dress: the body (which here is old and tattered)

sages: wise or holy men

perne in a gyre: to spin within a spiral

artifice: something made by craft or art

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Title

Guidelines tower, part of the Coole estate, for £35, and restored and refurbished it with the help of an architect. It was for many years a rural retreat

In 1917 Yeats bought this fifteenth-century

‘Sailing to Byzantium’ is the first poem in what many regard as Yeats’s greatest volume of poetry, The Tower, first published in 1928. It sets the tone for the volume, in which Yeats responds to the events of his day (including the Civil War in Ireland), looks back over his own past and contemplates the future.

Thoor Ballylee

and a summer home for all his family, including inspiration and symbolism. The tower and the

The I of the poem

two small children. It was also a source of

The speaker of the poem is a man grown old, a man who yearns for purity and eternity. It is easy to imagine that that man is river beside it and the bridge over the river were simply Yeats, and that the voyage to Byzantium is therefore an given their own symbolic value in his private imaginary or purely symbolic one. It is certainly true that Yeats mythology. The poet Ezra Pound, however, projected many of his fears and desires onto the ‘I’ of the poem, referred to it as Yeats’s ‘phallic symbol on the and that the poem tells us a lot about him, but Yeats liked to try bogs’. The Yeats family moved out in 1929 and Ballylee fell into disuse and ruin. out different voices and personas in his poems. Here it is worth taking note of the fact that when he went away to Killarney to compose this poem, he wrote to a friend, ‘I came here to write a poem about a medieval Irishman longing for Byzantium’. ‘winding stair’ within it provided names for two

of Yeats’s finest volumes of poetry, and the

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The Byzantine Empire and culture were powerful for more than a thousand years, from the end of the Roman Empire to the late Middle Ages, roughly 330–1450 CE. Yeats believed that Byzantium was the holy centre of European civilisation – the meeting point of east and west. He also believed that Byzantine art had influenced Celtic art, especially in the highly intricate and brightly decorated religious artwork found, for example, in the Book of Kells. So a journey from Ireland to Byzantium around 800–1000 was not a fantasy, but a real possibility. If we keep this in mind, we can see the extreme desires of the poem’s speaker as something other than Yeats expressing his own personal wishes. In fact, by adopting a persona, Yeats is able to explore an extreme state of mind fully without completely identifying himself with the views expressed. This is similar to his method in ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’.

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W. B. Yeats

Commentary Stanza I

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The country that is not ‘for old men’ is not named but can be thought of as Ireland, with its ‘salmon-falls’ and ‘mackerel-crowded seas’. One might even see it as Tír na nÓg, the mythical land of eternal youth, with ‘The young / In one another’s arms’. But here, life, however vibrant and teeming, also involves death: ‘Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.’ Both birds and humans are ‘Those dying generations’. The life of the body implies death. But what all ignore, because they are so involved with (‘Caught in’) the ‘sensual music’, is the timeless (‘unageing’) and the spiritual or intellectual side of existence.

Stanza II

The speaker turns to consider himself – an ‘aged man’, a ‘paltry’, useless thing. He feels he is like a scarecrow – ‘A tattered coat upon a stick’. But the final word of that line, ‘unless’, isolated by the comma before it and the line break after it, brings a moment of suspense and possibility. What can compensate for physical frailty? The answer he gives, the first word of the next line, is ‘Soul’. The soul must be active. It must ‘clap its hands and sing, and louder sing’. Notice the work that the verbs do here, the repetition of ‘sing’ indicating the urgency of what is needed. And how does a soul learn to sing? In ‘singing school’, of course, and that means studying ‘Monuments of its own magnificence’. What are those monuments? It is not clear, but they are something to do with the highest achievements of a culture and a civilisation, and they are to be found, he believes, in Byzantium: ‘therefore I have sailed the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium’.

Stanza III

The speaker is now in Byzantium. One might imagine him looking at the golden mosaics, like those Yeats had seen with Lady Gregory in Ravenna in 1907 or with his wife in Sicily in 1925. He speaks to the ‘sages’ – perhaps those pictured in the mosaic – and asks for their help. It is like a prayer. To him, they are ‘standing in God’s holy fire’. He asks them to come from that fire to be ‘the singing-masters of my soul’. He imagines them coming ‘perne in a gyre’, spinning within a spiral. There is a real urgency to the speaker’s plea: ‘Consume my heart away’. He wants to be rid of his decaying body and the passions that come with it and the death it will face. Instead, he wants to be part of the ‘artifice of eternity’ – not a human or an animal, but something artificial, something that will last forever. He pleads with the sages to ‘gather me’, as if he is entirely passive, like a crop to be harvested.

Stanza IV

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Yeats believed that the soul after death could choose its own shape. In this stanza the speaker describes what he wants to become when he has passed on from this life – ‘out of nature’. He does not want to take his shape (his ‘bodily form’) from any living creature; he desires an artificial, man-made form. He wants to become a work of art. He imagines something made of gold – the metal that does not tarnish; the word ‘gold’ occurs four times in four lines. He imagines himself as a golden bird singing on a golden bough. The ‘drowsy’ emperor, and the lords and ladies seem almost oblivious to this miracle, and yet the bird has a very special power. What it sings is not ordinary birdsong or the ‘sensual music’ of stanza I; it sings of ‘what is past, or passing, or to come’ – the past, the present and, most remarkably, the future. The bird is also a prophet.

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Themes and imagery

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The poem’s themes and imagery are organised around pairs of opposites: age is set against youth, the body against the soul, time against eternity, sensual life against artifice and works of art. The country of stanza I, with its teeming creatures and carefree people, represents one pole. It stands for youth, the cycle of life and death, and sensuality. Against that is set the old man with a decaying body who wants to nourish his eternal soul and escape from the cycle of life and death. The other pole is Byzantium, which stands for the spirit, the intellect, art and artifice, and which seems to hold out the possibility of a kind of immortality. The movement of the poem is from one to the other, away from the cycle of life and death towards art and eternity. At its simplest, this is an expression of the old man’s wish to escape: to escape from his ageing body, and the humiliation he feels in being identified with it, towards an idea of perfection which can rise above death. It is no coincidence that Yeats was over sixty when he wrote the poem, and becoming increasingly aware of his age and his dwindling energy.

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The nature and value of art – and song in particular – is another thread that runs through this poem, and a central image in it. Singing is mentioned in the first stanza. The ‘dying generations’ are ‘at their song’ (line 3), which must be related to the ‘sensual music’ they are caught up in (line 7). In stanza II the speaker urges his soul to ‘sing, and louder sing’ (line 11). That might be interpreted as the soul learning to be alive, but ‘song’ is also another term for poetry – Yeats called many of his poems ‘songs’; thus, becoming a better poet by putting all his efforts into singing is one of the things on Yeats’s mind, if not the speaker’s. The ‘Monuments of its own magnificence’ he would study in ‘singing school’ (lines 13–14) might be thought of as the great poetry (and other works of art) of the past. The sages in stanza III that he asks to be the ‘singing-masters of my soul’ (line 20) would then be seen as poets and artists as well as wise men.

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W. B. Yeats

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The final image of becoming a golden bird singing is what the speaker says he desires most. He wants to be a work of art (the golden bird) which in turn creates works of art (the songs). Moreover, his songs can speak of the future. Yeats believed a poet could and should also be a prophet. The final image of ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ can be seen as presenting a vision of that possibility. Yeats is not ashamed of his ambition. By making this the first poem in The Tower, the poet is suggesting something about what he is setting out to accomplish in the rest of the book: singing about past, present and even future.

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Form and language

This poem is written in eight-line stanzas rhyming abababcc, a tight form that perhaps reflects the intricate craftsmanship of Byzantium. Notice that every stanza ends with a rhyming couplet, which gives it the sense of something being neatly tied up. Yeats uses the iambic pentameter (five stresses to a line) with his accustomed flexibility and skill. He often uses the caesura and enjambment to carry the energy through to the following line. We looked at one example in lines 10–11: ‘A tattered coat upon a stick, unless / Soul clap its hands and sing’. Can you identify others?

This is in many ways a difficult poem, and the language can be mystifying: ‘perne in a gyre’ (lines 19); ‘the artifice of eternity’ (line 24). There is something abstract and hard to grasp in some of the vocabulary. Nevertheless, Yeats makes the words work hard for him. The ‘sensual music’ mentioned in line 7 can be felt in the rich, hyphenated phrases Yeats has invented – ‘The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas’ (line 4) and in the alliteration of ‘Fish, flesh, or fowl’ (line 5) and ‘begotten, born’ (line 6).

In the second stanza Yeats uses the sounds of the words to carry the bitter resentment of old age that the speaker expresses. The burst of energy that comes with the initial ‘p’ of ‘paltry’ (line 9), which is almost like spitting, is carried over into the next line, where the hard consonants (‘t’ and ‘c’) of ‘A tattered coat upon a stick’ tell us all we need to know about how he feels about what old age has done to him. In contrast, the alliteration of ‘m’ sounds and the half-rhyme of ‘–ents’ / ‘–ence’ in ‘Monuments of its own magnificence’ (line 14) suggest a delighted relish at the prospect of encountering these monuments in Byzantium.

Interpreting the poem

Some readers are disappointed by the poem’s ending: the fact that all the speaker aspires to, in the end, is to be an artificial bird. It lacks life compared with the ‘sensual music’ of the first stanza. Did you have that feeling when you read it? It is a fair reaction.

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It is worth bearing in mind, though, as discussed above, that although the speaker dwells on matters that preoccupied the poet, he is not simply Yeats. The poem is an expression of a state of mind taken to an extreme, and the poem follows the logic it sets up to this rather bizarre destination. But a poem does not have to express its author’s final conclusions. In other poems Yeats (or the speaker) expresses quite different views, some of which we shall be examining.

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Questions In your own words, describe the country depicted in stanza I.

Why are its inhabitants described as ‘Those dying generations’ (line 3)?

What does the country lack, in the view of the speaker?

According to stanza II, what is the only thing an old man can do to rise above his physical decay? Use your own words.

Stanza III is like a prayer. Who is the speaker praying to and what, in your own words, does he want?

In stanza IV the speaker imagines being free to choose his shape. What shape does he choose, and why?

This poem could be seen as an expression of escapism. Can you see any parallels with ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’? Explain.

This poem could be seen as being about poetry. Does this interpretation make sense to you? Explain.

Choose two lines or phrases that you particularly like, and explain why you like them.

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Comment on the repetition of ‘gold’ in stanza IV.

Yeats wrote this poem when he was sixty-one. Might this account for the attitude to life expressed in it? Support your comments by reference to the text.

One of the themes of the poem is the relationship between art and life. Develop this idea. upwo

Which do you find more appealing – the country depicted in stanza I or Byzantium? Discuss in pairs or groups.

Imagine you are a mechanical bird which had once been human and now can only sing. What would you sing? Write in verse or prose, as you wish.

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W. B. Yeats Before you read

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We are closed in, and the key is turned On our uncertainty; somewhere A man is killed, or a house burned, Yet no clear fact to be discerned: Come build in the empty house of the stare.

The bees build in the crevices Of loosening masonry, and there The mother birds bring grubs and flies. My wall is loosening; honey-bees, Come build in the empty house of the stare.

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from Meditations in Time of Civil War: VI The Stare’s Nest by My Window

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The next poem is taken from ro r upwo a sequence of poems called ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’. In class or in groups, discuss what you know about the Irish Civil War.

Glossary Title

A barricade of stone or of wood; Some fourteen days of civil war; Last night they trundled down the road That dead young soldier in his blood: Come build in the empty house of the stare.

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We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart’s grown brutal from the fare; More substance in our enmities Than in our love; O honey-bees, Come build in the empty house of the stare.

Stare: starling

crevices: cracks, narrow openings

masonry: stonework

discerned: discovered, made out

barricade: barrier, usually constructed in a conflict to block opposing forces

civil war: the Irish Civil War (June 1922 – May 1923)

brutal: violent, savage, lacking compassion

fare: diet (in this case, what the heart has been fed on)

substance: weight, significance

our enmities: our hatreds; the things that divide us

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Guidelines

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This poem comes from a sequence of seven poems called ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’, in which Yeats contemplates the terrible events of the world around him from his tower in Co. Galway, Thoor Ballylee. It was published in The Tower (1928). In the sequence Yeats uses his immediate surroundings – the tower and certain items in it – to make symbols (or, to use his term, ‘emblems’) that stand for different aspects of the wider world. In ‘The Stare’s Nest by My Window’ he looks from the window of his study at the signs of the Civil War and also at the wildlife around him.

Commentary

In discussing this poem it feels natural to say ‘Yeats’ rather than ‘the speaker’, as Yeats puts himself and his tower at the centre of this sequence of poems. This poem is called ‘The Stare’s Nest by My Window’; others in the sequence are called ‘My House’, ‘My Table’, ‘My Descendants’, ‘The Road at My Door’.

Stanza 1

Yeats starts by observing the wildlife – the birds and the bees that fly around his tower, the nurturing of the young. The starling’s nest by his window is empty now, and he asks the honey-bees to build their own nest in it. At this stage all seems calm and peaceful; the focus is on the harmony of nature. Only the repetition of ‘loosening’ in the phrase ‘My wall is loosening’ alerts the reader to the sense that all is not well.

Stanza 2

Stanza 3

The opening of stanza 2 takes a sinister turn: ‘We are closed in, and the key is turned’. The image is of being locked up, as if in prison, but Yeats does not write ‘We are locked in’. Presumably they (he and his family there) locked the door to protect themselves from what was going on around them, but once the door is locked the outside world becomes separate and hard to know, so it is their ‘uncertainty’ that is locked in place by the turning of the key. Only rumours are heard – a man killed, a house burned – but there is always that uncertainty to bear: ‘no clear fact to be discerned’.

Th e

The third stanza offers glimpses of what Yeats can discern from his tower. ‘A barricade of stone or of wood’ might refer to the barricades constructed by the warring factions, but it may also refer to the tower, with its stone walls and wooden door, which is his own barricade against the threats from outside. Line 12 makes clear what is going on: ‘civil war’. Then we get an image of something horrifying glimpsed from his window – the ‘dead young soldier in his blood’ being dragged down the road by a nameless ‘they’. The soldier was, presumably, a member of the Free State Army. The refrain of the final line now seems very detached from the action – a plea that some small thing may be made right.

Stanza 4

Yeats now gives his diagnosis of events. The ‘fantasies’ ‘We’ (the Irish people) had ‘fed the heart on’ are presumably the republican notions of ‘blood sacrifice’ and the need for violence to create a free and independent Ireland. Yeats’s views of those ideas have been discussed in relation to ‘Easter 1916’. Now he

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sees what he regards as the consequences of those views – the heart ‘grown brutal’ and ready for further violence. Hatred (‘our enmities’) is proving stronger than love.

The final repetition of the refrain is a desperate prayer. The ‘O’ before ‘honey-bees’ adds an intensity to the plea to ‘build in the empty house of the stare’, and its symbolic meaning is now inescapable.

Themes and imagery

This poem sets the destruction and brutality of a civil war, seen most vividly in stanza 3, against the beauty and productivity of nature seen in stanza 1.

Th e

The central image, which seems to become more intense as the counter-images of brutality build up, is that of the honey-bees building a nest. With this image the poet clings to a hope for the future. It is easy to see the bees as symbolic of a productive society and their honey as The origin of the poem peace and harmony. There is even hope in the fact that because In his volume of Autobiographies, Yeats says the masonry is ‘loosening’, it allows them to build ‘in the crevices’ this poem came from ‘an overmastering desire there (lines 1–2). Now that the stare’s nest is empty, there is a not to grow unhappy or embittered, not to lose space to fill. The speaker pleads for the honey-bees to fill that all sense of the beauty of nature’. space and ‘build’ for a sweeter future. For all the brutality and fear in the poem, the refrain always takes the reader back to hope.

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Form and language

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The poem is written in five-line stanzas rhyming abaab, with the repeated final line like a prayer or incantation running through it. It is written in iambic tetrameters (four stresses per line), with the refrain given a lulling rhythm by the extra unstressed syllables.

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The language varies from the plain description of the first stanza to the authoritative, assured diagnosis of the country’s ills in stanza 4, but simple, blunt statements, often lacking a verb (lines 11–12 and 18–19) are used throughout. Against these is set the insistent incantation of the refrain.

As ever, Yeats enriches the poem with textures of sound and rhythm. Notice, for example, how the patterning of ‘b’, ‘m’ and ‘s’ sounds in the first stanza helps to create a harmonious image.

Questions

Describe, in your own words, the activity Yeats describes in stanza 1.

How would you describe the atmosphere indicated in stanza 2?

What, according to stanza 3, can be ‘discerned’ (line 9) of the Civil War?

What, do you think, were the ‘fantasies’ Yeats mentions in line 16, and why did they make the heart ‘brutal’ (line 17)?

What do the honey-bees represent? And what are the implications of asking them to ‘build in the empty house of the stare’?

What is the atmosphere of the first stanza? How does Yeats create this?

Comment on the use of the word ‘trundled’ in line 13. What does it tell us about Yeats’s viewpoint on what was happening outside his window?

Which is uppermost in your reading of the poem – hope or despair? Explain your answer.

The poem raises questions about the nature of nationalism, particularly in its extreme forms. What are those questions? Are they still relevant today, in Ireland or elsewhere?

Ed upw

How do you see Ireland at the present time, and what would you wish for its future? Discuss in pairs or small groups.

Th e

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W. B. Yeats Before you read

Th e ©

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Glossary

Dear shadows, now you know it all, All the folly of a fight With a common wrong or right. The innocent and the beautiful Have no enemy but time; Arise and bid me strike a match And strike another till time catch; Should the conflagration climb, Run till all the sages know. We the great gazebo built, They convicted us of guilt; Bid me strike a match and blow.

The light of evening, Lissadell, Great windows open to the south, Two girls in silk kimonos, both Beautiful, one a gazelle. But a raving autumn shears Blossom from the summer’s wreath; The older is condemned to death, Pardoned, drags out lonely years Conspiring among the ignorant. I know not what the younger dreams – Some vague Utopia – and she seems, When withered old and skeleton-gaunt, An image of such politics. Many a time I think to seek One or the other out and speak Of that old Georgian mansion, mix Pictures of the mind, recall That table and the talk of youth, Two girls in silk kimonos, both Beautiful, one a gazelle.

In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz

‘In Memory of Eva Gorero r upwo Booth and Con Markiewicz’ is the title of this poem. What would you expect to find in a poem ‘in memory of’ someone? Discuss in pairs or small groups.

Lissadell: early nineteenth-century country house near Sligo, home of the Gore-Booth sisters; Yeats visited the house as a young man

kimonos: Japanese robes

raving: savage, mad

shears: cuts off

wreath: arrangement of flowers and leaves in a ring, often associated with funerals

Utopia: ideal world

gaunt: thin

Georgian mansion: big eighteenth- or nineteenth-century house; here, Lissadell

catch: catch fire

conflagration: huge fire

gazebo: a building with a commanding view and open sides, usually built in the grounds of a large house

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Guidelines Built in the 1830s for the Gore-Booth family in

The subjects of this poem are the Gore-Booth sisters, in whose splendid house, Lissadell, Yeats had stayed in the winter of 1894/5.

Lissadell House

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a neo-classical style, it is an imposing building,

The elder sister, Constance, became a painter, married a Polish count called Casimir Markiewicz, and settled in Dublin. She fought of Magherow peninsula in northern Co. Sligo, it in the 1916 Easter Rising (see ‘Easter 1916’), and was condemned remained in the Gore-Booth family until 2004. See picture opposite. to death for her part in it, though the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment because she was a woman. She was released in 1917 and resumed her political activity. She was the first woman elected to the British parliament, though she did not take her seat. She later became Minister for Labour in the first Dáil Éireann cabinet. She supported the republican cause in the Civil War.

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austere rather than elegant. On the south shore

Yeats was closer as a young man to the younger sister, Eva – the ‘gazelle’ of line 4 – who was, he thought, a promising poet. She moved to England in 1897, but instead of pursuing her poetry she devoted herself to the poor, becoming involved with the trade union movement and the struggle for women’s rights.

Both sisters, then, rejected their privileged Anglo-Irish background out of political conviction. Eva died in 1926, Con in July 1927. This poem was completed in October 1927. It was published as the first poem in Yeats’s collection The Winding Stair (1933).

Commentary Stanza 1

The poem begins by conjuring a beautiful image of the past out of a few elements: the big house, the evening light, the large windows, the beautiful girls in silk kimonos. The sentence, which lasts four lines, has no verb, as if the image exists outside time. The first verb comes at the end of the fifth line, and it is a brutal one: ‘a raving autumn shears / Blossom from the summer’s wreath’. In other words, the passing of time destroys beauty, just as autumn destroys summer’s flowers.

Yeats goes on to describe the ways in which the sisters’ beauty has been destroyed by their political convictions. Con’s achievements are dismissed as ‘Conspiring among the ignorant’; Eva in ‘withered’ old age is described as ‘An image of such politics’, as if that is what her strong socialist views deserved.

Th e

Yeats next imagines looking one of the sisters up to reminisce about that distant time. Notice that he writes as if it is still possible: ‘Many a time I think to seek / One or the other out’. It is as if the sisters were still alive. The stanza ends with a restatement of the first image, as if it has not changed: ‘Two girls in silk kimonos, both / Beautiful, one a gazelle.’

Stanza 2

Now Yeats addresses the ‘shadows’ or ghosts of the two dead sisters. He imagines, confidently, that now they are dead they understand the ‘folly’ of pursuing a political cause, fighting with ‘a common wrong or right’.

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W. B. Yeats

Lissadell House, Co. Sligo.

The ‘innocent and the beautiful’, as they were when they were young, have, he says, ‘no enemy but time’. One of the implications of this statement is that they both made enemies as a result of their political actions. Another implication is that if you could defeat time you could restore innocence and beauty – the moment in Lissadell Yeats contemplates at the beginning of the poem. This thought is behind the following two lines: Yeats summons the sisters to ‘Arise and bid me strike a match / And strike another till time catch’. The idea is that time itself could be burned up and destroyed, and the past restored.

But the image goes beyond that idea. Yeats imagines the ‘conflagration’ climbing, as if it destroyed more than it was meant to. It is hard to say who the ‘sages’ in line 29 are – perhaps the same ones as were standing in ‘God’s holy fire’ in ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. It is as if heaven itself were ablaze.

Th e

The last three lines have been interpreted in many different ways. It is not clear who ‘We’ are, or what the ‘great gazebo’ represents. A gazebo is the sort of thing a big house like Lissadell might have had: a place to sit and gaze at the countryside. It could stand for the Anglo-Irish ‘Ascendancy’ culture, of which the GoreBooth sisters were part. It could represent the cultural nationalism of ‘Romantic Ireland’, which Yeats’s poetry did much to shape. What is certain is that by the poem’s final line, the instruction to ‘Bid me strike a match and blow’, what is at stake has shifted and grown. There are resonances here of the burning down of big Anglo-Irish houses that happened during the Civil War. What is it that the speaker is now suggesting might be set fire to? Time, certainly. A whole culture, possibly. It is hard to know whether he would destroy time in order to restore innocence and beauty and the culture they emerged from, or destroy that innocence and beauty.

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Themes and imagery

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Time is one of the main themes of this poem. Thinking about two dead sisters and an image of them from decades before, ‘both / Beautiful, one a gazelle’ (lines 3–4), leads Yeats to contemplate the mysteries of time, as we have discussed above. Yeats believed that time was merely a construction of the human mind, and in the central image of the second stanza he writes of striking matches to set fire to time, as if it could be destroyed by human action. He considers the possibility that the ‘conflagration’ (line 28) could get out of control. He is ready to commit arson, to strike the match, and ‘blow’ to get the flames going (line 32).

The poem is also concerned with the legacy of the Anglo-Irish ‘Ascendancy’ classes. Yeats was proud of that heritage, and he must have felt special pride and privilege in the surroundings of Lissadell, as it is presented in the opening lines of the poem. It was a civilisation of which Yeats felt himself not only to be part, but also, as a poet, to be one of the creators of its culture and values: ‘We the great gazebo built’ (line 30). It is this culture that the sisters represented in their youth and beauty. However, they later rejected it through their political activism, which Yeats felt had diminished them. If ‘We’ who built the ‘great gazebo’ (such as the one pictured above) are Yeats and men such as the Anglo-Irish patriots he celebrated in ‘September 1913’ – Fitzgerald, Emmet and Tone – it is possible to read ‘They’ in line 31 as the sisters, whose rejection of the values of the society from which they came throws blame on that society. The poem is filled with nostalgia for that civilisation, and can be viewed as marking its disappearance.

Form and language

Th e

The poem is written in iambic tetrameters (four stresses per line) with a rhyming pattern of abbacddc, etc. It is divided into two parts, with the second part developing the ideas of the first part. In this it is like a sonnet, and although it is more than twice the length of a sonnet, its proportions are roughly similar. There is a directness and simplicity to the language which masks the obscurity of meaning in places. Nevertheless, Yeats creates some subtle and telling effects with the words he chooses. The delicate, harmonious atmosphere of the first four lines is conjured with a pattern of light, delicate consonants, especially ‘l’, ‘k’, ‘s’ and ‘n’ sounds (e.g. ‘silk kimonos’, line 3); the name of the house, with its double ‘l’ sounds, is a gift in this respect: ‘Lissadell’, line 1. In contrast with that, the long vowel in the active verb ‘shears’ in line 5 brings that delicate beauty to an abrupt and tangible end.

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W. B. Yeats

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It is worth noting, too, that Yeats’s handling of the language, and of verbs in particular, is central to his development of the theme of time. We have already looked at the way in which the lack of verbs in the image of the sisters in Lissadell in the first four lines means that that image seems suspended in time. In the rest of that stanza Yeats uses the present tense – ‘is condemned’, ‘drags out’, ‘dreams’, ‘seems’ – although he is talking about past events in the lives of women who are dead. Then he declares that ‘Many a time I think to seek / One or the other out’ (lines 14–15), not ‘thought to seek’, as if it is still possible to meet up and talk. He imagines he can ‘recall’ (line 17) that scene, not only in the sense of ‘remember’ it, but also actively ‘call it back to life’. Similarly, in the second stanza he addresses the ‘shadows’ (line 21) directly, as if they are still present despite being dead, and could order him to bring them back to life: ‘Arise and bid me strike a match’ (line 26). They remain, in his and our imaginations, not the old women they became but ‘The innocent and the beautiful’ (line 24). The ordinary workings of time are suspended by Yeats’s subtle use of grammar. Con Markiewicz.

Questions

Explain the image in lines 5 – 6. What is its meaning in the context of the poem?

How does Yeats view the later lives of the two sisters? What words and phrases indicate how he feels?

Why, do you think, does Yeats repeat lines 3–4 at the end of the first stanza?

What is Yeats asking the ‘shadows’ to ‘bid’ him to do in lines 26–27, and why?

In your view, what does the ‘great gazebo’ (line 30) represent?

Is this an optimistic or a pessimistic poem? Give reasons for your answer.

The passing of time and its effects are at the heart of the poem. Show how Yeats treats this idea.

The poem betrays Yeats’s social and political attitudes. How would you describe them, on the evidence it provides?

Comment on Yeats’s handling of sounds and images to create atmosphere and emotion in this poem.

Th e

upwo

If Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz could be conjured back to life and were shown Yeats’s poem, what might they say? Discuss in pairs.

Imagine you are Con or Eva. Write about what you remember of the young poet Yeats when he came to visit you in Lissadell, and about what you think of what he has since become.

Think of a vivid memory of a happy or treasured day. Try to find one image that sums up the day and what it meant to you. Write it down in as few words as possible.

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Swift’s Epitaph

Before you read k

Epitaph: an inscription on a gravestone or plaque in memory of a person who has died

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Glossary Title

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Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast. Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveller; he Served human liberty.

Who was Jonathan Swift? ro r upwo What did he write? Share what you know in class.

Swift: Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin; best known as the author of Gulliver’s Travels indignation: righteous anger lacerate: tear and wound

World-besotted: too attached to worldly things

2 3

Guidelines

This short poem is a loose translation of the Latin epitaph that Jonathan Swift wrote for himself, which can be found carved in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, where Swift was Dean. Swift was also a writer of poetry and satire, in which he used his wit and his anger to attack cruelty, hypocrisy, vanity and stupidity.

Swift had a strong hold on Yeats’s imagination, especially at this point in his life. Yeats wrote about him and other eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish authors in several poems in The Winding Stair (1933), from which this poem comes.

Commentary

Th e

The first three lines tell us Swift has died; he has gone to his ‘rest’ because he can no longer be torn apart by his ‘savage indignation’ at the injustices of the world, and so he is at peace. In the final three lines the poem turns to address its reader. This idea is clearer if you think of a visitor – a tourist, perhaps – finding and reading the epitaph carved in stone in St Patrick’s Cathedral. He or she is the ‘World-besotted traveller’, too attached to things of the material world. The poem/epitaph issues a challenge: ‘Imitate him if you dare’ because he served the cause of ‘human liberty’. One possible way of understanding the poem is to think of Yeats as the traveller, which makes sense because he liked to sit beside Swift’s monument in the cathedral where the epitaph is carved. In this reading, Yeats is, in effect, challenging himself to live up to the example of one of his literary heroes.

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W. B. Yeats

Themes

Yeats, too, was no lover of mass thinking, and although he was involved with the Irish Republican Brotherhood in his early years and worked for the independence of Ireland, he valued his independence of thought just as much, and championed freedom of artistic expression. As one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre, he defended works that had caused public outrage, notably John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World and Seán O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, putting artistic freedom above mass indignation. In both cases he was able to help sway public opinion rather than give way Jonathan Swift. before it.

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What sort of ‘liberty’ (line 6) did Swift serve and Yeats aspire to? In 1930 Yeats considered Swift’s epitaph in his diary, and wrote, ‘the liberty he served was that of intellect, not liberty for the masses but for those who could make liberty visible’. Swift often found himself at odds with the ‘masses’, but he had the courage to think for himself, to trust his own reason and moral sense, and to speak and write what he thought.

Yeats felt strong affinities with Swift and other eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish writers and thinkers. He, like they, was part of a significant minority in Ireland who considered themselves Irish but, being of Protestant stock and from privileged backgrounds, were not always regarded as truly Irish by the Catholic majority.

For Yeats, the loyalty to his roots and his sense of what liberty meant came to a head in a famous speech to the Senate in 1925. He was speaking in a debate on divorce, which was being made illegal in the strongly Catholic post-independence Ireland, a move which he believed was ‘grossly oppressive’ to the significant minority of Protestants who did not share the religious beliefs upon which the law was based. Speaking as part of that minority, he said:

We against whom you have done this thing, are no petty people. We [Irish Protestants] are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Grattan; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created the most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

Th e

These sentiments are reflected in many of Yeats’s poems, including ‘September 1913’ and ‘In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz’.

Form, language and imagery This poem consists of six short lines rhyming ababcc. The rhythm is interesting. It has a solemn weight that is appropriate to an epitaph, given to it by starting each line with a single stress rather than an iambic foot , (unstressed–stressed:  ), e.g. ‘Swíft hăs sáiled ı̆ntó hı̆s rést’ (line 1). Notice, too, how placing ‘he’ at the end of line 5 creates a moment of suspense before the final line, which tells us the most important thing the poem has to say. HIGHER LEVEL 2024 / 469

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The language is dignified, and has a somewhat haughty tone as it addresses, a little scornfully, the ‘World-besotted traveller’ and issues its challenge to ‘Imitate him if you dare’ (lines 4–5). There is a suggestion of personification in the idea of ‘Savage indignation’ being able to ‘lacerate’ Swift’s breast (lines 2–3). The only image is that of death being like a journey which Swift has ‘sailed’ towards his ‘rest’ (line 1).

Swift on government

‘all government without the consent of the

governed is the very definition of slavery’.

Questions

Bust of Jonathan Swift in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

On the evidence of this epitaph, what kind of man was Jonathan Swift?

Who, do you imagine, is the ‘World-besotted traveller’ addressed in line 5 of the poem?

Suggest possible reasons why Yeats included this translation among his own poems in The Winding Stair. Comment on the rhythm of the poem. Why is it appropriate for an epitaph?

What is the effect of the line break after ‘he’ (line 5)?

Th e

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In pairs, compare this epitaph with the one Yeats wrote for himself in ‘Under Ben Bulben’ (page 476).

Write a short epitaph for a well-known person who died during the last twenty years.

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W. B. Yeats Before you read

An Acre of Grass

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Picture and book remain, An acre of green grass For air and exercise, Now strength of body goes; Midnight, an old house Where nothing stirs but a mouse.

My temptation is quiet. Here at life’s end Neither loose imagination, Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.

What do you think will be ro r upwo most important to you when you are old? Discuss in small groups.

Grant me an old man’s frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call;

Th e

A mind Michael Angelo knew That can pierce the clouds, Or inspired by frenzy Shake the dead in their shrouds; Forgotten else by mankind, An old man’s eagle mind.

Glossary 15

Timon and Lear: central characters from two of Shakespeare’s tragedies, both old men and, at times, full of rage

William Blake: William Blake (1757–1827), poet, artist and mystic; as a young man, Yeats edited an edition of his poetry

Michael Angelo: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance; best known for his statue of David and for his paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome

shrouds: cloths in which a dead person is wrapped for burial

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Guidelines

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‘An Acre of Grass’ was written in November 1936, when Yeats was seventy-one. It was first published in Last Poems, after the poet’s death. Its setting is Riversdale, the old farmhouse in Rathfarnham in which Yeats lived from 1932 until his death in 1939.

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Commentary Stanza 1

Yeats takes stock of his situation, as an old man in a house he knows will be his last. His ‘strength of body’ is going, and though he has what he needs – books, pictures, his garden – it feels like a reduced life compared with what has gone before. The singular form of ‘Picture and book’ and the single acre of grass all suggest this. You can imagine him contemplating all this, alone, in his study (Yeats had taken the biggest room in the house in Rathfarnham for his study), listening to the quiet of the night, as lines 5–6 suggest. The atmosphere is calm, but is he happy?

Stanza 2

He could easily relax and take it easy: ‘My temptation is quiet’. But he knows that it would be a mistake because neither ‘loose’ (undirected, unfocused) imagination, nor the ‘mill of the mind’ working on its random thoughts and emotions – ‘its rag and bone’ – can achieve what he wants: to ‘make the truth known’. In other words, taking things easy is not going to get any poems written.

Stanzas 3 and 4

Now he prays for the ‘frenzy’ he needs to continue to create and write true poetry. The word is used twice (lines 13 and 21). It implies passion and inspiration and a bit of madness, and brings to mind the ‘delirium of the brave’ from ‘September 1913’. He says he must ‘remake’ himself and become like the figures he names from Shakespeare or from life. Timon and Lear were passionate old men; both raged against injustice and human vice; Lear goes mad. The two artists he names both kept their creative energy into old age: Blake, a poet, artist and mystic, died at seventy; the great Renaissance artist Michelangelo lived to nearly ninety. He asks for a mind like Michelangelo’s, with the ability to excite the world – to ‘Shake the dead in their shrouds’. He may be forgotten by most of mankind in his quiet farmhouse, but he still has – or aspires to – ‘An old man’s eagle mind’. The image suggests a mind that is far-seeing, sharp-thinking and also, perhaps, savage.

Themes and imagery

Th e

The primary theme of this poem is one that we have encountered in ‘Sailing to Byzantium’: the sense of being diminished physically by old age and the urgent need not to give in to it, but to live all the more fully, with a passionate soul and an inspired mind. The speaker here desires ‘frenzy’ (lines 13 and 21): passion, energy and even a little madness. This is a theme that runs through many of Yeats’s later poems, and forms a stark contrast with the dreamy, twilight atmosphere of many of his early poems, notably ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’.

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W. B. Yeats

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The first half of the poem focuses on the quiet scene in the ‘old house’ (line 5). The only metaphor is of the mind consuming its ‘rag and bone’ (line 11) – a phrase Yeats uses, here and elsewhere, to refer to the disordered mess of thought and emotion we all have inside us. In the second half of the poem he uses vivid, physical images to express his impassioned need to ‘remake’ (line 14) himself: Blake who ‘beat upon the wall’ (line 17) until he got the answer he wanted; the ‘mind Michael Angelo knew’ which can ‘pierce the clouds’ or ‘Shake the dead in their shrouds’ (lines 19–22). Notice the active, physical verbs he uses: ‘beat’, ‘pierce’, ‘Shake’.

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Form and language

The poem is written in six-line stanzas which rhyme abcbdd. In fact, in the first two stanzas the b rhymes are only half-rhymes: ‘grass’/‘goes’; ‘end’/‘mind’. The urgent energy of the third and fourth stanzas is felt all the more strongly thanks to the full rhymes that are used there: ‘remake’/‘Blake’; ‘clouds’ / ‘shrouds’.

The spare descriptive language of the opening, which conjures a daily life and a state of mind in a few simple images, gives way in stanza 3 to a plea or a prayer: ‘Grant me an old man’s frenzy…’. The physical passion of the imagery is reinforced by alliteration in, for example, ‘Myself must I remake’; ‘Blake / Who beat’; ‘Till Truth’; ‘Shake the dead in their shrouds’.

Questions

What impression do you get of the speaker in the first stanza? How would you describe the mood of this stanza?

Explain, in your own words, why ‘quiet’ is a ‘temptation’ (line 7). Why would it be a dangerous thing for the speaker?

What do you learn about what the speaker desires from the real and fictional men he names in the poem?

What do you understand by ‘frenzy’ (lines 13 and 21)? Is it a good thing, in the speaker’s view? Explain.

‘An old man’s eagle mind’ (line 24). What qualities are suggested by this image, do you think?

In stanza 3 the speaker declares ‘Myself must I remake’. For what purpose must he ‘remake’ himself?

Explain the significance of the title. Can you suggest another title?

Th e

Choose two images from the poem that strike you as particularly effective. Explain your choice.

Do you think the speaker deserves our admiration? In pairs or groups, share your thoughts. r

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How do you imagine yourself when you are old? How would you like to be? Write your thoughts as a poem or in prose.

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Before you read k

Politics

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What is your own attitude ro r upwo to politics and politicians? In class or groups, share why you feel this way.

‘In our time the destiny of man presents its meaning in political terms.’

Thomas Mann: (1875–1955), German writer

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Epigraph

Glossary

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here’s a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there’s a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war’s alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!

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Thomas Mann

Guidelines

The first draft of this poem was written in May 1938. This was a time of crisis in Europe. There was a civil war in Spain, a fascist government in Italy, Stalin’s communist dictatorship in Russia, and although Germany is not mentioned in the poem, Adolf Hitler was in power. It was not hard to imagine that the continent was heading towards war, which eventually broke out in September 1939. Politics, therefore, were hard to ignore.

’Politics’ was written in response to an article by the poet Archibald MacLeish in an American journal, the Yale Review. MacLeish had praised Yeats’s ‘public’ language but regretted the fact that he did not devote more attention to political subjects, quoting the words of Thomas Mann that Yeats uses in the epigraph to the poem.

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Commentary

The question the speaker asks in the first four lines is simple: How can he ‘fix’ his ‘attention’ on politics when there’s a beautiful girl standing near him? He allows some self-doubt to enter in lines 5–10, admitting that there are things worth knowing in politics and that there may be truth in what politicians say ‘Of war and war’s alarms’. But the poem’s ending sweeps all that aside with a passionate exclamation: But O that I were young again And held her in my arms! Politics pales to insignificance compared with that prospect.

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W. B. Yeats

Themes and imagery

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The poem’s title proclaims its main theme – or at least half of it. Yeats had long considered politics fundamentally dishonest, defining the job of the professional politician as ‘the manipulation of popular enthusiasm by false news’. It is clear he has his doubts when he says, ‘And maybe what they [the politicians] say is true’ (line 9). Nevertheless, as we have seen in other poems, Yeats often dealt with politics in his poetry, and he engaged, both as poet and later as senator, in the great public debates of his day.

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‘Politics’ is best seen not as a considered statement of Yeats’s priorities, but as a spirited retort to MacLeish’s article in the Yale Review. He does not want to be told what to write, and is not going to put his poetry at the disposal of professional politicians, but he makes his point with a light and humorous touch. He makes no great claims for his insight that he would rather be in the embrace of a young woman than talking about politics. Nevertheless, he is making a real point about the importance of passionate human relationships as opposed to political abstractions – the other half of the theme. This was the last lyric poem Yeats wrote, so it is not surprising that his age is always present in his mind – ‘O that I were young again’ (line 11). The recognition that he would have to be much younger before the girl would be likely to embrace him gives the ending a wistful note of regret to balance the delight he clearly feels at the prospect.

Form and language

There is no poetic imagery in the poem, but there is an essential contrast between the talk of politics, which is all abstract and generalised, and the physical presence of the girl, and especially the imagined image of her in the speaker’s arms.

The twelve lines of the poem divide naturally into three quatrains rhyming abcb, though they are not divided this way on the page. For most of the poem it is hard to make out any regular metre, but lines with seven or eight syllables alternate with shorter lines of five or six. In lines 5–8 the language is casual and conversational, and there is hardly any hint of metre, but in the final four lines of the poem the underlying iambic beat comes strongly through. The thought in the final two lines is expressed in conventional poetic terms, as an exclamation with ‘O’, and with clear accents: ‘But Ó that Í were yoúng agaín’. This adds zest to a thought that is already full of relish, and the delight in the idea is clinched by the final strong rhyme on ‘arms’, bringing the poem to a satisfying close.

Questions

What does the young girl in this poem represent, or is she just a young girl?

Is the speaker in this poem impressed by world affairs and by what people say about them?

How would you describe the tone of this poem? For example, do you think it is: ■ Angry ■ Regretful ■ Light-hearted ■ Joyful? Or what other term would you use?

What, if anything, does this poem have in common with Yeats’s other ‘political’ poems?

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Did you enjoy reading this poem? Discuss in groups or pairs. r

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Before you read

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V Irish poets, learn your trade, Sing whatever is well made, Scorn the sort now growing up All out of shape from toe to top, Their unremembering hearts and heads Base-born products of base beds. Sing the peasantry, and then Hard-riding country gentlemen, The holiness of monks, and after Porter-drinkers’ randy laughter; Sing the lords and ladies gay That were beaten into the clay Through seven heroic centuries; Cast your mind on other days That we in coming days may be Still the indomitable Irishry.

from Under Ben Bulben: V and VI

This poem could be ro r upwo thought of as Yeats’s message to the future. What would be your message to the future?

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VI Under bare Ben Bulben’s head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid. An ancestor was rector there Long years ago; a church stands near, By the road an ancient cross. No marble, no conventional phrase; On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!

Glossary 6

Base-born products of base beds: of low descent; illegitimate

indomitable: stubborn; impossible to defeat

Ben Bulben: mountain that dominates the landscape around Drumcliff, Co. Sligo, where Yeats is buried

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W. B. Yeats

Guidelines

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‘Under Ben Bulben’ is often regarded as Yeats’s poetic last will and testament. In it he reviews his beliefs and artistic principles. He wrote many elegies for other people; this is his own elegy, and includes an epitaph for his gravestone.

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Yeats intended the poem to be the opening one of his final book, to be published after his death. In fact it has often been printed as the last of his Last Poems.

Commentary Section V

Eugenics: the indomitable Irishry

Yeats was interested in theories of eugenics, the science of breeding selectively to produce desirable qualities in a population. He believed, for example, in limiting the size of families among the poor. The science has been tainted by its association with Hitler and Nazi Germany, where it was used to justify the extermination of the Jewish people, but Yeats was not antiSemitic or pro-Nazi. His concern was that the Irish culture and the Irish people were becoming degenerate, owing to the bad influences of English materialism and the small-mindedness of the Irish middle class. This, he thought, was not just a matter of mind and soul, but of body too. He complained in a letter, at the same time that this poem was written, that the new, young

This section presents Yeats’s assessment of contemporary poetry and his advice to current and future poets. He tells them to ‘learn your trade’, and to ‘Sing’ – in other words, write in verse – ‘whatever is well made’. They should be good craftsmen, and avoid the poetry ‘now growing up’ that he describes as ‘out of shape’. Which poets he was thinking of here is open to debate: perhaps the modernist British and American poets; probably the lesser post-independence Irish poets. He accuses them of being ‘unremembering’ in head and heart, ignoring national history and poetic tradition. Then, in a somewhat shocking phrase, he calls them ‘Base-born products of base beds’ – the ‘wrong’ sort of people, one might say. This line alerts us to Yeats’s controversial ideas and fears about the decline of the Irish stock (see sidebar).

actors at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin were The instructions he gives in the remainder of this section are coming out of school with ‘misshapen bodies’. straightforward, if rather old-fashioned. He tells Irish poets to Yeats believed in the virtues of aristocracy, ‘the ‘Sing’ of the peasants and the gentry, the holy (‘monks’) and the best born of the best’. profane (‘Porter-drinkers’), and the ‘lords and ladies gay’ that have come and gone ‘Through seven heroic centuries’ – in other words, the aristocracy of Ireland since the Norman invasion of 1169. He tells them to think of the past (‘Cast your mind on other days’) so that in the future (‘coming days’), Irish poets can help to maintain the ‘indomitable’ Irish traditions. It is noticeable that the modern middle classes are not part of the heritage Yeats wants the poets to celebrate.

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Section VI

In the sixth and final part of ‘Under Ben Bulben’, Yeats speaks as if he is already dead, describing his grave and the epitaph on the gravestone. He gives no instructions but states bare facts. The location in Sligo, ‘Under bare Ben Bulben’s head’, was where he felt he belonged, a place he had known as a child, and in Drumcliff he had family roots, as he tells us: ‘An ancestor was rector there / Long years ago’. Yeats emphasises the depth of history and local connection: the ancient cross, the local limestone. It is a scene that is fitting, complete, almost self-contained.

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The epitaph that concludes the poem helps to make this a self-contained scene. Instead of the conventional instruction for the passer-by to stop and consider the dead person or his/her own mortality, Yeats tells the ‘Horseman’ to ‘pass by’; not to linger but to keep going. The instruction to ‘Cast a cold eye / On life, on death’ is reminiscent of the ‘Irish Airman’ who sees his fate in the same cold light: ‘In balance with this life, this death’.

Yeats is buried in Drumcliff Churchyard, Co. Sligo.

Themes and imagery

These two sections of ‘Under Ben Bulben’ share a concern with Irish heritage – in V, historic and cultural; in VI, of family and place. These might be seen as what Yeats calls, in section II of the poem, man’s ‘two eternities, / That of race and that of soul’.

In section V Yeats gives instructions meant to help poets shape Irish culture and the Irish people, a theme that runs through his poetry from the beginning. The imagery is of the different Irish people Yeats wants to celebrate in song. Notice that the ‘lords and ladies’ are ‘beaten into the clay’ over the centuries (lines 11–13), implying not just that they are dead but also that they have become part of Irish soil – of Ireland itself.

In section VI the imagery is simply that of the scene described, and the main impression given is of the rightness of this burial, rooted in family history and a connection with the place. The death is seen as a proper end to the life, just as in the epitaph the reader is told to ‘Cast a cold eye’ equally on life and death.

Form and language

The poem is written in rhyming couplets, in a metre which is basically iambic but which is often missing the first, unstressed syllable, so that there are seven syllables rather than eight: ‘Írish póets, léarn your tráde’ (line 1). This is the metre in which ‘Swift’s Epitaph’ is written. It creates an Drumcliff insistent, quite heavy rhythm. Yeats uses this to lay down his law If you visit Drumcliff today you can see it all in section V, using the self-assured style of confident statement as Yeats describes: churchyard, simple grave, that we have seen in, for example, ‘The Second Coming’. church, cross, the stone with Yeats’s epitaph,

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with the bare steep slopes of Ben Bulben in the

background. Yeats commented in a letter that

his description of his grave in a remote Irish village ‘will bind my heirs thank God. I write my poems for the Irish people but I am damned if

I will have them at my funeral’. He did not want a big funeral in Dublin, and knew that his poem would act as a set of instructions. Although he died in the south of France in 1939, his bones were reburied in Drumcliff Churchyard after the Second World War.

At the start of section VI, Yeats uses the insistent rhythm along with alliteration to create a drum-like beat: ‘Únder báre Ben Búlben’s héad’. The fact that the churchyard is called ‘Drumcliff’ underlines the effect. The epitaph that ends the poem consists of three lines with four syllables in each. Apart from ‘Horseman’, every word is a single syllable. The effect is weighty and considered.

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W. B. Yeats

Questions What attitude does Yeats show to contemporary poets in section V?

What kind of Irish poetry would he like to see in the future?

From what we see in section V, what elements of Irish life and culture does Yeats value?

Does Yeats see himself as an Irish patriot?

How would you describe the tone of section V?

In section VI Yeats describes the setting in which he wants to be buried. What elements of it are important to him, and why?

What does the three-line epitaph at the end tell us about Yeats?

Comment on some of the poetic effects Yeats achieves in this poem through rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, etc.

Yeats originally included another line at the start of the epitaph: ‘Draw rein, draw breath’. This would have completed the quatrain and added another rhyme. Can you suggest any reasons why he decided to leave it out of the final version?

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Do you like Yeats’s plan for his burial? In groups, imagine a better one, for him or for an important public figure of your choosing.

■

Balances opposing ideas in his poetry Balance of passion and detachment Balance of the personal and political in his poetry Opposition between the body and the spirit Opposition and conflict are central to his vision Increasingly valued his heritage as a member of the Anglo-Irish community

■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT W. B. YEATS

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■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Conscious of his role as a poet in shaping modern Ireland Early poetry rich in adjectives and word music Poetic style and language become more direct and simple Creates his own symbolism and mythology Best work as a poet came relatively late Wrote with sustained vigour into old age

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Exam-Preparation Questions ‘Yeats uses evocative language to create poetry that includes both personal reflection and public commentary.’ Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to both the themes and language found in the poetry of W. B. Yeats on your course.

‘Yeats conveys his meanings through images and symbols to a greater extent than through statement and argument.’ Would you agree? Give reasons for your answer.

What do W. B. Yeats’s poems, taken as a whole, tell you about the man who wrote them?

Outline the qualities of W. B. Yeats’s poetry you admire or dislike. You might discuss Yeats’s ideas, his images, his descriptive power, his rhetoric, his patriotism, his use of language and his mastery of poetic technique.

‘Yeats’s poems attempt to recreate Ireland and Irishness in a changing world.’ Discuss the ways in which W. B. Yeats’s poetry responds to and tries to shape the political events of his time.

‘Yeats was given the Nobel Prize in 1923 for the poetry he had then written, but his best poetry was written after he won the prize.’ Do you agree with this assessment of W. B. Yeats’s work? Give reasons for your answer.

‘Much of the poetry of W. B. Yeats is based on contrast.’ Discuss this comment with reference to, and quotation from, some of the poems by Yeats on your course.

‘The past, in one form or another, is often central to Yeats’s poems.’ Does W. B. Yeats often make the past seem better than the present? If so, why is this, and what does it tell you about Yeats as man and poet? Answer with close reference to the poems of Yeats on your course.

Write an introduction to the poetry of W. B. Yeats for someone new to his verse. In your answer you should discuss: ■ The themes of his poetry ■ His use of language and your response to it ■ His use of form and poetic technique.

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W. B. Yeats is often considered the greatest of all Irish poets. Why is this, do you think? Is it a fair judgement? You might consider: ■ The way in which his poetry is both very personal and very public ■ His skilful use of the sounds and rhythms of language ■ His use of symbols ■ The variety of subjects with which he deals ■ The obscurity of some of his poetry ■ The development of his poetry over many decades.

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You might also consider some of these subjects: ■ His use of symbols ■ The way in which he uses his personal life in his poems ■ His response to public events ■ The development and variety of his poetry.

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W. B. Yeats

Sample Essay

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‘Yeats’s poetry is driven by a tension between the real world in which he lives and an ideal world that he imagines.’ Write a response to the poetry of W. B. Yeats in the light of this statement, supporting your points with suitable reference to the poems on your course. It is certainly true that Yeats’s poetry sometimes imagines worlds that contrast with the everyday world, and that the emotional power of the poems often results from the tension between those worlds. As a poet, Yeats lived and worked through his imagination, but the worlds his imagination drew him to changed over the course of his life as a poet. I will start with his early poetry.

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Answer addresses the

question immediately

‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ is the earliest of the poems we have studied, and is the clearest and simplest example of Yeats imagining an ideal world. The tension here is using the terms of the between the ‘pavements grey’ of London, where Yeats was living when he wrote the question poem, and the imagined life on an island in a lake in County Sligo. He declares that Short quotations used he ‘will arise and go now’, but it is the expression of a strong urge rather than a firm throughout the essay intention. The ideal world that Yeats imagines here is a hermit’s solitary Keeps the terms of the question in mind, and retreat – a simple, pastoral life in harmony with nature, one that is self-sufficient: defines them as they ‘Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee’. The ideal world is, above apply to this poem all, a place of escape from the big city, a place of rest where ‘peace comes dropping slow’. Though the island exists, this is really an imagined place. However, Yeats’s poem pictures it so vividly, with its glimmering light and the sounds of bees (‘bee-loud glade’), crickets and the ‘lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore’, that it seems more real than London. The rich patterns of word music – alliteration, assonance, rhyme and rhythm – all combine to conjure up the peace and beauty of this world for which the poet yearns, so that the reader, like the Paragraph concludes with a strong image poet, hears its sounds ‘in the deep heart’s core’. Nowhere else in the poems we have studied do we find such a straightforward urge to escape to an idealised world.

Introduces the first

poem to be discussed,

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Introduces second In ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ there is a more complex yearning for a different sort of poem using the terms ideal world. Like Innisfree, the Byzantium Yeats depicts is an idealised place based of the question on a real one. Innisfree is rural and close to nature, whereas Byzantium is urban and highly artificial. In this poem the tension is between the ‘country’ of the first stanza, which is caught up in the cycle of life and death, and Byzantium in the second half of the poem, which is a place of art and artifice, the soul rather than the body. In this poem, however, the reality which the speaker wants to escape has less to do with the teeming life of the first stanza Continues to use short than with the fact that he is old – ‘a dying animal’. Driven by old age and impending quotations death, he yearns for a kind of immortality that he believes can be found in Byzantium. That immortality is the permanence of art, the ‘artifice of eternity’, and his image for it is the artificial bird made of ‘hammered gold and gold enamelling’ that is ‘set upon a golden bough to sing’. It is a strange sort of ideal world, and in many ways the ‘sensual music’ of the country Discussion of second poem ends with a described in the first stanza is much more attractive, but the power of the poem return to the terms of certainly comes from the tension between the two worlds. the question

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Other poems also contain a tension between the poet’s current reality and an idealised element of some kind. In ‘Wild Swans at Coole’, the poet’s awareness of his age and the passing of time is the emotional reality that drives his imagination to see the swans as symbols not Discussion of third poem concludes just of vigour and passion, but of eternal youth: ‘Their hearts have not grown old’. by addressing the The central contrast is between the speaker’s sadness and loneliness – ‘my heart is terms of the question, sore’ – and the swans’ beauty, strength and loving companionship – ‘lover by lover’. and introduces a qualification In this poem, however, although the speaker idealised the swans, he does not really imagine an ‘ideal world’.

The passing of time is also a central theme of ‘In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz’. There, the ideal world is in the past, merely a memory. That memory is a theme that links of the two sisters at Lissadell, ‘both / Beautiful, one a gazelle’, who stand for a whole it to the previous Anglo-Irish culture whose values Yeats admired. The real world is the one in which paragraph the sisters grew old and lonely and died. The past cannot be brought back to life, of course, but the daring power of the poem comes from the idea that such a thing might happen. It might be possible to destroy time by setting fire to it: ‘bid me strike a match / And strike another till time catch’. Yeats’s yearning for the ‘innocent and the beautiful’ is channelled into this wish to abolish time and restore the past. In one sense, Yeats succeeds. The image with which the poem opens contains no verbs, and therefore seems to hang outside time. Yeats writes as if it is Discussion of theme leads into discussion still possible to see the sisters again: ‘Many a time I think to seek / One or the other of Yeats’s technique out’. The recurrence of the opening image at the end of the first stanza consequently prepares the reader for the idea of destroying time which dominates the second stanza. At the end of the poem Yeats is ready to begin the ‘conflagration’: ‘Bid me strike a match Striking phrase to end and blow’. It is as if the power of his imagination and his desire were able to change the paragraph reality. A further poem is

introduced mentioning

While continuing to

address the question,

Discussion of poem

The tension between an idealised past and the realities of the present is also central the particular focus to ‘September 1913’, but here the context is public and political. The present small- of this paragraph is minded middle classes who ‘fumble in a greasy till’ are set against the self-sacrificing defined heroes of the past. The poem is full of bitterness and irony, and though Yeats proclaims that ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone’, as if that was a good thing, the poem calls our attention to what is missing in the modern world, and hence for the need for the idealism of the past. The imagined ideal world features much less in Yeats’s later poetry. In ‘An Acre of Grass’, for example, the real world in which he lives, in a smaller house as an old of the question man, is set against his hopes for the future: ‘Grant me an old man’s frenzy’. He is not imagining an ideal world or an idealised past, but instead he is expressing a desire to fight against the limitations that his real-world existence imposes on him. His mind and imagination are still in tension with his everyday reality, but they are not drawn to a dreamy idealism but to an urgent need to reinvent and reinvigorate himself: ‘Myself must I remake’. which suggests a

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challenge to the terms

Final paragraph summarises the arguments and suggests a

qualification to the statement in the question

In conclusion, although the pull of an ideal world is particularly strong in his earlier poems, there is no single ideal world that features throughout Yeats’s poetry. What can be said is that the possibilities created by his imagination are always in tension with the real world in which he lives. Yeats was always striving to make a reality rather than just to describe one. It is one of the most remarkable things about Yeats that his poetic imagination fought on with such passion until the end of his life.

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W. B. Yeats

ESSAY CHECKLIST Purpose

Yes 4

No 8

Has the candidate understood the task?

Has the candidate responded to it in a thoughtful manner?

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Has the candidate answered the question? Comment: Has the candidate made convincing arguments?

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Coherence

Has the candidate linked ideas? Does the essay have a sense of unity?

Language

Is the essay written in an appropriate register?

Are ideas expressed in a clear way?

Is the use of language accurate? Are all words spelled correctly?

Mechanics

Is the writing fluent? Comment:

Comment:

Does the punctuation help the reader?

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Comment:

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b. 1934

Fleur Adcock

O R D I N A RY L E V E L

485

Advice to a Discarded Lover

Biography

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Fleur Adcock is a New Zealand poet with English and Irish ancestry. She was born in Auckland but spent much of her childhood, including the war years, in England. The family returned to New Zealand in 1947, where her father was a university lecturer in psychology and her mother, Irene, was a poet. Adcock studied and taught Classics at university. She met and married the poet Alistair Campbell in 1952. The couple had two sons before they divorced in 1958. Adcock married for a second time in 1962, but this marriage was short-lived and she emigrated to England with her younger son in 1963 (the older boy stayed with his father in New Zealand). Adcock published her first collection in 1964. She has won many awards and prizes and received an OBE in 1996 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry in 2006. Her poems often deal with the relationship between men and women or explore family connections. Adcock’s work is noted for its dark humour and psychological insights. In addition to her own writing, she is an editor and translator.

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Fleur Adcock

Advice to a Discarded Lover

Before you read G

As a group, think about the ro r upwo word ‘discarded’ and what it means. What kind of things are usually discarded? Why are things discarded? Revisit your discussion when you have read the poem.

Returning later, though, you will see A shape of clean bone, a few feathers, An inoffensive symbol of what Once lived. Nothing to make you shudder.

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It is not accidental. In you I see maggots close to the surface. You are eaten up by self-pity, Crawling with unlovable pathos.

It is clear then. But perhaps you find The analogy I have chosen For our dead affair rather gruesome – Too unpleasant a comparison.

Glossary Title

Discarded: thrown aside; unwanted

scavengers: animals that feed on the dead and rotting flesh of other animals

analogy: comparison highlighting the similarities between things that may not usually be associated with each other

gruesome: horrible; disgusting; causing the flesh to creep

pathos: here, something pitiful or contemptible

for charity: to think favourably (of you) and act kindly (towards you)

If I were to touch you I should feel Against my fingers fat, moist worm-skin. Do not ask me for charity now: Go away until your bones are clean.

Pity is for the moment of death, And the moments after. It changes When decay comes, with the creeping stench And the wriggling, munching scavengers.

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Think, now: if you have found a dead bird, Not only dead, not only fallen, But full of maggots: what do you feel – More pity or more revulsion?

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Guidelines

Adcock was a member of a London-based, male-dominated group of poets in the 1960s known as ‘The Group’. It was a time when it was difficult for women poets to have their work recognised as being of equal value to that of their male counterparts. The Group valued clarity of meaning, which is a quality reflected in this poem. The Group also linked poetry to speech, and favoured poems that took the form of dramatic monologues. Adcock read ‘Advice to a Discarded Lover’ at a meeting of The Group. It later appeared in Tigers (1967), her first collection to be published in England.

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Commentary Title

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The words ‘Advice’ and ‘Discarded’ establish the relationship between the former lovers. The speaker holds the power.

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Stanza 1

The poem begins with an imperative, ‘Think’, which suggests that the addressee, the ‘you’ in the poem, is not thinking. The tone is reminiscent of an adult admonishing a child, or a teacher addressing a student who has given a wrong answer. The language is clear, simple and logical. It is the kind of language used in demonstrating a point, but the example given is startling: ‘a dead bird, / Not only dead, not only fallen, / But full of maggots’. The reader, unsure where the speaker is going with the argument, is intrigued at this point. The speaker then asks a rhetorical question: ‘what do you feel – / More pity or more revulsion?’ Again, the matter-of-fact tone is striking. It is similar to the way a scientist might make observations on an experiment.

Stanza 2

Stanza 3

Although a rhetorical question does not need answering, the speaker answers her own question by elaborating on the difference between pity and revulsion. Pity is tied ‘to the moment of death’ and to the period before the process of decay has begun, when the bird is still close to life. Pity changes to revulsion when the process of decay takes over, with its ‘creeping stench’ and ‘wriggling, munching scavengers’ – a vivid description of the action of maggots in breaking down a dead body. The reader is still not clear how the imagery of decay and the distinction between pity and revulsion relate to the discarded lover or constitute advice.

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The speaker describes the reaction of an observer after the process of decay has been completed. Her objective, detached tone is striking as she explains how a ‘clean’ carcass is ‘inoffensive’ in a way that a rotting body is not. She suggests that when ‘you’ return and see nothing more than ‘clean bone’ and ‘a few feathers’, you no longer find the dead bird revulsive. It has become an ‘inoffensive symbol of what / Once lived’. The revulsion passes once the process of decay is allowed to continue to its end.

Stanza 4

The speaker sets out to bring her argument to a conclusion, drawing out the lesson of her example in the three preceding stanzas: ‘It is clear then.’ What she claims to have established is the difference between pity and revulsion. She adopts the tone of a schoolteacher making an obvious point to a child, helping the child to think in a rational way. As the stanza continues, the reader realises, with surprise, that the ‘you’ is the speaker’s former lover, and the dead bird was an analogy for their ‘dead affair’. She seems to make an allowance for the former lover’s feelings when she wonders if he finds the analogy ‘rather gruesome’ and ‘Too unpleasant’.

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Fleur Adcock However, this apparent concern is neutralised by the reference to ‘our dead affair’, which seems cold and detached in the extreme.

Stanza 5

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Stanza 5 brings the poem in a new direction. The speaker tells her former lover that the comparison between the dead bird and their relationship ‘is not accidental’. The tone is icy. The suggestion is that the whole poem is deliberate and carefully considered; it has not been written in a moment of passion. The speaker speaks directly to the former lover about the way she now regards him. What she says is unapologetic and brutal: ‘In you / I see maggots close to the surface.’ She elaborates on this perception with ‘You are eaten up by selfpity, / Crawling with unlovable pathos.’ Now the rotting and decaying dead bird becomes a symbol for her former lover. The distinction she has carefully set up between pity and revulsion is used to illustrate her current feelings for the discarded lover of the title.

Stanza 6

Themes and imagery

The opening lines of the final stanza state explicitly what was implied in the previous one. Were she to touch her former lover, she would feel revulsion, in the same way she might feel revulsion touching a dead bird full of worms. The last two lines dismiss the discarded lover. She tells him not to ask for charity now (because she finds him too revulsive). Instead, she instructs him to ‘Go away Catullus until your bones are clean’, when she will be able to face him as Catullus, a celebrated Roman poet, wrote of ‘an inoffensive symbol’ (line 11) of their former love. turbulent love affairs, his devotion to family and

friends and his contempt for his enemies. His poetry combines his strong and often scathing feelings with his wit and intelligence. Although

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written over two thousand years ago, it seems The title encapsulates the themes of the poem. It establishes the very modern. As a Classics student, Adcock balance of power in the relationship. The lover has been discarded, was familiar with the poetry of Catullus. Her thrown away, and the speaker is about to offer the unwanted lover poem is also remarkably direct – she does not advice on how to behave. The rest of the poem confirms what hold back from expressing her feelings – and it is also carefully crafted and clever. Catullus’s the title suggests – the speaker is offering no hope or comfort to most famous poem is one written to mark the the discarded lover. The poem challenges the stereotype (see death of his beloved’s pet sparrow. That poem Glossary page 603) of the woman as the ‘weaker sex’ and the may have inspired the dead bird imagery in one who would be distraught and emotional at the end of Adcock’s poem. a relationship. (Remember this poem was written in the 1960s.) The poet clearly delights in the strength and power of the speaker of the poem. It is a mocking look at romantic love, delivered with a detached clarity that borders on the cruel. It is a break-up poem that is utterly unsentimental and anti-romantic.

The imagery of the dead bird and the process of its decay and decomposition is central to the poem. It is far removed from the imagery of birds found in conventional love poetry. Adcock’s ability to subvert the conventional love poem is part of the pleasure and wit of this poem. It is both shocking and amusing. The idea that lovers are things to be discarded or thrown away is also at odds with the conventional view of love and being happy ever after. The main emotion invoked in the poem – revulsion – is not one of the usual emotions associated with a break-up, such as hurt, distress or loss. The speaker feels no loss and appears to despise her former lover for his weakness. It is hard not to admire the strong voice and persona that emerge from the poem. The speaker may be heartless and cruel, but she is darkly humorous and powerful.

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Form and language

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The style of the poem is conversational, but it is carefully controlled. Because the poem is conversational, it does not follow a strict metre. However, it does follow a strict syllable count, as each line is composed of nine syllables. The final words in the second and fourth lines of each stanza have a rhyming echo. While there is enjambment within each stanza, which adds to the sense of a speaking voice, all stanzas end with a full stop so that each individual stanza forms a complete unit. The argument of the poem is clear, economical and rational. The stanza form adds to the sense of control and deliberation.

Where Adcock enjoys herself is in the choice and sound of individual words and phrases. Notice how she uses stressed syllables, repetition and ‘d’, ‘f’ and ‘l’ sounds, as well as the delicious sounding ‘maggots’ in stanza 1, to great effect:

Think, now: if you have found a dead bird, Not only dead, not only fallen, But full of maggots: what do you feel – More pity or more revulsion?

She delights in full-sounding, expressive words to convey disgust, as in ‘the wriggling, munching scavengers’ (line 8) or ‘I should feel / Against my fingers fat, moist worm-skin’ (lines 21–22). It is a poem to be read aloud and savoured.

Understanding the poem

Exam-Style Questions

What kind of poem do you expect to follow from the title?

What distinction does the speaker make between pity and revulsion in the first two stanzas of the poem?

Do you find the example of the dead bird to be effective in making the speaker’s point? Explain your answer.

According to the speaker in stanza 3, what follows after revulsion in the example she gives?

What was your reaction when you realised that the speaker was using the example of the dead bird to refer to a former love affair and former lover? If you were the discarded lover, would you find the example of the dead bird a gruesome or a helpful comparison to describe your former relationship? Give reasons for your answer.

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Describe the tone of the speaker in stanzas 5 and 6 as she addresses her former lover.

Select a favourite line or image from the poem and say why you chose it.

Select an example of the striking use of language in the poem. Why is it striking?

What aspect of the poem most surprised you?

Choose three words to describe the speaker of the poem. Explain your choices.

Summarise in your own words the advice the speaker gives to her former lover.

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Fleur Adcock Thinking about the poem How would you feel if you were the ‘you’ addressed in this poem?

Which of these statements is closest to your response to the poem? ■ This is an inventive and clever poem. ■ This is an amusing poem. ■ This is a cruel poem. Explain your choice.

‘Whatever feelings the speaker may have had for her “discarded lover”, they have been replaced by mockery and a desire to humiliate.’ Discuss this assessment of the poem.

‘Advice to a Discarded Lover’ is a carefully crafted poem. Choose three examples from the poem that support this point of view. Justify your choices.

Which of the following adjectives best describes the tone of the poem: abusive; honest; insulting; humorous; harsh; controlled? Explain your answer.

Adcock has written: ‘I read my work aloud as it develops and try to remove anything that is clumsy or unacceptable to the ear.’ Has she succeeded in doing this in ‘Advice to a Discarded Lover’? Explain your answer.

Adcock has stated that what she values in a poem is ‘the odd or the unexpected … the kind of detail which throws new and startling light … often … related to another quality I admire: wit’. In what ways does this statement apply to ‘Advice to a Discarded Lover’?

Would you consider this a successful break-up poem? Explain your answer.

The poem has been described as an anti-romantic poem. Do you agree? Explain your answer.

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Imagining

Imagine you are the discarded lover of the title. Write a letter or poem in answer to Adcock’s poem. Choose the tone and style that you think are appropriate.

Choose ten words or phrases from the poem that appeal to you. Write a piece of creative prose or a short poem inspired by your selection.

Write a piece, real or imagined, in which you describe your reaction to finding a dead bird or animal.

Suggest a song to be included in a list of the best break-up songs. Explain your choice.

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SNAPSHOT

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

A break-up poem Conversational Rational Brutally honest Carefully constructed

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Syllabic poetry

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Anti-romantic Strong persona Striking imagery Delights in sounds of words Darkly humorous

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1928–2014

Maya Angelou

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Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield

(When Great Trees Fall)

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Biography

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Maya Angelou lived an extraordinary life. She was a dancer, actor, singer, songwriter, theatre director, filmmaker, producer for stage, film and television, college professor, historian and writer. She was born into poverty in the USA, suffered trauma as a child, became a mother while still a teenager and went on to be one of the most popular and decorated African-American writers of all time. Her first autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), brought her international acclaim. She was friends with the leading African-American artists and writers of her generation. In the 1960s, she worked with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in the Civil Rights Movement. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. She continued working right up to her death in 2014.

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Maya Angelou X Before you read

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When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety.

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Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield (When Great Trees Fall)

Have a class discussion on the subject of ‘great souls’, individuals whose death would be mourned by all who knew them. What ro r upwo qualities do ‘great souls’ have that inspire universal admiration? Do you know someone whom you consider a ‘great soul’?

When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear.

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When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened.

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Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves.

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And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.

Glossary

Ailey: Alvin Ailey (1931–1989), African-American dancer and choreographer who founded the American Dance Theatre (Angelou trained as a professional dancer and formed a dance partnership with Ailey); he died of an AIDS-related illness

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Baldwin: James Baldwin (1924–1987), African-American writer at the centre of a cultural circle that included Angelou (he encouraged her to write an autobiography and she described him as her ‘friend and brother’); he died of stomach cancer

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Floyd: Samuel Clemens Floyd III, African-American professor of English (Angelou credited him with encouraging her to write and described him as among her closest male friends); he died after contracting HIV

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Killens: John Oliver Killens (1916–1987), African-American writer and founder of the Harlem Writers’ Guild (in the late 1950s, he encouraged Angelou to concentrate on her writing, move to New York and join the guild); he died of cancer

Title

Mayfield: Julian Mayfield (1928–1984), African-American actor, writer, director, filmmaker and civil rights activist (he and Angelou were part of a group of American intellectuals who lived in Ghana in the early 1960s); he died of a heart attack

6 9 11 12

hunker: crouch down for shelter or safety

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lumber: move in a slow and clumsy way recoil: shrink back in fear eroded: destroyed; gnawed; worn souls: here, inspiring individuals who possessed nobility of spirit sterile: lacking nutrients; barren

gnaws: here, worries constantly over something, unable to let it go

wizened: shrivelled; dried up

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radiance: glowing with intelligence, joy and knowledge

unutterable: incapable of being expressed in words

irregularly: not occurring at expected intervals; not following a set pattern

electric: charged (with emotion?)

vibration: gentle movement; tingling sensation

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Maya Angelou X

Guidelines

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The poem was published in Angelou’s last individual volume of poetry, I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), when she was sixty-two years of age. It is an elegy for the loss of five important African-American artists/intellectuals who died in the middle of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Angelou knew each of them, and they were all important figures in her life. Their deaths, coming so close together, were a huge blow to her personally and to the African-American community and American cultural and artistic life in general. In an anthology to remember artists struck down by AIDS, Angelou wrote:

The artists, heartbreakingly numerous, who have died of AIDS have left us, the general community, bereaved and wanting. Grief-stricken at their absence and wanting to relive the time we had together, we wander, mull, and meditate over what we could have done to make their passing easier. Among my personal losses I must list Samuel C. Floyd, for whom I wrote [this] poem.

I credit Samuel Floyd for encouraging me to write I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. (…) Sam Floyd told me I could write better than most people and he knew he was right because he had read everything in English. (…) Sam’s absence introduces a large, lifeless gray area into my life. He was among the closest of my male friends. (…)

Each time I hear of a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger who has died from AIDS, I feel as if I am a pedestrian on the streets and a cortege is passing. I, out of love for my friend, am inspired by the loss that other families and friends are experiencing, stop dead still, put my hand on my heart as if watching a flag being raised, and I think of my friend. I experience the loss within a loss, within a loss and I know that my life will never be the same and the world will never right itself again.

Commentary

Title

Since the poem was first published in 1990, it has popularly been referred to as ‘When Great Trees Fall’. However, this is not the title. In the Collected Poems (1994), Angelou used her original title, ‘Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield’, and did so again for the anthology Loss Within Loss (2001), in which she wrote about the poem. Despite this, the poem is frequently anthologised under the title ‘When Great Trees Fall’. In using that title, editors remove the personal context of the poem, as well as the names of the artists whose deaths Angelou wished to mourn.

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Stanza 1

The speaker describes with authority and certainty what happens when great trees fall. The world of nature is shaken. The effect is felt far away. Even ‘rocks on distant hills’ feel the impact. They ‘shudder’. The lion and the elephant, two of the most powerful animals, seek shelter. Note the onomatopoeic qualities of the three strong verbs used to describe the impact of the great trees falling: ‘shudder’, ‘hunker’ and ‘lumber’. The stanza suggests the exalted place of great trees in the natural world.

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Stanza 2

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The speaker describes the impact in forests when great trees fall. The forests fall into silence as ‘small things’ shrink back, their senses worn or torn ‘beyond fear’. Interestingly, the impact is not just physical. The speaker highlights the way in which the fall of great trees affects the nervous system of small creatures. The verbs ‘recoil’ and ‘eroded’ suggest that the small creatures retreat into themselves, with nerves frayed by the impact of the fall.

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Stanza 3

There is a change of perspective as the speaker next describes the effect in the human world when great souls die. The use of the word ‘souls’ is interesting. It suggests inspirational individuals. However, ‘souls’ is also the word commonly used to refer to the essential or spiritual part of human beings, which many consider immortal. So, the statement ‘when great souls die’ is a striking one. This stanza describes the profound impact of death on those who remain. There are suggestions of loss, regret and self-recrimination. The verb ‘gnaws’ captures the distress in the immediate aftermath of a death and the inability to let go of any feelings of guilt in relation to the dead person.

Stanza 3 also brings a change from descriptions of external events to those of personal experience, ‘Our’ experience. The speaker takes on the role of spokesperson for all those who have lost loved ones. The sense of a collective, universal experience is emphasised. The collective pronouns ‘we, ‘us’ and ‘our’ are repeated throughout the poem from line 13 onwards. According to the speaker, the very air around us is changed, robbed of its vital ingredients, made ‘light, rare, sterile’ by our loss. It is as if the death of great souls robs the air of the oxygen we need to survive. Our breathing changes. We breathe ‘briefly’. Our perception is altered. For a brief time, we see and understand with a clarity that is distressing. Our memories are sharpened. We examine and worry over the kind words we did not say to our loved ones, the ‘promised walks / never taken’. Although this stanza has a universal quality, the reference to ‘promised walks’ reads like a personal regret.

Stanza 4

The speaker continues to describe the profound effect upon us of the death of great souls, suggesting that we lose hold of ‘our reality’ because it is bound so closely to the person we have lost. It is as if, in losing them, we lose our bearings. Our souls become smaller, shrivelled, because we lack the spiritual nurture provided by the loved one, the great soul. Our minds, too, are diminished because they are no longer formed and informed by the radiant intelligence of the loved one. The speaker sums up the state we are thrown into by suggesting we are reduced to a primitive stage of development, incapable of finding words, existing in ‘dark, cold / caves’. It is a striking image.

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Stanza 5

The final stanza focuses on peace, restoration and comfort. The speaker is, as elsewhere in the poem, definitive: ‘after a period peace blooms’. This, she states, will happen slowly and not according to any set pattern. But it is clear that it will happen. The spaces or voids created by the death of a loved one become filled with something that resembles a charged but soothing vibration. It is as if the air, which felt sterile after the death of the loved one, is now wrapping us in comfort, massaging us. It is as if we are coming back to life, emerging from the dark cave. Our senses are restored, but they will never be the same. They seem to speak softly to us, reminding us that the great soul existed. We remind ourselves of this fact. We draw strength from this fact. If they existed, we can live: ‘We can be.’ Not only can we exist, but we can ‘be / better’.

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Maya Angelou X

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The repetition in the final three lines of the poem serves as a statement of faith, belief and determination. As we emerge from the period of numbing loss, we who mourn affirm the life of our loved one and, drawing strength from their life, commit to living and being better on account of the fact that the great soul existed. (Is this because we who grieve feel bound to live better lives to honour the lives of great souls? Is the very fact that great souls existed a source of inspiration to us?) The repetition of ‘be’ in the penultimate line has an imperative quality, as if we are calling out to ourselves and urging ourselves to live in honour of the great souls. Interestingly, while the final stanza has a feeling of looking forward, the poem ends with a verb in the past tense: ‘For they existed.’ It is the past that will provide the inspiration for the future.

Themes and imagery

The poem describes the experience and effect of loss caused by the death of ‘great souls’ (line 12), important and inspiring people in our lives, and the comfort we can derive from the fact that they existed. The absence of personal statement in the poem gives it a universal quality, as if the poet is speaking on behalf of all those who are grief-stricken at the loss of a loved one. The poem describes the physical, psychological and spiritual effects of loss upon those who mourn. The very quality of ‘the air around us’ (line 13) is changed by our loss. The speaker suggests that mourners lose their sense of reality and become diminished and, once removed from the radiance of the loved one, are ‘reduced to the unutterable ignorance / of dark, cold / caves’ (lines 37–39).

The imagery of the first four stanzas focuses on loss and the diminution of life for those who remain. The various verbs and verb forms speak of retreat, withdrawal, regression and erosion: recoil; eroded; gnaws; shrink; wizened; fall away; reduced. The final image in stanza 4 is of dark and cold caves. The poem also depicts the regrets mourners feel for words unsaid and actions untaken. However, it is not a bleak poem. It also describes peace, soothing and a restoration of our numbed senses; how we take comfort from the fact that the loved one existed; and how their example can inspire us to be better.

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

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The poem turns on the identification of great trees with great souls, an association that occurs in different cultures. Great trees are strong. They are deeply rooted in the earth, in their own place. They stand firm in wind and storms. They reach towards the heavens. They offer shelter. It is easy to see why great trees can symbolise inspiring individuals. When great trees fall, the speaker declares, the effect is felt far and wide. Everything in nature, from the inanimate rocks to the mightiest beasts, is affected. The magnitude of the event in nature is used to suggest the effect of a great soul dying in the human world. Just as great trees leave a space to be filled, inspiring individuals create a void when they die. Those who remain are grief-stricken and mourn their loss. But time brings peace to those who mourn. The poem suggests that the death of an inspiring individual leaves an absence, a space in which those left behind can grow and become better because their loved one existed. Ultimately, those who remain

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Great souls of the 1960s Two other great souls who influenced Angelou were the civil rights activists Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. It took her fifteen

take comfort and strength from the fact that great souls existed and those who were close to them were privileged to have known them and can live a better life because of them. The end of the poem is an encouragement to live, to be and be better.

Angelou and for the entire African-American community due to the assassination of Malcom X in February 1965; the riots in Watts, Los Angeles in the same year in protest at alleged police brutality, which resulted in thirty-four deaths; and the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968.

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1968. This was a time of immense sorrow for

The poem consists of a series of general statements, delivered with assurance and a knowledge drawn from experience. The voice of the poem is one we feel we can trust. There is a generosity in the poem. Although it was inspired by personal grief, the poet reaches out to all who have suffered bereavement, especially to families who lost loved ones to HIV/AIDS. The collective pronouns ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ are inclusive. They also lend a stately feel to the poem.

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(2002), which covers the period from 1964 to

autobiography, A Song Flung from Heaven

years to complete the final volume of her

Form and language

The poem is composed of fifty lines of free verse, divided into five stanzas of varying line length. Lines are generally short; some consist of a single word. The use of repetition and parallel structures gives an almost prayerful feeling to the poem. Each stanza ends with a full stop. Within stanzas, however, enjambment and punctuation control the pace and flow of the language. The poem has eighteen full stops and twentyeight commas. The effect is to slow down the progress of the poem and cause us to give due weight and significance to each word and phrase. The many long vowels and voiced consonants ensure that most words are enunciated clearly and forcibly. This slow quality, allied to the use of repetition and the theme of mourning, links the poem to the sorrow songs of African-American slaves.

The precision of the language of the poem is evident from the initial sound of the first word of the first line. The first two letters of ‘When’ create a wind sound that speaks to the theme of the poem. After the initial ‘When’, the first line has three more monosyllabic words, each of which takes a full beat: ‘When great trees fall’. This exact, emphatic language is continued in the second line with the solid, full-sounding noun ‘rocks’. The initial voiced ‘d’ followed by the medial and end voiced ‘t’ in ‘distant’, force a clear enunciation of the word. The final word in the second line is the strong-sounding and meaningful ‘shudder’. The final ‘er’ sound in ‘shudder’ is repeated in the verbs ‘hunker’ (line 3) and ‘lumber’ (line 6). Taken together, the three verbs capture the effect of a great tree falling, and the onomatopoeic characteristics of the words add to this effect.

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The precision of the language continues through the slow, careful progress of the poem. Every stanza has stressed syllables, long vowel sounds, end-stopped ‘t’ and ‘d’ consonants, verbal repetitions and brilliant choices of individual words. Angelou is conscious of the mood and feeling created by strings of sound. The sounds are expressive. They capture the grief and dignity of the speaker. Angelou is also alert to the effect achieved by repetition. Note the swelling and powerful effect of repeating the marvellous phrase ‘When great trees fall’, and its linked phrase ‘When great souls die’. Also note the extraordinary effect of the repetition of the word ‘be’ in the penultimate line, where each iteration seems to sound stronger and more determined. There is a notable difference between the clear language of the first stanza, describing the physical impact of the fall of great trees, and the more metaphorical language of the remaining stanzas. The language of the

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Maya Angelou X first stanza is concrete, with references to hills, rocks, lions and grasses. However, from stanza 2 onwards, the speaker is dealing with more abstract concepts, such as feelings and memories, mind and soul, and she uses metaphors to convey how death affects the mental, spiritual and more intangible aspects of our beings.

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This is an emotional poem, inspired by sorrow and loss. However, the care taken with the language and phrasing keeps the emotions in check (although, arguably, the reader can sense a tremor just beneath the surface of the poem). Angelou was celebrated for her performance of her own poetry. The poem demands to be read aloud and heard.

Exam-Style Questions Understanding the poem What, according to stanza 1, happens when great trees fall?

Why, do you think, does Angelou refer to lions and elephants in stanza 1?

What words and phrases strike you as particularly effective in stanza 1?

According to stanza 2, how are small things affected by the fall of great trees?

According to stanza 3, what happens to the air when great souls die? Do you think Angelou intends us to take this as a factual description? Explain your answer.

What kinds of regrets, according to stanza 3, does the grieving person experience when great souls die?

Comment on the effectiveness of the verb ‘gnaws’ (line 21).

In stanza 4, what does the speaker say is the effect of the death of a great soul upon: a) the reality, b) the soul and c) the mind of those left behind?

According to the speaker in lines 46–50, how does the death of a great soul inspire those who remain?

Do you find this a depressing or an inspiring poem? Explain your answer.

Thinking about the poem In what ways might a tree make a fitting symbol for a great soul?

Select four interesting verb choices in the poem and comment on their effect.

Do you think the expression ‘eroded beyond fear’ (line 11) is effective? Explain your answer.

The speaker describes the grieving person as ‘reduced to the unutterable ignorance / of dark, cold / caves’ (lines 37–39). Do you think this is a successful image?

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What ideas are suggested by the phrase ‘soothing electric vibration’ (line 45). Do you think it is effective? Explain your answer.

Comment on the ways in which the poet’s use of punctuation and her choice of words enhance the poem.

The poem has been described as dignified and mournful. Explain why you agree or disagree with this assessment.

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

What comfort or consolation does the poem offer? Do you think it is persuasive?

To what extent do you agree with each of these different views of the poem? a) Although the poem was inspired by personal loss, Angelou writes in an impersonal and universal way about grief. b) Although written in the first-person plural, this is really an autobiographical poem and that is what gives it its authenticity.

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What kind of person do you imagine the speaker of the poem to be?

The poem was inspired by the death of Angelou’s friend Sam Clemens Floyd. Based on the poem, what kind of man do you imagine him to have been?

Do you think the poem is a successful elegy? Give reasons for your answer.

‘What the poem suggests is that when we lose truly great people, their death leaves an absence, a wide space in which we might grow, learn, become.’ Give your response to this statement.

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Imagining

1 Write a short creative piece (poetry or prose) in response to the prompt: ‘Death can make us feel small.’

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In groups of three, prepare a recital of the poem, using a combination of single, dual and choral voices as you see fit. Your recital should reflect the emotional range of the poem. Include any gestures or movements that you think will enhance the recital.

2 Use one of the following phrases as a prompt for a piece of creative writing: ■ Rocks on distant hills shudder ■ Small things recoil into silence ■ Kind words unsaid ■ Our senses whisper to us.

4 This poem is often read at funerals. Suggest a piece of music that would make a suitable accompaniment to the poem in a funeral setting.

Elegy for a group of friends Theme of grief and loss Theme of comfort and consolation Symbolism of great trees Effect of death on those who mourn Speaking for all who have experienced loss Collective experience Inclusive language Stately and dignified Careful phrasing Enjambment and punctuation control pace Repetition

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■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1806–1861

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How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

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Biography Elizabeth Barrett was born in Durham, England to a part-Creole family who owned a sugar plantation in Jamaica and used slave labour. By the age of ten she was reading Milton and Shakespeare, and wrote her first poem at twelve. A lung condition and a back injury led to a lifelong dependence on morphine. She was passionate about the Classics, Bible studies and social change, writing about the abolition of slavery and child-labour. Edward, her brother, died in 1838 and, heartbroken, she spent the next five years secluded in her bedroom, writing poetry. Her collection Poems inspired fellow poet Robert Browning to write to her. The couple exchanged 574 letters in twenty months and eloped to Florence in 1846.

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Before you read

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This is a love poem. Write ro r upwo down four expectations you have of what it may contain.

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Grace: the freely given, unmerited favour and love of God

Glossary

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right. I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

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How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43)

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Guidelines

From her poetry collection, Sonnets from the Portuguese, which was written in secret before Barrett Browning’s marriage and published in 1850. The name of the collection comes from the nickname Browning gave her, ‘My little Portugee’, and this is the second-last of the forty-four sonnets in the collection, which she dedicated to her husband. In it the speaker strives to convey intense love for the beloved. Note that although the poem is written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and is dedicated to her husband, the gender of the speaker and their beloved is not obvious in the poem.

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Commentary Lines 1–4

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The question ‘How do I love thee?’ is asked and the speaker decides the best way to answer is to ‘count the ways’. The rest of the poem sees her doing just that. The first ‘way’ is conveyed in terms of size and space. She loves him as deep and wide and high as her soul can reach when it is searching – ‘when feeling out of sight’ for the limits of existence, the heavens and God: ‘For the ends of Being’. The phrase ‘ideal Grace’ seems to imply a state of perfect grace, what it is to be blessed by the love and presence of God. (Browning was a devout Christian and was involved in Bible and missionary studies in her church.) This suggests that she feels blessed by the love of her beloved and that God has blessed their love. The notions of ‘ends of Being’ and being in receipt of God’s perfect ‘ideal’ love suggest death and the afterlife, which foreshadows the final part of the sonnet. Therefore the first kind of love the speaker feels is a spatial one encompassing all possible space, and the furthest reaches of her soul. It extends beyond what can be physically felt or seen when she feels ‘out of sight’ to all that exists.

Lines 5–8

Next the poet describes how this huge love is also just the right amount for her to handle day to day. It is enough to fill ‘to the level’ of ‘everyday’s / Most quiet need’. She loves him day and night – ‘by sun and candlelight’. ‘Most quiet need’ conveys that the speaker both needs to love him and must be secretive about this. (Elizabeth could not tell her father of her love for Robert as he had forbidden his children to ever marry, and she lived quite a reclusive life at the time she wrote these poems.) This kind of love contrasts with the grand all-encompassing love described in the first four lines; it is a more domestic, calmer kind of love but still eternal, as the imagery of day and night suggests.

The next two ways she loves are ‘freely’ and ‘purely’. Both are compared in similes to worthy qualities: ‘Right’ and ‘Praise’. Her love is given as freely as the sacrifices made by men who ‘strive for Right’ – those who fight against injustice and who try to improve society and bring about social change. These are things Barrett Browning was passionate about. And her love is as pure as those who are modest and humble ‘as they turn from Praise’. She admires someone with a moral conscience who also shuns attention.

Lines 9–14

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She next loves her beloved with the intensity – ‘passion’ – that used to go into feeling bitter about ‘old griefs’ – things that had hurt or angered her in the past. She has channelled this energy and emotion into her love for him. Therefore loving her beloved has made her less bitter, less petty perhaps. Likewise she loves him with the ‘passion’ she had given to her childhood beliefs when she believed totally in things without doubt or question. (Think of the strength and conviction with which children believe, e.g. in Santa or the tooth-fairy!) A strong, unshakable and intense love is conveyed here, as well as a charming innocence. She used to have faith in people who have perhaps let her down – ‘my lost saints’ – and now that faith is transferred to her beloved. Elizabeth’s father may be in mind here. He was an owner of slaves, something she came to oppose. Perhaps the loss of her adored brother Edward is also at play in this quatrain.

Lines 12 and 13 sum up all the ways of loving that have come before, and offer more besides. She loves him with everything she has, her ‘breath’ and every emotion that she has (‘smiles, tears’). She offers these ORDINARY LEVEL 2024 / 501

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completely – ‘of all my life’. In the final line she predicts that her love will exist and strengthen even beyond life. She will love him, if God allows, even more in the afterlife – ‘if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death’. The modesty she praised previously (line 8) is evident here. The power to achieve this everlasting love lies in God’s hands, not hers.

Themes and imagery

Love, intense and everlasting, is the obvious theme here. The speaker loves her beloved so much that she wishes to convey this in a list of all of the different forms her love takes.

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She describes how it occupies her whole being; her past, present and future. It is a secret love and is in tune with her modesty and ideas of social justice, as well as matching her religious beliefs. This love is eternal. The phrase ‘I love thee’ is used nine times, love is mentioned ten times and ‘passion’ is mentioned also.

Death hovers in the background as a theme that frames the poem. It is suggested in line 4: ‘the ends of Being’. If a person dies in a state of ‘ideal Grace’, Christians believe they are sure of a place in heaven, and this connects to the final image of the two lovers in heaven after death, ‘if God choose’.

Religion is linked to the themes of love and death, not surprisingly given Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s interest in the subject and her strong Christian faith – as a child she taught herself Hebrew so that she could read and study the Old Testament. Her lost love for ‘lost saints’ ties in with this religious theme and imagery. The past disappointments and sadness in her life have been replaced by this uplifting and redeeming passion for her beloved.

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning X Hyperbole (exaggeration) is used by the poet in the octave to convey the depth and intensity of her love, which is as big and wide and broad as it can possibly be, and spans all day and all night, to the end of her life. It is free and right and modest.

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Notice also that many key words are given a capital letter. This was a common feature of Victorian poets, called personified abstraction, and something Shakespeare had previously done in many of his sonnets, e.g. ‘Time’, ‘Death’, etc. (Later you will be asked to look at the words that are capitalised and why you think those words were chosen.)

The sestet references simple feelings such as a nursed grievance or a childhood belief, smiles and tears, and ‘lost saints’. Thus the poet reaches into her past, present and future to express herself.

The lack of a clear gender for either the speaker or beloved makes this a universally loved and popular love poem.

Form and language

Repetition is used effectively. As we have said, this fourteen-line poem is built on statements beginning, ‘I love thee’. This provides a spine for the poem to build its ideas on. The poet also uses alliteration extensively: ‘I love thee to the depth and breadth and height’. Line 4 is the only line that does not use alliteration, but it does contain assonance: ‘the ends of Being and ideal Grace’. This assonance stretches out the line, emphasising the far-reaching nature of the poet’s love.

The poem is written as a Petrarchan sonnet. Petrarch was an Italian poet (1304–1374) who wrote sonnets divided into an octave (eight-line section) and a sestet (six-line section). The octave presents the theme or problem, in this case how much the speaker loves her beloved and the ways that she loves him. The sestet offers a resolution or provides an answer while often expanding on the theme. Typically, the end of the octave is known as the ‘volta’, meaning ‘turning-point’, as the thought process of the poem turns from a presentation of the theme to a further development of it and the offer of a solution. Barrett Browning’s answer or resolution here is to promise that her love will grow even more intense after death and will then be eternal.

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The metre of the sonnet is iambic pentameter (see Glossary of Terms).

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SNAPSHOT Hyperbole – exaggeration Capitalisation of abstract concepts List of ways speaker loves beloved Religious aspect Repetition

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Eternal nature of love which can conquer all Past, present and future of speaker Secretive aspect of the love ties into poet’s biography Petrarchan sonnet

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem What does the speaker decide to do in the first line?

In lines 2 to 4 how does the speaker say she loves her beloved?

In the second quatrain (lines 5–8) four more ways of loving are described. List these in your own words.

‘I love thee with the passion put to use / In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.’ What two aspects of her past is the poet talking about here?

What do you think the speaker means by ‘lost saints’? Read Barrett Browning’s biography. Who or what might she mean if we take it that she is the speaker in question?

What does she hope for after death? Why, in your opinion, will her love be ‘better’?

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Thinking about the poem

How many different kinds of love can you identify in the poem? List the types you identified.

Examine the religious imagery and allusion in the poem. Do these make it more or less romantic? Explain with reference to the poem.

What words (excepting first words in a line) are capitalised? List them and comment on each one. What do they have in common?

Find three examples of repetition in the poem and comment on their effect.

What is the tone of the poem? Is it only romantic or is it more complex? For instance, the poem is essentially a list. Does this enhance or detract from the aim of the speaker?

Which ways of loving did you like most and least? Give reasons for your choices.

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Do you agree that the theme of the poem is ‘The everlasting and all-conquering nature of love’? Discuss in pairs or groups.

Write a poem, perhaps a sonnet of your own, which begins, ‘How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways …’

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This poem doesn’t have a formal title – sonnets rarely did. Suggest a suitable title for this sonnet and justify your choice.

Imagining

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1938–1988

Raymond Carver

The Juggler at Heaven’s Gate

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Biography

Raymond Carver was born in Oregon on the west coast of the USA. His father worked in a sawmill and his mother was a waitress and clerk. In 1957, when he was nineteen, Carver married his sixteenyear-old girlfriend, Maryann Burk, who was pregnant with the couple’s first child. A year later, Maryann gave birth to their second child. Although he had his first short story published in 1961, and got a college degree in 1963, writing often came second as Carver struggled to support his family by doing a variety of jobs and tried to cope with alcoholism. In 1977, he met the poet Tess Gallagher, with whom he lived for the last eleven years of his life. During this period, which he described as a second life, free from alcohol, he published three collections of stories and three collections of poetry. He completed his final poetry collection, A New Path to the Waterfall, in the weeks before his death from lung cancer at the age of fifty. Carver is widely regarded as one of America’s finest writers.

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Before you read

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Behind the dirty table where Kristofferson is having breakfast, there’s a window that looks onto a nineteenthcentury street in Sweetwater, Wyoming. A juggler is at work out there, wearing a top hat and a frock coat, a little reed of a fellow keeping three sticks in the air. Think about this for a minute. This juggler. This amazing act of the mind and hands. A man who juggles for a living. Everyone in his time has known a star, or a gunfighter. Somebody, anyway, who pushes somebody around. But a juggler! Blue smoke hangs inside this awful café, and over that dirty table where two grownup men talk about a woman’s future. And something, something about the Cattlemen’s Association. But the eye keeps going back to that juggler. That tiny spectacle. At this minute, Ella’s plight or the fate of the emigrants is not nearly so important as this juggler’s exploits. How’d he get into the act, anyway? What’s his story? That’s the story I want to know. Anybody can wear a gun and swagger around. Or fall in love with somebody who loves somebody else. But to juggle for God’s sake! To give your life to that. To go with that. Juggling.

For Michael Cimino

The Juggler at Heaven’s Gate

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Think about the appeal of juggling and jugglers, ro r upwo and what a juggler may represent or symbolise. Or think of an example where a writer or filmmaker included a small detail in a scene, which you thought was an act of genius.

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Raymond Carver X Glossary Title

Heaven’s Gate: a bar/dancehall/skating rink in the film of the same name

Dedication Michael Cimino: (1939–2016), US director whose films included The Deer Hunter (1978) and Heaven’s Gate (1980) Kristofferson: Kris Kristofferson, the actor who played James Averill, a Harvard-educated marshal, in the film Heaven’s Gate Sweetwater, Wyoming: Sweetwater is a county in the mountain state of Wyoming in the American West; in the film, the town is named Sweetwater

frock coat: a man’s long-sleeved, waisted black coat that falls to the knee and is usually worn on formal occasions

star: here, sheriff or marshal, a law-enforcement officer two … men: Jim Averill and a gunfighter called Nate Champion

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a woman: Ella Watson (another character in the film)

Cattlemen’s Association: organisation for cattle ranchers, which, in the film, raises a private army to kill members of the farming community

Ella: Ella Watson, who is involved in a love triangle with Jim Averill and Nate Champion

the emigrants: the community around Sweetwater is made up of European immigrants who farm the land

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Guidelines

The poem comes from Carver’s 1985 collection, Where Water Comes Together with Other Water. When the poem was first published, it carried the title ‘The Juggler’ with a subtitle: ‘Or, The Scene to Remember from Heaven’s Gate’. It refers to the 1980 film Heaven’s Gate, a Western (see sidebar for a synopsis), which was a critical and commercial failure when it was released but many critics now regard it as a masterpiece. The poem is based on a scene in the film in which the two main characters, Nate Champion and Jim Averill, are speaking inside a bar/café. Averill is sitting at a table with his back to a window. Outside the window, a juggler can be seen juggling three sticks. The juggler appears for no more than thirty seconds in a film of nearly three hours. It is a tribute to Carver’s powers of perception that he picked up on the detail of the juggler.

Commentary

Heaven’s Gate The film is loosely based on the conflict between farmers, many of whom were European immigrants, and wealthy cattle ranchers in Wyoming in the 1890s (known

as the Johnson County War). In the film, the ranchers hire a gunfighter, Nate Champion, to kill any farmers who steal their cattle. The conflict escalates when the ranchers make a list of ‘troublemakers’ and hire a private army to kill them. Jim Averill, the town’s marshal, discovers that the woman he loves, Ella Watson, is on the list. Champion, Averill’s rival for Ella, denies any knowledge of the list. Averill warns the farmers, who form a militia to defend themselves. The opposing sides meet in a bloody battle. Averill reluctantly joins forces with the farmers. Champion, Averill and Watson are fictionalised versions of real people who died in the Johnson County War.

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Lines 1–3

The speaker sets the scene: an actor, Kris Kristofferson, is eating breakfast at a ‘dirty table’ in a nineteenthcentury setting. As the poem progresses, the speaker acknowledges the plot lines in the film and its main characters: the rivalry between the marshal and the gunslinger who both love the same woman; the hostilities between the immigrant community of farmers and the local ranchers. However, in the opening lines, the speaker dwells on a small moment in the film. Carver has a storyteller’s eye for detail (the ‘dirty table’). The speaker notes the window and what it looks out on.

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Lines 3–8

‘wearing a top hat and a frock coat’ The opening sequence of Heaven’s Gate shows Averill’s graduation from Harvard, a prestigious

been noted by several critics. Some suggest that the juggler represents a version of Averill, the Harvard graduate. They interpret the juggler as symbolising the balancing act Averill is engaged in, in both his personal and his private life. There is also the suggestion that Averill,

like all jugglers, will eventually drop something.

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The appearance of the juggler in a tense scene between the marshal and the gunfighter has

graduates wear top hats and frock coats.

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US university, in 1870. The majority of the male

Although the scene through the window is incidental, the juggler ‘at work out there’ captures the speaker’s imagination. The juggler is ‘a little reed of a fellow’, rather than the strong male we associate with Westerns. Instead of brandishing a gun, he juggles ‘three sticks’. He is dressed in ‘a top hat and a frock coat’, clothes that seem ridiculous in the context of Sweetwater, Wyoming. The speaker asks the reader to ‘Think about this’, the juggler, for a moment. The speaker’s interest is piqued by the juggler. He refers to his ‘amazing act of the mind and hands’. And then, as if thinking out loud, he adds, ‘A man who juggles for a living.’ There is a tone of wonder and admiration. And, of course, the line has metaphorical force. How many people are forced to juggle for a living?

Lines 9–11

The tone of these lines is dismissive. The speaker is not impressed by the standard characters of Western films: the gunslinger and the sheriff or marshal, referred to dismissively as ‘a star’. He makes no distinction between these characters, who both throw their weight around. He has no interest in them or in the kind of masculinity they represent. There may also be a suggestion that the speaker has encountered these sorts of people in his own life. But he is impressed by the juggler. The juggler is someone and something out of the ordinary. Look at the exclamation mark on line 11: ‘But a juggler!’

Lines 11–14

The speaker goes back to what is happening in the foreground of the scene. His storyteller’s eye notes the ‘Blue’ smoke that ‘hangs’ in the air of ‘this awful café, and over that dirty table’. He is interested in the details, the grubby details. He is less interested in the storyline of the film, in the ‘grownup men’ discussing ‘a woman’s future’ and ‘something about the Cattlemen’s Association’. The idea of two men deciding a woman’s future speaks volumes about the patriarchal nature of the world depicted in the film. Note how the repetition of the word ‘something’, ‘And something, / something about’, captures his lack of interest or impatience with this part of the plot.

Lines 15–18

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The speaker tells us that ‘the eye’, his eye, ‘keeps going back to that juggler’. Again, as in line 8, it is as if we catch him thinking out loud when he adds, ‘That tiny spectacle.’ The spectacle may be ‘tiny’, but he is fascinated by it, declaring that ‘Ella’s plight / or the fate of the emigrants / is not nearly so important as this juggler’s exploits’. In terms of human life, a juggler juggling is not as important as the fate of an individual or a community; however, in the moment, it is easy to get caught up in the artistry, tension and excitement of someone juggling. There is a hold-your-breath quality to the way a juggler can command the attention of spectators. It is interesting to speculate whether the director of the film, Michael Cimino, would share the speaker’s view that the juggler’s exploits, a background detail, are more important than what is happening in the scene. Would Cimino, to whom the poem is dedicated, regard this as a triumph or a failure of his storytelling?

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Raymond Carver X Lines 19 and 20

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Then the speaker, in language that is noticeably more urgent, wonders about the juggler, asking: ‘How’d he get into the act, anyway? What’s his story?’ The colloquial language creates the impression of a real person speaking and thinking in real time, someone who really wants to know the answers to these questions. And the speaker, willing to entertain the idea that the juggler is a real person, submits to the illusion of art, the illusion that fictional characters are real people. He reiterates his curiosity: ‘That’s the story I want to know.’

Lines 20–24

The speaker establishes a distinction between the story he wants to know (the story of the juggler), which the film does not tell, and the story the film is telling (men with guns who swagger around and fall in love with ‘somebody who loves somebody else’), which holds no interest for him. The statement ‘Anybody / can wear a gun and swagger around’ is wonderfully dismissive of the action of the scene and one of the main plot lines of the film. The speaker sets the idea of juggling against the main action of the film. He is almost lost for words in expressing his enthusiasm: ‘But to juggle / for God’s sake!’ The expression ‘for God’s sake’ suggests his astonishment, surprise and, perhaps, exasperation at trying to find words to convey his meaning. He reiterates his astonishment and wonder and, perhaps, his incomprehension, in the two final lines: ‘To give your life to that. / To go with that. Juggling.’ The repetition of the word ‘that’ suggests someone almost lost for words.

Themes and imagery

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Throughout his life and writing career, Carver was interested in lives lived in the shadows. He was drawn to characters on the margins of society, living their precarious lives away from the spotlight and forced to juggle to keep going, as he did for much of his own life, working a series of jobs to support his family while trying to write, earn an education and cope with his alcoholism. Little wonder that, in this poem, the speaker’s eye is drawn to the juggler and away from the main action and the protagonists of the film. The juggler is an antidote to the stereotypical masculinity of Western heroes: the marshal and the gunslinger, people who push others around. The speaker seems to suggest that the narrative of the film is predictable, whereas the presence of the juggler is unexpected and arouses his interest and curiosity. The fact that the juggler is seen only briefly, and through a window, increases the sense of mystery. It is as if we are being given a glimpse into a life lived on the edge. The speaker dwells on the unnamed juggler, the ‘little reed of a fellow’ (line 5), and wonders about his story. Indeed, it can be argued that wonder is a major concern of the poem, and the way in which narrative

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art or storytelling has the power to excite our wonder and curiosity concerning the lives of others. Although the attitude of the speaker to the juggler is never stated directly, it is clear that the speaker comes to life when speaking about him. The juggler brings something unexpected and unusual that the speaker values. He is intrigued by the juggler’s presence and attracted to the unconventional choices the juggler has made.

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What does the juggler represent? Perhaps he represents someone who does not conform to the predictable pattern of our lives, someone who commits to a different way of living, who gives his life to something involving an ‘amazing act of the mind and hands’ (line 7). The speaker seems to admire and, possibly, envy the juggler’s commitment to his art. And the juggler may also represent the unexpected in art – the element of surprise that delights and intrigues the spectator or reader – and the way in which art has the power to command our attention so that we become absorbed in observing it. In the context of the entire film, the juggler can be seen as a living embodiment of what is happening inside the café, where lives are being juggled.

Form and language

Art blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary. The question posed by the speaker in line 19, ‘How’d he get into the act, anyway?’, is a reminder that the scene in the café forms part of the dramatic structure of the film, and the juggler is an actor playing his part in this particular act of the film. It is the illusion of art, in this instance Cimino’s film Heaven’s Gate, that we are presented with real people rather than fictional characters. The poem continues the illusion by treating the juggler as a real person. One answer to the question ‘How’d he get into this act, anyway’ is that Cimino, the director, made an artistic choice to include the juggler in the scene. Thus, it could be argued that it is Cimino’s artistic choice that is being celebrated in the poem.

The poem consists of twenty-four lines of free verse. It has a conversational feel, with some sentences consisting of no more than a word or two: ‘This juggler’ (line 7); ‘Juggling’ (line 24). It sets out to create the effect of the speaking voice and uses colloquial expressions, exclamation marks and repetition to that end: ‘Somebody, anyway, who pushes somebody / around’ (lines 10–11); ‘How’d he get into the act, anyway? What’s his story?’ (line 19); ‘for God’s sake!’ (line 23). The poem creates the effect of a real person talking in real time. It is as if the speaker is engaged in a conversation with the reader: ‘Think about this for a minute’ (line 6).

Carver also succeeds in creating the impression of someone thinking out loud in real time, forming his thoughts as he goes. Take the last four sentences. It is as if the speaker is adding to his thoughts, step by step. The fact that the thoughts seem vague increases the sense of authenticity:

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… But to juggle for God’s sake! To give your life to that. To go with that. Juggling.

It is as if the speaker is saying to the reader: ‘Do you know what I mean?’ And the answer is: ‘Not really!’

The poem has little of the ornament that we normally associate with poetry. It lacks the elaborate sound correspondences found in, for example, Austin Clarke’ s ‘New Liberty Hall’; or the stanza structure of Fleur Adcock’s ‘Advice to a Discarded Lover’; or the stately, oratorical language of Maya Angelou’s ‘Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield’. However, it is not without artifice. Look, for example, at the run of ‘w’ sounds

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in the opening lines: ‘window … Sweetwater, Wyoming … work … wearing’. Read the poem aloud and see how balanced the phrasing is, as in ‘a top hat and a frock coat’ (line 4), or ‘That’s the story I want to know’ (line 20). The poem reads like a monologue written for an actor, with its built-in pauses and punctuation controlling the flow of the language. It is written in long lines of up to seventeen syllables. Carver uses enjambment, but it does not necessarily lead to a flowing rhythm because the placement of the line break often creates a hesitancy between the words in a phrase. The end of line 1, for instance, breaks the phrase ‘having / breakfast’, and the break between lines 2 and 3 splits ‘nineteenth-’ and ‘century’.

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem

The first line refers to a ‘dirty table’. What does this suggest about the location?

Where is the juggler in relation to the two main characters in the scene?

What details does the speaker give us about the juggler?

What is the attitude of the speaker to the juggler?

What, do you think, is the attitude of the speaker to the marshal and the gunfighter?

a) What is happening in the scene in the café/bar between the two men? b) What importance does the speaker attach to this scene?

What is ‘the story’ that the speaker wants ‘to know’ (line 20)?

Which of these three statements is closest to your understanding of the speaker’s interest in the juggler? ■ The juggler is an unusual presence in a Western film. ■ The juggler has an amazing skill. ■ The juggler lives an exciting, unconventional life. Explain your choice.

What kind of man do you imagine the speaker to be and what kind of life do you imagine he has led? Give reasons for your answer.

The poem is dedicated to the director of Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino. Do you think the poem celebrates Cimino’s work? Give reasons for your answer.

Thinking about the poem Where is the interest and attentiveness of the speaker most in evidence in the poem?

The juggler is glimpsed through a window. Does this add to or take from the mystery surrounding him?

‘What the poem celebrates is the wonder that stories and storytelling excite about the lives of others.’ Discuss this view of the poem.

Carver’s style has been described as one of ‘unadorned directness’. Do you think this is a good description of the style of this poem? Explain your answer.

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Experiment with dividing the poem into different lines and line endings. What difference does it make to the poem and the way it flows?

‘Carver creates the impression of someone speaking directly to the reader.’ Discuss this view of the poem.

‘The poem suggests that the really interesting stories are not the obvious ones. It suggests we should keep our eyes open and welcome those who live their lives on the margins or dedicate their lives to art.’ To what extent do you agree with the opinions expressed in this response to the poem? Explain your answer.

Do you like the poem? Give reasons for your answer.

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Imagining

Imagine you are Michael Cimino and you are being interviewed at an international film festival. The interviewer asks why you included the juggler in this scene. Give your answer.

‘What’s his story?’ (line 19). Invent a backstory for the juggler that accounts for him turning up on a street in Sweetwater, Wyoming, wearing a frock coat and a tall hat.

Write a short creative piece (poetry or prose) prompted by the title ‘In Praise of Juggling’.

Based on a scene in the film Heaven’s Gate Speaker interested in what is happening in the background Little interest in plot of film Glimpse of a life on the margins Focus on the juggler Speaker is intrigued and admiring Art and artifice Impression of someone thinking out loud Conversational style Plain and unadorned Free verse Long lines, enjambment

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SNAPSHOT

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1896–1974

Austin Clarke

New Liberty Hall

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Biography

Austin Clarke was born in Dublin to well-off parents. His mother was a strict Catholic and Clarke developed a dislike for a religion obsessed with sin and sexuality. He was educated in Belvedere College and later at UCD, where his time coincided with the 1913 Lockout and the 1916 Easter Rising. Clarke began to write poetry in college, publishing his first collection in 1917. He took a position as a lecturer in English in UCD, replacing Thomas MacDonagh, who was executed for his part in the 1916 Rising. Clarke suffered a nervous breakdown, and also lost his UCD position because, it seems, he married in a registry office rather than in a church. He emigrated to England in the early 1920s. When he returned in 1937, Ireland had settled into a post-revolutionary Catholic state that was not to his liking. Clarke concentrated on playwriting and wrote almost no poetry until 1955. His later poetry is full of social satire, frequently directed at the Church and State. In addition to poetry, Clarke wrote over twenty plays, two volumes of autobiography, journalism, criticism and three novels. The Irish censor banned each of his novels.

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Before you read

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In small groups, identify a building, ro r upwo in Ireland or abroad, which you consider to be iconic. In general terms, what makes a building iconic?

ny pa

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Higher than county lark Can fly, a speck that sings, Sixteen-floored Liberty Hall Goes up through scaffoldings In memory of Larkin, Shot Connolly. With cap On simple head, hallmark Of sweat, new capitalists Rent out expensive suites Of glassier offices, Babel’d above our streets, The unemployed may scoff, but Workers must skimp and scrape To own so fine a skyscraper, Beyond the dream of Gandon, Shaming the Custom House The giant crane, the gantries. Labour is now accustomed To higher living. Railing Is gone that I leaned against To watch that figure, tall and lean, Jim Larkin, shouting, railing. Why should he give a damn That day for English grammar, Arm-waving, eloquent? On top, a green pagoda Has glorified cement, Umbrella’d the sun. Go, da, And shiver in your tenement.

New Liberty Hall

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Austin Clarke X Glossary New Liberty Hall: Dublin’s first skyscraper, built on the site of the historically significant Liberty Hall

Larkin: James (Jim) Larkin (1874–1947), trade union leader and orator

Connolly: James Connolly (1868–1916), trade union leader and one of the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising

capitalists: believers in private wealth and the pursuit of profit for private gain Babel’d: reference to the biblical Tower of Babel, which was never completed because the builders could not understand each other

Gandon: James Gandon (1743–1823), English architect who designed the Custom House in Dublin

Custom House: eighteenth-century building a short distance from Liberty Hall

gantries: overhead structures with a platform for a movable crane, used for loading ships

grammar: here, the polite use of language

pagoda: religious building or temple in the distinctive form of a tiered tower, mostly associated with Buddhism

tenement: substandard residences formed by the subdivision of rooms in a large house; Dublin’s tenements were among the worst in Europe in the early twentieth century

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Title

Guidelines

‘New Liberty Hall’ was written in the early 1960s, during the construction of the first high-rise office building in Dublin. The poem comes from Clarke’s 1968 collection, The Echo at Coole. Clarke believed that much of Irish contemporary culture, including architecture, had no regard for the elegance of the past. At the time he wrote the poem, Clarke was unique among Irish poets in setting his poems in the city.

Commentary

Lines 1–6

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In writing about the new tower-like building, Clarke invokes an image of a lark. The lark has a joyful, melodious song. Clarke describes it as a ‘county lark’, presumably because, unlike starlings, sparrows and pigeons, the lark is not a city bird. At its highest point in the sky, the lark appears as no more than ‘a speck’. Yet, the sixteen storeys of this new building rise up, through the scaffolding, New Libery Hall higher than a lark can fly. Does this suggest that the building is too high or unnaturally high? Is it greedy in taking up the air? The The new version of Liberty Hall was designed lark, this tiny, beautiful speck from the world of nature, a creature by Dublin architect Desmond Rea O’Kelly and completed in 1965. It was the tallest of the air, is contrasted with the huge building towering over the building in Ireland at that time, reaching up city. Compare the impact of the lark with that of the new building, almost sixty metres into the air. The sixteenboth visually and environmentally. The building is being erected storeyed building was made of steel, concrete in memory of Jim Larkin and James Connolly, two great leaders and glass. It was originally fitted with nonof workers in Ireland in the early twentieth century. Note how reflective glass and had a viewing platform on its roof. The wider base of the building Clarke makes the first few lines sing, with the rhyming of ‘sings’ houses a theatre. The tower, rising above and ‘scaffoldings’ and the echo of ‘lark’ in ‘Larkin’.

Lines 6–19

Clarke claims that ‘new capitalists’ disguised as workers (they wear caps, the traditional headwear of working men, as opposed to the soft hats and bowler hats of bankers and those in the professions)

the base, is slender. In 2012, the trade union

SIPTU applied for permission to demolish and replace it with a twenty-two-storey building. Permission was refused. There have been calls to retain the modernist building, which many now regard as iconic.

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rent the new building’s ‘expensive suites / Of glassier offices’. Is there a suggestion that the union bosses are closer to the capitalist bosses than to the workers they represent? ‘Glassier’ is an interesting word. Is Clarke implying that this new building is trying to outdo other office buildings with its walls of glass? (Glass, steel and concrete are hallmarks of modernist buildings.) The glass offices, spread over sixteen floors, are ‘Babel’d above our streets’. This line is rich in connotations. It suggests that the offices are removed from the city and also that the language of capitalism is incomprehensible to the Tower of Babel rest of society. The unemployed ‘scoff’ at or mock the building. The story of the Tower of Babel comes from Do they see it as irrelevant to their situation? In theory, it is the the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Some workers, the people who ‘must skimp and scrape’, who own this Hebrew scholars translate the word ‘babel’ building through their union. But it is clear that Clarke does not as confusion. According to one interpretation think the workers really own the building. of the story, God was offended by humanity’s

symbol of arrogant pride and disunity.

Gandon’s Custom House In 1781, the English-born architect James Gandon began supervision of the building of a new custom house for the port of Dublin on the north bank of the River Liffey. The project took ten years to complete. It met with

considerable hostility from local merchants,

world. The unfinished tower is often used as a

language groups were scattered around the

Unable to understand each other, the tower was never completed, and the different

You can hear the irony in the description ‘so fine a skyscraper’, a skyscraper that in its height and scale goes beyond anything that the Georgian architect James Gandon could have dreamed of. In its scale, it puts the Custom House to shame, as well as the cranes and the gantries of the Dublin docks. Our interpretation of these lines is wholly dependent upon tone. And it is clear that the tone is mocking. For Clarke, the new building may be ‘glassier’, but it is not ‘classier’ than Gandon’s Custom House. There is irony and humour in the statement ‘Labour is now accustomed / To higher living.’ The humour comes from a play on words. The workers’ demands for more wages to achieve a higher (standard of) living is mockingly set against the ‘higher living’ of the sixteen storeys of Liberty Hall.

the builders to speak in multiples languages.

pride in seeking to build a tower that would reach or ascend to heaven, so God caused

who opposed the building and its siting. It

was built with Portland stone (a limestone

Lines 19–25

with a milky-white colour) in a neoclassical

For the first time in the poem, the ‘I’ pronoun is introduced. The poet remembers hearing Jim Larkin speak outside the old Liberty of Dublin’s most beautiful buildings. Gandon Hall. He recalls leaning against the railing that surrounded the also designed the Four Courts, O’Connell Bridge and the King’s Inns in Dublin, and Emo old building. He remembers the ‘tall and lean’ Larkin shouting Court in Co. Laois. and railing. The verb ‘railing’ mirrors the noun ‘Railing’. The verb suggests that Larkin is complaining bitterly though eloquently. He is animated, ‘Arm-waving’, as he speaks, in all likelihood reproaching the employers for their unfair treatment of workers. The poet asks the rhetorical question: ‘Why should he give a damn / That day for English grammar’? The use of the colloquial ‘damn’ and the rhetorical question give us a flavour of Larkin’s use of language on that day.

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or Roman style and is considered to be one

Lines 26–29

Clarke likens the top of the building to a pagoda (a temple used to house sacred objects). The statement ‘a green pagoda / Has glorified cement’ can be read in at least two ways. The first suggests that the pagoda has been constructed using an inferior material – ‘glorified cement’. The second suggests that the pagoda has glorified the cement by making it seem a more splendid material than it is in reality. In fact, the whole building might be seen as a glorification of materials that Clarke regards as inferior to the Portland stone

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Austin Clarke X Liberty Hall Located on the north quays of the River Liffey, close to the Custom House, Liberty Hall was

originally a hotel. It was built in the style of an Italian palace. It became the headquarters of

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the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU; founded by Jim Larkin) in 1912, and

of the Irish Citizens Army (founded by James

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Connolly) in 1913. During the 1913 Lockout, Maud Gonne and Countess Markiewicz ran a soup kitchen in Liberty Hall for the families of workers. After the outbreak of the First World

War, the ITGWU hung a banner from Liberty Hall that declared: ‘We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser, But Ireland!’ The 1916 Proclamation was printed in Liberty Hall, which was also

used to build Gandon’s Custom House. The green undulating roof of the new building is made of copper, a nod by the architect to the dome on the Custom House. The undulating sections of the roof remind Clarke of the sections of an umbrella, keeping off the sun. Clarke does not say keeping off the rain because he wants to make a contrast between the need to stop the new glass building from overheating and the difficulty of heating the rooms in the nearby tenement buildings. The rhyming of ‘pagoda’ with ‘Go, da’ expresses his disgust with the new building built in the name of the two men who worked tirelessly to improve the living conditions of the poor. The colloquial ‘da’ is here used to refer to any poor person living in the tenements. The imperative form of the verb ‘Go’ might be read as the union sending the people they are supposed to represent back to their tenement room, while they spend money on a tower of offices.

the assembly point for Volunteers taking part in the 1916 Rising. New Liberty Hall was built

Themes and imagery

on the site of the original building.

Clarke was almost unique among poets in the 1960s in taking Dublin as the setting for his poetry and in offering a contemporary commentary on a new building in the city, as it was being constructed. Implicit in the poem is the contrast between the past and the present, between the idealism of Larkin and Connolly and the selfishness of capitalism. Clarke does not admire the new face of Dublin, associating it with capitalism and a loss of culture. The poem is polemical and Connolly and Larkin Clarke makes no attempt to see the argument in favour of the James Connolly was born to Irish parents new building.

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In the poem, the new tower-like building becomes a symbol. The tower has some of the features of a pagoda, but, in Clarke’s eyes, it is a temple to capitalism rather than a temple to the struggle and sacrifice of the workers. The symbolism of the tower-like structure is reinforced by a reference to the Tower of Babel. In the original biblical story, Babel symbolised disunity and arrogant pride. Does Clarke regard the building of a new Liberty Hall as an arrogant gesture, removed from the concerns of the working class and the poor whom the union ought to represent? He seems to be highlighting the irony that the home of Larkin’s trade union will provide luxury offices for capitalists while the poor shiver in the nearby tenements. The railings that surrounded the old Liberty Hall, and all that it represented, have been replaced by ‘glorified cement’ (line 27). For Clarke, the past is being remodelled and reconstructed, its meaning lost in a glass tower. He clearly feels nostalgic for what has been replaced, which he associates with Larkin. As a young man, Clarke heard Larkin speak and was moved by the power of

in Edinburgh. Jim Larkin was born to Irish

parents in Liverpool. Both men came to Dublin and were involved in the trade union movement, the 1913 Lockout and the establishment of the Irish Citizens Army. Larkin was a noted public speaker and orator, with immense physical energy. In 1913, when he was sentenced to seven months in prison for the use of ‘seditious language’ (language likely to incite rebellion or public disorder), he told his supporters: ‘This great fight of ours is not simply a question of shorter hours or better wages. It is a great fight for human liberty of action, liberty to live as human beings should live, exercising their God-given faculties and powers over nature; always aiming to reach out for a higher betterment and development, trying to achieve in our own time the dreams of great thinkers and poets of this nation – not as some do, working for their own individual betterment and aggrandisement.’

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Form and language

his oratory. Although it is not stated directly, Clarke implies that the new Liberty Hall is a betrayal of Larkin and Connolly and of the unemployed, the workers and the poor.

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The poem consists of seven sentences of variable length. It is not divided into stanzas and does not follow the usual metric forms. However, it is not written in free verse. Clarke copies the tradition of medieval poetry in Irish with its emphasis on the number of syllables per line (predominantly six per line in ‘New Liberty Hall’) and the use of internal rhyme, half-rhyme, alliteration, consonance and wordplay. A close examination of the poem reveals a richness of sound echoes and correspondences. Its largely matter-of-fact descriptions are enlivened by the musicality of the language and the clever wordplay. The style of the poem is compact. Where he deems it necessary, Clarke will omit words like ‘a’ and ‘the’ to maintain the syllable count, as in the opening line, ‘Higher than county lark’. This, and the use of puns and wordplay, can make the exact meaning unclear, though not the general intent. The poem is impersonal and non-confessional. The Liberty Hall in Dublin. single ‘I’ in the poem refers to leaning against the railing that surrounded the original Liberty Hall. Yet Clarke’s feelings of scorn can be detected in the tone of the poem.

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Clarke takes an almost childlike delight in wordplay, surprise, sound echoes and concord. For example, the ‘lark’ of line 1 becomes ‘Larkin’ in line 5. The workers ‘scrape’ (line 13) to own a ‘skyscraper’ (line 14). He makes an outrageous rhyme between ‘pagoda’ (line 26) and ‘Go, da’ (line 28). He rhymes one-syllable words with words of two or more syllables: ‘sings’ (line 2) with ‘scaffoldings’ (line 4). He rhymes the initial syllable rather than the end one: ‘grammar’ (line 24) and ‘damn’ (line 23). He likes the repetition of vowel and consonant sounds and rhymes and half-rhymes: hall/hallmark; scoff/skimp/scrape; county/liberty/memory/Connolly; suites/streets; custom/accustomed; shouting/should. He employs words that have more than one meaning, ‘railing’ being the obvious example (lines 19 and 22). In rhyming ‘eloquent’ with ‘cement’ and ‘tenement’ (lines 25–29), he links ideas as much as sounds. Clarke admired the tradition of public oratory that existed in Dublin in the early twentieth century. It could be said that this poem, with its puns and ironies, pays homage to Larkin and his anger, indignation and sense of civic responsibility by speaking out against the development of the city for, as Clarke sees it, the benefit of capitalism at the expense of the poor.

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem How does Clarke portray the height of the new building in the opening sentence?

Why is the building being erected in memory of Larkin and Connolly?

What, do you think, is Clarke suggesting about the ‘new capitalists’ when he describes them ‘With cap / On simple head’ (lines 6–8)?

Comment on the use of the word ‘glassier’ (line 10).

What, do you think, is the meaning of ‘Babel’d above our streets’ (line 11).

Why might the unemployed ‘scoff’ (line 12) at the new building?

Do the workers really ‘own so fine a skyscraper’ (line 14)? Explain your answer.

In what way is the new Liberty Hall ‘Beyond the dream of Gandon’ (line 15)?

What impression of Jim Larkin do you form from the description given in lines 20–25?

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Comment on the phrase ‘glorified cement’ (line 27).

Do you think the description ‘Umbrella’d the sun’ (line 28) is effective? Explain your answer.

Who, do you think, tells ‘da’ to go ‘shiver’ in his tenement (lines 28–29)? Explain your answer.

Thinking about the poem

Do you think Clarke felt a personal connection to the old Liberty Hall? Explain your answer.

‘For Clarke the new face of Dublin is destroying the elegance of the past.’ Do you agree with this view? Give reasons for your answer.

Why, do you think, might Clarke be drawn to the lark more than to the new tower building?

Is the argument of the poem clear, or does it depend too much on suggestion and ambiguity? Give reasons for your answer.

‘The poem is filled with facts and details, so the poetry comes from the language patterns rather than the subject matter.’ Do you agree with this view? Give reasons for your answer.

Select the word, phrase or image that most appeals to you in the poem. Explain your choice.

Give three examples of the rich and closely woven soundscape of the poem.

‘We need more poems about public buildings and our built environment and fewer about personal feelings.’ Discuss this statement.

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Which, if any, of these statements is closest to your understanding of the poem? a) It is a poem about the heroes of the past. b) It is a poem about modern architecture. c) It is a poem about the changing face of Dublin city. Explain your answer.

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10 Which of these views is closest to your own? a) ‘From reading this poem, I form the impression that Clarke was a passionate man who cared about his city, the past and the treatment of ordinary people.’ b) ‘From reading this poem, I form the impression that Clarke was a cranky man who lived in the past and did not want to understand the modern world.’ Explain your answer.

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Imagining

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1 Write an impressionistic piece from the viewpoint of a lark flying over the city, entitled ‘If a lark could speak’.

2 Write a short description of a modern building that you admire and say why you admire it.

3 Imagine you are Desmond Rea O’Kelly, the architect who designed the new Liberty Hall. Write a letter to Clarke in defence of your building.

Set in Dublin Critical of city’s first modernist office building Addresses public issue Sets present against past Largely impersonal Mocking tone Satirical Oratorical style Syllabic poetry Rich soundscape Puns and wordplay

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SNAPSHOT

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1772–1834

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Kubla Khan

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Biography Samuel Taylor Coleridge was brought up in the south-west of England. He read books and wrote poetry from early in his childhood, and went on to study at Cambridge University. In 1795 he met William Wordsworth, and together they produced the volume of poetry called Lyrical Ballads, which did a great deal to establish and set the course of the Romantic Movement in English poetry. The Romantics valued the emotions and the individual imagination above reason and intellect. He wrote the poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and wrote influential essays about literature, especially Shakespeare. He suffered from anxiety and depression, and as he grew older he developed an addiction to opium, which contributed to his death at the age of 61.

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Kubla Khan

Before you read Search the internet for paintings by John Martin, and Albert Bierstadt’s paintings of the Yosemite valley. They will give you an idea of what was known as the ‘sublime’ in nature and art. Have these pictures in mind when you read the poem.

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In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

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Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

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But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

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Xanadu: (say Zanadu) modern Shangdu in northern China, the site of Kubla Khan’s palace decree: order (to be built) girdled round: surrounded

Kubla Khan: or Kublai Khan, 1215–1294, Chinese and Mongol emperor, grandson of Genghis Khan

Title

Glossary

A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

sinuous rills: winding streams Enfolding: enclosing

chasm: deep cleft or canyon in the earth’s surface

athwart a cedarn cover: across a forest of cedar trees

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e’er: ever

waning: getting smaller

with ceaseless turmoil seething: continuously bubbling up in chaotic ways

momently: continually

half-intermitted: partly interrupted

vaulted: jumped

chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: the wheat (or other grain) that bounces up when it is hit by a special stick (flail) to remove the husks (chaff); this activity is called threshing

tumult: loud confusion

mingled measure: mixed sounds

device: design

damsel: young woman

dulcimer: stringed instrument

Abyssinian: Ethiopian; dark-skinned

symphony: harmony of sounds

honey-dew: nectar

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Guidelines

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When Coleridge published ‘Kubla Khan’ in 1816, he also printed an introduction to it that explained how it had been written. In 1797 he felt ill and took a remedy for it, then fell asleep while reading a book about Kubla Khan and the palace he had built. While asleep he had a dream vision which included lines of poetry that described the vision. When he woke up he started to write the lines down, but was interrupted by ‘a person on business from Porlock’, and was horrified to discover after talking to him that he had forgotten the rest of his inspired poem, which he thought would have been 200–300 lines long. The ‘medicine’ he took for his sickness was probably a kind of opium, the substance from which heroin is made. It would certainly help to explain the extraordinary vision the poem describes.

Commentary

Lines 1–11

The scene is quickly set. Kubla (or Kublai) Khan was a real historical figure, and he did build a palace (or ‘pleasuredome’) at Xanadu (or Shangdu) in northern China in the thirteenth century. There is no river Alph in Xanadu, however. It seems to take its name from the river Alpheus in Greece, which is described in an ancient book by Pausanias in terms very similar to the ones in this poem. So Coleridge is clearly creating an imaginary world.

Alph seems to run in very deep (‘measureless to man’), dark caverns, down to a ‘sunless sea’ – perhaps an underground ocean. The geography described in the poem is hard to pin down.

The next six lines bring us back to the palace grounds which, in contrast with the dark ‘measureless’ caverns, are ‘bright’ and ‘sunny’, ‘fertile’ and well-ordered and measured. Notice the sense of reassuring protection: the land is ‘girdled round’ with walls and towers, and the forests ‘enfold’ the green, sunny clearings.

Lines 12–24

Now the focus – and the mood – suddenly changes. We are shown, with an awe-filled ‘oh!’, the ‘deep romantic chasm’. This is not the same as the ‘caverns measureless to man’, as will be clear later, but it is a wild (‘savage’) and terrifying place, the sort of place where you might find a ‘woman wailing for her demon-lover’, or the ghost of one. It is haunted and strange, and the exclamation marks indicate the speaker’s excitement in thinking about it. It is ‘romantic’ not because it is pretty, but because it stirs extreme emotions.

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From line 17 we hear why this chasm is significant: it is the source of the sacred river Alph. The chasm seethes with ‘ceaseless turmoil’ as if the earth were gasping for breath. It sounds rather like an earthquake, but out of it is ‘forced’ a ‘mighty fountain’. It is a violent process that sends great fragments of rock flying, but this is the source of the river.

Lines 25–30

The mood changes again, as the speaker describes the serene course of the river meandering through ‘wood and dale’. Then it reaches the ‘caverns measureless to man’ that we heard about in line 4, and sinks ‘in tumult’ – in turbulence and loud noise – into the ‘lifeless ocean’, which must be the ‘sunless sea’ from line 5. Then, in another sudden change of focus, we return to Kubla Khan, who hears in the midst of this ‘tumult’ the voices of his ancestors ‘prophesying war’. It is a moment of suspense, suggesting that some great action will take place, but we never hear any more about it.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge Lines 31–36

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As if to prolong that moment of suspense, we are now given a more distant view of the pleasure-dome with its shadow cast on the waves of the sea, and the caverns. Somehow we can hear the mixed sounds (‘mingled measure’) of the fountain and the caves. It is hard to picture the sunny palace and the dark, cold caverns in one image but then, as the speaker says, it was ‘a miracle of rare device’.

Lines 37–54

Everything changes again. For the first time an ‘I’ enters the poem, describing a vision that he once saw of ‘an Abyssinian maid’ playing a dulcimer and singing of ‘Mount Abora’, another invented place. This section is generally thought to have been added at a later time, as a commentary on the incomplete vision of Xanadu. It seems at first to have nothing to do with what has gone before, but although it starts calmly it gets more and more impassioned as the speaker declares that if he could recall her music (‘revive within me / Her symphony and song’) he would be so inspired that, ‘with music loud and long’, he could recreate the vision of Xanadu (‘build that dome in air /… those caves of ice!’). And others would be able to see it too, as well as a strange figure with ‘flashing eyes’ and ‘floating hair’. He is both frightening and holy – the best thing to do if faced with him is to ‘Weave a circle round him thrice’ in a magic ritual to protect you, and shut your eyes. Who is this figure? Is it Kubla Khan? Or is it the speaker himself, the poet who has eaten ‘honey-dew’ and ‘drunk the milk of Paradise’ in the form of opium, and inspired by his vision, has become almost a god?

Themes and imagery

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It is much easier to describe the effects the poem has on the reader – the way it can excite and calm you – than to say what it is actually about. We are presented with a description of the palace at Xanadu, the river Alph and the sunless sea. There is the hint of a story (the prophecy of war) but it never gets going. The contrast between the sunny, ordered, enclosed gardens and the violence and darkness associated with the river is striking, and it suggests themes to do with nature and art. The man-made paradise of Xanadu is threatened by the raw force of nature. The river runs below the ground as if it might undermine the palace, but it could also symbolise the dangerous power of the subconscious or the imagination.

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The final section of the poem reinforces the idea that the true theme of the poem is the power of the imagination, and particularly of poetic inspiration. Coleridge imagines he could ‘revive’ his memory of the Abyssinian maid’s music, and with his own music, he ‘would build that dome in air’. You could say that that is exactly what he has done in the earlier parts of the poem. He has imagined the scene so vividly that the music of his language has brought it to life for the reader. He was, he believed, inspired. You might ask what part drinking the ‘honey-dew’ (i.e. the remedy) played in that inspiration.

grand scale, especially huge, rugged mountains or big, rough seas. The Anglo-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke wrote an influential book that tried to understand the feelings of awe, wonder

increasingly to appreciate and admire scenery they called sublime: landscapes that were on a

During the eighteenth century people began

Coleridge said that he decided to publish the poem only because a friend and fellow poet, Lord Byron, persuaded him to do so many years after it had been written. And then he did so as a ‘psychological curiosity’ rather than because he thought it was a good poem. It was only a ‘fragment’, he insisted. And yet people have been fascinated by the poem for two hundred years. Why is that?

The sublime

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Language and form

and terror that were part of the pleasure of such

One answer that has often been given is that we love the sound it makes. It is a poem that needs to be read out loud so you Wordsworth and Coleridge, were strongly can feel the sounds and rhythms in your body. There are rich drawn to ‘sublime’ scenery and the emotions it produced. The paintings of John Martin and J. patterns of vowel and consonant sounds to relish; the pulse of M. W. Turner, a little later, are often expressions the iambic rhythm (see Glossary page 600, iambic pentameter) of the sublime in art. – sometimes calm but often urgent – drives the poem forward; the rhymes are woven through it all and bind it together. It would be impossible here to analyse every effect, but we will look at two sections in some detail.

scenes. The English Romantic poets, including

The opening

The poem opens boldly with four tetrameters (i.e. four lines of four beats each) that sketch the scene. Notice the rich pattern of sounds just in the first line: ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan’. As well as the obvious alliteration in the name ‘Kubla Khan’, there are the ‘d’ sounds in ‘Xanadu did’, the ‘n’ sounds of ‘In Xanadu’ and ‘Khan’, and the vowels all chime with each other: ‘In’ and ‘did’; ‘—du’ and ‘Ku—’; and especially the short ‘a’ sounds in ‘Xanadu’ and ‘Kubla Khan’. It is all these sound patterns that make it such a satisfying line to speak. Another particularly rewarding line is ‘So twice five miles of fertile ground’ (line 6), with its alliterations, long ‘i’ vowels and internal rhyme (‘miles ’/ ‘fertile’).

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The fifth line is shorter, with just three beats (a trimeter), beginning with a strong stress on ‘Down’ which adds to the sense of something reaching an end. Then the next six lines pick the energy up again with the description of the ‘fertile ground’, and the lines expand into pentameters (ten syllables, five stresses) from line 8, giving a sense of expansiveness and relaxation, e.g. ‘And here were forests ancient as the hills’.

The rhymes come thick and fast, especially in the shorter lines, adding to the harmony of the poem’s music. Notice that one rhyme runs all through this section, so that the final word ‘greenery’ is linked not only to the ‘incense-bearing tree’ two lines before, but also to the ‘sunless sea’ in line 5, and to Kubla Khan’s ‘decree’ in the second line.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge The second section

The relative calm of the opening gives way to a passage full of the violence and wildness of nature as well as its beauty. The rhythm and sounds respond to the very different imagery. Let us look at lines 17–19:

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‘And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced’

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The hissing ‘s’ sounds in ‘ceaseless’ and ‘seething’, reinforced with the repeated ‘ee’ sound (assonance), creates in sound the sense of boiling, restless and threatening energy captured in the image. The ‘f’ and ‘th’ sounds in the next two lines carry that energy forward, and the alliteration of ‘m’ and ‘f’ consonants in the third line underline the iambic pentameter and give the image An earlier version its force. Notice too how Coleridge breaks the rhythm in the In 1934 a copy of ‘Kubla Khan’ that Coleridge second line, with ‘fast thick pants’. Say those three words out loud had written by hand and sent to a friend and feel what they make you do with your lips, tongue and teeth. years before it was eventually published was discovered in a private library. There are

A few lines later, one of the poem’s many memorable lines changes the energy yet again. ‘Five miles meandering with a mazy motion’ slows down the movement immediately with the first two words and their long ‘i’ vowels. The iambic rhythm is almost completely blurred, and the insistent ‘m’ sound makes the line move slowly, meandering, like the river.

The ending

a few differences between this version and the published one, suggesting that this was an earlier version of the poem. The changes Coleridge made before publication all seem to concern the sounds of the words. For example,

‘hideous turmoil seething’ became ‘ceaseless turmoil seething’, with its strong sibilance. Mount Amara (a real mountain mentioned in other poems) became Mount Abora (an invented place), presumably because Coleridge

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The final section of the poem starts quietly with short lines of preferred the sound of the word. three or four stresses, such as ‘A damsel with a dulcimer / In a vision once I saw’. Then from line 42 it builds steadily, in one long sentence, phrase piling on phrase, and simple rhymes chiming through (only three rhyme sounds from line 46 to the end: on ‘air’, ‘ice, ‘ed’) to reach the emotional climax at the end. Read it aloud and then try to see how Coleridge uses repetition, alliteration, assonance, and other sound patterns to create his effects.

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SNAPSHOT

Poem based on a dream vision, according to Coleridge’s account Contrasting imagery of wild nature and human artifice Underground river as symbol of imagination or the subconscious Theme of the power of the imagination and poetic inspiration Rich, musical patterns of sounds The sound may be more important than the sense Strong but varied rhythm that carries the reader through

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Exam-Style Questions What is the central contrast in the landscape described in lines 1–11?

What impression do you get from lines 12–16 of the ‘deep romantic chasm’?

What is being described in one complete sentence through lines 17–24?

Can you put into your own words what is described in lines 31–36?

How would you describe the tone of the poem’s final section (lines 37–54)?

Thinking about the poem

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Understanding the poem

In an earlier version of the poem, Coleridge wrote ‘twice six miles of fertile ground’ in line 6, instead of ‘twice five’. Why, do you think, might he have changed that word?

What is the significance, do you think, of the ‘Ancestral voices prophesying war’ in line 30?

Choose one or two lines from the poem and comment on Coleridge’s use of rhythm and patterns of sound in it/them.

‘The poem is completely meaningless and not worth bothering with.’ Is this a fair judgement on ‘Kubla Khan’? Explain your answer.

‘The poem is pure music, and one of the greatest achievements of English poetry.’ Comment on this statement with reference to the text of the poem.

Who, do you think, is being described in the final five lines of the poem, with ‘flashing eyes’ and ‘floating hair’? Explain your answer.

Imagine you are the ‘person … from Porlock’ who interrupted Coleridge when he was writing down his visionary poem. Write an account of your visit to his house and the state he was in when you arrived there.

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Your group has been asked to prepare an audio-visual presentation to accompany a reading of ‘Kubla Khan’. Discuss what music, sounds and images you would use in the presentation.

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Imagining

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Rita Dove

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b. 1952

Rita Dove Summit Beach, 1921

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Biography

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Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio. Her mother had a passion for reading and her father was one of the USA’s first black research chemists of prominence. She graduated from Miami University and earned a Fulbright scholarship to study in Germany. There, she met German writer Fred Viebahn, whom she married in 1979. The couple lived in several countries, including Ireland, before settling in the USA. Dove, who has published short stories, poetry collections, essays, a novel and a play, has said, ‘There’s no reason to subscribe authors to particular genres. I’m a writer, and I write in the form that most suits what I want to say.’ She has also performed her work live in theatres, schools and hospitals and before US presidents. She was the youngest ever Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1993–1995) and Virginia’s Poet Laureate (2004–2006). She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia and loves to play the viola and ballroom dance with her husband. Her granddaughter has an Irish name, Saoirse!

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Summit Beach, 1921

Before you read

May 26, 1993

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The Negro beach jumped to the twitch of an oil drum tattoo and a mandolin, sweaters flying off the finest brown shoulders this side of the world. She sat by the fire, shawl moored by a single fake cameo. She was cold, thank you, she did not care to dance – the scar on her knee winking with the evening chill. Papa had said don’t be so fast, you’re all you’ve got. So she refused to cut the wing, though she let the boys bring her sassafras tea and drank it down neat as a dropped hankie. Her knee had itched in the cast till she grew mean from bravery. She could wait, she was gold. When the right man smiled it would be music skittering up her calf like a chuckle. She could feel the breeze in her ears like water, like the air as a child when she climbed Papa’s shed and stepped off the tin roof into blue, with her parasol and invisible wings.

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Have you ever injured yourself? ro r upwo How did it happen? Where? Why? Do you have a scar? Share your stories!

Glossary 1

Negro: old-fashioned word used to refer to a black person from Africa or whose ancestors came from Africa

oil drum: empty oil barrel; the top is played as a drum (often called a steel drum)

tattoo: beating a drum quickly and rhythmically

mandolin: small stringed instrument

cameo: brooch featuring a face carved in raised relief

cut the wing: dance

sassafras: a type of tree

skittering: moving lightly and quickly

parasol: light umbrella used to provide shade from the sun

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Rita Dove X

Guidelines

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The poem is from Dove’s 1989 collection, Grace Notes. Interestingly, it stands alone at the beginning of this forty-eight poem collection in which the other poems are grouped in an 11-9-7-9-11 pattern. The poem depicts a US beach party in 1921, where music and dancing surround an adolescent girl who observes the festivities but does not take part.

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Commentary Lines 1– 4

Music dominates the poem’s opening; even the beach itself seems to dance to the beat of the drum and the tune of a mandolin. The beach is a ‘Negro’ one. This word, coupled with the year in the title, 1921, sets the poem in the era of segregation in the USA. There is a sense of wild abandon: ‘sweaters flying off the finest brown shoulders’.

Lines 5–14

The focus shifts from the general beach scene to a specific figure, an unnamed girl sitting wrapped in a shawl beside the fire. She declines offers to dance. One reason for this is that her knee is scarred and the cold breeze seems to irritate her injury: ‘the scar on her knee winking / with the evening chill’. Another reason is that her father has told her to refrain from encouraging the attentions of men. He wants her to save herself for the right man: ‘don’t be so fast, / you’re all you’ve got’. She complies with his wishes and accepts only tea from the boys, which she sips daintily, taking no part in the dancing.

Lines 15–25

We move to the inner life of the girl as she recalls how the cast she had to wear on her knee had irritated her so much that ‘she grew mean’. She has internalised and accepted her father’s advice, deciding she will wait for ‘the right man’. She will know he is the right one from how his smile makes her feel; it will cause a physical and sensual reaction that will feel like ‘music skittering up her calf’. The girl is attuned to her surroundings and feels the cool breeze in her ear. This sensation brings her back to the moment in her childhood when she originally hurt her knee in a daring act, jumping from the tin roof of her father’s shed using a parasol as an ineffectual parachute. She had imagined she would fly on ‘invisible wings’, but the scar is evidence that she could not. We might wonder whether her daring spirit has been completely crushed or still lurks beneath the demure and aloof exterior she now portrays.

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Themes and imagery Referring to this poem and the collection it opens, L. Wright said: ‘Dove illustrates how the black adolescent must dance to similar rhythms and desires as those sixty years beyond her did.’ Certainly, ideas of race and gender are explored here. The very first line tells us that this is a ‘Negro beach’. It is an example of the segregation of black and white people. The girl herself seems segregated from the main action, which sounds so full of life and energy: ‘an oil drum tattoo and a mandolin, / sweaters flying off the finest brown shoulders’ (lines 2–3). She does not participate; ORDINARY LEVEL 2024 / 531

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in fact, she seems tied to her spot by the fire – a simile likens her to a ship ‘moored / by a single fake cameo’ (lines 5–6). The word ‘fake’ hints at poverty and the specific images of the cameo brooch and the shawl seem old-fashioned when compared with the casual sweaters and bare shoulders of the dancers. Perhaps her position and attire have been remarked upon: ‘She was cold, / thank you’ (lines 6–7) sounds like a curt response. She rebuffs invitations to dance, accepting only tea from the boys who approach her. Image of a segregated beach from the State Library and Archives of Florida. Is this her choice? Or is it because of her father’s warning: ‘don’t be so fast’ (line 10). In other words, is her separation from the fun within her own power or is it being controlled by the men in her life?

There are many contrasts present in the imagery of the poem. Freedom versus control is one, as discussed above. Others include: innocence and experience, action and stillness, hot and cold, covered and uncovered. Look for examples of these in the poem. An internal contrast comes in the form of the girl herself. She seems prim and proper, older than her years; consider the simile describing how she drinks her tea: ‘drank it down / neat as a dropped hankie’ (lines 13–14). However, the scar on her knee represents a much freer and more daring spirit. She jumped from the roof of ‘Papa’s shed’ (line 23) with a ‘parasol and invisible wings’ (line 25). She had dared to fly, but it ended in injury, and with her knee in a cast that itched and made her ‘mean from bravery’ (line 16). She now has the scar to show for this experience. Is the poet telling us that she is a daring creature who has passion within? Or has she been cowed by the experience and become a more careful person?

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There is certainly sensuality within her as she imagines meeting the ‘right man’ and how his smile will cause a sensation like ‘music skittering up her calf’ (lines 18–19). This incredibly loaded metaphor is full of physicality and sexual energy. She is not immune to the passions of music and men.

The poem’s similes, metaphors, personification and symbols combine to paint a picture full of contrast and emotion. For example, think about the phrase ‘into blue’ in the penultimate line of the poem. Is the ‘blue’ the sky, the sea or something more abstract? Think about what people mean when they use the phrase ‘out of the blue’. Could ‘blue’ be a metaphor or symbol for something – freedom, danger, the unknown? You have lots in this poem to ponder.

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Rita Dove X

Form and language

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The poem’s unbroken lyric moves from the general to the specific, from the present to the past and from the external to the internal. On the surface, the poem seems like a simple recounting of a beach party and a childhood injury. However, the poem’s form is carefully crafted and is as full of movement as the dancers of its opening lines. First, we have a general picture of a beach with dancers and music. There is energy and joy in the language; for example, ‘twitch / of an oil drum tattoo’ (lines 1–2) mixes harder and quicker consonant sounds with longer vowel sounds (especially ‘o’) to echo the musicality of the percussion and string instruments used by the musicians. We then move to the specific: the girl sitting by the fire covered modestly by a shawl while sweaters fly off brown shoulders nearby. Her isolation and difference from the group are further marked by her stillness – another reference to movement in the poem. The poem also moves from the present to the past when a sea breeze fills ‘her ears like water’ and reminds the girl of a time ‘when / she climbed Papa’s shed and stepped off / the tin roof into blue’ (lines 21–24).

Language is used skilfully to set the scene. The opening line’s ‘Negro beach’ tells us a lot about the time and place of the poem. Other words and phrases create an African-American feel; for example, ‘don’t be so fast’ (line 10) and ‘cut the wing’ (line 12). To ‘cut the wing’ means to dance, but what an interesting phrase to choose. We tend to think of dancing as a form of free expression, whereas having wings cut suggests something quite opposite. Also, the phrase foreshadows the girl’s story of her ill-fated fall or jump from the shed on ‘invisible wings’ (line 25). Having wings cut generally means being restricted, being held back from one’s desires. How might this feed into the theme of the poem? ‘Don’t be so fast’ is a warning to the girl not to give herself to just anyone. To be described as ‘fast’ means to be promiscuous. Speed is linked to sex, and both are bad in this context.

The mention of ‘sassafras tea’ (line 13) also adds depth to the setting of the poem, and an old-fashioned culture of women needing to seem demure and aloof is suggested in the phrase ‘neat as a dropped hankie’ (line 14). Dropping a handkerchief was often a signal from a woman to a man that she liked him. As he passed by, the hankie would be dropped ‘accidentally’ and if he liked her, he would pick it up and return it to her. Thus, there are two worlds at play in the language of the poem: the sensual world of brown bodies dancing with abandon by the sea and the formal southern world of ‘cotillion’ ball and, with its emphasis on polite behaviour and affected modesty.

Exam-Style Questions

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Understanding the poem 1

The opening lines of the poem are full of life, movement and energy. How does the poet convey this to us?

What details in the poem establish its setting? You might like to look at sounds and images here.

What details in the poem show that the girl is cold?

Explain why the girl has a scar on her leg.

What advice has the girl’s father given her about men? Has she followed his advice? Explain.

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Thinking about the poem Dove uses contrast throughout the poem. Choose the three examples of contrast that you found most effective and write about them.

Analyse the imagery in the poem using these four headings: similes, metaphors, symbols and personification. You might decide to write this in paragraphs or choose to present it as a grid or mind map, etc. Make sure you discuss the meaning and effect of the imagery you identify.

The poem moves from the general to the specific in terms of its focus and setting. Describe this movement.

Compare male and female in the poem in terms of freedom and control.

Why, do you think, has the poet included the story of the girl jumping from the shed roof?

Describe the female protagonist of the poem. What are your impressions of her? Does she have your admiration or sympathy, or something else?

Which of these words do you think is closest to describing the principal theme of the poem: freedom, inequality or love? Justify your answer.

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Imagining

Would you like to be at the beach party described in the poem? Give reasons for your answer using details from the poem.

In a piece of creative writing, tell the story of the girl jumping from the shed. Try to use imagery, sound effects and aspects of the five senses to bring your piece to life.

SNAPSHOT

Segregation Energy, movement and rhythm Use of contrast Girl set apart from others on the beach Similes, metaphors, personification and symbols Concepts of risk and freedom Unbroken lyric Variety of sound effects

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b. 1966

Tom French

Night Drive

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Biography

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Tom French was born in Kilkenny and raised in Tipperary. He studied at NUI Galway and the University of Limerick. The death of his brother led him into writing poetry. In a speech at the ‘A Poem for Ireland’ libraries’ competition in 2016, French said, ‘That poem – that one poem, that single perfectly constructed artifice of words – is worth pursuing with your whole being. That unexpected reward is worth everything.’ He received a bursary from the Arts Council and his awards include the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Dermot Healy Award and the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. Family and the Irish landscape and its history are central to his work. Having lived and worked in Europe and the USA, French now lives with his wife and family in Meath, where he works for the county library services and specialises in local studies. Peter Fallon has said it is ‘fitting that Tom is a librarian as well as a poet. Poetry is an archive of intense experience, and libraries are archives of our shared human experience.’

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Before you read

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Night Drive

How does our relationship with ro r upwo our parents or guardians change as we grow older? Discuss.

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in your lap, bracing yourself for the impact, hearing you whisper ‘Jesus’ under your breath, preparing your soul for the moment of death. Then, just as suddenly, nothing happened —

Something stepped into our beam and stood there, dumbly, ready to confront its death. I remember your right hand in the darkness — a white bird frightened from its fastness

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The closest, Mother, we have been in years was a night drive back from Achill on our own. Our tyres pressed their smooth cheeks to the ice, gripping nothing, squealing, barely holding on.

Guidelines

the sheep stepped back into the verge for no reason, attracted by a clump of grass. For days I felt the pressure of your hand on mine. You would’ve led me to the next world, Mother, like a child.

‘Night Drive’ first appeared in French’s debut collection, Touching the Bones, which explores the nature of family relationships and won the 2002 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Here, a near miss on a car journey causes the poet to ponder his relationship with his mother.

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Commentary

Stanza 1

The speaker addresses his mother directly, inviting her to share the memory of a drive on an icy night. It was just the two of them in the car and it seems they had grown apart a little over the years: ‘The closest, Mother, we have been in years’. It is interesting that they seem to be going home from somewhere: ‘a night drive back from Achill’. The conditions are already treacherous, with the tyres on the icy road ‘gripping nothing, squealing, barely holding on’.

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Tom French X Stanzas 2 and 3

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The tension increases in stanza 2. The headlights show that a sheep has wandered into the car’s path as if ready to die. This sight causes the mother to grip her son’s hand as she prepares for impact and the possibility of death. The word ‘Jesus’ escapes her lips; perhaps a prayer. Then, just as quickly as they were faced with death, stanza 3 tells us they are safe because ‘nothing happened’.

Stanza 4

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The sheep returned to the roadside, ‘attracted by a clump of grass’. The frightening experience ended quickly and without incident, but it made the speaker think about the nature of his relationship with his mother. He continued to feel her presence for ‘days’. He realises she is still his mother. She is his protector and his guide in life and also in death if necessary: ‘You would’ve led me to the next world, Mother, like a child.’

Themes and imagery

William Wordsworth said that poetry is ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’, a definition that suits this poem very well. The experience of almost crashing and of momentarily facing the possibility of death is one that the speaker thinks about long after it has passed. The abiding effect is not fear, however, but a gentle epiphany (moment of realisation). Despite having grown apart from her, he realises that this woman will always be his mother; she will always seek to guide and protect him (lines 15–16). Although their relationship changed as the speaker grew to adulthood, the fundamental bond between mother and son will always be there, even into death and beyond.

The personification of the car comparing the tyres to ‘smooth cheeks’ (line 3) adds a touch of humour. Are these cheeks from a face or a comparison to buttocks? Either way, the description of the tyres as smooth suggests that they may have been bald, which is, of course, very dangerous for driving in any conditions let alone icy ones. If the car has not been well maintained, it is prone to disaster. Could this be a metaphor for the parent–child relationship itself?

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The theme of chance and the transience of life is also evident in the poem, which has been described as ‘an exploration of the unpredictability of life and death’. Why did the sheep decide to step out in front of them just at that moment? The speaker seems unsure of what it is, such is the suddenness of the encounter: ‘Something stepped into our beam’ (line 5). As the mother’s hand moves, from being held quite stiffly as she prepared for impact to exerting pressure on her son’s hand as she anticipated death, it becomes like a symbol of peace – ‘a white bird’ (line 8) may make us think of a dove, a universal symbol of peace. The moment is so very meaningful for the speaker. It is as if a peace has been made after some tension. At the crucial moment, ‘preparing your soul for the moment of death’ (line 11), the mother’s possible last action was to grip her son’s hand. That image is central to the poem’s imagery and meaning. The anticlimax that follows underlines the nature of chance in life as ‘just as suddenly, nothing happened’ (line 12). The sheep ‘for no reason’ (line 14) moved out of the car’s path. However, there is a reason, which follows immediately. The sheep was ‘attracted by a clump of grass’ (line 14). So, we might wonder about fate and chance in life. Was this moment meant to be or is it just a product of a random series of events (ice, bald tyres, a journey taking them to that particular spot on the road at that particular moment just as that particular sheep stepped out and back again)? This simple anecdote, using accessible language and imagery, may cause us to ponder some universal and fundamental questions.

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Form and language

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This lyric poem has a simple form of four four-line stanzas containing some rhyme but no formal rhyming scheme. ‘Own’ and ‘on’ echo each other in stanza 1. The rhyming of ‘darkness’ and ‘fastness’ speeds up the effect of stanza 2. As this is the point where the car seems about to hit the sheep in the road, it is the perfect place to insert a fast rhyme. The space between the two long dashes at lines 7 and 12 is quicker than the other sections of the poem and the use of enjambment contributes to this. Note the fast consonance of the ‘f’ sounds in line 8: ‘a white bird frightened from its fastness’. The panic and swift pace of this unexpected event is clearly conveyed. Compare this to the slower line that follows once the speaker realises all is well: ‘Then, just as suddenly, nothing happened’ (line 12). More syllables and the use of commas slow down the pace of the poem considerably. There is time now to reflect on matters. The use of the word ‘nothing’ here might also bring our attention back to its use in line 4: ‘gripping nothing, squealing, barely holding on’. In a line packed with verbs, the immediacy of the present tense creates tension and an awareness of something ominous to come. Phrases like ‘nothing happened’ (line 12) and ‘for no reason’ (line 14) might make us wonder about the nature of fate or chance in life (see ‘Themes and imagery’ above).

The poem is addressed directly to the speaker’s mother, which gives it an intimacy that might make readers feel that they are almost intruding in a private moment. The word ‘Mother’ in the first line and final line frames the poem beautifully and references their relationship and the bond that has been there since his childhood.

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem 1

What evidence is there in stanza 1 that the mother and son in the poem are not as close as they used to be?

Might it be significant that the poem is set at night? Explain your answer.

What details in the first two stanzas show the dangers facing the passengers in the car?

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Tom French X How does the mother prepare for ‘the moment of death’ in stanzas 2 and 3, both physically and verbally?

According to stanza 4, what made the sheep return to the grass verge?

What did this event make the speaker realise about his mother?

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Thinking about the poem

Comment on the metaphor and the language in lines 7–9: ‘I remember your right hand in the darkness – / a white bird frightened from its fastness // in your lap’.

How has this near-death experience shaped or changed the way the speaker views his relationship with his mother?

What, do you think, is this poem saying about the concepts of fate and chance in life?

How is the setting of the poem typically Irish (West of Ireland to be precise) and what details in the poem contribute to creating this setting?

How does the poet create a very intimate feeling in this poem?

What, do you think, is this poem saying about parent and child relationships through this retelling of a simple anecdote?

Comment on the use of two or more sound effects in the poem. Choose from the following list: consonance, rhyme, repetition, enjambment, sibilance.

How does the poem’s punctuation affect its speed and meaning?

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Imagining

Write about this experience from the mother’s point of view. You may like to write a poem in response, a diary entry, a dialogue or something else.

Write about a near-death experience you have had (real or imagined). Try to create atmosphere, tension and a clear sense of place in your piece.

Write a letter from the speaker to the local council to complain about the dangers of sheep left to roam unchecked.

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SNAPSHOT

Speaker addresses his mother directly Relationship not as close as it once was Builds tension Anticlimax Image of mother’s hand as dove Punctuation affects pace and meaning Considers ideas of fate and chance Speaker gains new insight into their relationship Anecdote Accessible language

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Nikki Giovanni

O R D I N A RY L E V E L

b. 1943

They Clapped

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Biography

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Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her full name is Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jnr and ‘Nikki’ is the name her brother called her when they were young. She was expelled from Fisk University for going home for Thanksgiving without permission but later returned to complete her studies. Her grandmother’s death in 1967 hit Giovanni hard and she wrote to help cope with the grief. In the 1970s she appeared on and produced the TV show Soul!, in which black arts, culture and politics were discussed. She has published collections of poetry, essays and children’s books and has released albums of spoken poetry. She says, ‘I would put books on a par with chocolate, a good book is delicious.’ Among her many awards are the Rosa Parks Women of Courage Award and the Langston Hughes Award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters. She heads the Global Scholars’ Programme at Virginia Tech, which suffered the trauma of a mass shooting in 2007 when 32 people were killed by a lone gunman. Her speech at the memorial service received a standing ovation.

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Nikki Giovanni Before you read

What we expect from something ro r upwo does not always match the reality of it. Discuss this idea and see if you can come up with concrete examples. Thinking about events like birthdays, holidays, New Year’s Eve, etc. might help to stimulate the discussion. Conversely, something we dread can often turn out better than expected!

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Glossary

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they clapped when we landed thinking africa was just an extension of the black world they smiled as we taxied home to be met black to black face not understanding africans lack color prejudice they rushed to declare cigarettes, money, allegiance to the mother land not knowing despite having read fanon and davenport hearing all of j.h. clarke’s lectures, supporting nkrumah in ghana and nigeria in the war that there was once a tribe called afro-americans that populated the whole of africa they stopped running when they learned the packages on the women’s heads were heavy and that babies didn’t cry and disease is uncomfortable and that villages are fun only because you knew the feel of good leather on good pavement they cried when they saw mercedes benz were as common in lagos as volkswagens are in berlin they shook their heads when they understood there was no difference between the french and the english and the americans and the afro-americans or the tribe next door or the country across the border they were exasperated when they heard sly and the family stone in francophone africa and they finally smiled when little boys who spoke no western tongue said “james brown” with reverence they brought out their cameras and bought out africa’s drums when they finally realized that they are strangers all over and love is only and always about the lover not the beloved they marveled at the beauty of the people and the richness of the land knowing they could never possess either

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They Clapped

they clapped when they took off for home despite the dead dream they saw a free future

we taxied: the plane travelled along the runway

declare: tell a customs official that you have certain items; state; claim

allegiance: loyalty

j.h. clarke: John Henrik Clarke (1915–1998) was an academic who promoted the study of black culture and the place of Africans in world history

nkrumah: Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) was a Ghanaian politician who promoted African independence and unity

sly and the family stone: US soul and funk band

francophone: Frenchspeaking

james brown: US soul and funk singer (1933–2006)

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Guidelines

Taken from the collection My House (1972), ‘They Clapped’ explores how the expectations of a group of African-Americans travelling to Africa do not match the realities they find there.

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Commentary

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Lines 1–13

The African-American passengers who land in Africa applaud as the plane touches down in what they see as their ‘mother land’. They smile when they see the black faces there but do not understand that their arrival and their ancestry are not such a big deal to those who live there: ‘not understanding africans lack / color prejudice’. These travellers are well educated, especially in the politics and philosophy of race and colonialism. The speaker mentions that they have read ‘fanon and davenport’ and heard ‘all of j.h. clarke’s lectures’. They have supported the Ghanaian revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, who became the country’s first president and prime minister after leading a revolt against British colonisation. Despite all this research and knowledge, it seems that these travellers are ill-prepared for the reality of Africa.

Lines 14–18

The travellers discover that the real Africa is not as quaint as they had expected. The burdens the women carry on their heads are heavy. When witnessed in the flesh, poverty and disease are very different from the stereotypes they anticipated. Living in a village of dust roads is ‘fun’ only when it is a novelty, which it is to those from US towns and cities who know ‘the feel of good leather on good / pavement’.

Lines 19–24

As well as being upset by the poverty they see, the travellers seem equally ill at ease with the wealth they find in cities such as Lagos in Nigeria, where there are plenty of luxury cars (‘mercedes benz’). They realise that the differences they had expected do not exist. They find things in common where they expected to find diversity: ‘no / difference between the french and the english and the americans / and the afro-americans or the tribe next door or the country / across the border’.

Lines 25–32

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A further disappointment to these visitors is the Americanisation of Africa. Even children who do not speak the colonial languages of French or English have heard of the US musician James Brown. There seems to be an epiphany at this point in the poem as disappointment turns to a new respect, not for what marks us as different but for what we have in common. We are all strangers somewhere: ‘they are strangers all over’. Realising that their love of the idea of Africa, the motherland, was more about them than about the actual place or its people, they resort to taking photos and buying tourist paraphernalia: ‘brought out their cameras and bought out africa’s drums’. An intriguing concept is introduced here: ‘love is only and always about the lover not the beloved’. What or whom we love is really about the person who loves. What attracts or captivates us is dependent on who we are, not on what the object of our love is. Any disappointment about Africa not meeting their expectations melts away and the travellers truly appreciate what they see for how wonderful the reality of it actually is: ‘they marveled at the beauty of the people and the richness / of the land knowing they could never possess either’. Their heritage may be from way back in Africa, but it is not their land.

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Nikki Giovanni Line 33–35

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This realisation does not diminish it or them. Rather, it frees everyone from a tie to something they were mistaken about all along and leaves us all free to shape our own individual and communal futures. The poem ends with the travellers departing for home, buoyed up by the idea that although the dream of the Africa they expected is ‘dead’, the alternative they have been shown is an even better proposition: ‘they saw a free future’.

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Ideas of race and culture are explored in a lively and thought-provoking way in this poem. The ‘they’ in the poem are perhaps gently mocked at first. Their preconceptions of what Africa will be and how they will feel a part of it, ‘allegiance to the mother land’ (line 8), are misguided. They have intellectualised Africa and its history, ‘hearing all of j.h. clarke’s lectures, supporting / nkrumah in ghana and nigeria in the war’ (lines 10–11). These people are presumably coming from a position of privilege: they know ‘the feel of good leather on good / pavement (lines 17–18). They seem to think that Africa is one place and one unified set of people that they are descended from, that they are part of ‘a tribe called afroamericans that populated the whole / of africa’ (lines 12–13). This is not the case, however, and a theme of the poem is revealed here – you cannot be who you or your people were or what you thought they were: ‘they could never possess’ (line 32) the land or its people.

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Themes and imagery

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The diversity of race is explored here too. Africa is full of variety and difference and the poet tells us that this is positive. The reality that there is not one black Africa is something to embrace. It can be a release from the burden of history and expectation, which may be as heavy to carry as those packages the women transport on their heads (lines 14–15); this key image is one of the typical Western representations of African life (along with images of crying babies and disease, which are also mentioned in the poem). In contrast, portrayals of a city full of Mercedes cars and of people living in remote places who are familiar with American soul and funk music surprise us because they are not the images of Africa we see on television. The idea of love is also pondered here and the fierce love these travellers feel for Africa is tested by their actual experience of it. They loved an idea rather than a reality. Is this true of all love? Do we love our idea of a thing, a place or a person rather than the reality? What if the expectation or the idea we have of our beloved does not match the reality? The poem seems to reassure us that there is no need to worry about this because the reality can be liberating: ‘despite the dead / dream they saw a free future’ (lines 34–35). ORDINARY LEVEL 2024 / 543

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Form and language

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The first thing we notice about this poem is the lack of punctuation. We must find our own way through the poem to figure out meaning and syntax, just as the travellers to Africa had to find their own true experience of it. All words are treated equally, none are given more importance by being capitalised. Proper nouns such as place names, brand names and people’s names are on a par with all other nouns.

Ire

The poem is framed by the landing of the plane in Africa and its return to the skies as the travellers journey home. Both events give the travellers cause to celebrate: ‘they clapped when we landed’ (line 1) and ‘they clapped when they took off / for home’ (lines 33–34). Note the anaphora (see Glossary page 600) used by Giovanni here and throughout the poem in the repetition of ‘they’ followed by a verb. They ‘clapped … smiled … rushed … stopped running … learned … cried … saw … shook their heads … understood … were exasperated … heard … smiled … brought out … bought out … realized … marveled … could never possess … clapped … took off … saw’. Looking at these verbs is a good way to trace the thought and experience of the poem. There is quite an even spread of positives framing negative actions and reactions here. The initial actions all show enthusiasm for what Africa would be in their expectations; a motherland, a sort of Utopia for blackness and its culture – perhaps like Wakanda in the Black Panther movie? As the travellers realise that Africa is neither a unified entity nor theirs, they are initially shocked and disappointed – see the underlined verbs above. However, soon they see that we are all the same because there are differences everywhere. Places and people are various and cannot be labelled or made to fit neatly into a particular philosophy or theory – like the writers ‘fanon and davenport’ (line 9) and others tried to do perhaps!

Their holiday experience and newfound awareness allow the travellers to return home without the burden of some shared cultural or racial profile. They are now able to make a ‘free future’ (line 35) that is not tied down by history or race. Note the use of consonance here and in ‘dead / dream’ (lines 34–35), where the heavy ‘d’ sounds, which are dull and unpleasant, are most unlike the fun ‘f’ sounds and swift ‘e’s of ‘free future’.

Exam-Style Questions 2 3

Suggest why the travellers clapped when the plane landed in Africa.

Understanding the poem

What expectations do these visitors seem to have as African-Americans travelling to Africa? Who are ‘they’ in the poem and what do we learn about them? What realities of Africa seem to shock or disappoint the travellers?

What details make the travellers accept and even marvel at the Africa they have discovered?

Suggest why the travellers clap as their plane departs from Africa.

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Thinking about the poem 1

Suggest why ‘they’ were ‘exasperated’ when they heard American music being sung in ‘francophone africa’ and by ‘little boys / who spoke no western tongue’ (lines 25–27).

What examples of variety and difference do the travellers witness in Africa?

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Nikki Giovanni Line 30 states that ‘love is only and always about the lover and not the beloved’. Explain what you think Giovanni means here. Do you agree with her? Give reasons for your answer.

Analyse and comment on the use of repetition in the poem.

Compare the poem’s first three lines with its final three lines.

Describe the tone of the speaker. Is she serious, mocking, gentle or something else?

‘Expectation versus reality’ is a strong idea explored in the poem. Write about this idea and examine how it is explored in the poem. The ‘Before you read’ discussion you had may be helpful here.

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Imagining

Imagine you are one of the travellers. Compose a piece of travel writing inspired by the details in the poem.

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Ideas of race and belonging are explored in the poem. The speaker seems to tell us we do not need to cling to these ideas to find our true selves. Do you agree? Discuss.

Poem framed by plane landing and taking off Anaphora – ‘they’ used repeatedly Verbs are key to following travellers’ journey Explores ideas of race, identity and belonging Expectations versus reality Alliteration used extensively Lack of punctuation Uncapitalised proper nouns throughout Conveys variety of ‘Africa’ effectively

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SNAPSHOT

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

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Vona Groarke

b. 1964

547

Away

Biography

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Vona Groarke was born in Mostrim, Co. Longford. She studied at Trinity College, Dublin and University College Cork. She has taught at Villanova and Wake Forest universities in the USA. The experience of living and working overseas has been central to a lot of her poetry, which often explores being Irish abroad and being distant from family. She has also lived in several locations in Ireland and has been the writer in residence at Maynooth and Galway universities. Groarke became a member of Aosdána (the Irish Academy of the Arts) in 2010. Her collections published by The Gallery Press include Shale (1994), Other People’s Houses (1999), Flight (2002, winner of the Michael Hartnett Award in 2003), Juniper Street (2006), Spindrift (2009), X (2014), Selected Poems (2016) and Double Negative (2019, shortlisted for the 2020 Irish Times Poetry Now Award). She has also written a book-length personal essay entitled Four Sides Full (2016). Groarke currently teaches in the Centre for New Writing in the University of Manchester.

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Vona Groarke X

Away

Before you read G

What do you imagine (or ro r upwo know from experience) would be the hardest things about spending long periods of time away from your family? Our recent experience with the Covid pandemic might be a starting point for this discussion.

I straighten uniforms, ask French, nag music practice, argue Friends, trim their Bebo access.

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I babysit by Skype, breakfast to their lunch, lunch to their dinner.

What would it take – one crossed cyber wire, a virtual hair’s breadth awry – for these synapsed hours to bloat to centuries, for my background

to be rescinded to a Botticelli blue, my webcam image ruffed and pearled, speaking vintage words into spindrift?

Or, failing that, for me to be headlonged into light years off

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to the room of an obsolete laptop where I Skype and Skype and no one answers,

I touch their silky faces on my screen. I am three thousand miles ago, five hours in the red.

where I Google Earth to see if the world namechecks for me this morning

Glossary 1

Skype: a video-chat application

Friends: a US television series first broadcast from 1994 to 2004

Bebo: social media platform from 2009 to 2015 popular with teens

hair’s breadth: a tiny distance apart – the width of a hair

awry: in the wrong direction

synapsed: passed a signal across (usually refers to information being transmitted in the brain and between nerves)

rescinded: cancelled; disallowed

Botticelli: famous Italian Renaissance artist (1444–1510)

spindrift: foamy spray blown from the top of a wave

obsolete: outdated; no longer of any use

my son’s bike in the garden, my daughter’s skirt on the line? ORDINARY LEVEL 2024 / 547

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Guidelines

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Spindrift, Groarke’s 2009 collection, includes two poems entitled ‘Away’. In the poem reproduced here, she describes living in a different time zone to her children and trying to parent via social media. The distance between her and her children would become even greater if technology were to malfunction. The poem is humorous but also conveys parents’ anxiety when they cannot be physically with their children.

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Commentary Stanzas 1–3

The speaker tells us that she must use a video-chat application (Skype) to communicate with and to supervise her children because she is ‘three thousand miles’ away from them. The difference in the time zones they live in – she is ‘five hours in the red’ – means that while she is having breakfast, they are having lunch. She parents them remotely, trying to cover many bases from a considerable distance: their uniforms, their French and music homework, their television viewing and their social media usage. The mention of Bebo dates this poem to the time between 2009 and 2015. She touches their faces on her computer screen.

Stanzas 4–7

Stanzas 8–11

The distance in time and space between this parent and her children can be bridged only by using technology. The speaker wonders what might happen if this technology were to fail. What if a tiny glitch sent the children back in time, caused ‘these synapsed hours / to bloat to centuries’? They would look like figures from Renaissance paintings dressed in ruffs and pearls and would talk in an old-fashioned way: ‘ruffled and pearled, / speaking vintage words’. Her webcam image becomes like a Botticelli painting and her children’s words are lost to the air like the spume or froth from a wave transported by the wind: ‘rescinded … into spindrift’.

The speaker next imagines herself being transported by a technical glitch into the future: ‘headlonged / into light years off’. In this future, her laptop is out of date and her video-chat application can no longer connect: ‘I Skype and Skype / and no one answers’. She imagines using Google Earth to check that her children are home and ready for school: ‘my son’s bike in the garden, / my daughter’s skirt / on the line’.

Themes and imagery

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Groarke often writes about what it is to be ‘away’, to live and work at a distance from family and one’s homeland. The importance of technology in such a situation is clear in the poem, and Skype, Bebo and Google Earth all receive a mention. It is difficult to imagine how families stayed in touch and felt connected when they lived far apart before these tools were at our disposal.

Technology and how it connects us is an idea explored in this imaginative and original poem. A mother tries to parent through an internet application and is conscious of how vital this link is but also of how tenuous it might be. A tiny glitch, ‘one crossed cyber wire’ (line 11), might take away this precious line of connection to her children. It might send them into the past or her into the future. Both outcomes would render her Skype connection ‘obsolete’ (line 25) and their words would be lost to each other. Her children’s words and images

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Vona Groarke X would disappear in the past like the foamy top of a wave in the wind (‘spindrift’; line 21). Her words would be unable to travel back from a future that is too advanced to communicate with her present-day laptop.

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Day-to-day parenting concerns ground the poem in details such as homework, uniforms, trying to limit a child’s social media access and laundry. The speaker deals with these everyday issues through an almost magical connection. However, this connection seems so tenuous that her imagination shapes her anxiety into images of losing contact through a tear in the fabric of time itself. What is at the heart of these fanciful imaginings is the lack of physical presence, which clearly gnaws at the speaker as she tenderly touches her children’s ‘silky faces’ on her ‘screen’ (line 7). The imagery of travelling through time and losing contact with her children has a sci-fi feel to it: ‘for me to be headlonged / into light years off // to the room of an obsolete laptop’ (lines 23–25).

Form and language

Eleven three-line stanzas take the reader on a journey through time and space, both real and imagined. The first three stanzas explore the relationship as it is – from a distance, ‘three thousand miles ago’ (line 8). The next four stanzas ask what would happen if the children went back in time to an era before technology. The final four stanzas ask what would happen if the speaker went forward in time to a place where her current technology is rendered obsolete. The rigid structure and careful organisation of the stanzas may be an attempt to impose control on a situation the speaker fears she may easily lose control over.

The language of the poem mentions lots of technology applications. For example, ‘Google Earth’ (line 28), which the speaker seems to use to confirm that all is well at home and that her son and daughter are safely there. The signs she sees that reassure her are her son’s bike in the ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Botticelli. garden and her daughter’s skirt (possibly part of a school uniform as mentioned at line 4) on the washing line. Definite phrases show the influence of technology and set the poem firmly in a specific era: Skype, Bebo, Friends, etc.

Th e

The use of the word ‘babysit’ in the first line is interesting. It is unusual for a parent to use this term to describe their own role (it usually refers to someone other than a parent minding children). Why might the poet have used this word here? Does she feel less of a parent because she is not physically there with her children? What do you think? Look at the originality in the use of language also. For example, Groarke uses the word ‘headlong’ but turns it into a verb to convey being propelled through time into the future: ‘headlonged / into light years off // to the room of an obsolete laptop’ (lines 23–25). The playfulness and humour here really enhance the poem. The word ‘I’ is repeated several times in the opening stanzas of the poem and this anaphora (see Glossary page 600) emphasises the lone position of the speaker and her isolation from the children she is trying to parent. The use of questions adds to this effect. ORDINARY LEVEL 2024 / 549

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem What details show us that the speaker is in a different time zone from that of her children?

Find and comment on the words and images that indicate the poem’s domestic setting.

Where is the speaker’s concern and affection for her children most apparent in the poem?

What specific apps are mentioned and why?

What details show the speaker imagining her children in the past? See lines 16–21.

The speaker imagines herself ‘headlonged’ into the future (lines 22–27). How does she convey this idea?

What might the bike and the skirt on the washing line in the final stanza represent?

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Thinking about the poem

How are the themes of technology and communication conveyed in the poem through its language and imagery?

What two very strange things might happen if there is a glitch in technology and the speaker and her children end up in even more different times and places?

Do you agree that the tone of the poem is a mixture of anxiety and humour? Explore this idea for the poem as a whole.

What two questions are asked in the poem? Explain them using your own words as well as quotation.

How does checking Google Earth reassure the speaker at the end of the poem?

Do you think the issues and details in the poem would be the same if written from a father’s point of view? You may like to tackle this question as a group or class discussion.

Write about your experience (real or imagined) of trying to stay in touch with family and/or friends during the worldwide Covid pandemic of recent years.

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Imagining

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SNAPSHOT

Eleven three-line stanzas Domestic setting Explores distance in place and time Role of technology Imagines separation in the past/future Some difficult language Repetition of ‘I’ Explores connection and disconnection Two questions Rigid structure Parental separation from children

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The Thought-Fox

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1930–1998

Ted Hughes

552

Biography

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Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, England. A bright student, he won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he published poems in university magazines. His first collection, The Hawk in the Rain, was published in 1957 to much critical acclaim. Hughes met and married the American poet Sylvia Plath in 1956. Theirs was an intense relationship. They supported each other’s work as poets and had two children together, but they separated in 1962 as a result of his affair with Assia Wevill. Plath’s mental and physical health declined and she took her own life in 1963. Wevill also developed serious depression and in 1969 she killed herself and their four-year-old daughter. Hughes married Carol Orchard in 1970 and they remained together until his death. He was made Britain’s Poet Laureate in 1984. In 1998, just months before his death, he published Birthday Letters, a collection of poems that charts his relationship with Plath.

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Before you read

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What associations ro r upwo do foxes have for you? In small groups, discuss what you know about foxes and how foxes are regarded.

Through the window I see no star: Something more near Though deeper within darkness Is entering the loneliness:

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock’s loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move.

Ire

The Thought-Fox

Cold, delicately as the dark snow, A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf; Two eyes serve a movement, that now And again now, and now, and now

Across clearings, an eye, A widening deepening greenness, Brilliantly, concentratedly, Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.

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Sets neat prints into the snow Between trees, and warily a lame Shadow lags by stump and in hollow Of a body that is bold to come

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Ted Hughes X

Guidelines

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‘The Thought-Fox’ appeared in Hughes’s first published volume of poetry, The Hawk in the Rain (1957). He often introduced a reading of this poem by telling the story of a dream he had had while studying English literature at Cambridge University. In the dream, a burned and wounded fox, the size of a man, entered his room and put a bloody hand on the essay he was writing. The fox said, ‘Stop this – you are destroying us.’ Hughes took this to mean that the academic study of literature was stifling his creativity and that he should give it up to concentrate on writing his own poems.

Commentary Title

The poem’s title, as is often the case, is an important indication of what the poem is about. It is not called ‘A Fox’ or ‘The Fox’, but ‘The Thought-Fox’. What does that combination of words suggest to you? Would it make any difference if it was written without the hyphen?

Stanzas 1 and 2

The first two stanzas set the scene and establish the space through which the poet’s imagination will range. It is midnight. The ‘I’ of the poem is looking through the window at darkness; he sees ‘no star’. A clock is (presumably) ticking and he addresses a ‘blank page’, which indicates he is writing or about to write. Hughes stated later that he wrote this poem in a few minutes, so it is natural to think of the speaker as Hughes himself, composing this poem. He is alone. The ‘clock’s loneliness’ suggests his own. It is a transferred epithet (see Glossary of Terms).

What is happening besides a man, perhaps sitting at a desk, a writer not writing, facing a blank page? He is imagining and in his imagination the moment is a forest: ‘this midnight moment’s forest’. The phrase recalls the opening of one of the best-known poems of William Blake, a poet whom Hughes greatly admired: ‘Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night’. Crucially, the man senses that ‘Something else is alive’ – something that is ‘more near’ than the invisible stars, perhaps nearer than the window. But it is also ‘deeper within darkness’ and it is approaching out of that darkness to enter the loneliness that surrounds him.

Stanzas 3 and 4

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The colon at the end of stanza 2 is a sort of sign, indicating the way forward. It tells us that what follows will in some way define the thing that is alive in the imagined forest, that is ‘entering the loneliness’ of the poet’s solitude. It is the fox. Hughes describes it through its separate parts – its nose, its eyes, its feet making prints in the snow, the shadow of its body – but the reader assembles the constituent parts into a vivid image of the animal. The immediacy of its presence is conveyed by the delicate, precise movements of nose and eyes, and in the repeated use of the word ‘now’ to suggest the fox’s rhythmic steps on the snow-covered ground. It is a living action that contrasts with the mechanical, dead ticking of the clock. There is a mixture of hesitancy and determination in the portrayal of the fox. Its delicate movements and its shadow shifting ‘warily’, unevenly ‘by stump and in hollow’ are matched by the uneven rhythm and contrast with the ‘body that is bold to come’, where the alliterative stressed syllables, ‘bódy … bóld’, suggest the fox’s bravado.

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Stanzas 5 and 6

The approach of the fox is enacted by the leap between the fourth and fifth stanzas, as the sentence jumps from one to the other – ‘to come // Across clearings’ – like the fox.

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Now the focus is tight on the fox’s eye, ‘A widening deepening greenness’ that echoes the clearing in the forest, suggesting the green life under the cold snow. The word ‘deepening’ echoes ‘deeper’ in line 7. Although there are no stars to see, the fox’s eye shines ‘Brilliantly, concentratedly’ – these two polysyllabic words with stresses on the first syllable slow down the pace. It is as if the poem goes into slow motion as well as tight focus as the climax nears.

The final stanza engages another sense: smell. The first two lines complete a long sentence that started at the beginning of stanza 2. The fox arrives ‘with a sudden sharp hot stink’. This description suggests an intimacy that is rare and animal. The smell of a fox is notorious – dogs often like to roll in fox droppings – but it is a smell with which most of us are probably unfamiliar.

The fox is not entering its den, or even the speaker’s room: ‘It enters the dark hole of the head’. Although it has been evoked in all its physical immediacy as an animal that is ‘Coming about its own business’, it is more than a fox. It is, as the poem’s title promises, a ‘Thought-Fox’, a product of the imagination and the unconscious.

Themes and imagery

Hughes often used this poem to illustrate his experience and understanding of writing poetry. He placed it at the start of his Selected Poems, perhaps because it threw light on the process of making them all. It is a poem about writing poems; but it is not just that.

Hughes on fishing and poetry

‘Your whole being rests lightly on your float,

Hughes wrote many poems about animals. In this early poem, he captures the fox’s careful, delicate grace as it moves, its secrecy in the description of its shifting shadow, but also its boldness and vividness, above all in the description of the ‘widening deepening greenness’ (line 18) of its eye. The fox belongs to the darkness and behaves according to its own mysterious rules, intensely alive as it goes about ‘its own business’ (line 20). But this is no ordinary fox: it comes so close that its ‘sharp hot stink’ (line 21) can be smelled; it is so intimate that it can enter ‘the dark hole of the head’ (line 22).

but not drowsily: very alert, so that the least

twitch of the float arrives like an electric

shock. And you are not only watching the

float. You are aware, in a horizonless and

slightly mesmerised way, … of the fish below in the dark … And the whole purpose of this

concentrated excitement, in this arena of apprehension and unforeseeable events, is to bring up some lovely solid thing like living metal from a world where nothing exists but

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those inevitable facts which raise life out of nothing and return it to nothing.

‘So you see, fishing with a float is a sort of

mental exercise in concentration on a small

point, while at the same time letting your

imagination work freely to collect everything

that might concern that still point.’ Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making

The fox’s symbolic significance is powerful not despite but precisely because it is evoked so vividly as an animal. What does it represent? There is no simple answer to that, and each reader will have a slightly different view, but the poem is about the imagination and the creative unconscious – the deep inner darkness from which poetry emerges, in Hughes’s vision. The first two words of the poem, ‘I imagine’, set all the rest in motion. Everything that follows is in some sense a product of that imagining, and yet it is noticeable that as the poem goes on the

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Ted Hughes X

‘I’ and ‘my’ of the first two stanzas disappear. The poet sets himself aside to let the ‘Something else’ of line 2 come fully alive; the fox takes over. The act of creative imagination is a surrendering of the conscious, everyday self to allow something else to emerge from the darkness of the unconscious mind.

Apart from the fox itself, the imagery of the poem often involves opposing or contrasting qualities. The first of these is darkness and light. The poem is set at midnight, the poet surrounded by darkness; even the imagined snow outside is, paradoxically, ‘dark’ (line 9). The brightest thing in the poem is the fox’s eye, which does what it does ‘Brilliantly’ (line 19), meaning ‘in a sparkling or shining fashion’. But although darkness is often associated with fear and threat, it is not a negative quality in the poem. It is out of deep darkness that the fox emerges, and into ‘the dark hole of the head’ (line 22) that it goes. In contrast, the whiteness of the ‘blank page’ (line 4) is empty and sterile until it is filled with the dark marks of words, ‘printed’ (line 24).

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Another pair of connected opposites are distance and closeness, or outer and inner space. The fox moves from a distance ‘more near’ (line 6) than the invisible stars, across the forest, and into ‘the dark hole of the head’ (line 22). Time, too, is seen in contrasting ways: the mechanical ticking of the clock is set against the rhythm of the fox’s movements as it places its feet in the snow ‘now / And again now, and now, and now’ (lines 11–12). The clock is still ticking at the end of the poem, just as the ‘window is starless still’ (line 23), but another life has entered the imaginary space, and ‘The page is printed’ (line 24).

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Form and language

Hughes claimed that ‘The Thought-Fox’ was written ‘in a few minutes’, but it is not put together carelessly. The poem is richly patterned in its word music.

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Perhaps the most striking device used in the poem is alliteration, often in combination with strong stresses, as in the opening line, where the alliterated ‘m’s all fall on stressed syllables: ‘I imágine this mídnight móment’s forest’. It recalls the opening line of ‘The Windhover’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet Hughes greatly admired: ‘I caught this morning morning’s minion’. For Hopkins, alliteration was a structural device, as it was in many early English poems. This association is strengthened by the fact that ‘The Thought-Fox’ is dominated by the old, usually short, English words that derive from the Anglo-Saxon language, or Old English, such as ‘fox’, ‘dark’, ‘star’, ‘twig’, ‘leaf’, ‘sharp hot stink’. They are often incorporated into the pattern of alliteration, as in ‘a body that is bold to come’ (line 16). There are few lines in which alliteration does not feature, and in a poem which has no regular metre, alliteration often serves to highlight the pattern of stressed syllables. For example, ‘déeper within dárkness’ (line 7), ‘the dark hóle of the héad’ (line 22) and ‘The páge is prínted’ (line 24).

The word music goes beyond alliteration, however. Notice the hard consonants and short vowels that evoke the fox’s delicate movements in ‘A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf’ (line 10), where the omission of the expected ‘and’ between the last two words adds to the sense of quick, precise movement. In contrast, the assonance of long vowels can slow the pace and suggest the breadth and depth of what it describes: ‘an eye, / A widening deepening greenness’ (lines 17–18). Try reading the poem aloud and listen out for the patterns of consonants, vowels and internal rhyme that run through it.

The poem is written in quatrains (four-line stanzas) with half-rhymes that may not be obvious at first reading, but which bind each stanza together. The pattern is usually abab, as in the first stanza, where ‘forest’ chimes with ‘loneliness’, and ‘alive’ with ‘move’. In two stanzas, however, there are different patterns – aabb in stanza 2 and abaa in stanza 3. Half-rhyme does not provide the neat finish and sometimes pleasure that full rhyme can give, but its presence in a poem does add to its effect. How would you describe the effect of half-rhyme in this poem?

Exam-Style Questions Understanding the poem 1

What picture do you get of the poet in his room in the first two stanzas? Describe how you imagine it.

What does Hughes mean when he writes ‘deeper within darkness’ (line 7)? What does the phrase suggest to you?

In your own words, describe the impression we get of the fox in stanzas 3–5.

What techniques does Hughes use to create this impression? Give examples.

What difference would it have made if Hughes had written ‘smell’ instead of ‘stink’ in line 21?

In your own words, explain what is being described in the final stanza.

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Ted Hughes X Thinking about the poem Hughes placed this poem at the very start of the collection of his Selected Poems. Suggest why he might have done that.

What, in your opinion, is the poem about? Explain your thinking with detailed reference to the poem.

What does the poem suggest to you about Hughes’s attitude to writing poetry? Explain your thinking with detailed reference to the poem.

Explore the use of paradox in the poem.

Discuss the ways in which alliteration is used in the poem.

Choose one phrase in the poem that you particularly like and explain why you like it and how it works.

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Imagining

Hughes wrote many poems about animals but thought of the fox as his ‘totem’ animal, the one with which he had a special connection. What would be your totem animal? Write your own poem about it or, if you prefer, write a paragraph about why it would be the right animal for you.

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Your group has been asked to put together an audio-visual presentation to accompany a reading of ‘The Thought-Fox’. Discuss the images, music, sounds or other effects that you would use in the presentation.

Poem about writing poetry Fox is real but also symbolic Darkness as a source of inspiration The power of the imagination Use of alliteration and word music Use of words with roots in Old English Quatrains using half-rhyme

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SNAPSHOT

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Bernard O’Donoghue lC

b. 1945

Ter Conatus

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Biography

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Bernard O’Donoghue was born in Cullen, Co. Cork, where he still spends part of every year. Although he has lived and worked in England for much of his life, his poems are mostly rooted in Ireland and his Irishness. As he once said in an interview, ‘County Cork where I grew up is the place I know and understand best’. He has studied and taught at Oxford University since 1965 and is a specialist in medieval literature. He is currently working on a translation of the long medieval poem Piers Plowman. His 1995 collection, Gunpowder, won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry and his most recent collection, The Seasons of Cullen Church (2016), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

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Bernard O’Donoghue X

Ter Conatus

Before you read G

‘Ter Conatus’ is about ro r upwo touching and not touching. In the Covid pandemic, people were often unable to hug or touch close family and friends. Discuss how that affected us and how much physical contact matters (or does not matter) to you.

of om

Glossary 20

Taking a step towards her. ‘I can manage,’ She answered, feeling for the stairs. Three times, like that, he tried to reach her. But, being so little practised in such gestures, Three times the hand fell back, and took its place, Unmoving at his side. After the burial, He let things take their course. The neighbours watched In pity the rolled-up bales, standing Silent in the fields, with the aftergrass Growing into them, and wondered what he could Be thinking of: which was that evening when, Almost breaking with a lifetime of Taking real things for shadows, He might have embraced her with a brother’s arms.

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She wondered about the doctor. When, Finally, she went, it was too late, Even for chemotherapy. And still She wouldn’t have got round to telling him, Except that one night, watching television, It got so bad she gasped, and struggled up, Holding her waist. ‘D’you want a hand?’ he asked,

churns: large metal containers for milk

milking-stand: structure on which cows or goats are placed to be milked

chemotherapy: treatment for cancer using powerful chemicals

aftergrass: the grass that grows after the first growth has been harvested for hay

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Sister and brother, nearly sixty years They’d farmed together, never touching once. Of late she had been coping with a pain In her back, realisation dawning slowly That it grew differently from the warm ache That resulted periodically From heaving churns on to the milking-stand.

Guidelines

‘Ter Conatus’ was published in the collection Here Nor There (1999). This apparently simple story, told in plain, conversational language, opens a window on the most private recesses of ordinary human lives and also resonates with stories and themes that are thousands of years old.

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Commentary Title

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The title of the poem immediately alerts us to something beyond its contemporary Irish setting. ‘Ter conatus’ means ‘having tried three times’ or, more simply, ‘three attempts’. The Latin phrase comes from an epic poem written more than two thousand years ago, The Aeneid by Virgil. It refers to a series of related moments in the poem where the hero, Aeneas, tries to embrace members of his family but is unable to. In the climactic scene, he meets his dead father, Anchises, in the underworld; they talk, but when Aeneas tries to embrace him, he cannot because his father is only a spirit, a ghost. Seamus Heaney translated the moment like this: ‘Three times he tried to reach arms round that neck. / Three times the form, reached for in vain, escaped / Like a breeze between his hands, a dream on wings.’

Stanza 1

The first two lines of the poem briefly set the scene, introducing a brother and sister who have farmed together for six decades and are presumably unmarried (as was often the case in rural Ireland). The phrase that ends the sentence adds a simple piece of information that reverberates through the poem: ‘never touching once’. Despite being siblings and working together, physical contact is not part of how they relate. Notice how calling them brother and sister instead of naming them emphasises the blood connection between them, and consequently reminds us of what is missing in their relationship. The rest of the stanza describes the pain growing in the sister’s back, which she is beginning to realise is more than the normal aching muscles that come from physical labour on the farm.

Stanza 2

Stanza 3

The sister was reluctant to see a doctor; we are told in a flat, understated tone that she ‘wondered about’ it. The mention of ‘chemotherapy’ tells us that when she eventually sought help, the diagnosis was cancer. It was ‘too late’ to attempt treatment. But she did not tell her brother and ‘wouldn’t have got round to telling him’ except that the pain got so bad that she could no longer hide it. It all happens undramatically, while ‘watching television’. The brother’s question in response is simple – ‘D’you want a hand?’ – and yet deeply significant for two people who never touch.

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The opening of the third stanza, completing the previous sentence, extends the gesture, the offer of help and of contact, as the brother steps towards his sister. She turns down his offer and moves away. It is the stairs, not her brother, that she feels for. As the brother tries to reach out to his sister in her need, the stanza takes on an ominous note and it is hard to ignore the symbolic or mythic nature of the repeated ‘Three times’ (like the Heaney translation quoted above). The triple failure might call to mind Peter’s three denials of Jesus in the Bible (see, for example, Matthew 26). It also recalls, as the poem’s title tells us, Aeneas’s inability to embrace his father in the underworld. The brother cannot break the pattern that a lifetime of reserve has ingrained in him. His hand falls back to his side – it ‘took its place’, the phrase implying that it was just resuming the natural order of things. The story leaps over the sister’s death and funeral, after which the brother ‘let things take their course’. Does the phrase echo the sister’s inaction in the face of her cancer?

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Bernard O’Donoghue X Stanza 4

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The opening of the final stanza tells us what was meant by letting things ‘take their course’: the brother has left the hay bales uncollected in the fields, with the new growth, the ‘aftergrass’, growing up into the bales. The perspective is that of the neighbours, observing the scene with ‘pity’. The stanza break after ‘watched’ in line 21 suggests their distance from the man they are watching. There is no indication that they do more than watch and wonder: their stance echoes that of the brother looking at his sister, unable to make the move that might help her.

Themes and imagery

The final lines take us inside the brother’s head. He is thinking about the evening described in stanzas 2 and 3 when he tried but failed to make real contact with his sister, when ‘He might have embraced her with a brother’s arms’. Instead, he remains caught in a lifetime’s habit of ‘Taking real things for shadows’, as if nothing and nobody was real, or really connected to him. The phrase is an inversion of one from Dante’s Divine Comedy, ‘taking shadows for real things’, as Aeneas had done in trying to embrace his father in the underworld.

the things you do learn coming to live [in

The primary theme of ‘Ter Conatus’ is the failure to relate fully and embrace the natural human connections that bind people together. The central image is of reaching out and failing to make contact. Its ancient source in Latin literature gives it both universality and poignancy: the brother fails to embrace his sister as Aeneas failed to embrace his family, and finally his dead father, who appears to him as a ghost. This scene might remind the well-read reader that the sister has passed over O’Donoghue on touch into death, where the brother can never touch her. What might ‘English people think that they’re withdrawn have been will never be. But the description is no less moving if and stand-offish; they’re not by the standards the classical reference means nothing to you. of the people I grew up amongst. One of

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England], is that you can slap shoulders and Physical touch is both a form of human connection and a make physical contact with people in a way metaphor for it. Verbs to do with touch run through the poem that Irish country people just don’t do.’ – ‘touching’ (line 2), ‘Holding’ (line 14), ‘feeling’ (line 16), ‘reach’ (line 17), ‘embraced’ (line 28), as do body parts that might either touch or be touched – ‘back’ (line 4), ‘waist’ and ‘hand’ (line 14), ‘hand’ (line 19) and the poem’s final word: ‘arms’. And yet the imagery that involves touch is always about absence and a failure to connect. O’Donoghue reinforces and enriches that theme through other images. As well as the brother who wanted to but could not embrace his sister, there are the neighbours who watch ‘In pity’ (line 22) from a distance and do not act. They are like the hay bales, ‘Silent’ (line 23) and ‘rolled-up’ (line 22) inside themselves.

Other images from life on the farm are worked into the texture of the poem. The first stanza evokes the hard physical labour of ‘heaving churns’ (line 7) and the ‘warm ache’ (line 5) it produces. Notice how the

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ominous pain in the sister’s back that ‘grew differently’ (line 5) from a normal ache is echoed in the image of the ‘aftergrass / Growing into’ the bales (lines 23–24). Both are described in terms of growth, the natural process on which farming relies, but both are unwanted and unwelcome forms of it.

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Form and language

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‘Ter Conatus’ is written in seven-line stanzas. Although O’Donoghue does not use rhyme, the breaks between lines and stanzas are skilfully controlled. Whereas the first stanza consists of two complete sentences, each of which ends where a line ends, the poem makes increasing use of the effects that enjambment between lines and stanzas can give. For example, the way that ‘When’ (line 8) and ‘And still’ (line 10) are left hanging at the end of the line suggests the sister’s hesitancy about acting. The awkward space that opens up in the mid-sentence break between stanzas 3 and 4 has already been noted, and the mid-phrase enjambments in the final stanza (‘standing / Silent’; ‘what he could / Be thinking of’; ‘a lifetime of / Taking real things’) help to evoke the brother’s sense of loss, the feeling that something is broken and can never be repaired.

Although there is no strong, insistent rhythm in the poem, the lines are infused by an underlying, often varied iambic pentameter (see Glossary of Terms). It gives the poem a steady, unassertive pulse that goes well with the simple, conversational language in which the story is told. But the plainness of the language does not mean that it is not both powerful and tightly controlled. O’Donoghue places words with great skill. For example, the colloquial question ‘D’you want a hand?’ (line 14) takes on great resonance in the context of the poem, where hands and what they do or do not do carry so much weight. There are very few adjectives and no poetic diction in the poem, so that the repetition of ‘Three times’ (lines 17 and 19) is all the more striking. And where there is an adjective, as in the ‘rolled-up bales’ (line 22), the reader is primed to see its metaphorical as well as its literal meaning.

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In a poem concerned with an event that should have happened and never did (the embrace), it is remarkable how often words and what they describe evoke their opposites, so that the reader becomes conscious of what is missing, perhaps without realising it. For example, the word ‘Silent’ in line 23 brings to mind the possibility of speech, and thus the fact that the neighbours do not seem to be talking to the bereaved man. In line 6, the word ‘periodically’ might bring to a reader’s mind what is absent in the old woman’s life – both menstruation at her age and, especially with the reference to milk in the next line, children. Thus, the absences in her life are subtly brought into the poem.

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem Explain the meaning and relevance of the poem’s title.

In stanza 2, why, do you think, is the sister reluctant to visit the doctor?

What is the effect of the repetition of ‘Three times’ in stanza 3?

Why, in your opinion, was the brother unable to embrace his sister?

‘Taking real things for shadows’ (line 27). In your own words, explain your understanding of the meaning of this phrase.

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Thinking about the poem

Describe, in your own words, what we learn in the poem about life on the farm and the pair who farm it.

How much, if at all, do the references to classical literature in the poem contribute to its effect?

Choose one word or phrase from the poem and comment on how it is used and the significance it carries.

Choose one image from the poem and comment in detail on its impact and significance.

Describe the emotional effect of reading and studying ‘Ter Conatus’. Can you explain how the poem achieves (or fails to achieve) its effects?

‘He let things take their course’ (line 21). Comment on the significance of this phrase to the poem as a whole.

Imagining

Imagine what might have been going on in the sister’s mind in the scene described in stanzas 2 and 3. Write a monologue for the sister, expressing her thoughts at the time.

The brother and sister in the poem are never named or described. Choose one or both of them and fill in the details that the poem does not give: appearance, name, the story of their life. Write down your pen portrait, as prose or verse, or draw a picture if you prefer – or even write a piece of music.

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SNAPSHOT

Apparently simple story of rural life Plain, colloquial language Underlying rhythm of iambic pentameter Skilled use of enjambment Theme of human connection Metaphor of reaching and not touching Imagery gives resonance to a simple story Reference to ancient story from the Aeneid

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Elizabeth Smither

O R D I N A RY L E V E L

b. 1941

On the euthanasia of a pet dog

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Biography

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Elizabeth Smither is a New Zealand author who has published many volumes of poetry as well as several novels. Her poetry is known for its eye for detail and wry humour. She also has a strong interest in Catholicism. In 2002 she became the first woman to be made New Zealand Poet Laureate, and has received many awards for her poetry. She was born in New Plymouth, where she worked as a librarian until her retirement.

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Elizabeth Smither X Before you read

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What do you know about ro r upwo the practice of euthanasia on animals? Share your information in pairs or small groups.

Lightly she fell where the vets’ hands held her the two vets who came with shaver and syringe two young blonde girls just out of vet school and she died between them, surrounded by petting.

On the euthanasia of a pet dog

It was three o’clock. All day we sat with her singly or together, making our farewells while she sniffed the bright day, heart heaving and lifted her muzzle to the faint breeze.

And when it was over we each wept copiously the vets departed, we gave in to grief as though we were rushing to basins to bend over hands held to faces, we stumbled and stooped.

Glossary Title 14

euthanasia: mercy killing; putting to death painlessly dehydration: drying out of all the fluids in a bod

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She lay on the carpet so soft and plumped-out all dehydration gone, all clenching of sinews she stayed there for hours so we could caress her and talk to her finally, and bless her.

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Guidelines

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‘On the euthanasia of a pet dog’ comes from the collection The Lark Quartet (1999). The title tells you all you need to know about what is happening in the poem.

Commentary

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Stanza 1

The poem starts with the death of the dog, the ‘she’ of the poem. The first phrase is turned around, so that instead of ‘She fell lightly’, Smither writes ‘Lightly she fell’, making the word ‘lightly’ the first of the poem. This sets the tone; although this is a poem about a death, it has a lightness of touch. The poem moves immediately to the vets’ hands, then the vets’ instruments – ‘shaver and syringe’ – and finally to the vets themselves, ‘two young blonde girls just out of vet school’, before returning to the dog dying ‘between them’. She dies ‘surrounded by petting’. The meaning is clear enough, but it is an odd, slightly comic way of putting it. It makes the ‘petting’ impersonal, disconnected from those who are doing the petting, as if the speaker is avoiding the emotions involved.

Stanza 2

In the plainest possible way, we are told the time of the dog’s death. Might it be significant, do you think, that this is the time Jesus died on the cross, according to the Christian Gospel of Mark? Or is it just another fact given in order to keep emotion at bay? Now we are taken back in time, to when the dog was alive earlier that day, and ‘we’ sat with her to say goodbye. It is a vivid, tender picture of the dog sniffing the air, perhaps as if she knew what was coming. The ‘bright day’ and ‘faint breeze’ sound pleasant, but fragile too.

Stanza 3

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The next stanza returns to where the first stanza left off. The dying is ‘over’, and the rest of the poem records what happened afterwards, touching at last on the emotions experienced. First ‘we each wept copiously’; when the vets had left, those who loved the dog were free to express their grief fully. The description of what they did in their grief keeps the reader at a distance from the feelings behind it. Smither describes the effects of grief rather than expressing it directly. There is something gently comical in the image of them ‘rushing to basins to bend over’, as if they were vomiting rather than crying. She records their actions – ‘we stumbled and stooped’ – with an outsider’s eye. Do you think this slight distancing makes the scene more or less touching for the reader?

Stanza 4

The focus returns to the dog, dead now and no longer in pain, ‘plumped-out’ on the carpet, almost as if she were a cushion. Though they are now ‘gone’, the mention of ‘dehydration’ and ‘clenching of sinews’ reminds the reader of how the dog must have suffered. The dog’s presence is strong: ‘she stayed there for hours’, Smither writes, rather than ‘we left her there’ – as if the dog is staying by choice, or even resting. The poem ends in a sad calm after the desperate grief of the third stanza. They stroke the dog, talk to her and ‘bless her’. The sense of comfort or consolation in that phrase is reinforced by the fact that it rhymes with ‘caress her’ in the previous line. It is the only rhyme in the poem.

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Themes and imagery

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The poem honours a pet dog that was loved very dearly. It is an account of a death, and the reactions to a death. You might wonder how different the poem would be if it were about a person. It is a record of a grief that was keenly felt and openly expressed, but the poem doesn’t try to describe the feelings of grief, only what was done in grief. It records details – the vets’ hands and instruments, the time, the way the people behaved when they ‘gave in to grief’. The reader is left to supply the emotion from his/her imagination. The calm at the end of the poem, where we see the dog released from her pain and softened in death, and the speakers can peacefully talk to the dog and ‘bless her’, shows that the process of grief has moved on a little, and suggests that the euthanasia was a kind and necessary act.

The dog is the focus of the poem, while the picture of the humans involved is left a little vague. The two vets are not individuals but simply ‘young blonde girls’, and it is never clear who ‘we’ are. One is the speaker/poet, but we learn nothing about the other (or others), except that they seem intimately connected – a partner or family member. Do you get the sense that the other is male or female, or is it irrelevant? The dog is ‘she’, not ‘it’, and although the poem is about her death, she is not treated as entirely passive. Smither uses active verbs, rather than passive ones, to describe her: ‘she fell’, ‘she died’, ‘she sniffed’, ‘She lay’, ‘she stayed’. Stanza 2 pictures her still alive, sniffing the air, her ‘heart heaving’. Though that phrase describes the dog, it resonates through the poem, hinting at the heaving, grieving hearts of the humans.

The poem’s imagery is drawn almost exclusively from the details of the scene described. There is just one simile, describing their physical actions in their grief, ‘as though we were rushing to basins to bend over’ (line 11).

Form and Language

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Apart from the inversion at the start (‘Lightly she fell …’), the poem is written in plain language close to daily speech. The phrasing is careful and precise, with an occasional deliberate oddness such as ‘surrounded by petting’ (line 4) or ‘plumped-out’ that adds a touch of humour, and ensures that there is no wallowing in the strong feelings that the poem evokes. There are no lavish verbal effects, but a few moments are heightened by alliteration and strong stresses, such as ‘heart heaving’ (line 7) or ‘we stumbled and stooped’ (line 12). Restraint is the key virtue. The four-line stanzas tend to contain the sense of the phrases within each line, as if they are playing their part in keeping the emotions under control. The exception is stanza 2, which uses enjambment to move us through the final day of the beloved pet. The lines are all between nine and thirteen syllables long, but there is no strong rhythm to stir the feelings. There are no rhymes either, until the final two lines, where the rhyme is all the more striking for being unexpected. It feels as though the poem moves from black and white to colour. ORDINARY LEVEL 2024 / 567

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Exam-Style Questions Who is ‘she’ (line 1)?

What is the significance of the ‘shaver and syringe’ (line 2)?

Stanza 2 begins ‘It was three o’clock.’ When does the rest of the stanza take place?

What impression of the dog do you get from stanza 2?

What impression do you get of ‘we’ in stanza 3?

In stanza 4, what has changed about the dog since her death?

What is the mood of the final stanza?

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Thinking about the poem

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Understanding the poem

Choose one phrase you like or don’t like, and explain the reasons for your choice.

What do we know about ‘we’ in the poem? Who, do you think, ‘we’ might be, apart from the speaker?

Do you see anything comic or humorous in the poem? If so, where is the humour and what is its effect?

Is there anything in the poem that suggests the writer has a religious outlook? Explain your answer.

Comment on the use of rhyme (‘caress her’ / ‘bless her’) at the end of the poem.

Do you like this poem? Why, or why not?

In many ways, this poem about euthanasia could have been written about a person as well as a dog. In the light of the poem, discuss, in groups, the rights and wrongs of voluntary euthanasia for humans.

Do you have a pet? Do you know someone who is particularly attached to their pet? Write a short piece, in poetry or prose, that touches on the relationship of human and animal.

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Imagining 1

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

SNAPSHOT

Poem about death and grief Focus on the dog Peaceful ending with sense of rightness Grief described with a lightness of touch Gentle humour in observation of this scene Quatrain form adds restraint

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Wisława Szymborska

1923–2012

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Wisława Szymborska In Praise of My Sister

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Biography

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Wisława Szymborska was born in Poland, where she mostly lived in the southern city of Kraków. For a large part of her life, Poland was ‘behind the Iron Curtain’ and was a socialist country where freedom of speech was very limited and being a writer came with an expectation that you would keep to the official Communist Party line. Szymborska did this in her early years as a poet, but gradually she moved away from the official position and spoke out for freedom of speech. She left the Communist Party in 1966. She became well known and popular as a poet in Poland – although, as she said herself, perhaps two in a thousand people like poetry. She became more widely known internationally after she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. Her poems have been translated into many languages and are prized for their wit, irony and deceptive simplicity.

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Before you read k

My sister doesn’t write poems, and it’s unlikely that she’ll suddenly start writing poems. She takes after her mother, who didn’t write poems, and also her father, who likewise didn’t write poems. I feel safe beneath my sister’s roof: my sister’s husband would rather die than write poems. And, even though this is starting to sound as repetitive as Peter Piper, the truth is, none of my relatives write poems.

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In Praise of My Sister

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This poem is called ‘In Praise ro r upwo of My Sister’. What do you expect a poem with such a title to contain? Discuss these expectations in small groups before you read the poem.

My sister’s desk drawers don’t hold old poems, and her handbag doesn’t hold new ones. When my sister asks me over for lunch, I know she doesn’t want to read me her poems. Her soups are delicious without ulterior motives. Her coffee doesn’t spill on manuscripts.

There are many families in which nobody writes poems, but once it starts up it’s hard to quarantine. Sometimes poetry cascades down through the generations, creating fatal whirlpools where family love may founder.

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My sister has tackled oral prose with some success, but her entire written opus consists of postcards from vacations whose text is only the same promise every year: when she gets back, she’ll have so much much much to tell.

Glossary 4

likewise: similarly

Peter Piper: reference to a well-known tongue-twister that starts ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’

ulterior motives: a hidden agenda; purposes you do not admit to

founder: sink; be submerged and destroyed

oral: something spoken (as opposed to written)

opus: work; a Latin word used to talk about the creations of writers, artists, composers, etc.

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Wisława Szymborska

Guidelines

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‘In Praise of My Sister’ was published in the collection A Large Number (1976). It was written in Polish, so the text here is a translation of the original. There have been several different translations of the poem, each with its own style even though all are recognisably translations of the same poem. The poem printed here was translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh and is taken from View with a Grain of Sand, selected poems by Szymborska, published in 1995.

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Commentary

Lines 1–8

The poem starts with a bold, bald statement: ‘My sister doesn’t write poems’. It is a delightfully unexpected way to begin what is, as the title tells us, a poem in praise of that sister. The following lines double down on the statement: the sister is not likely to start writing poems, she is the child of non-poets and she has married a man ‘who would rather die than write poems’. The repetition at the end of most lines of ‘write/writing poems’, each framed as a negative, drives home the point that not writing poems is the normal state of things. Szymborska makes fun of her own repetition by comparing it to ‘Peter Piper’ (of course, this is the translators’ choice of an English-language equivalent for the reference in the original poem to a piece of Polish verse known for its repetitiveness). The speaker is by definition a poet, and we might expect her to have negative feelings about the fact that ‘none of my relatives write poems’ or appear to have any interest in poetry. Yet, nestled in the middle of these first eight lines is the statement ‘I feel safe beneath my sister’s roof’.

Lines 9–14

The second section explores the consequences of the fact that the sister does not write poems and suggests why the poet might feel safe in her sister’s house. The poet tells us some things that are missing from her sister’s life. These are interesting, not because of what they tell us about the sister, but because of what they imply about the poet herself and perhaps about other poets she knows. By noting that her sister does not have new poems in her handbag, she suggests that other people do. In writing that her sister’s ‘soups are delicious without ulterior motives’, she suggests that other people invite her to lunch in order to be able to read out their poems. The adjectival phrase ‘without ulterior motives’ is an example of a transferred epithet (see Glossary of Terms), since any motives would belong to the sister rather than to the soup. What other ‘ulterior motives’ might a poet have for inviting a fellow poet to lunch?

Lines 15–18

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The next four lines are a wistful but playful look at how writing poems can run in a family. Szymborska portrays it as a perilous occupation, like a disease that is ‘hard to quarantine’, or like a mountain river or waterfall that ‘cascades down through the generations’ and creates whirlpools that are ‘fatal’ because in them ‘family love may founder’. Given the suggestions about poets in this poem, why might writing poetry be a threat to family relationships?

Lines 19–25

Tongue in cheek, the poet starts to talk of her sister as if she were a writer, even if not a poet. She has ‘tackled oral prose’ – in other words, talking – but her ‘written opus’ (a phrase that usually describes the output of a professional writer) is made up of holiday postcards whose ‘text’ (another technical word used to refer to the ORDINARY LEVEL 2024 / 571

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work of a writer) is always the same: she will have plenty (‘so much / much / much’) to report when she gets back. We are left in no doubt that her ‘oral prose’ will be copious.

Themes and imagery

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Above all, this poem is, as the title declares, a poem in praise of the poet’s sister. Imbued with a natural, if teasing, affection, the poem is full of real tenderness. The sister does not write poems and that is seen as a genuine positive. It is a relief from the rivalries, anxieties and hidden agendas that, by implication, are part of the lives of those who do write poems. It seems that the love that ‘may founder’ (line 18) in families filled with poets and their poems has prospered in this non-poetry-writing family. At the same time, the poem is also to some extent a self-portrait, or perhaps a portrait of other poets, who behave in ways unlike her sister because they have been infected with the virus of poetry.

The poem casts light on something that preoccupied Szymborska: the relationship between poetry and daily life. If poetry is so unimportant to her sister and to the rest of her family, with whom she seems to have a good relationship, how important can it be? Is it worth all the energy that some people expend on it? Perhaps one answer to that question is hinted at in the final stanza, in which the poet treats her sister as if she were a writer – of ‘oral prose’ rather than poetry. She clearly relishes the prospect of hearing her sister tell all the stories from her holiday, as her postcards promise; that is her sister’s natural way of expressing herself. Poetry, perhaps, is simply the poet’s way of expressing herself, and it is just as natural to her – this witty poem is evidence of that.

This poem is filled with poems. They are constantly present – precisely because of their much-stated absence – in desk drawers and handbags or as manuscripts on tables. They are not metaphors but the subject matter of the poem. Only in the third section does Szymborska use metaphors, when talking about how poetry can run in a family, like a disease that should be quarantined or a waterfall that creates dangerous whirlpools. These lines stand out as deliberately over-poetic, even melodramatic – as if poetry were a sinister force intent on destruction. The tone is playful, tongue-in-cheek.

Form and language

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Because the text we are discussing is a translation, it would be wrong to comment in detail on poetic technique. It is written in free verse, unrhymed and without traditional metre. The most striking thing formally – and all translations incorporate different versions of it – is the repetition in the short lines at the very end of the poem (‘so much / much / much to tell’), which suggest the sister’s enthusiasm and insistence as well as, perhaps, her limited skill with the written word. This entertaining and accessible poem is written in plain, conversational language. It is unpoetic and uncomplicated. The language is also playful, for example in its use of the transferred epithet in line 13, as if the sister’s soups could have ‘ulterior motives’. The poem is filled with the vocabulary of poetry and writing, which is given a humorous twist in the final section, where the sister’s everyday words (talking, writing on postcards) are treated as if they were the output of a serious writer.

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Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem ‘I feel safe beneath my sister’s roof’ (line 5). What indications can you find in the poem to explain why this may be the case?

‘Her soups are delicious without ulterior motives’ (line 13). What light does this line throw on: a) the sister, b) the poet and c) other poets?

What is the poet suggesting in lines 15–18 about the effect poetry can have on families? Describe the tone of these lines.

What do lines 19–25 tell you about the sister’s relationship with language?

Why does the poet write that her sister ‘has tackled oral prose with some success’ (line 19) instead of, for example, she ‘is a good talker’? What does the phrase tell you about the writer of the poem?

What, in your opinion, is the effect of the repetition of ‘much’ in the poem’s final three lines?

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Thinking about the poem

Is ‘In Praise of My Sister’ a good title for this poem? Give reasons for your answer and, if appropriate, suggest a better title.

What impression do you get of the poet’s sister from this poem? Refer to the text to support your answer.

How would you characterise the poem’s attitude to poetry? Is it dismissive, disrespectful, affectionate, exasperated? Or what other word would you use? Give reasons for your answer.

What impression does the poem give you of the poet who wrote it? Give reasons for your answer.

Choose one or two lines from the poem that you particularly like and explain in your own words why you like them.

Imagining

Write a playful pen-portrait of a member of your own family (poetry or prose). You may like to use Szymborska’s poem as a model.

Imagine you are the sister who is the subject of this poem. Your sister is the poet. You have no interest in poetry. Write a paragraph about your sister, or, if you would prefer, record a monologue of yourself talking about her.

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SNAPSHOT ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Affectionate portrait of a sister Writing poems is something abnormal Relationship of poetry and everyday life Different forms of self-expression Witty, playful and self-mocking Free verse and plain, conversational language Accessible and entertaining ORDINARY LEVEL 2024 / 573

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1883–1963

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William Carlos Williams This is Just to Say

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Biography

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William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His father, who had English and Danish ancestry, was a travelling salesman in the Caribbean and Latin America, where he had met his future wife, Raquel Helene Hoheb. William grew up speaking both English and Spanish and learning about art and poetry from his parents. He began to write poetry in school. While studying medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, he met the poet Ezra Pound and was influenced by the ideas of imagism, which emphasises concentrated images presented in clear and simple language. Back in Rutherford, he began general practice and married Florence Herman, whom he described as the rock on which he built his life. He published poetry throughout the 1920s and 1930s, but it was his long poem Paterson, published in five books between 1946 and 1958, that saw his reputation grow. He believed that ordinary, everyday life should be the subject of poetry. He also published plays, novels, short stories, essays, reviews and an autobiography. The first English edition of his poetry appeared after his death.

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William Carlos Williams X Before you read

pa om 10

Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

and which you were probably saving for breakfast

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox

This is Just to Say

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If you received a note beginning ro r upwo with the words ‘This is just to say ...’, what kind of message would you expect to follow? Share your thoughts with a partner.

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Guidelines The poem is written in the form of a note left on the refrigerator. Writing about the way the imagination works, Williams said: ‘Imagination creates an image, point by point, piece by piece, segment by segment into a whole. But each part as it plays into its neighbour, each segment into its neighbouring segment and every part into every other … exists naturally in rhythm’. ‘This is Just to Say’ shows the imagination at work in the way described by Williams.

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Commentary

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The poem is composed of twenty-eight words arranged into three stanzas of four lines, with no line having more than three words. There is no rhyme or regular beat.

Title

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The title establishes the poem as a message or note poem.

Stanza 1

The first stanza describes what the ‘I’, the speaker, has done – eaten the plums.

Stanza 2

In stanza 2 the speaker shows an awareness of the probable purpose and intention of the ‘you’ in relation to the plums. The ‘you’ was saving them for breakfast. (Nevertheless, the ‘I’ ate them.)

Stanza 3

The third stanza invites the ‘you’ to forgive him, even as he tells the ‘you’ how delicious the plums were.

Theme

There is no agreement or way of agreeing on the theme of the poem. Taken at face value it is a playful ‘apology’ for a minor event. The speaker has indulged himself at the expense of someone else and asks forgiveness, although he does not seem ashamed of his actions. The poem may have a ‘deeper’ meaning of a male apologising to a female for his weakness in succumbing to temptation and for prioritising his pleasure over hers. A further version of this interpretation suggests that the male succumbs to sexual temptation, represented by the soft fruit, and asks his partner’s forgiveness for his infidelity.

For some readers the poem contrasts the sensual pleasure of consuming food (eating plums) with the aesthetic pleasure of consuming art (reading a poem).

Th e

No matter which reading you choose, the speaker’s reference to the pleasure he took in eating the plums seems to prioritise his experience over ‘yours’. The final repetition of the intensifying word ‘so’ (‘so sweet / and so cold’) emphasises the sensuous pleasure that the speaker enjoyed at the expense of the ‘you’. In fact, it is the man, the ‘I’ of the poem, who is active, who describes, eats, apologises and composes. The woman, the ‘you’, is entirely passive and speechless.

Tone

The variety of interpretations is related to the tone that emerges in an individual reading of the poem. Some readers regard the final word, ‘cold’, as an indication of the nature of the relationship between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ of the poem, a relationship so cold that forgiveness must be The poem was written during the Great sought for eating a few plums. An opposite view suggests that it Depression (1929–1939), when fresh fruit was is the ‘I’ who is cold, enjoying stealing the plums and feeling no scarce and therefore desirable. remorse for doing so. In this view, the poem is more an expression

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William Carlos Williams X

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of triumph than a real apology. A different interpretation suggests that the poem, and its description of eating the plums, is payment for what has been taken: the poem, offered by the ‘I’ to the ‘you’, is a fair exchange for the fruit. A further interpretation suggests that while the speaker may sound smug, the fact that the poem has been written signals a real attempt to make good the loss. He hopes that the poem/note pinned to the fridge will compensate the ‘you’ for the lost pleasure of eating the plums.

Real life

In describing his poetry, Williams wrote, ‘No ideas but in things.’ This statement is a neat summary of his desire to write poetry that was based on real life rather than abstract ideas and this poem is based on an actual note left by Williams for his wife. The very existence of the poem has led to speculation on the nature of the relationship between the couple. In real life, the poem would have been successful if his wife had been amused and had forgiven him the ‘transgression’. You might like to consider this angle in the light of the answering poem written by Florence (‘Floss’) to William (‘Bill’), which ends with the lines:

Bill, […] Plenty of bread in the bread-box and butter and eggs— I didn’t know just what to make for you. Several people called up about office hours—

See you later. Love. Floss.

Please switch off the telephone.

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Form and language Williams was less interested in the traditional rhythms of poetry than in the visual appearance of the poem on the page. Line breaks, spacing and typography were all important to him. The twenty-eight words of the poem are arranged into three stanzas of four lines (quatrains). The lines of stanza 1 follow a three-word/twoword pattern. There is a reversal in stanza 2, with lines 5 and 6 following a two-word/three-word pattern. Lines 7 and 8 switch to a two-syllable/three-syllable pattern. The final stanza follows a two-word/three-word pattern. In such a short poem it is notable that Williams places words at the end of lines that we do not normally see highlighted in poetry. These include: the preposition ‘in’ (line 3); the relative pronoun ‘which’ (line 5) and

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the adverb ‘probably’ (line 6). Interestingly, the final three lines of the poem conclude with three adjectives, ‘delicious’, ‘sweet’ and ‘cold’. Some critics have pointed to the presence of the words ‘just’, ‘saving’ and ‘forgive’ as lending the poem an almost religious quality.

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Williams’s interest in the appearance of the poem on the page may explain the absence of punctuation. However, the arrangement of words on the page does guide our reading and encourages us to pay full attention to the sound and shape of every single word. In this way, as each word and line falls into the next, the poem unfolds in a slow, delicious way that imitates the eating of the plums.

Sound effects

Exam-Style Questions

For such a short poem, Williams achieves interesting sound effects through clever repetition. Note, for example, how the plosive ‘p’ and ‘b’ sounds repeat and echo in the first two stanzas. Note also how various forms of ‘s’ sounds snake their way through the poem. When you combine these sounds with the long vowel sounds and the more precise ‘t’ and ‘d’ sounds in the final stanza, you begin to see the artfulness behind the short poem. The sounds capture the physical and sensual pleasure of eating a soft fruit.

Understanding the poem

‘This is Just to Say’ What tone is struck by the title of the poem?

In the third stanza the speaker asks for forgiveness. What has he done that needs forgiveness?

Comment on the choice of adjectives used to describe the plums, ‘delicious’, ‘sweet’ and ‘cold’.

Why, in your view, does the speaker describe the plums he has eaten?

Do you think the speaker offers a genuine apology in the poem? Explain your answer.

On the evidence of the poem, what is the relationship between the speaker of the poem and the ‘you’ to whom the poem is addressed?

Some readers have remarked that the words ‘icebox’ and ‘cold’ describe the emotional atmosphere of the poem. What do you think?

The poem has twenty-eight words. Which, if any, of the words would you replace? Explain your thinking.

How would you describe the speaker of the poem? ■ Apologetic ■ Full of himself ■ Amusing Explain your answer.

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Thinking about the poem 1

Here are two opposing views of the motives behind the writing of the poem. ■ The poem is intended to charm and disarm the ‘you’. ■ Having taken her plums, the ‘I’ makes matters worse by describing how delicious they were. Which of the two readings do you prefer? Explain your thinking.

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William Carlos Williams X

How would you feel if you were the ‘you’ and found this poem on the door of your fridge? ■ Offended ■ Amused ■ Delighted ■ Angry ■ Cheated Explain your choice. Which of the following best describes the theme of the poem?

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■ It is a poem about love. ■ It is a poem about guilt.

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■ It is a poem about selfishness. Explain your choice.

(a) Do you think a poem of small details can speak about bigger themes? Explain your thinking. Or (b) ‘This is not a poem about eating plums. It is a poem about a marriage.’ Give your response to this view of the poem.

‘Williams is the poet of the everyday. He captures the small but important moments in life.’ On the evidence of ‘This is Just to Say’, would you agree with this assessment of Williams? Explain your answer.

Do you like the poem? Give reasons for your answer.

Imagining

Imagine you are the ‘you’ of the poem. Write a poem in response to this one and suggest where you would leave it for the ‘I’ to find.

Write a poem to a friend or relative, confessing that you have borrowed and lost something of his or hers. Ask for this person’s forgiveness. Imitate Williams’s method of using no more than thirty words. Give consideration to the placement of each word on the page and the sound of each word.

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Benjamin Zephaniah

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b. 1958

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The SUN

Biography

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Benjamin Zephaniah and his twin sister were born and raised in Handsworth in Birmingham. His father, who was a postman, came from Barbados. His mother was a nurse and came from Jamaica. He has described Handsworth as the Jamaican capital of Europe, with the best curries, hip hop and reggae in Britain. He did not like school and left when he was thirteen without being able to read or write very well. Described as uncontrollable, rebellious and ‘a born failure’, he got into trouble when he was a teenager and served a jail sentence for burglary. His poetry is influenced by reggae music and what he calls ‘street politics’. Zephaniah is a football fan and supports the Birmingham team Aston Villa. He has received many awards for his work.

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Benjamin Zephaniah X

The SUN

Before you read G

Have a class discussion ro r upwo exploring why tabloid newspapers appeal to so many readers.

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I believe the Blacks are bad The Left is loony God is Mad The government’s the best we’ve had So I read The SUN. I believe Britain is great And other countries imitate I am friendly with The State, Daily, I read The SUN.

Glossary 2

Jungle bunnies: an insulting term used to refer to black people and people of African origin

Princess Di: Diana Spencer, the Princess of Wales, who was married to Prince Charles, heir to the British throne. She died in a car accident in Paris in 1997. The Sun newspaper featured many stories on Princess Di and the British royal family

nits: head lice

Page Three: a feature on page three in the Sun – a photograph of a topless, female model

witch-hunting: waging a campaign against an individual for alleged unacceptable behaviour

skeletons from people’s closets: embarrassing or shameful facts that a person tries to keep hidden

Black people rob Women should cook And every poet is a crook, I am told – so I don’t need to look, It’s easy in The SUN.

The Left is loony: the ‘Loony Left’ was a term used by the Sun newspaper to describe the actions and policies of sections of the Labour Party in Britain in the 1980s

Man, I don’t like Russian spies But we don’t have none I love lies, I really do love Princess Di I bet she reads The SUN.

I am not too keen on foreign ones But I don’t mind some foreign bombs Jungle bunnies play tom-toms, But, I read The SUN.

Every hippie carries nits And every Englishman love tits I love Page Three and other bits, I stare into The SUN.

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I like playing bingo games And witch-hunting to shame a name But aren’t newspapers all the same? So why not read The SUN. Don’t give me truth, just give me gossip And skeletons from people’s closets, I wanna be normal And millions buy it, I am blinded by The SUN.

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

Guidelines

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‘The SUN’ comes from Zephaniah’s 1992 collection, City Psalms. In 1987 Zephaniah was shortlisted for a poetry fellowship position at Cambridge University. When the shortlist was published, the Sun newspaper published a headline which read, ‘Would you let this man near your daughter?’ The article drew attention to the fact that Zephaniah was black and a Rastafarian. It alluded to his conviction for burglary when he was a teenager. The article mocked his poetry and questioned his suitability to teach at Cambridge. ‘The SUN’ was Zephaniah’s response.

Commentary

Stanzas 1–3

Written in the voice of a stereotypical reader of a newspaper called ‘The SUN’, Zephaniah takes aim at the racism, xenophobia and disregard for the truth that, for the poet, characterises the newspaper’s presentation of news. There is little doubt that Zephaniah’s target was the Sun newspaper. The poem is a satire in which a stereotypical Sun reader explains his preference for this newspaper and expresses his personal beliefs and principles.

The opening stanza is a profession of faith expressed in language that is humorous in its overstatement:

Hillsborough

‘I believe the Blacks are bad The Left is loony God is Mad This government’s the best we’ve had So I read The SUN.’

The most infamous example of how the Sun

always supports authority was its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster in which ninety-six Liverpool fans lost their lives. Four days after

the tragedy the Sun published an article under a front-page banner headline, ‘The Truth’. The article made a number of false claims, stating as fact that drunken Liverpool fans

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had attacked police and rescue workers as they tried to revive victims. It also claimed that

The language is simple, reflecting the simplicity and ignorance of the views expressed. The implication is that the Sun newspaper reflects the prejudices of its reader, who appears to be a bigoted, sexist, white male. The speaker goes on to share the social and political attitudes he holds: expressing belief in the greatness of Britain (line 6) and his belief that other countries imitate Britain. The speaker says he is friendly with ‘The State’ and so reads the Sun (lines 8–9). The Sun newspaper has traditionally supported the British army and the police of the State, even in situations where their actions did not merit support.

fans had robbed the pockets of victims. At a

In stanza 3 the reader gives his views on ‘foreigners’. He tells us he is not too ‘keen’ on them but he has no objection to his government dropping bombs in foreign countries (line 11). The actions they had taken on the day. reference to black people as ‘jungle bunnies’ (line 12) is not only racist, but it is also insulting and demeaning. Here, as elsewhere in the poem, the points made by the speaker lack logic. The final line in stanza 3 connects the speaker’s views to those of the newspaper. public enquiry, all these claims were found to

be untrue and the police were criticised for the

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Benjamin Zephaniah X

Stanzas 7 and 8

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The fourth stanza touches on the topic of Russian spies and the British royal family, the kind of news features that cross the line between entertainment and news. Does the speaker believe that Princess Di reads the Sun because she is British, like him, and this is a British newspaper? Or is Zephaniah making an ironic comment on Princess Di? Or is there a suggestion that readers feel a mistaken sense of connection with the celebrities they read about in the gossip columns, even when they realise that the stories they read are not true – ‘I love lies’? In stanza 5, the speaker makes racist, chauvinistic and prejudicial statements about black people, women and poets. Interestingly, he suggests that he is told these things by the Sun and, therefore, doesn’t need to ‘look’, to verify them independently. Stanza 6 continues to list his beliefs: the idea that hippies are dirty; that ‘every Englishman love tits’ (line 25). This view leads to his statement of love for page three. Critics of page three argue that it demeaned women by presenting them as sexual objects. The verb ‘stare’ expresses the male viewer’s lascivious interest in the photographs on this page.

Stanzas 4–6

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Stanza 7 suggests how the newspaper treats everything as a game. The reader loves bingo, as well as the ‘game’ of ‘witch-hunting to shame a name’. This is probably the nearest that Zephaniah comes to commenting on his own case: how his name was smeared by the real Sun newspaper. The rhetorical question (‘But aren’t newspapers all the same?’) is ironic: the fictional reader of the Sun is making an assumption that none of the readers of the poem will share. Newspapers are not the same and there are good reasons not to read those newspapers which promote racism and sexism and pay little attention to the truth. The final stanza suggests that the speaker is so ‘blinded’ by the Sun that all he wants is the gossip and scandals that are featured in the newspaper. The speaker claims he just wants ‘to be normal’ and read the paper that ‘millions’ of others read. The final line of the poem suggests that the Sun has blinded the reader and is responsible for the views he holds.

Theme and imagery This poem is a political satire. It addresses an important theme: the degree to which the popular media informs social attitudes and influences public opinion. In this case, the degree to which the popular media in England define Britishness and Englishness. The poem suggests that the definition of Englishness proposed

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O R D I N A RY L E V E L

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by the popular media is racist, sexist and socially and politically conservative. The three references to black people demonise – ‘Blacks are bad’ (line1); criminalise – ‘Black people rob’ (line 19); and dehumanise – ‘Jungle bunnies … play tom-toms’ (line 12). The racism is casual and unthinking. Indeed, the thrust of Zephaniah’s satire is that this white, male English reader of the Sun has no interest in thinking or expending any kind of energy in pursuing or receiving the truth. In a world where scandal, gossip and lies are produced and consumed, truth gets lost. The imagery of staring into the sun and being blinded by the sun is invoked in lines 27 and 36. In this instance the blinding is not physical, it is intellectual, suggesting that the reader of the Sun suffers from blind prejudice.

At the outset of the poem, the phrase ‘I believe’ allows for the possibility that someone else might hold a different belief. The statement ‘Black people rob’ (line 19) is categorical and leaves no room for a different opinion. However, the statement ‘I am told’ (line 22) suggests that the speaker is taking the newspaper as his source of authority. The final stanza, in which the speaker expresses a desire to ‘be normal’ and refers to the millions who buy the paper, raises the spectre of a vast army of like-minded readers sharing such alarming and regressive views.

Form and language

SNAPSHOT

The poem is written in a mixture of four- and five-line stanzas. There is rhyme but it does not occur in a regular pattern. Each stanza concludes with a refrain that has small variations as the poem proceeds. The repetition, strong beats and full rhymes give the language a song-like and humorous quality, suited to the satiric intent. The tone of the speaker is not overtly aggressive. It is clear that he believes that the views he expresses are normal and unexceptional. He is someone who lacks any critical understanding of his own attitudes.

Written to be recited out loud Simple language Simple rhymes Satiric Exposes racism, sexism and xenophobia Prompted by headline in the Sun Questions the influence of the mass media Questions the idea of ‘Englishness’

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Benjamin Zephaniah X

Exam-Style Questions

Understanding the poem What tone of voice do you imagine the speaker using in the first stanza as he announces his beliefs?

Comment on the phrase ‘I believe Britain is great’ in stanza 2.

What attitude to ‘foreign ones’ is expressed in stanza 3?

Comment on the reference to black people in line 12 of the poem.

What do Russian spies and Princess Diana have in common? Explain your answer.

What outrageous claims are made in stanza 5?

How are women referred to in stanza 6?

Comment on the final line of the poem.

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Thinking about the poem

Here are three views of the speaker of the poem. Which one is closest to your own? ■ The speaker is ignorant but not malicious. I think he is harmless ■ The speaker is unthoughtful and has a superiority complex. I think he is dislikeable ■ The speaker is a racist, a sexist and a xenophobe. I think he is dangerous Explain your answer.

‘What Zephaniah is suggesting is that the popular media promotes division in British society.’ Discuss.

‘The poem is a justifiable protest by a black poet against white prejudice’. Discuss.

‘The poem presents a crude stereotype of a white, working-class, English male. It is guilty of racism.’ Discuss this statement. Support your points with reference to the poem.

What answer would you give to the question ‘But aren’t newspapers all the same?’ (line 30)?

Write your own ‘I believe’ poem in which you express your beliefs and principles in relation to society, politics and culture.

Imagining

Select a song that you think would make an interesting backing track to the performance of this poem. In groups or pairs, explain your choice.

Write to Benjamin Zephaniah giving your response to the poem and the circumstances which prompted him to write it.

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HIGHER LEVEL

Reading the Unseen Poem

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Reading Unseen Poetry lC

Reading a poem is an activity in which your mind, your beliefs and your feelings are all called into play. As you read, you work to create the poem’s meaning from the words and images offered to you by the poet. This process takes a little time, so be patient. However, the fact that poems are generally short – much shorter than most stories, for example – allows you to read, and re-read, a poem many times over.

As you read a poem, jot down your responses. These notes may take the form of words or phrases from the poem that you feel are important, although you may not be able to say at first why this is so. Write questions, teasing out the literal meaning of a word or a phrase. Write notes or commentaries as you go, expressing your understanding. Record your feelings. Record your resistance to, or your approval of, any aspect of the poem: its statements; the choice of words; the imagery; the tone; the values it expresses.

Begin with the title. What expectations does it set up in you? What does it remind you of?

Next, read the poem and jot down any ideas or associations brought to mind by any element of the poem, such as a word, a phrase, an image, the rhythm or the tone.

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Be alert to combinations of words and patterns of repetition. Look for those words or images that carry emotional or symbolic force. Try to understand their effect.

Note other poems that are called to mind as you read the unseen poem. In this way, you create a territory in which the poem can be read and understood.

Poems frequently work by way of hints, suggestions or associations. The unstated may be as important as the stated. Learn to live with ambiguity. Learn to enjoy the uncertainty of poetry. Don’t be impatient if a poem does not ‘make sense’ to you. Most readers interpret and work on poems with more success than they

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Reading Unseen Poetry know or admit! Learning to recognise your own competence, and trusting in it, is an important part of reading poems in a fruitful way. Remember that reading is an active process and that your readings are provisional and open to reconsideration.

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Do not feel that you have to supply all the answers asked of you by a poem. In a class situation, confer with your fellow students. Words and images will resonate in different ways for different readers. Readers bring their own style, ideas and experiences to every encounter with a poem. Sharing ideas and adopting a collaborative approach to the reading of a new poem will open out the poem’s possibilities beyond what you, or any individual, will achieve alone.

In an examination situation, of course, you will not be able to talk with your fellow students or return to the poem many times over a couple of days. Trust yourself.

The poem may be new to you, but you are not new to the reading of poems. Draw on your experience of creating meaning.

Poetry works to reveal the world in new ways. D. H. Lawrence said, ‘The essential quality of poetry is that it makes a new effort of attention and “discovers” a new world within the known world.’ In an examination answer, you are looking to show how a poem, and your reading of it, presents a new view of the world. Read the poem over, noting and jotting as you do so, and then focus on different aspects of the poem. The questions set on the poem will help direct your attention.

Possible Ways into a Poem

There are many ways to approach a poem; here are some suggestions.

The words of the poem

Remember that every word chosen by a poet suggests that another word was rejected. In poetry some words are so charged with meaning that everyday meaning gives way to poetic meaning. Often there are one or two words in a poem that carry a weight of meaning – these words can be read in a variety of ways that open up the poem for you. Think, for example, of how the word ‘Translation’ in Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s poem of the same name, comes to signify the removal of sacred remains to a proper burial place, and the translation of silent suffering into spoken words.

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Here are some questions you might ask yourself: Are the words in the poem simple or complex, concrete or abstract? Are there any obvious patterns of word usage, for example words that refer to colours, or verbs that suggest energy and force? ■ Is there a pattern in the descriptive words used by the poet? ■ Are there key words – words that carry a symbolic or emotional force, or a clear set of associations? Does the poet play with these associations by calling them into question or subverting them? ■ Do patterns of words establish any contrasts or oppositions; for example, night and day, winter and summer, joy and sorrow, love and death? Think of the way youth and age are contrasted in Yeats’s poetry. ■

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The music and movement of the poem

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In relation to the sounds and rhythms of the poem, note such characteristics as punctuation, the length of the lines, or the presence or absence of rhyme. A short line can create a feeling of compressed energy; a long line can create an impression of unhurried thought.

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Look carefully at the punctuation in a poem and the way in which it affects your reading. Think of Emily Dickinson’s ‘I felt a Funeral in my Brain’ and the way in which the punctuation works with the line endings and the repetition to influence the flow and energy of the poem.

Consider how sound patterns add to the poem’s texture and meaning. For example, do the sound patterns create a sense of hushed stillness, or an effect of forceful energy? In W. B. Yeats’s ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ the mixture of light, short sounds and long, easeful ones captures the peaceful life the poet imagines.

The voice of the poem

Ask yourself the following questions: ■ What is the pattern of line length in the poem? ■ What is the pattern of rhyme? ■ Is there a pattern to vowel sounds and length? What influence might this have on the rhythm of the poem or the feelings conveyed by the poem? ■ Are there patterns of consonant sounds, including alliteration? What is their effect? ■ Are there changes in the poem’s rhythm? Where and why do these occur? ■ What part does punctuation play in controlling or influencing the movement of the poem?

Each poem has its own voice. When you read a poet’s work, you can often recognise a distinctive, poetic voice. This may be in the poetry’s rhythms or in the viewpoint the poems express. Sometimes it is most evident in the tone of voice.

Sometimes you are taken by the warmth of a poetic voice, or its coldness and detachment, or its tone of amused surprise.

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Try to catch the distinctive characteristic of the voice of the poem, as you read. Decide if it is a man’s voice or a woman’s voice and what this might mean. Try to place the voice in a context; for example, is it the voice of a child or an adult? This may help you to understand the assumptions in the poem’s statements, or the emotional force of those statements.

The imagery of the poem

Images are the descriptive words and phrases used by poets to speak to our senses. They are mostly visual in quality (word pictures) but they can also appeal to our sense of touch, smell, taste or hearing.

Images, and patterns of imagery, are key elements in the way that poems convey meanings. They create moods, capture emotions and suggest, or provoke, feelings in the readers.

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Reading Unseen Poetry Ask yourself these questions:

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Are there patterns of images in the poem? What kind of world is suggested by the images of the poem: familiar or strange; fertile or barren; secure or threatening; private or public; calm or stormy; generous or mean? (Images often suggest contrasts or opposites.) What emotions are associated with the images of the poem? What emotions might have inspired the choice of images? What emotions do the images provoke in me? If there are images that are particularly powerful, why do they carry the force they do? Do any of the images have the force of a symbol? What is the usual meaning of the symbol? What is its meaning in the poem?

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The structure of the poem There are endless possibilities for structuring a poem, for example:

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The obvious structures of a poem are the lines and stanzas. Short lines give a sense of tautness to a poem. Long lines can create a conversational feel, and allow for shifts and changes in rhythm. Rhyme and the pattern of rhyme influence the structure of a poem. The poem is also structured by the movement of thought. This may or may not coincide with line and stanza divisions. Words such as ‘while’, ‘then’, ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘but’ may help you to trace the line of thought, or argument, as it develops through the poem. In narrative poems, a simple form of structure is provided by the story itself and the sequence of events it describes. Another simple structure is one in which the poet describes a scene, and then records his or her response to it. A poem may be built on a comparison or a contrast. A poem may be structured around a question and an answer, or a dilemma and a decision. The structure may also come from a series of parallel statements, or a series of linked reflections.

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The structure of a poem can be quite subtle, perhaps depending on such things as word association or changes in emotions. Be alert to a change of focus or a shift of thought or emotion in the poem.

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Quite often there is a creative tension between the stanza structure (the visual form of the poem) and the emotional or imaginative structure of the poem. Think, for example, of the four-line stanzas of Dickinson’s ‘I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain’, which give the impression of neat tidiness, and the alarming breakdown of consciousness described within these stanzas. If the poem is in a conventional form such as a sonnet, consider why the poet chose that structure for the subject matter of the poem. Also note any departures from the traditional structure and consider why the poet has deviated from the convention. On the following pages you will find some sample unseen poems and questions for you to try.

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Imtiaz Dharker

Read the following poem and answer either Question 1 or Question 2 which follow.

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Blessing

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Imagine the drip of it, the small splash, echo in a tin mug, the voice of a kindly god.

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The skin cracks like a pod. There never is enough water.

Sometimes, the sudden rush of fortune. The municipal pipe bursts, silver crashes to the ground and the flow has found a roar of tongues. From the huts, a congregation: every man woman child for streets around butts in, with pots, brass, copper, aluminium, plastic buckets, frantic hands,

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and naked children screaming in the liquid sun, their highlights polished to perfection, flashing light, as the blessing sings over their small bones.

(a)

From your reading of this poem, explain your understanding of the title, ‘Blessing’. (10)

(b) Choose one image from the poem that appealed to you. Explain your choice. (10) or

Write a personal response to this poem, highlighting the impact it makes on you. Your answer should make close reference to the text. (20)

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Reading Unseen Poetry

Jane Hirshfield

Read the following poem and answer either Question 1 or Question 2 which follow.

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The Envoy

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Who, seeing me enter, whipped the long stripe of his body under the bed, then curled like a docile house-pet.

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One day in that room, a small rat. Two days later, a snake.

I don’t know how either came or left. Later, the flashlight found nothing.

For a year I watched as something – terror? happiness? grief ? – entered and then left my body.

Not knowing how it came in, Not knowing how it went out.

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It hung where words could not reach it. It slept where light could not go. Its scent was neither snake nor rat, neither sensualist nor ascetic.

There are openings in our lives of which we know nothing. Through them the belled herds travel at will, long-legged and thirsty, covered with foreign dust.

(a)

Based on your reading of the poem, explain what you think the poet means when she says, ‘There are openings in our lives.’ (10)

(b)

Choose two images from the poem that appeal to you and explain your choice. (10) or

Discuss the effectiveness of the poet’s use of language throughout this poem. Your answer should refer closely to the text. (20)

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Jackie Kay

Read the following poem by Jackie Kay and answer either Question 1 or Question 2 which follow.

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You might forget the exact sound of her voice or how her face looked when sleeping. You might forget the sound of her quiet weeping curled into the shape of a half moon,

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Darling

when smaller than her self, she seemed already to be leaving before she left, when the blossom was on the trees and the sun was out, and all seemed good in the world. I held her hand and sang a song from when I was a girl –

Heel y’ho boys, let her go boys – and when I stopped singing she had slipped away, already a slip of a girl again, skipping off, her heart light, her face almost smiling.

(a) What do you believe is the central message of this poem? Support your answer with reference to the poem. (10)

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And what I didn’t know or couldn’t say then was that she hadn’t really gone. The dead don’t go till you do, loved ones. The dead are still here holding our hands.

(b) Identify two phrases or images which you find interesting in the poem. Explain your choices, supporting your answer with reference to the poem. (10)

Based on your reading of the poem, identify the emotions expressed by the poet and explain how these emotions are conveyed in the poem. (20)

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Reading Unseen Poetry

Galway Kinnell Saint Francis and the Sow

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The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words and in touch blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow began remembering all down her thick length, from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine down through the great broken heart to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

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Read the following poem by Galway Kinnell and answer either Question 1 or Question 2 which follow.

(a) What, according to the poem, does the bud stand for? Support your answer with reference to the poem. (10)

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(b) Identify two images that you find interesting in this poem. Explain your choices, supporting your answer with reference to the poem. (10)

Discuss the poet’s use of language in the poem. Your answer should make close reference to the text. (20)

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Fleur Adcock

Read the following poem by Fleur Adcock and answer either Question 1 or Question 2 which follow.

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A snail is climbing up the window-sill into your room, after a night of rain. You call me in to see, and I explain that it would be unkind to leave it there: it might crawl to the floor; we must take care that no one squashes it. You understand, and carry it outside, with careful hand, to eat a daffodil.

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For a Five-Year-Old

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails: your gentleness is moulded still by words from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds, from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed your closest relatives, and who purveyed the harshest kind of truth to many another. But that is how things are: I am your mother, and we are kind to snails.

(a) What in your view is the dominant tone of the poem? Refer to the text in support of your answer. (10)

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(b) Identify one interesting use of language in the poem. Explain your choice. (10)

Write a personal response to the poem, highlighting the impact it made on you. Your answer should make close reference to the text. (20)

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Reading Unseen Poetry

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Exam Advice from the Department of Education and Skills

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The Department of Education and Skills published this advice to students on answering the unseen poem questions in the Leaving Certificate Examination. As the Unseen Poem on the paper will more than likely be unfamiliar to you, you should read it a number of times (at least twice) before attempting your answer.

You should pay careful attention to the introductory note printed above the text of the poem.

The Department has also issued an explanation of the following phrases, which may be used in the exam questions on poetry:

‘Do you agree with this statement?’

‘Write a response to this statement.’

You are free to agree in full or in part with the statement offered. But you must deal with the statement in question – you cannot simply dismiss the statement and write about a different topic of your choice.

As above, your answer can show the degree to which you agree/disagree with a statement or point of view. You can also deal with the impact the text made on you as a reader. ‘What does the poem say to you about …?’

What is being asked for here is your understanding/reading of the poem. It is important that you show how your understanding comes from the text of the poem, its language and imagery.

Last Word

The really essential part in reading a poem is that you try to meet the poet halfway.

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Bring your intelligence and your emotions to the encounter with a poem and match the openness of the poet with an equal openness of your mind and heart. And when you write about a poem, give your honest assessment.

In responding to the unseen poem in the exam, never lose sight of the question you have been asked. Make sure that you support every point you make with clear references to the poem. Your answers do not have to be very long, but they must be clearly structured in a coherent way. For this reason, write in paragraphs. Write as clearly and accurately as you can.

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Guidelines for Answering Questions on Poetry

Phrasing of Examination Questions

Questions may be phrased in different ways in the Leaving Certificate English examination. In the earlier years of the examination, questions were usually phrased in a general way. Some examples include: Poet V: a personal response. What impact did the poetry of Poet W have on you as a reader? ■ Write an introduction to the poetry of Poet X.

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However, in recent years students have been presented with more specific statements about a poet, to which they are then invited to respond. Some examples include: Seamus Heaney: ‘Seamus Heaney transforms the familiar and the mundane through his powerful use of language, thereby enabling us to learn a range of profound lessons from his poetry.‘ Discuss the above statement, developing your response with reference to your experience of the poems by Seamus Heaney on your Leaving Certificate English course. (2021) ■ Sylvia Plath: Discuss how successfully, in your opinion, Sylvia Plath uses stylistic features in an innovative way to convey both overwhelming wonder and unsettling menace in her work. Develop your response with reference to the poems by Sylvia Plath on your Leaving Certificate English course. (2021) ■ Emily Dickinson: Discuss how Dickinson’s unique approach to language, and the balance between beauty and horror in her imagery, help to relieve some of the darker aspects of her poetry. Develop your response with reference to the poems by Emily Dickinson on your course. (2020)

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Answering the full question

You will notice that these questions refer to more than one aspect of the poet’s work. For example, the questions ask you to consider the themes (i.e. the subject matter) of the poems as well as the poet’s style, i.e. how he or she expresses these themes. Pay special attention to the guidelines that follow the opening statement. Examiners will expect discussion of all aspects of the question (e.g. observation and experience; subject matter and style; themes and language) although it is not always necessary to give exactly equal attention to both.

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Reading Unseen Poetry Do not neglect the final aspect of the questions asked: ‘Support your points with suitable reference to the poems on your course.’ This may take the form of direct quotation or paraphrasing of the appropriate lines.

Marking criteria

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As in all of the questions in the examination, you will be marked using the following criteria:

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Whatever way the question is phrased, you will need to show that you have engaged fully with the work of the poet under discussion.

Clarity of purpose (30% of marks available). This is explained by the Department of Education and Skills as ‘engagement with the set task’ – in other words, are you answering the question you have been asked? Is your answer relevant and focused? ■ Coherence of delivery (30% of marks available). Here you are assessed on your ‘ability to sustain the response over the entire answer’. Is there coherence and continuity in the points you are making? Are the references you choose to illustrate your points appropriate? ■ Efficiency of language use (30% of marks available). This concerns your ‘management and control of language to achieve clear communication’. Aspects of your writing such as vocabulary, use of phrasing and fluency will be taken into account – in other words, your writing style. ■ Accuracy of mechanics (10% of marks available). Your levels of accuracy in spelling and grammar are what count here. Always leave some time available to read over your work – you are bound to spot some errors.

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Preparing for the Examination

In order to prepare well for specific questions such as those above, it is necessary to examine different aspects of the work of each poet on your course.

The poet’s choice of themes

Be familiar with the issues and preoccupations of each poet on your course. In writing about themes in the examination, you will need to know how the poet develops the themes, what questions are raised in the poems and how they may or may not be resolved. Bear in mind that the themes may be complex and open to more than one interpretation.

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Write about how you responded to the poet’s themes. In forming your response, questions you should ask yourself include:

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Do the poet’s themes appeal to me because they enrich my understanding of universal human concerns such as love or death? Do the themes offer me an insight into the life of the poet? Do I respond to the themes because they are unusual or unfamiliar? Do the themes appeal to me because they reflect my personal concerns and interests? Do I respond to themes that appeal to my intellect as well as to my emotions, for example politics, religion or history? READING UNSEEN POETRY / 597

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The poet’s style or use of language

Any discussion of a poet’s work will involve his or her style or use of language. In preparing for the examination you should study carefully the individual images or patterns of imagery used by each of the poets on your course.

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Do the images appeal to my senses – my visual, tactile and aural senses, and my sense of taste and of smell? How do I respond? Do I find the images effective in conveying theme or emotion? Are the images clear and vivid, or puzzling in an unusual or exciting way? Are the images created by the use of simile and metaphor? Can I say why these particular comparisons were chosen by the poet? Do I find them surprising, precise, fresh, painterly …? Has the poet made use of symbol or personification? How have these devices added to the poem’s richness? Does the poet blend poetic and conversational language? Has language been used to denote (to signify) and/or to connote (to suggest)? Does the poet use simple expression to convey his or her ideas or complex language to express complex ideas? An exploration of language may include style, manner, phraseology and vocabulary, as well as imagery and the techniques mentioned above.

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When you write about imagery, try to analyse how the particular poet you are discussing creates the effects he or she does (i.e. what the poet’s unique or distinctive style is). Ask yourself the following questions:

The sounds of poetry

Many people find that it is the sound of poetry that they respond to most. It is an ancient human characteristic to respond to word patterns like rhyme or musical effects such as rhythm. This may be one of the aspects of a poet’s work that makes it unique or distinctive.

Sound effects such as alliteration, assonance, consonance and onomatopoeia may be used for many reasons – some thematic, some for emotive effect, some merely because of the sheer pleasure of creating pleasant musical word patterns.

Look carefully at how each of the poets you have studied makes use of sound. Your response will be much richer if it is based on close reading and attention to sound patterns and effects.

The poet’s life, personality or outlook

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Since poems are often written out of a poet’s inner urgency, they can reveal a great deal about the personality or experience of the poet. An examination question may ask you to discuss this aspect of a poet’s work. For example, in 2016 a question on Elizabeth Bishop referred to the ‘unique personal experiences in her poetry’.

Poems can be as revealing as an autobiography. Read the work of each of the poets carefully with this in mind. Ask yourself the following questions:

Can I build up a profile of the poet from what he or she has written, from his or her personal voice? Is this voice honest, convincing, suggesting an original or perceptive view of the world? ■ Do I find the personal issues revealed to be moving, intense, disturbing? What reasons can I give for my opinion? ■ ■

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Reading Unseen Poetry

It may also be that you like the work of a particular poet for a contrasting reason: that he or she goes beyond personal revelation to create other voices, other lives. Many poets adopt a different persona to explore a particular experience. Might this enrich our understanding of the world? Your response may also take this aspect into account.

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Poetry and the emotions

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At their best, poems celebrate what it is to be human, with all that being human suggests, including confronting our deepest fears and anxieties. Very often it is the emotional intensity of a poem that enables us to engage with it most fully.

Questions to consider include:

What is the tone of the poem? Tone conveys the emotions that lie behind the poems. All of the elements in a poem may be used to convey tone and emotion. Each stylistic feature – such as the poet’s choice of imagery, language and sound patterns – contributes to the tone of the poem. Look at the work of the different poets with this in mind. ■ What corresponding emotions does the work of each poet on the course create in you as a reader? Do you feel consoled, uplifted, disturbed, perhaps even alienated? ■ Does the poet succeed in conveying his or her feelings effectively, in your view?

■

These are issues you should consider in preparing to form your response to a specific question in the examination.

Conclusion

It is worth remembering that you will be rewarded for your attempts to come to terms with the work of the poets you have studied in a personal and responsive way. This may entail a heartfelt negative response, too. But even a negative response must display close reading and should pay attention to specific aspects of the poems mentioned in the question. Do not feel that you have to conform to the opinions of others – even the opinions expressed in this book!

Read the question carefully. Some questions may direct your attention to specific aspects of a poet’s work – make sure you deal with these aspects in your answer.

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Some questions may simply invite you to include some aspects of a poet’s work in your response. It would be unwise to ignore any hints as to how to proceed!

You will be required to support your answer by reference to or quotation from the poems chosen. The Department of Education and Skills has published the following advice to students on answering the question on poetry: It is a matter of judgement as to which of the poems will best suit the question under discussion and candidates should not feel a necessity to refer to all of the poems they have studied.

Remember that long quotations are hardly ever necessary. Good luck!

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Glossary of Terms

allegory A story or poem in which the characters and events represent ideas about the world.

alliteration Repetition of consonants, especially at the beginning of words. The term itself means ‘repeating and playing upon the same letter’. Alliteration is a common feature of poetry from every period of literary history. It is used mainly to reinforce a point or enhance the music of a poem. The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins is noted for its alliteration: ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’.

allusion A reference to a person, place or event or to another work of art or literature. The purpose of allusion is to get the reader to share an experience that has significant meaning for the writer. The title of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s poem ‘The Second Voyage’ alludes to the second voyage of the Greek hero Odysseus.

ambiguity Ambiguous words, phrases or sentences are capable of being understood in two or more possible senses. In many poems, ambiguity is part of the poet’s method and is essential to the meaning of the poem. The final line of Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Constable Calls’ (‘And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked.’) is ambiguous. It describes the sound of the bicycle, but it also suggests the ticking of a clock or a bomb.

anaphora The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or lines of a poem. Nikki Giovanni uses this device in ‘They Clapped’ and in Vona Groarke’s poem ‘Away’ ‘I’ is repeated to emphasise the speaker’s separation from her children.

antithesis A statement in which opposites are set up against each other. Yeats uses antithesis to create a sense of balance in 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death'.

assonance The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, in a sequence of words. Assonance can contribute significantly to the meaning of a poem. Hopkins often uses assonance, for example in the ‘ay’ sounds in the phrase ‘great grey drayhorse’ in ‘Felix Randal’.

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ballad A poem or song that concentrates on telling a story. Ballads are usually composed in quatrains with the second and fourth line rhyming.

blank verse Unrhymed verse, especially that written in lines of iambic pentameter. Yeats’s ‘Second Coming’ is written in blank verse.

caesura The pause which occurs in most lines of poetry of any length. Sometimes, though not always, it is indicated by a punctuation mark. Possibly the most famous caesura in all literature occurs in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question.’ You might like to recite the line and decide how long to hold the caesura on the comma between ‘be’ and ‘that’ in the middle of the line. colloquialism Using the language of everyday speech. The colloquial style is plain and relaxed. In much poetry of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there is an acceptance of colloquialism, and even slang, as a medium of poetic expression. Paula Meehan's ‘Them Ducks Died for Ireland’ is an example of everyday language.

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Glossary connotation The additional meanings that words have beyond their basic or dictionary meaning. For example, in using the title ‘The Underground’ for a love poem, Seamus Heaney plays upon the association between the underground and the underworld and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.

consonance Repetition of consonant sounds within as well as at the beginning of words. You can hear consonance at work in the phrase ‘bee-loud glade’ from Yeats’s ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’.

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convention Any aspect of a literary work that author and readers accept as normal and to be expected in that kind or genre of writing. For example, it is a convention that a sonnet has fourteen lines that rhyme in a certain pattern.

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diction The vocabulary used by a writer – his or her selection of words and word combinations. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, poets wrote in accordance with the principle that the diction of poetry had to be clearly different from the diction of current speech. There was a certain sort of ‘poetic’ diction, which, by avoiding commonplace words and expressions, was supposed to lend dignity to the poem and its subject. This is entirely contrary to modern practice.

dramatic monologue A long speech spoken by a character in a play or a poem written in this style.

elegy A poem written to commemorate someone who has died. An elegiac poem has a mournful or sad tone. Paula Meehan’s ‘Cora, Auntie’ is an example of an elegy.

enjambment Also referred to as a run-on line, this is when the meaning carries over from one line of poetry into the next, almost without a pause, often creating an extra burst of energy, as in this example from Sylvia Plath’s ‘Morning Song’: ‘The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bold cry / Took its place among the elements.’

epigraph A quotation from another piece of literature that is placed beneath the title at the beginning of a poem. Yeats’s poem ‘Politics’ starts with a quotation from Thomas Mann – this is an epigraph that reflects on the poem’s title.

free verse Poetry that does not rhyme and does not have a regular metre. That does not mean that it lacks musical qualities, but it does not follow any conventional form. Many of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s poems are written in free verse.

hyperbole Deliberate exaggeration used for effect. Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses hyperbole in her sonnet ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ to express the depth and strength of her love.

iamb The most common metrical ‘foot’ in English poetry, consisting of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed one (˘ ’), as in the words bĕcáuse and ŭnléss. Iambic verse has a natural connection with the beat of the heart or the rhythm of walking.

iambic pentameter A line of verse consisting of five iambs (di -dúm, di -dúm, di -dúm, di -dúm, di -dúm), used by Shakespeare in all his plays and sonnets, and one of the most common metres in English-language verse. image A descriptive word or phrase used by poets to speak to our senses. The poet Cecil Day-Lewis puts the matter well when he describes an image as ‘a picture made out of words’.

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imagery This is a term with a very wide application. When we speak of the imagery of a poem, we refer to all its images taken collectively. Often the imagery of a poem has a certain theme or other quality in common. lament A poem expressing deep sorrow and grief. A lament can express private grief at the death of a loved one or communal grief, such as that which follows the death of a leader. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s ‘Kilcash’ laments the death of Margaret Butler and the decline of the family estate at Kilcash. lyric Any relatively short poem in which a single speaker, not necessarily representing the poet, expresses feelings and thoughts in a personal and subjective fashion. Most poems are either lyrics or feature lyrical elements. Yeats’s ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ is a celebrated example of a lyric.

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metaphor A comparison between two elements that is implied by the words, rather than by using ‘like’ or ‘as’. (See also simile.) If in a simile someone’s teeth are like pearls, in a metaphor they are pearls. A metaphor is capable of a greater range of suggestiveness than a simile and its implications are wider and richer. For example, in Dickinson’s ‘A Bird came down the Walk’, the movement of the bird’s wings is described as oars dividing an ocean.

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metonym A word or expression that stands for something with which it is closely associated. For example, in Yeats’s ‘The Stare’s Nest by My Window’ the honey bees can be seen as a metonym for a productive society and a brighter future.

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metre The rhythm or pattern of stressed and unstressed sounds in a line of poetry. Especially in traditional and rhyming forms, a line of poetry consists of a number of ‘feet’, and each foot is made up of two or three syllables in a specific pattern. For example, if you say ‘incy wincy spider’ aloud, you can hear that it has three feet of one stressed followed by one unstressed syllable (´ ˘ ); ‘hickory dickory dock’ has two feet of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (´ ˘ ˘ ), and then the final word ‘dock’. The different types of foot have names. The most common one is the iamb ( ˘ ´ ), which has its own entry above. Others are: trochee (´ ˘ ), anapaest ( ˘ ˘ ´ ), dactyl (´ ˘ ˘ ) and spondee (´ ´ ). The metre of a line of verse can be given a name according to the number and type of feet in a line. A line with four feet is called a tetrameter; a line with five feet is called a pentameter. So a line made up of five iambs would be called an iambic pentameter.

monologue A long speech made by a single character or persona. Paula Meehan’s ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’ is an example of a monologue.

ode A poem written in praise of something or someone. The subject often allows the poet to express his/her emotions. Odes are written in an exalted (high-flown) style using complex stanza forms. The poem is usually addressed to the source of the poet’s inspiration.

onomatopoeia The use of words that resemble, or enact, the very sounds they imitate. In ‘Felix Randal’, Hopkins uses the verb ‘battering’ to describe the sound of the horse’s iron shoe striking the ground.

paradox An apparently self-contradictory statement that, on further consideration, is found to contain an essential truth. Paradox is so intrinsic to human nature that poetry rich in paradox is valued as a reflection of the central truths of human experience. John Donne often uses paradox, notably at the ending of the sonnet, ‘Batter my heart’: ‘… for I / Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free, / Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.’

pastoral To do with the countryside, particularly animals that graze in fields (pasture). In literature, it is the name given to a tradition that portrays an idealised version of country life. Yeats’s ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ draws on this pastoral tradition in its depiction of the simple rural life he imagines on the island.

persona Sometimes a poet adopts the mask or character of another person, or even an object, as the speaker in a poem. The mirror, in Plath’s poem of the same name, is a persona. personification The attribution of human qualities to an animal, concept or object. In Tom French’s ‘Night Drive’, the description of the tyres’ ‘smooth cheeks’ personifies the car.

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quatrain A stanza form of four lines, which can be rhymed or unrhymed. The most popular rhyme schemes are abab, abba and aabb. For example, Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ is written in rhymed quatrains. refrain A repeated line or lines (often a couplet) at the end of a series of stanzas. ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, / It’s with O’Leary in the grave’ in Yeats’s ‘September 1913’ is an example of a refrain. rhetoric Language which is designed to persuade or impress the reader or listener. We call such language rhetorical. Traditionally, rhetoric involved a range of techniques, but the only one commonly recognised now is the rhetorical question, which is a question that makes a point but does not expect an answer. Yeats’s ‘September 1913’ is a highly rhetorical poem.

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Glossary run-on line See enjambment.

sestina A poem with six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three-line seventh stanza (known as an envoy). The poet uses six particular words throughout the poem as the end words of each line, but in a different order in each stanza.

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sibilance The hissing sound associated with certain letters such as ‘s’, ‘sh’. In ‘God’s Grandeur’ the ‘s’ sound features throughout the poem, as in the line: ‘And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil’.

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simile A comparison between two things that uses a comparative word (‘like’ or ‘as’). In Seamus Heaney’s poem, ‘Mossbawn’, there is a striking simile comparing love to a tinsmith’s scoop in the meal-bin.

sonnet A rhymed lyric poem of fourteen lines. These fourteen lines are long enough to make possible the fairly complex development of a single theme, and short enough to test the poet’s gift for concentrated expression. English poets have traditionally written one of two kinds of sonnet – the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean. The Petrarchan sonnet, named after the Italian poet who made the form popular, and favoured by Keats, falls into two divisions – the octave (eight lines rhyming abba, abba) and the sestet (six lines generally, but not always, rhyming cde, cde). The octave usually presents a problem, situation or incident; the sestet resolves the problem or comments on the situation or incident. In contrast, the Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (groups of four lines rhyming abab, cdcd, efef) and a rhyming couplet (gg). John Donne’s Holy Sonnets combine elements of both kinds of sonnet.

stereotype A belief or an assumption, that certain types of people or things, sharing similar characteristics, are all the same.

style A writer’s manner of expression – his or her particular way of saying things. Consideration of style involves an examination of the writer’s diction, use of figures of speech, order of words, tone and feeling, rhythm and movement. Traditionally, styles were classified as high (formal or learned), middle and low (plain). Convention required that the level of style be appropriate to the speaker, the subject matter, the occasion that inspired the poem, and the literary genre.

symbol Any word or image that stands for something else. In this sense, all words are symbols. In literary symbolism, however, the objects signified by the words stand in turn for things other than themselves. Objects commonly associated with fixed ideas or qualities have come to symbolise them, for example the cross is the primary Christian symbol, and the dove is a symbol of peace. Colour symbols have no fixed meaning but derive their significance from the context: green may signify innocence or Irish patriotism or envy; red may signify anger or love or Communism. In W. B. Yeats’s poem ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, the swans become a symbol for passion and for the poetic imagination, which transcend time.

tercet A stanza form of three lines. Sylvia Plath’s ‘Morning Song’ is written in tercets.

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tone Every speaker must inevitably have an attitude to the person or object being addressed or talked about. The tone expresses this attitude. When one is trying to describe the tone of a poem, it is best to think of the poem as a spoken, rather than a written, exercise. A poem has at least one speaker who is addressing somebody or something. In some poems, the speaker can be thought of as meditating aloud, talking to himself or herself; we, the readers, overhear the words. transferred epithet An epithet is a descriptive word, an adjective, and a transferred epithet is one which applies to a noun other than that which the syntax suggests that it should apply. It is common, even in everyday speech. For example, we talk about ‘sleepless nights’ when in fact it’s not the nights that are sleepless but the person who can’t sleep. Ted Hughes uses the device in the phrase ‘the clock’s loneliness’ in ‘The Thought-Fox’.

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2019 Brendan Kennelly Elizabeth Bishop W. B. Yeats Sylvia Plath

2013 Elizabeth Bishop G. M. Hopkins Derek Mahon Sylvia Plath 2012 Thomas Kinsella Adrienne Rich Philip Larkin Patrick Kavanagh

2015 John Montague Robert Frost Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Thomas Hardy

2011 Eavan Boland Emily Dickinson Robert Frost W. B. Yeats

2014 W. B. Yeats Emily Dickinson Philip Larkin Sylvia Plath

2010 T. S. Eliot Patrick Kavanagh Adrienne Rich W. B. Yeats

2016 Emily Dickinson T. S. Eliot Elizabeth Bishop Paul Durcan

2020* Eavan Boland Emily Dickinson Adrienne Rich William Wordsworth * The 2020 exam was held in November 2020.

2017 Eavan Boland John Donne John Keats Elizabeth Bishop

2021* Eavan Boland Paul Durcan Seamus Heaney John Keats Sylvia Plath * Extra question included because of Covid pandemic.

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Poets Examined at Higher Level in Previous Years

2018 Robert Frost Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin John Montague Philip Larkin

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Revision Charts Emily Dickinson Revision Chart

‘Hope’ is the Hope thing with feathers

Language

Form

Mood

Buoyant, solemn

Flight

Precise, metaphorical

Lyric, hymn-like

Optimism

Affliction

Despair

Oppressive, authoritative

Blurring of senses

Solemn, weighty

Lyric statement

I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain

Death, breakdown, limits of the imagination

Intense, disoriented

Sounds, falling

Sparse, repetitive

Intense lyric

A Bird came down the Walk

Nature, harmony

Amused, whimsical, gentle

Movement, flight

Playful, gentle, metaphorical

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died

Death, faith

Ironic

Light, dark

Effect Striking, vivid, immediate

Sobering

Incomprehension Startling

There’s a certain Slant of light

Calming

Lyric description Grace

Dramatic monologue

Ambiguity

Revelatory of the poet

Freedom, entrapment

Gothic

Lyric meditation

Oppression

Chilling

New World, treasures

Colourful, allusive

Love lyric

Assurance

Heartening

Conversational, terrified fascination

Secrecy, unpredictability

Formal, poised

Lyric description Wariness

Quietly chilling

I could bring Love You Jewels – had I a mind to

Confident, playful

Chilling, delirious

Solemn, legal

The Soul has Elation, despair Bandaged moments

Nature

A narrow Fellow in the Grass

I taste a liquor never brewed

Joys of summer

Joyful, rapturous

Intoxication, extravagance

Playful, ornate

Lyric

Dizzy happiness

Cheering

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

Suffering

Dignified, solemn

Immobility, freezing

Formal, fragmented

Lyric meditation

Anguish

Sobering

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Imagery

Tone

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Theme

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Poem

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The Sunne Rising

Supremacy of love

Song: Goe; and catche a falling starre The Anniversarie

Tone

Imagery

Language

Form

Mood

Effect

Celebratory

Stimulating, amusing

The sun, astronomy

Colloquial, with learned references

Love lyric, tenline stanzas

Inconstancy of Provocative, beautiful women mocking

Fable and folklore, impossibilities

Colloquial

Satirical lyric, Cynical nine-line stanzas

Love and death

Triumphant

Kingship and royalty

Precise, paradoxical

Love lyric, tenline stanzas

Earnest

Varied, from everyday life

Colloquial, personal

Love lyric; tenline stanzas

Dispiriting, sour

Inspiring

Celebratory

Tender

Reassuring

Erotic love lyric

Sensual, troubled

Perplexing, intriguing

Reassurance on Song: lovers parting Sweetest love; I do not goe

Irreverent, yet tender

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Theme

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Poem

Colloquial, intimate, paradoxical

Dreaming and fantasy

Intense, troubled

Dreaming, sleeping and waking; angels

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Reassurance on lovers parting

Earnest, argumentative

Drawn from science and craft

Clear, precise, technical

Love lyric, quatrains

Thoughtful, serious

Satisfying

The Flea

Seduction through a fleabite

Flippant, witty

A flea, sacred places and events

Colloquial, dramatic

Seduction poem, nine-line stanzas

Playful

Amusing, delighting

Batter my heart

Spiritual anguish Urgent, anguished

War and violence, love

Imperative, paradoxical

Sonnet

Desperate

Exciting, shocking

The Last Judgement, theology

Imperative, repetitive structures

Sonnet

Troubled, uncertain

Impressive, troubling

Sonnet

Tentative, anxious

Troubling

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Thou hast made me

Sin and guilt, a call for God’s help

The Dreame

Insistent, then The Last At the round earths Judgement and resigned salvation imagin’d corners Pleading, uncertain

John Donne Revision Chart

Heaven and hell, Intimate, exact magnet

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Revision Charts Seamus Heaney Revision Chart Theme

Tone

Imagery

Form

Mood

Effect Transforming

Craft, imagination

Wonder, lament

Light and dark, sacred

Strong, rich in sound

Sonnet

Celebration

Bogland

Landscape, memory, poetry

Assured, confident

Bogs and prairies

Spare, musical

Lyric meditation

Excitement

The Tollund Man

Violence, ancestry, imagination

Sadness, longing

Burial, sacrifice, germination, pilgrimage

Simple, clear, prayer-like

Lyric meditation

Love, family, Mossbawn: Two Poems nurture in Dedication (1) Sunlight

Affectionate, loving

Baking, warmth

Flowing, descriptive

Lyric description Tenderness

A Constable Calls

Fear, power, alienation

Fearful, guilty

Precise, inhuman

Clear, impersonal, harsh

The Skunk

Married love, erotic intimacy

Humorous, ironic, affectionate

Unusual metaphors; sensuous, sacramental

The Harvest Bow

Father–son relationship, hope

Nostalgic, loving, harmonious

Craft and making

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Raising questions

Warming

Descriptive, full-sounding, symbolic

Lyric meditation

Love

Amusing, startling

Richly descriptive

Lyric addressed to poet’s father

Admiration

Inspiring

Classical allusions, flight and pursuit

Allusive, energetic

Love lyric

Celebration, perseverance

Energising

Visionary; weight, weightlessness

Light, sensuous, Lyric meditation symbolic

Trust

Transforming

Threatening

admiring

marvellous

Sombre contemplation

Oppression

The Pitchfork The real and the Uplifting,

Opening up possibilities

Narrative

Playful, celebratory, erotic, honest

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The Forge

Marriage, love The Underground

The real and the Tolerant, marvellous understanding, definite

Flight, anchorage

Clear, matterof-fact

Narrative

Lightness

Freeing of the spirit

A Call

Love, death

Fearful, apprehensive, relieved

Silence, waiting

Clear, dramatic

Dramatic narrative

Relief

Involving

Postscript

Openness, the unexpected

Thoughtful, excited

Land and sea, light and air

Conversational, descriptive, symbolic

Sonnet-like

Openness

Being in two worlds

Tate’s Avenue

Love, influence of place

Intoxicated, cautious

Rugs, picnics, home and abroad

Descriptive, sensuous

Love lyric

Fond remembrance

Revealing of the lovers

Lightenings, viii: ‘The Annals Say’

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Language

Poem

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Gerard Manley Hopkins Revision Chart Theme

Tone

Imagery

Language

Form

Mood

Effect

World filled with Praising; regretful, then the grandeur hopeful of God; human activity degrades nature

Religious then industrial, then drawn from nature

Descriptive

Sonnet

Varies from celebratory to disillusioned to optimistic

Inspirational

Spring

Celebratory Celebration of spring; spring a reflection of the innocent springtime of the world

Nature, Christian story

High descriptive, alliterative

Sonnet

Celebratory, then pleading

Convincing affirmation of the divine purpose in creation

As kingfishers catch fire

Uniqueness of every created thing

Affirmative, celebratory

Natural world, Christianity

Descriptive then Sonnet philosophical

The Windhover

Splendour of the falcon reflects the greater splendour of Christ

Celebratory

Falconry, crucifixion

Powerfully descriptive, devotional

Pied Beauty

Unchanging God Affirmative created a highly varied world

Natural world

Felix Randal

Spiritual relief of suffering

Catholic, bodily suffering and physical strength

Inversnaid

Joy in wild nature Celebratory

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Reassuring, inspirational

‘Curtal’ (shortened) sonnet

Celebratory, joyful

Heartening

Alliterative, descriptive, devotional

Sonnet

Nostalgic, devotional, sympathetic

Inspirational, deeply moving

Descriptive

Lyric

Enthusiastic

Happy

Descriptive, narrative, reflective

Sonnet

Deeply despairing

Deeply disturbing

Joyful, reassuring

Close and accurate description

Nature

Optimistic, celebratory

Happy, reverential

Sympathetic

Sonnet

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God’s Grandeur

Poem

Horrors of No worst, there is none despair

Desolate

Religious, literary, natural

Horrors of depression and spiritual desolation

Deep despair

Darkness, illness Descriptive use of plain words

Sonnet

Dark, depressive Frightening

Thou art indeed just, Lord

Questioning divine justice

Despairing, pleading

Biblical, nature

Sonnet

Questioning, disillusioned, disappointed, pleading

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I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day

Reflective, interrogative

Stimulating

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Revision Charts Paula Meehan Revision Chart

Tenement life

Excited

The Pattern

Relationship with Nostalgic mother

Language

Mood

Quest; light and Idiom; musical dark; similes

Unbroken lyric

Cheerful

Symbolism; sewing

Direct speech

Lyric; elegy

Regret

Elegy

Restrained anger

Mournful; angry

Seasons; sacraments; nature

Religious

Cora, Auntie Emigration;

Admiring

Sequins; personification of death

Lively; inventive

Sewing; birds

Meditative

My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis

Family; conservation; transformation

Celebratory

Hearth Lesson

Poverty; discord

Angry; resentful; Classical; astonished money; fire; tennis

Reflective

Inspiring

Detailed; descriptive

Anecdote

Jubilant

Heartwarming

Accessible; dialogue

Anecdote; lyric

Wry; surprised

Saddening yet amusing

pa Three-line stanzas

Detached

Loss; commemoration

Prayer for the Children of Longing

Birds; religious; domestic

Saddening

Heartwarming

Power of language; gender issues

Relatable

Celebratory

The Exact Moment I Became a Poet

Elegy

Effect Uplifting

Oppression; The Statue of the Virgin teenage pregnancy at Granard

illness

Form

Buying Winkles

Imagery

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Tone

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Theme

Poem

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Death of a Field

Them Ducks Died for Ireland

Nature; conservation versus development

Angry; sad; calm Tree; streets

Religious; use of Elegy repetition

Contemplative; Shocking yet restrained anger calming

Mournful; nostalgic; angry

Flora; fauna; chemical; domestic

Lists; use of contrast

Elegy

Wry

Provokes thought and perhaps action also

Time; statues; war

Portmanteau words; highly descriptive

Sonnet

Contemplative

Interesting

Commemoration; Questioning effect of time passing

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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Revision Chart Imagery

The Second Voyage

Adventure, exile and longing, power, struggle

Varies between detached third person narration and impassioned speech of Odysseus

Deaths and Engines

Inevitability of death

Street

Romance, mystery, danger

commemoration, power of art

First person narrative

Optimistic

Descriptive, Sea journey, struggle, water: wild dramatic, and tamed

Narrative

ThoughtThe mood of provoking the narrative is detached; mood of Odysseus: longing, frustration, determination

Sombre

Random: wreckage, Descriptive snow, cutlery, hospital, pyjamas

Reflective lyric

Suspenseful

Symbolic: blood, knife, open door, stairs, footprints

Plain, descriptive

Loving

Symbolic: painterly, architectural, sickness, human kindness

Descriptive, complex

Suspenseful, mysterious

Descriptive Uncanny: strange house, locked rooms, keys, confinement, voices

Seduction, persuasion, promises

Following

Matter-of-fact Memory and commemoration, following in a parent’s footsteps

Kilcash

Lament for a noble woman and a way of life

Translation

Solidarity, remembrance, justice, respect

Time, death and memory

All for You

Fireman’s Lift Love, grief,

Journey, quest, Descriptive, folkloric, contrasting rich, symbolic, musical

Flight, escape, moral questioning

Marriage, love, To Niall power of stories Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia, married in Dublin on 9 September 2009

Sober

Narrative

Sobering, depressing

Uncertain, questioning

Intriguing

Lyric meditation

Philosophical, elegiac, loving

Moving, elevating

Dramatic narrative

Unsettling

Thoughtprovoking, intriguing

Dramatic narrative

Hopeful, longing

Admiration for the poet

Formal, descriptive

Lyric

Despairing and wishing

Evokes sorrow

Insistent, powerful

Excavation, washing, veiling, speaking

Multi-layered

Public lyric

Determined, protesting

Evokes anger at mistreatment

Loving, tender, sorrowful

Tender, Sacred places, descriptive, accumulation of memories, presence richly patterned of loved ones

Lyric

Loving, thoughtful

Moving, heartening

Reflective, thoughtful

Danger, flight, escape

Combination Thoughtful of lyric and narrative

Thoughtprovoking

Affectionate, wise, humorous, loving

Instructive Drawn from fairy tales and folktales; happiness ever after

Wedding poem

Joyous

On Lacking the Killer Instinct

Heartening

Contrasting: order and plenty; disorder, ruin and scarcity

Mournful, respectful

Th e

The Bend in the Road

Descriptive, lyrical

Effect

la n

Natural, monastic, surreal, spring-like

Mood

Ire

Reflective

Form

Escape, healing, return

Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht

Language

Tone

Theme

Poem

Descriptive, economical, lyrical

Reassuring, celebratory, loving

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Revision Charts Sylvia Plath Revision Chart Imagery

Language

Form Lyric meditation

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

Inspiration

Fearful, hopeful, Light and cautious radiance; transformation

Heightened, metaphorical, controlled

The Times Are Tidy

Blandness of contemporary culture

Dismissive, satirical

Fairy tale

Clear, patterned Lyric, confident statements

Morning Song

Motherhood, birth

Joyful, amazed, protective

Museum, separation, baby’s cry

Clear, direct, musical

Finisterre

Life and death

Anxious, calm

Surreal images of the ocean, war, fog, rocks

Detailed, symbolic

Mirror

Judgement, fear, ageing

Detached, cold

Personification, rising, fish

Pheasant

Preciousness of life, fear of destruction

Accusing, pleading, admiring

Elm

Fear, love, selfhatred

Mocking, fearful, Subconscious, threatening dreams, nightmares

Irony

Lyric, expressive Elation, celebration at end

Lyric description Heightened and meditation emotion

Hesitantly hopeful

Effect Evokes sympathy

Low-key, amusing

Surprising, elevating

Fascinating, unsettling

Precise, accurate Dramatic monologue

Darkness

Disturbing

Intense

Dramatic monologue in terza rima

Anguish

Revealing of the poet

Powerful, symbolic, rich

Dramatic monologue

Terror

Overpowering

Intense, passionate, onomatopoeic

Concentrated lyric

Darkness

Unsettling

Present-tense narrative

Triumphant optimism

Entertaining

Short lyric

Anguish

Heart-breaking

Fear and longing Dramatic, disturbed, emotional

Poppies in July

Visual, descriptive

Mood

Tone

la n

Theme

Ire

Poem

Personal fears

Child

Love and despair Frustration, longing

Th e

The Arrival of the Bee Box

Frightened, fascinated

Sickness, violence, annihilation

Entrapment and Direct, powerful freedom

Whimsical, images of reflection

Inventive, composed

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W. B. Yeats Revision Chart Tone

Imagery

The Lake Isle Desire to escape Yearning to rural solitude of Innisfree

Language

Form

Mood

Effect

Impressionistic; Descriptive; rich Lyric in word music sights and sounds of nature

Peaceful

Inspiring

Disturbing, questioning

Ironical, Betrayal of a noble ideal; Irish mocking identity

Petty thrift and heroic sacrifice

Energetic, rhetorical

Rhymed eight-line stanzas; iambic tetrameter

Resentful, bitter

The Wild Swans at Coole

Time, death, immortality

Regretful, then resigned

Autumn; swans

Musical, harmonious

Lyrical meditation

Reflective, wistful

Easter 1916

Transformation of ordinary people into heroes

Detached, questioning

Theatre; drawn Descriptive, controlled, from nature (stone in stream) incantatory

Meditation; rhymed trimeters

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

One man’s attitude to war, life and death; nationality and identity

Detached

Very little

Reflective lyric

The Second Coming

End of order, coming of anarchy

Authoritative, dramatic

Horrific; from the Bible and mythology

Sailing to Byzantium

Art and life; time Passionate and eternity; old age

The Stare’s Nest by My Window

Damaging effect Disillusioned; of civil war yearning

In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz

Time and loss; Anglo-Irish heritage

Swift’s Epitaph

Swift as champion of liberty

Exhilarating

Unrhymed iambic pentameter

Fearful

Deeply troubling

Lyric; tight stanza form

Frustration to exhilaration

Fascinating

Sensual nature Forceful, and immortal art energetic

Honey bees set Colloquial, blunt Meditative lyric against brutality

of Resigned, at peace

Inspiring

Dramatic, intense

Exhilarating

Solemn but celebratory

Unadorned; carefully balanced

Ire

September 1913

Bitter, but Troubling, clinging to hope chastening

Meditative Descriptive, plain; subtle use lyric; rhymed tetrameters of tenses

Bitter, regretful

Disturbing

Solemn, scornful Journey into death

Dignified, haughty

Epitaph

Celebratory

Challenging

Limits imposed by old age

Determined, imploring

Great artists of the past; quiet house

Plain words, strong verbs

Meditative lyric

Frustration, aspiration

Inspiring

Politics

Politics and personal life

Frustrated, exasperated

Colloquial A young woman; abstract ideas of politics

Lyric

Regretful

Amusing, thoughtprovoking

from Under Ben Bulben: V and VI

Heritage: Irish poetry and the poet himself

Authoritative, celebratory

Drawn from everyday life

Valediction (farewell poem)

Robust, unsentimental

Stimulating

Th e

An Acre of Grass

Nostalgic, bitter Civilised beauty and setting fire to it

Statement and instruction; strong and direct

Theme

la n

Poem

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