Year 12 Literature 2012

Views and Values

Harwood

This Booklet belongs to

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I heard a Fly buzz

by Emily Dickinson

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

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –And Breaths were gathering firmFor that last Onset – when the KingBe witnessed – in the Room –

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed awayWhat portions of me beAssignable – and then it wasThere interposed a Fly –

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

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Because I Could Not Stop for Death

by Emily Dickinson

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 –

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess – in the Ring –

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –

We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed us –

The Dews drew quivering and chill –

For only Gossamer, my Gown –

My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground –

The Roof was scarcely visible –

The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

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I first surmised the Horses' Heads

Were toward Eternity –

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Prize Giving

1. What is the rhyming pattern?

2. Count the syllables in each line in the first stanza? (this rhythm is called iambic pentameter.) How many syllables are there?

3. This poem is a narrative, what happens?

4. Professor Eisenbart initially comes across as a very superior figure. Copy 3 phrases that support this.

5. Give an example of and explain an allusion from the poem.

6. What impression do you get of the girl who played the piano?Quote 3 phrases from the poem that support this.

7. What happens to the professor from the time ‘He took her hand’?

8. Can you explain the last 3 lines?

9. What view of education do you get from this poem?

10.What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem? A Kitchen Poem.

1. Where is the farmer? Describe some of the things he sees.

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2. How does this compare with the room he is in?

3. What is the wife dreaming about as she looks out the window?

4. Why is she dreaming of these things?

5. What are some of the words he uses to describe women in the city? What impression does this add up to?

6. Pick an image from stanzas 5 or 6 and explain it.

7. Pick an image from stanzas 7 or 8 and explain it. Why are the tones completely different (Qs 6 and 7)

8. Do you think the opinions of the farmer and his wife coincide?

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9. What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

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Estuary

1. What are some of the things she describes in the estuary?

2. How would you describe the mood or tone of the poem? What are two images that support this?

3. What are 3 words or images that Harwood uses that are associated with death?

4. What are 3 words or images that Harwood uses that are associated with life ?

5. Why do you think she mentions 4 different generations?

6. What is the connection to the estuary to the different generations?

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7. What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

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An Impromptu for Ann Jennings

(Fern Tree is in Tasmania)

1. Why is her memory ‘singing’?

2. Wittgenstein ( a philosopher) runs into’ cleaning up infants’ What is Harwood’s purpose here?

3. What are the negatives of having children, in the poem?

4. In stanza 5, ‘woman’ stands by itself, why do you think this is so?

5. Explain the references to ‘Caesar’

6. What is her attitude to life and having children in the last two stanzas?

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7. What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

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The Violets

1. The first stanza is set in the present, what’s the image that is reminiscent of childhood?

2. What upset Harwood so much, as a young child?

3. What images do we get of her childhood and parents in stanzas 3 and 4? Copy out the most powerful words.

4. Her memory is so intense, it’s as though her parents have come back to life, what does she mean by ‘death’s disorienting scale’?

5. In the last stanza, match the description to each of the 5 senses.

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6. The last line, what brings her back to the present?

7. What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem? (Answer on the back of the sheet.)

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Iris

1. ‘..named for the rainbow’ Look up iris in Greek mythology and write some notes.

2. On one level the poem is about a boat, what is some of the sea imagery?

3. What is an example of personification in the poem?

4. What qualities does the water have?

5. Explain what’s happening with the crabs.

6. The tone of the opening stanza is quite bright, with ‘ lively…fondles…fresh’ Describe the tone of stanzas 5 and 6.

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7. What attitude is reflected in the last stanza?

8. What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

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Father and Child 1. Barn Owl

1. Describe the rhyming pattern throughout the seven stanzas.

2. What’s the effect of the full colon after ‘Daybreak’?

3. The child is ‘blessed by the sun’ and a ‘horny fiend’ what’s the contradiction there?

4. How does the child see the father at this stage?

5. Explain the metaphor ‘ a wispy- haired judge whose law/would punish beak and claw.’

6. Give two examples of enjambment from the poem.

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7. Stanza six has an interruption to the rhyming pattern, why do you think this happens?

8. ‘End what you have begun is the only line from the father, why do you think this is so?

9. ‘I fired.’ What’s the effect of such a short sentence?

10.How has the child changed from the start of the poem to the end of the poem? What lines mirror this?

11.What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

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Father and Child 2.Nightfall

1. Describe the rhyming scheme of the stanzas.

2. What is the (suppressed) metaphor in the opening two lines? What is packed in what?

3. What is the “season” which has arrived?

4. What other seasons are there? What is the effect of using this word, instead of, say, ‘old age’?

5. What is “time’s long-promised land’?

6. In what sense might this description be termed ironic?

7. How could you explain the (otherwise) sudden, even surprising, shift from “land” to “taste”?

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8. Find the line reference in King Lear from which Harwood took this sentence. What did she add? (Read Act V.ii)

9. Explain the progress of the poet’s thought from “taste: to “ripeness” to “fruit”.

10.What is the meaning of the word “temporal”?

11.Explain the irony of “late” is line 12.

12.What is your reading of the tone in line 13?

13.In what sense is/was the father a “stick-thin comforter”?

14.What is the poet/character looking at in lines 16 and 17? Why the use of the word “simplicities”? Simple compared to what else?

15.What is the effect of the mention of the birds? What are they doing? Why? What might they contrast with? Look at the verbs in the suburbs and sunset sentences. What do they have in common? Contrasting with what?

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16.What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

17.What is ironic about the growth in lines 21 and 22?

18.What is the meaning of “transience”? In what sense is the sun a symbol of this quality?

19.Explain the irony of the statements following “as if …” in lines 24 and 25?

20.What sense can you make of “Things truly named can never/Vanish from earth.”?

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21.How may this help to explain part of the poet’s purpose in this poem?

22.These poems appear as a "diptych" – i.e. they are bracketed together. What are some of the ways the poems could be regarded as a contrasting pair? Can you see any links between the poems in terms of comparison or contrast? (think of the poet’s use of language, setting inc. time, themes, tone, mood and imagery, point of view…)

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The Lion’s Bride

The poem, a sonnet, appears to tell the story of a lion-keeper’s daughter who is killed by the lion which she had come to trust. This reading of the poem is hardly satisfactory – it fails to account for much of the poem’s frightening power, and for the ways in which this has been achieved.

1) Whose point of view is this poem written from? What effect does this have on the poem?

2) Why do you think Harwood describes the lion as the bridegroom?

3) Is this poem a literal account of events or a metaphor? What could it represent?

4) How does this differ from many of Harwood’s other poems?

5) How is the woman described? What impact does this have?

6) Examine the way in which words that can be associated with food are used. What is emphasised through this?

7) Identify the alliteration in the fourth line. What does this suggest about the role of the father?

8) Notice the contrasting words used to describe the lion and his bride. What does this emphasise?

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9) Consider the final line, “Come soon my love, my bride, and share this meal.” What does this tell us about the lion?

10) What is your interpretation of the poem? What are the ideas/views that you think Harwood is trying to convey? Use evidence from the poem to justify your interpretation.

11) What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

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The Secret Life of Frogs

1. What triggers her memory in the first stanza?

2. Why is the story so different in the retelling compared to when Harwood first over heard the conversations?

3. Describe the scene in the second stanza.

4. ‘We knew about atrocities’ How are the girl’s naivety shown in stanza 2?

5. ‘Well, that was life for frogs.” Describe the tone there, why do you think that tone was used?

6. What’s the link between the first and last stanzas?

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7. What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem? (Answer on the back of the sheet.)

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"Mother Who Gave Me Life" (1981)

1. Why does the speaker say "Forgive me the wisdom/I would not learn from you"?

2. How does the poem communicate through its rhythm and imagery a sense of power and mystery in the first four stanzas?

3. What do you think is the major concern of these stanzas?

4. How effectively do you think the poem achieves a change of focus, and what lines give effect to this, and how?

5. Why does the speaker give her mother’s life span as "thirty thousand days"? In what ways might this usage connect with the first four stanzas of the poem?

6. What does the "ward door" symbolise, and why does the poet remark on it being "of heavy glass"?

7. In what ways are her mother and father similar as they approach death? (Compare "Nightfall")

8. Compare the way in both poems there is a balance of grief and acceptance.

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Class of 1927 - Slate (1988)

1. The first octet has a ‘jaunty’ rhythm. Why has this tone been used when talking about slate?

2. ‘my morbid, chronic/nostalgia swells to recreate’What is happening here?

3. Nominate another poem in the collection where ‘nostalgia swells to recreate.’

4. In stanza two, what is the discrimination being practised?

5. How is Bonehead treated by the others in stanza three? How is this reinforced by the images?

6. The two enjambments at the end of the stanzas

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‘delight/in cruelty’ and ‘fright/did nothing. Where does the emphasis fall? Why is this?

7. What is the contradiction to the class ‘Being on our honour’

8. ‘The revolution” (of a sort) What is the revolution?

9. The class work together against the teacher, to protect Bonehead. Why doesn’t the doctor’s son tell the truth?

10.The class have to conjugate ‘to be’ Bonehead won’t be able to do this, What is the irony here?

11.If the teacher represents the doctor’s son, the student’s represent the mouse and the cane represents the instruments of torture, what is Harwood saying about education?

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12.What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

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Class of 1927 - Spelling Prize (1988)

1. Why the observation ‘seated four in discomfort’?

2. Spelling is set up as a competition. What is being inferred about the education system?

3. What are some of the images that Harwood sees as she looks through the window?

4. ‘You do this to empty the heart’ Who else in the poem has had their heart emptied? How?

5. ‘the hand that fed’ How does this apply to Harwood?

6. Why didn’t Harwood ‘slip in a k/ or an i for a y and lose’

7. Why does Harwood’s ‘memory brood’?

8. Explain the contradiction of ‘coveted, worthless prize.’

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9. What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

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Class of 1927 - Religious Instruction

1. The ‘Micks’ and Jews, why are they separated from the rest of the class?

2. Go through the rhyming pattern in all stanzas, what do you notice?

3. ‘They’d only give me a hiding’ What does this indicate?

4. What is the atmosphere like in the room? What are some of the indicators?

5. The ‘tender lambs of Jesus’ What is ironic about this?

6. Explain the metaphor of the minister as a bird.

7. “I am ready to forgive’ what is the irony there?

8. Why are the students described as having ‘spilled into the sunlight’

9. Can you explain the last line?

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10.What criticisms is Harwood making of education?

11.What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

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Class of 1927 – The Twins

1. Why does the grandmother use the word ‘accouchement’?

2. Why do the neighbours ‘intone’ and later when talking about Fridays we are told ‘the story went’?

3. Why does the father decline the fruit basket?

4. What are the ways that Harwood’s life is different to that of the twins?

5. what impression do you get of the twins?

6. ‘We don’t like lollies’ Where does this lie come from?

7. The last part of the poem, Harwood is back in the present reads like a prayer. What is she seeking forgiveness from? Does she succeed?

What are the things that interest Harwood in this poem?

Nights and Dreams

Part 1

1. Why does crab pray to the redeemer?

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2. What is the irony of ‘We’ll cook the brute tonight’

3. ‘I became Crab’ Why?

Part 2

4. Contrast crab of velvet-/seaweed cloak with the description of the first three lines of part 2.

5. Explain the last three lines of the section, concentrate on the light.

Part 3.

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6. What is the pun on ‘cancer’ (Remember that Harwood suffered from cancer.)

7. ‘Now I’m programmed in your brain’ What is meant by this?

Part 4.

8. ‘I ate him sixty years ago’ What’s Harwood’s emotion at this stage?

9. Explain two puns in section 4.

10.Explain the last stanza.

11.Why do you think there is no consistent style or pattern in this poem.

Some concerns, issues and explorations in this poem are

(quote a line or image for each)

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Regret

Nostalgia

Sympathy

Power

Guilt

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Appendices

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