Poems from the anthology that MUST be covered: The Manhunt and Dulce et Decorum Est

Possible outline for teaching:

Please note, there are a selection of poems on the shared drive and within a pdf booklet that could be used as alternatives. Additionally, there are a selection of multiple choice quizzes to accompany the poems above

if you do decide to use these poems.

Learning Episodes

Content/ knowledge Skills/ AO

1 Charge of the Light Brigade, Tennyson (Poetry as response to war)

AO1 interpretation/ AO3 context of poetry- using STILTS to explore poetry

2 Dulce et Decorum Est, Owen (propaganda vs reality)

AO2 language and meaning (word choice, terminology and impact)

3 Exposure, Owen (conflict between man and nature)

AO2 Structure for meaning (structural choice, terminology and impact)

4 War Photographer, Duffy (internal conflict)

AO2 use of narrative voice

5 Out of the Blue, Armitage (narrative voice)

AO1 evaluation of narrative voice ( the perception of the narrator)

6 Manhunt, Armitage (narrative voice)

AO3 Comparison and analytical response

Charge of the Light Brigade Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1.

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"Charge for the guns!" he said:

Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

2.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"Was there a man dismay'd?

Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blunder'd:

Theirs not to make reply,Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to do and die:Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

3.

Cannon to right of them,Cannon to left of them,Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd at with shot and shell,Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred.

4.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,Flash'd as they turn'd in air,Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd:

Plunged in the battery-smokeRight thro' the line they broke;

Cossack and RussianReel'd from the sabre stroke

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumblingFitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Wilfred OwenNotes:

Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

Source: Poems (Viking Press, 1921)

ExposureOur brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us . . .

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

What are we doing here?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . .We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy armyAttacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,

But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew,We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,

But nothing happens.

Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces—We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

—Is it that we are dying?

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozedWith crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,—

We turn back to our dying.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,For love of God seems dying.

Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,Shrivelling many hands, and puckering foreheads crisp.The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,But nothing happens.

Wilfred Owen

War PhotographerIn his dark room he is finally alone

with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.

The only light is red and softly glows,

as though this were a church and he

a priest preparing to intone a Mass.

Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays

beneath his hands, which did not tremble then

though seem to now. Rural England. Home again

to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,

to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet

of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features

faintly start to twist before his eyes,

a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries

of this man’s wife, how he sought approval

without words to do what someone must

and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black and white

from which his editor will pick out five or six

for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick

with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.

From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where

he earns his living and they do not care.

Carol Ann Duffy

Out of the Blue

You have picked me out.Through a distant shot of a building burning

you have noticed nowthat a white cotton shirt is twirling, turning.

In fact I am waving, waving.Small in the clouds, but waving, waving.

Does anyone seea soul worth saving?

So when will you come?Do you think you are watching, watching

a man shaking crumbsor pegging out washing?

I am trying and trying.The heat behind me is bullying, driving,

but the white of surrender is not yet flying.I am not at the point of leaving, diving.

A bird goes by.The depth is appalling. Appalling

that others like meshould be wind-milling, wheeling, spiralling, falling.

Are your eyes believing,believing

that here in the gillsI am still breathing.

But tiring, tiring.Sirens below are wailing, firing.

My arm is numb and my nerves are sagging.Do you see me, my love. I am failing, flagging.

Simon Armitage

Remains

On another occasion, we got sent outto tackle looters raiding a bank.

And one of them legs it up the road,probably armed, possibly not.

Well myself and somebody else and somebody elseare all of the same mind,

so all three of us open fire.Three of a kind all letting fly, and I swear

I see every round as it rips through his life –I see broad daylight on the other side.So we’ve hit this looter a dozen times

and he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out,

pain itself, the image of agony.One of my mates goes by

and tosses his guts back into his body.Then he’s carted off in the back of a lorry.

End of story, except not really.His blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on patrol

I walk right over it week after week.Then I’m home on leave. But I blink

and he bursts again through the doors of the bank.Sleep, and he’s probably armed, and possibly not.

Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds.And the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out –

he’s here in my head when I close my eyes,dug in behind enemy lines,

not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land

or six-feet-under in desert sand,

but near to the knuckle, here and now,30his bloody life in my bloody hands.

Simon Armitage

The Manhunt (Laura's Poem)

After the first phase,after passionate nights and intimate days,

only then would he let me tracethe frozen river which ran through his face,

only then would he let me explorethe blown hinge of his lower jaw,

and handle and holdthe damaged, porcelain collar-bone,

and mind and attend the fractured rudder of shoulder-blade,and finger and thumb the parachute silk of his punctured lung.

Only then could I bind the strutsand climb the rungs of his broken ribs,

and feel the hurtof his grazed heart.

Skirting along,only then could I picture the scan,

the foetus of metal beneath his chestwhere the bullet had finally come to rest.

Then I widened the search,traced the scarring back to its source

to a sweating, unexploded mineburied deep in his mind,

around which every nerve in his body had tightened and closed.Then, and only then, did I come close.

Simon Armitage

You have picked me out.Through a distant shot of a building burning

you have noticed nowthat a white cotton shirt is twirling, turning.

In fact I am waving, waving.Small in the clouds, but waving, waving.

Does anyone see

A soul worth saving?

So when will you come?Do you think you are watching, watching

a man shaking crumbsor pegging out washing?

I am trying and trying.The heat behind me is searing, searing,

but the white of surrender is not yet flying.I am not at the point of launching, leaving.

A bird goes by.The depth is appalling. Appalling

that others like meshould be wind-milling, wheeling, spiralling, falling.

Are your eyes believing,believing?

Here in the gillsI am still breathing.

But tiring, tiring.Sirens below me are wailing, firing.

From Out of the Blue by Simon Armitage

My arm is numb and my nerves are sagging.Do you see me, my love. I am failing. Flagging

Stormzy- Opening Rap to Grenfell Tower Charity Single

Yeah, I don’t know where to begin so I’ll start by saying I refuse to forget you

I refuse to be silenced

I refuse to neglect you

That’s for every last soul up in Grenfell even though I’ve never even met you

That could have been my mum’s house, or that could have been my nephew

Now that could have been me up there

Waving my white plain T up there

All my friends on the ground trying a see up there

I just hope that you rest and you’re free up there

I can’t feel your pain but it’s still what it is

Went to the block just to chill with the kids

Troubled waters come running past

I’mma be right there just to build you a bridge yo

Unseen Poetry Analysis – The Manhunt

The title of the poem ‘The Manhunt’, automatically evokes feelings of searching and loss. Early connotations may suggest something frantic and almost violent; however, Armitage’s poem seems to explore something more loving and tender. Throughout the poem, metaphors are used to represent an emotive encounter between the pair. In the second stanza, the metaphor ‘frozen river which ran through his face’ is used to demonstrate pain and emotion. The use of the word ‘frozen’ has connotations of being cold and almost numb; something that is further developed by the addition of ‘river’. We could also associate ‘river’ with a ‘rivers of tears’, thus suggesting an outpouring of emotion. The combination of ‘frozen river’ indicates an overwhelming sense of emotion and tears, yet since they are ‘frozen’, then ‘he’ is not letting them fall freely – perhaps causing the speaker to feel shut out and helpless. The reader is also forced to acknowledge that metaphors are used in place of discussing real emotion; that the speaker would rather talk figuratively about suffering being like a ‘river’ rather than facing the harsh reality of emotion. The use of figurative language is developed with repeated imagery of pain and injury. The speaker recounts a catalogue of vivid injuries: ‘blown hinge of his lower jaw’, ‘fractured rudder of a shoulder-blade’, ‘broken ribs’. The use of violent adjectives like ‘blown’, ‘fractured’ and ‘broken’ attempt to emphasise the physical pain and suffering that the man has undergone. The structure of the poem explores each physical injury in isolation, thus emphasising just how badly hurt this man has been. Structurally, the speaker works her way around the body, acknowledging each physical wound and describing them with violence in order to highlight her shock and horror at his pain. She catalogues his injuries; using enjambment in each couplet to show that she is discovering more and more wounds. However, her continued use of metaphors once again demonstrates her detachment from his pain, suggesting that she is using her imagination to visualise the injuries that he has obtained. Finally, there is a continued juxtaposition to emphasise feelings of love and pain. Armitage chooses delicate, loving imagery and contrasts it with violence and destruction. In the sixth stanza we learn of ‘the parachute silk of his punctured lung’, ‘silk’ is obviously delicate and fragile, as emphasised by the soft ‘s’ sound. In contrast, ‘punctured’ is plosive and violent, thus providing us with the contrast between fragility and violence. This juxtaposition perhaps acknowledges the pair’s relationship, where his violent wounds and pain are met with her tenderness and love. Later in the poem, Armitage also juxtaposes ‘foetus’ and ‘bullet’; contrasting a new, hopeful life, with something violent and destructive. Again, we can reflect on the relationship between the pair; where most couples hope to create a new life together, this couple have been faced with mortality and death.

On reflection, then, it appears that ‘The Manhunt’ in the title is not a frantic ‘hunt’ for an offender or villain, but instead, a tender journey to search for and piece together an unrecognisable partner after a severe trauma. The voice is desperate to recover her partner, and ‘only’ when she has acknowledged all his suffering, both

physical and mental, can she ‘come close’ to completing her search.

Take a better look at poetry using StiltsSubjectWhat does the poem appear to be about? Is it obvious orambiguous? Is it narrative in nature, telling a story; or is it moreabstract and concerned with feelings and emotions? Is there aclear link between its subject and its title?

ThemesWhat idea or concept is central to the poem? Is there a moralmessage? What is the poet suggesting about human nature orexperience?

ImageryWhat visions and pictures fill your head when you read thepoem? Does the poet use semantic fields, metaphors, similes,sensory language, connotations?

LanguageWhat words, phrases and register does the poet use to addimpact and power to the poem? Does the poet use sounds toshape understanding? Do they contrast or juxtapose words foreffect?

ToneDoes the poem convey a feeling of celebration, sadness, rage,joy, regret, love, hate, irony, satire, pathos? Does the tone of thepoem appear to give an insight into the poet's state of mind atthe time the poem was written?

StructureHow has the poet structured the poem? Consider the use ofstanzas, rhyme, the point of view, punctuation – how do theseshape meaning?

Annotated copies of the poems

Charge of the Light Brigade Alfred, Lord Tennyson

DULCE ET DECORUM ESTBent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

Exposure

War Photographer

Out of the Blue

You have picked me out.Through a distant shot of a building

burningyou have noticed now

that a white cotton shirt is twirling, turning.

In fact I am waving, waving.Small in the clouds, but waving, waving.

Does anyone seea soul worth saving?

So when will you come?Do you think you are watching,

watchinga man shaking crumbs

or pegging out washing?

I am trying and trying.The heat behind me is bullying, driving,

but the white of surrender is not yet flying.

I am not at the point of leaving, diving.

A bird goes by.The depth is appalling. Appalling

that others like meshould be wind-milling, wheeling,

spiralling, falling.

Are your eyes believing,believing

that here in the gillsI am still breathing.

But tiring, tiring.Sirens below are wailing, firing.

My arm is numb and my nerves are sagging.

Do you see me, my love. I am failing, flagging.

Simon Armitage

The Manhunt (Laura's Poem)

After the first phase,after passionate nights and intimate

days,

only then would he let me tracethe frozen river which ran through his face,

only then would he let me explorethe blown hinge of his lower jaw,

and handle and holdthe damaged, porcelain collar-bone,

and mind and attend the fractured rudder of shoulder-blade,

and finger and thumb the parachute silk of his punctured lung.

Only then could I bind the strutsand climb the rungs of his broken ribs,

and feel the hurtof his grazed heart.

Skirting along,only then could I picture the scan,

the foetus of metal beneath his chestwhere the bullet had finally come to rest.

Then I widened the search,traced the scarring back to its source

to a sweating, unexploded mineburied deep in his mind,

around which every nerve in his body had tightened and closed.

Then, and only then, did I come close.

Simon Armitage

Stormzy- Opening Rap to Grenfell Tower Charity

Single

Yeah, I don’t know where to begin so I’ll start by saying I refuse to forget youI refuse to be silencedI refuse to neglect youThat’s for every last soul up in Grenfell even though I’ve never even met youThat could have been my mum’s house, or that could have been my nephewNow that could have been me up thereWaving my white plain T up thereAll my friends on the ground trying a see up thereI just hope that you rest and you’re free up thereI can’t feel your pain but it’s still what it isWent to the block just to chill with the kidsTroubled waters come running pastI’mma be right there just to build you a bridge yo