Now, how good is your French everyone?

Fin means the end of something. Fete, with that little thing over the e is a celebration of sorts, in my book anyway, so this means that this poem should be about the end of a celebration of some sort and because it is in the love and relationships section of the anthology, we have to assume this poem will be about the end of the relationship that existed between one person and another, the end of the celebration of love they shared. Such is the power of a title eh?

But that does not mean to say that any poem links so obviously to its title. Look for example, at An Arundel Tomb. Yes, it is about a tomb, but it is also about undying love, eternal love shown in the edifice of the two lovers still together after death.

So, what is this poem about? What is being shared here within? Well, let’s take it line by line as we usually do [I urge you to write a short response to each of the poems in the section you are studying, for revision purposes, and so you are able to compare and contrast one with another in the section].

Upon first reading, the striking word used is the first one, especially because of the comma straight after it. Pausing after the first word is almost like the poet, or the speaker, is trying to make a point about something. Is the word “sweetheart” meant with affection, or with sarcasm?  Different people will read this differently; such is the joy of poetry for we all come to a poem from different world and social viewpoints. “Sweetheart,” says the speaker, as if to make a point in the next few words. Then we see the words “for such a day” as this, “one mustn’t grudge the score.”

The point the speaker is making is about the day that this was written, a day when something ended, if we stick with the title. It is a day of pain and heartache to the speaker. But he or she says we must not begrudge anything when we are grieving or in pain. In the here and now, the speaker is saying, is the best place to be so from one person to another, “it is good night at the door.” Best to end this amicably, peacefully, without malice. If however, the word “sweetheart” is meant in malice and sarcasm, then we see the alternate meaning, one where the word “goodbye” suddenly is said with venom. Have you ever said goodbye to someone like that? If so, then you will know the sentiment shared here. You will know what it is like to lose something special. You will know what it is like to feel that this is the end of a celebration of love. This is what is being shared here.

Then we get verse two and the repetition of the words “good night” but this time, there is a little more venom in the tonal quality because “good night and good dreams to you” can be taken more in the antagonistic, venomous way than it can any sweet fashion. Yes, good and happy dreams are being asked for here, but only in a sarcastic tone, from one lover who wishes the opposite to what s/he is asking for the partner. When we are hurting, we do such things don’t we? We say things with so much sarcastic intent, showing the true nature of our feelings and sharing with the world how we truly feel. Social media, especially Facebook, is rife with comments of such a nature as this each day.

Then the speaker asks the former lover if they remember certain things about their relationship; the “picture book thieves,” the “sleeping children” and how “the birds came down and covered them with leaves.” All these are pictorial images made in the mind of the reader, created by the poet to show tender times of love between one person and another in a former relationship. Times were good, so it seems, but now, they have soured. Once again, the heart has been broken. Once again, something has come to an end. In a world where people tend to end relationships at a whim, such as this should resonate well with a modern audience, who are quick to tell someone they think they love to be gone from their side.

The speaker suggests that when things were good, they “should have slept,” or more likely, that they should have ignored the things happening around them, ignored the signs that things were coming to an end, for in this time now, the speaker feels so lonely and the line that shows this the most is the one where we see the words “oh what a lonely head.” Where once there were two heads on pillows sharing a bed, now there is only one. It is very reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream here, with Oberon and Titania [Google the story] where one is suddenly alone in the forest asleep, but what is shown is that “with just the shadow of a waving bough in the moonlight over your bed” there is a sense of loneliness to something that once was peaceful slumber. In essence, this is a sad, almost depressing poem, but it is a love poem. It does show the depths of true love, how when the celebration ends, only pain can follow. In this sense, it truly shows the extent of the human condition.

A Broken Appointment

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
– I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me.

THOMAS HARDY (1840–1928)

This is one of those poems that you can read and read and read again and still be left thinking what on earth is this about? But in the end, it is another example of how language has changed over the years. Note please, the dates when this poet and great author was alive. He was born in 1840, before the Crimean War broke out, when the British Empire was in its infancy as led by Queen Victoria and he was writing just after this time of great turmoil. Do some research on him, from his life, where he lived, what themes he wrote about and you will begin to see links into this and other poems. One of his poems is called Woman Much Missed for heaven’s sake. He writes about broken relationships. Tess of the D’Urbevilles is a fine example, so it comes as no surprise to see words like “You love not me.”

The title tells us a lot in this matter in the fact that the word “appointment” is indicative of a meeting like a dental or doctor’s appointment rather than a lover’s rendezvous. It suggests just a meeting rather than anything serious, but it also tells us from the beginning that this one was “broken” and as you read, it seems it has been broken without telling the man who is meeting the woman. Then as you read the first line, you begin to see the negatives in the poem, rather than the positives, so this is one of those love poems that is about broken love, or unrequited love, a love that is only one sided.

The speaker says “you did not come,” suggesting a meeting had been arranged and that as the speaker waited, “marching Time drew on,” or went by in such a way as to annoy. Anyone who has made a date with a man or woman and that person has not arrived will know the feeling that this evokes. It is a feeling of rejection and can be annoying as that time passes and you realise that the person has no intention of meeting you. It saps at the heart strings. It wears you down and makes you feel “numb” inside, leaving you with a sense of negative self worth; you feel as if you have done something wrong to deserve this sensation of pain.

Yet, the speaker [is this a man speaking to a woman or the other way around? Just because a man write it does not matter or factor into an answer to that question. We see the answer later]. Yet, there is a sense of “loss” felt by the speaker not so much because of a lack of “presence there” at that time, but more because of the feeling of being “found lacking” in the realms of love. This a poem about heartache and any amount of “high compassion” does not seem to matter for the speaker. It can be borne. It can be overcome. The speaker knows that [but will not like it] and the partner’s “reluctance for pure loving kindness’ sake” to attend the so called meeting gives no sense of happiness or relief at being jilted. In fact, there is a profound sense of grief, even though the partner did not attend. The speaker feels as if even in their good times, there was a sense of love and relationship, but “as the hope-hour stroked its sum,” which means as the hour of their appointment came, there was hope for that day, but then, says the poet, “you did not come.” The repetition of the start and end of the verse is worked on purpose [never forget that] to urge the reader into sharing the pain at being jilted for their meeting. The sense of pain and heartache is palpable.

But then we get the second verse and a slightly different take on matters. It is not sufficient that the poet has the speaker saying “you did not come.” Now, the tone gets stronger, as the speaker says “you love not me,” which is a slightly archaic manner of saying “you do not love me” as a result of their lack of an ‘appointment.’ Love, says the speaker, can lead to “loyalty.” The speaker knows that to be the truth but still shares the regret at losing that love, but the loss of such loyalty is the thing that is hardest to take here in this poem, especially as we consider the next few and remaining lines. If, says the speaker, with all the “store of human deeds” it is possible for that partner to share one last meeting together, then that person should at least have the courage to meet and say that this is the end. That would be the gracious thing to do. It would be almost God-like, sharing the “divine” nature of love “in all but name,” but then the speaker shows their true feelings for the absent partner in this liaison. “Was it not worth a little hour or more” of your time, the speaker asks, to “add yet this” one special moment to our relationship, rather than to just not attend? If she, the woman [as we see in the next line] would have attended the appointment, to “soothe a time-torn man” in his turmoil, then his life could continue apace and he be happy enough to see their relationship end. But we know, from the nature of this poem and the words contained therein that this is not the case. He has been left to think one thing – “You love not me.”

These are painful and powerful emotions at play here in this poem. There is nothing so beautiful as being in love. There is nothing so time consuming as sharing love with another person and in this poem we see how one man is able to share his love for a woman, but how she does not love him back in the same way, if at all. This is the pain and the raw power of unrequited love. From the days of William Shakespeare [and beyond] to the modern song writer poets, this kind of love poem has shown the painful side of human relationships and it is something that Hardy wrote about a lot in his works.

Love and Friendship

Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree—
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green.

EMILY BRONTË

If you get to studying A Level English, then there is a chance that you may come across the Bronte sisters and their writing. Wuthering Heights has always been a favourite A Level text in English Literature, the epic story of love and passion for one person to another. Likewise, the story of Jane Eyre from one of the sisters [look it up] is equally compelling. These were sisters who knew something about love in its requited and unrequited state.

And so, we have here, a typical love poem of the time, but the title gives us more information. Sometimes, what I do is give a class a poem title and ask them to tell me what they think the poem will be about. For some, like Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est, that would get some very interesting answers. For others, like this, the entire class would be in the know straight away. But then I might ask, from which perspective would you expect it to be written? Love that is pure, or the loss of love? After all, most good love songs in the charts are usually about someone breaking up with someone else. The song usually goes something like Don’t Go Breaking My Heart or offers some other comment.

So what is Bronte trying to evoke here? Well, she is comparing one with the other, so what is the difference between the two? Have you heard of a ‘platonic’ friendship, where one person is so close to another but they are not in love? Modern parlance calls such folk BFFs [whatever that stands for]. Friendship, she is saying, is something that is better than love, which can be hurt in much more powerful ways.

Consider for example, the first line where she says that “love is like the wild rose briar.” An excellent example of a simile, it shares the belief that love is thorny, it can prick at the heart, it can sting when abused. But, says the poet, “friendship is like the Holly tree” in that it is not as dangerous as it appears, so is she saying that it is best to be a friend rather than in love? Possible! Probable!

She sets this up by adding that the “holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms but which will bloom most constantly?” There is a sweetness to the rose briar in spring, a sense of real beauty and when it comes to the summer, the “summer blossoms scent the air” sharing the beauty of Creation with the rest of the world. But like most things, when the bad weather comes, with the pang of winter cold, she asks “who will call the wild-briar fair?” Now what does she mean by “fair?” Does she mean fair as in being equal, or is it more likely that she means the word as in the “fairest of them all” as the saying goes? The rhyme scheme helps the poem deliver the words evenly throughout the poem, bringing an equal sense of movement, just as the briar goes through the seasons.

If love is like the rose briar, all prickly and thorny, able to hurt if not handled correctly, is she writing this from the point of view that she has been hurt in love before now and does not trust it any more? If so, and it can be read that way, then we see someone who is thinking that friendship is more inclined to not be as harsh, but is she correct in her assumption. If love is the briar  [now we are into metaphor] then she is saying we should all treat it with contempt and “scorn the silly rose-wreath now.” By doing so, we are then able to lead a life that is not racked with pain and heartache. When you consider the lamentations of some of the Bronte characters, it is easy to think she may be writing it as a polemic [Google this word] and is stressing her belief that friendship is better than love every time. Here is someone who has tasted the bitter end of love and all that that can bring and she is reeling from its sting.

But notice in the last verse that there suddenly seems to be a Christmassy feel to this with mention of the “holly” and the word “deck” reminding us of the song “The Holly And The Ivy.” She says we should “deck thee with the holly’s sheen,” or lustre [shining glory] so that when we feel the coldness of the winter nights in December, we can still be left with a sensation and feeling of everything still being hopeful in the world. “When December blights thy brow,” she says, the one who is loved “may leave [our] garland green.” The use of the colour green signifies new growth, beauty, life springing forth from something that was dead [from winter to spring, the cycle continues] and is symbolic of the fact that if we get the balance right between love and friendship then we can have a relationship that is not only grounded in love, but one that is also full of real friendship; fair, equal minded and able to withstand the pressures life inevitably brings.

Now that is love personified!

Now

Out of your whole life give but one moment!

All of your life that has gone before,

All to come after it, – so you ignore,

So you make perfect the present, – condense,

In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment,

Thought and feeling and soul and sense –

Merged in a moment which gives me at last

You around me for once, you beneath me, above me –

Me – sure that despite of time future, time past, –

This tick of our life-time’s one moment you love me!

How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet –

The moment eternal – just that and no more –

When ecstasy’s utmost we clutch at the core

While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!

Analysis

Okay, so what is the first thing you notice when you see this poem for the first time? Your answer should be simple; the amount of lines there are, which of course, is fourteen. What does that tell you? It should make you think about a poem with fourteen lines, with a roughly equal amount of stresses on each line and make you think Sonnet straight away without even looking. Count them, as you say out loud each word on the first line and you see [or hear] or even count ten, just like those famous Shakespearean sonnets like number 18 which asks”Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” It is like seeing an old friend once again for anyone who has read sonnets, or even written them before now [I used to teach Sonnet 18 by the Bard and get Y8 to write a love sonnet to each other – and then a hate filled one as well, just for a chuckle].

So, we are in the world of sonnets, fourteen lines and possibly, in places, some iambic pentameter. But what is the poem all about? That is the question, as the Bard would ask. Well, in essence, it is in the LOVE section of the anthology, so we have to assume there is some link to passion, emotion, love, etc. So, we begin with the first line, as we  have before now and see the words “Out of your whole life give but one moment!” To whom is the poet speaking? Is he speaking to a person, as if this is written for someone special, as all good sonnets should be? I hope so, for the next line clarifies why the first was written because it says that if out of your life, you are in a position to offer one golden moment to someone or something, then all “of your life that has gone before” will not matter for the love you feel in that special moment will be so heavenly that everything that came before it will simply not matter. Indeed, the poet goes on to stress that all that is “to come after it” will be ignored as you make this one special moment in the present so special that you will never forget it.

There is a saying that your wedding day is the best day of your life. It could be that you disagree, having been divorced, but there will have been a day you can relate to when time itself seemed to stop. For me, that was when I was in my teens and I met the first love of my life. That love, in that moment, was and remains special to me. I made “perfect the present.” I still remember to that day how things that normally meant something to me did not matter any more. Just being with that girl was the essence of my life and now, as I look back on that time [and how I was unceremoniously dumped] I can see how the next bit of the poem makes such perfect sense.

When it is going good, we “condense” time. It seems like it is all happening on slow motion replay film. But then, when it is gone, there is the “rapture of rage” which seems an oxymoron of a statement to make, but this can happen when in love and when out of it too. It is a state of perfection when love takes over your life to that extent, so here is Browning, if indeed he is meaning it from him, expressing his undying devotion to that woman in his life. Considering who he was married to [Google her] I am not surprised at his comments here.

The phrase “for perfection’s endowment” may seem a strange one, but if you look it up, it is not that hard to understand. An endowment can be a policy you take out to protect your home or assets. Is he saying here that this love is protected by the sense that he feels it is a perfect love, that the love of his life is nothing short of perfection in his eyes and that because of that, his soul is protected from the potential harm that can befall a man when he loses that special love? It certainly is possible.  After all, he sees that in that time when “thought and feeling and soul and sense” are bound in love and “merged in a moment” so special, then that is perfection. That is what they mean by the term “true love.”

Consider the next words carefully because they are important because this state of grace he feels he is in gives him a sense of something lasting in his life, because the woman he loves is being engulfed by his mind, his soul, his thoughts, his body, his whole self. Now some may feel threatened by that from a man [or woman] when one is loving another. That can happen and it can feel threatening, but this sensation of love he is feeling is bound in love as he sees and feels her presence all around him. I know that when I am separated from my wife, who I have been married to for thirty years now, I feel a sense of loss. It is almost like grief because I cannot be with her to share her life. When she is at work, it is torture for me. But I still manage to feel her presence even though she is not there physically. I can feel her “around me” and “above me” in the sense that she is such a huge part of my life. Such is the power of love one person can have for another.

It is a rather special moment when you can feel and know that someone else loves you and here, in this poem, Browning is sharing that thought so well. He tells his love that in this “tick of our life-time’s one moment you love me!” What more in life can be better than that? It is, for him, and for those who love, a “sweet” and “eternal” moment “just that and no more.” That moment is in itself a form of bliss, a time when the heart and the mind and the body seem to be in harmony with each other. We can wax lyrical about love. We can even be blase about it, but in the end, love is not a feeling, it is an act of the will. We need to remember that. He chooses to love this person in this manner and hopefully, she reciprocates that love with ardour and affection.

For this man, there is one special moment when the two of them meet together in embrace, or as he says, “when ecstasy’s utmost we clutch at the core, while cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!” For those who love, for those who choose to share love, and for those who have felt the pang of love on their heart, this is one beautiful sonnet.

Bright Star – John Keats

OCR Anthology

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death

There are many different ways to look at a poem. On this site, I use with students the file called UNLOCKING A POEM especially when that poem is a difficult one, like this will be to some people. This one can be tricky if you are not careful.

But another way to analyse is by a line by line thought process starting with the title and then work down line by line, not worrying if you see lines you feel are too difficult.

Sometimes, a poem can be related to its title in a most obvious way. So when we see “Bright Star” what do we think? There are several bright stars to think of. There is the one over Bethlehem at Christmas in the eternal story. There is the idea that someone can be someone else’s “bright star,” in history, or even in love and when we consider that this is from a section of poems about LOVE AND FRIENDSHIPS, we have to assume before we read that this ‘may’ be the way the poet intended the poem to be read and understood. And then there is the eternal bright star in the sky, the one that sits over the north pole and is known as Polaris, or the North Star. It is used for navigation on the seas and is ever reliable, but sits there, all lonely, watching the earth meander in its existence below it [if it had life to do so – personification?]

So when Keats addresses the Bright Star in this poem, he is doing so to the latter of those ideas and saying that he wishes he was as “stedfast” [note the old style spelling] as it is, being there for eternity. It stays there and watches the world unfold around it. If only I was as reliable as you, he is thinking. Steadfastness means the ability to be ‘resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering’ [dictionary] or ‘committed’ and ‘devoted’ to something else. If only I was as devoted as you, he is thinking, but thinking it because of the person he loves. Line two develops this idea by saying that he has no wish to be up there, like the star, “in lone splendour,” but instead, he would sooner be lying on his “fair love’s ripening breast.” He lists a list of negative things that the star has in its characteristics, such as the loneliness and the static nature of its existence, but parallels these with the chance for him to lay his head on the torso of his love.

There is a closeness to his relationship with this person that does not exist in the star. The star is is simply there. It offers no real solace. It brings no comfort, not at least, the comfort of the heart. But the person he adores is something else entirely, a shining star in his eyes, a star on his horizon, someone to look up to [like he would the star] and someone in whom he can rest assured of a reciprocated love.

And yet, after the negative of the single word “No,” in the middle of the poem, there comes a series of images that make the reader realise just how much he is in love with this person, presumably the woman in his life, although that is not absolutely stated. It could be his wife, or lover, but it could also be a wish he might be having as he feasts on the delights of someone who has become his muse, a fascination for him in life that he wishes he could get to know and lay his face close into her torso for comfort. After all, we say that we can wish upon a star, so perhaps this is Keats’ way of saying [and doing] the same thing, but in a more poetic manner.

Now for those of you who are young and who have never experienced the pang of true love for another person, think about when you were younger [very young] and needed comfort. A cuddle always helped didn’t it? By that physical contact, you were allowed to feel better, to feel relief from the pain that you had experienced. The same could be true here as well. “No,” he says, defiantly. He still wishes to remain “stedfast, still unchangeable,” but resting on his “fair love’s ripening breast, to feel for ever its soft fall and swell.” There is a sense of desperation here, to me, that in all this writing, in all this thought, he expresses just one thing; a desire to seek out and find comfort from the one who he loves and adores. I know when things are going rough for me in life, the one place I can safely say that is best to be is home with the woman I love. So I see here in these words someone who adores his lover as much as I do my wife. This is a man who knows about love and how to love.

But, he then says he wishes to be “awake for ever in a sweet unrest” so that he can still “hear her tender-taken breath.” He believes that if he can be that close to her, then he can feel the blessing that love offers, the real love that he has and that she has for him. In doing so, he believes that there is a chance to “live ever” in the knowledge that the love she has for him will allow him to undergo any pressures and pains that life brings. That is the joy of true love; it allows the person receiving it, the recipient, to feel that there is nothing in this world that can destroy when you are loved, for nothing else matters. But, he thinks, should all this not be possible; his desire is to not be like the star, apart from being able to be there with his love. Then, he would sooner not live a moment longer; in fact, he would sooner “swoon to death.” A swoon is “an occurrence of fainting” [dictionary] so he is saying that if this kind of life is not possible, put me out of my misery and let me die. There is no more pain in death.

Now I understand his thought process. When I married, I married for life as far as I am concerned. I live for the chance to make my wife happy and here is Keats thinking similar things, but because the feeling and the emotion are given back, or reciprocated, to him, it is an essence of pure love that the both of them share. In a world where there are so many divorces, so much hatred, so much distrust and envy, where people get married and then divorced, just like the celebrities they see on the television, such a poem as this is a true blessing, to share the complexities and the beauty of true, romantic love. That is why this poem is so good and added into this anthology for you to study.

Enjoy!

With a little bit of care, a good GCSE student can write something really good. The task was set for this young man to write a descriptive piece about somewhere he knows well. He chose to write about the place he lives.

This is his response, similar to the other on this site from a Year 8 student. Enjoy this Year 10 response [permission has been given to share this – well done that man].

If you look up the poem exercise on The Tollund Man, by Seamus Heabey, on this website, you will see that the final task is to write a newspaper report of the finding of the body.

Here is just one student example of that task. Note the year group. Can you do better?

Go on, have a go!

Okay, so if you are a teacher coming to this post, thinking about using a section of poems from the anthology, perhaps you may be unsure as to which one to teach to your students. I would not blame you in the least. Or you are a student already started on one section of these poems and wondering just why your teacher decided on such a group of poets and their works. Hopefully, this little blog will put you at ease and assist you in your thinking.

So, which one would I choose, with over twenty years of experience behind me, 16 of them teaching GCSE? The answer needs to come after we view the three sections.

Here they are… in no particular order either.

The conflict poems are arguably some of the juiciest to have a go at under normal times and practicalities. Blake, Byron, Hardy, Clarke, Heaney; all exceptional at their craft, not to mention my favourite, Wilfred Owen. If Dulce Et Decorum Est was in here, the other two sections would not get a second glance. I find I can get more out of a poem with conflict in it than I can about love, or relationships, youth or age because conflict is the one fact of life that unites us all. To me, a good poem like Anthem For Doomed Youth cries out, like the cries from Flanders Field itself, to be studied. It should be studied and never ignored, so as to continue the themes of Lest We Forget in our modern society. For our futures, people put themselves in harm’s way.

The Hardy poem, is perhaps the best one in there as well. It is sublime in its brilliance [and I am not a huge fan of Hardy’s work, having had it rammed down my neck at University]. So perhaps, a male teacher like myself, a former soldier in the TA [see Bayonet Charge], sees a section like this and sees the chance for the boys in the class to engage better than usual. You know the types. We call them “The Mafia” who usually sit at the back in each corner leering at you until something interesting comes along. Perhaps, choosing such as this will help more than just the usual few?

Could the Mafioso at the back deal with themes of love and relationships for example? To some of them I have taught, the ideas of love and relationships are alien to them, or they have a very skewed sense of what a truly loving relationship is. Mum and Dad have separated, or bitterly divorced. The family has broken. Damage has been caused and then you trot along, as a new teacher, all happy and upbeat about the idea of teaching them about love and relationships. Yeah, right, sure! So sorry for being cynical here, but these themes can be an instant turn off [just as much as conflict, I know].

I have recently written a review/analysis of the first poem, called “Song,” by Helen Maria Williams and it was not an easy task. It would be harder for me to teach that poem and more importantly to teach the students how to formulate a written response to it. Bronte and Browning will no doubt be the same. But when it comes to the admirable Carol Ann Duffy, there I would be in my element, so the heady mix of what we teachers used to call “pre-1914 lit” in each of these sections balances out the more modern. I adore Philip Larkin and Arundel Tomb, for example, having taught it to Year 9 before now, but also because of the ‘religious’ aspect [in another guise I am a preacher as well]. So this section would not phase me, but it might the students. A one gender school maybe, will flatten this section, but the gender would have to be the right one to fully grasp the emotional and almost spiritual aspects of some of these poems.

And then we get the strangely titled “Youth and Age.” Now what on earth is going on there? It is like one of those titles you get on Pop Master on Radio 2 in a morning where you think Oh that sounds good and then he asks you the questions and you think or maybe not!

To a young audience, the idea of youth and what it is to be young, would appeal. I wonder what the 55 year old teacher would do with this though? Is the idea to balance the differences between youth and age in this section? Is that what they are trying to achieve by putting this lot together?

To an adult GCSE group, like I taught last, they would be prime movers for such as this because they have done the former and are well into the latter, some of them more than others. Once again, the balance has to be right. As a teacher, you need to select, thinking not so much what is the easiest to teach [for me, Conflict] but more about the group/s you have. What is their social and demographic make-up? What are their attitudes to life, to each other, to the pressures we face as humans?

Just have a look at the poems in the section now…

Clarke and Frost are fine poets with equally good poems; easily understandable. But some of the others, like Plath, need to be researched well, for only then will any student understand them completely in the context of a historical and social standpoint. You need to teach the life, lifestyle, beliefs, practices, moral ideas and views of the poet to be able to allow the student to then see the reason why someone like Plath is writing as she is. You need to be aware of the things happening in the world at that time. If I am thinking for example, about my own mortality [having near enough died in 2010 in a major car crash myself] and I write a poem about ageing and the afterlife, then what am I saying? In my case, the message I am more than likely going to share is do not worry about death [been there once and the experience was sublime!]. For the student, you need to learn EVERYTHING you can about each poet, about their life. about beliefs, marriages, separations, everything you can. You may see something in the poem then where you stop and think hey now, hang on a minute here, s/he is writing this because…….

That moment will be an epiphany of information coming together to make perfect sense!

Now, you students reading this, here is where you do not need to worry. If you do not like the choice your teacher has made and you want to do another one, here is my challenge for you. When it comes to the exam, there will be a page with questions on for each section. So three pages at least, but more like six. Your teacher may teach you the Love and Relationships section, but that does not mean you cannot, on your own, before the exam, study the other two [for fun – yes, for fun – English Lit is total fun]. What you do in your own time is your domain, but more importantly, just imagine this; your teacher has done the section and you open the test paper and see the question. If at that moment the acronym of W.T. F suddenly hits you and your eyes widen alarmingly, look to the other two sections to see what questions they have before planning an answer.

And above all, do not panic!

You may find that the alternate section has a better, more answerable question. In my finals for my degree, I did this and got the 2:1 so there is your proof that a shift over to another section works, when needed.There is no rule saying you cannot do the other section question but do not answer a question from more than one section. That bit is important. Believe it or not, I have seen that done and known they would either fail, or not get their C grade.

So, whatever poem you teach, or study, how to answer a question depends on your approach. Try going to the search bar on this site and typing in UNLOCKING A POEM. Then copy and paste it into a word processor on your computer and choose one poem after the next [as I will endeavour to do here over the coming months – year more like] and write an analysis of your own. The more you do it, the more you will understand and the more your chances of a high pass come closer. But above all else, find out about the poet first – do some research on each one. Write a half page bio if needs be for notes.

Happy hunting!

A Song – Helen Maria Williams

This poem, by Helen Maria Williams, is one that we find in the Love and Relationships section of the OCR anthology. It is easy to view it in terms of a love poem, simple and true, straight forward if you like, but there is always a danger in doing such as that, for the more you know about the poet, the more you begin to realise just why she wrote the thing in the first place. After all, poets do not just sit down and think I know, I will write a love poem today. No, we tend to be inspired by someone or something. Love poets need a muse of some sorts and it can be a person or an experience.

So, when I see the first line of this poem and the words “No riches from his scanty store My lover could impart; He gave a boon I valued more — He gave me all his heart” I am led to question if this is about a person or some form of thing and the “he” is being used to make the link in this way, rather like we do with cars when we say “she” or “her.”

Note though, the alliteration in that first verse. “Scanty” and “store” trip off the tongue almost too romantically as the reader reads and the word “boon,” being quite archaic, leads the reader to understand it back in the context of when written. A boon is either a blessing, a godsend, or a bonus. It is also seen as a help or a privilege, so suddenly we are thinking in terms maybe of a dowry of sorts, a payment from the groom’s family to the bride’s family, to be to take her from her family. This is something that was very much the norm when Williams was alive.

So, was this the romantic interest in her life? Or was it something else entirely? As a love poem, this is one man securing the love of his life, but seen against the context of life in France at the time of the Revolution, of how Williams was a religious rebel of the time, a person who supported the French Revolution and its issues, and a person who lived with a married man in Luxembourg for a time [may have been just platonic so do not take that the wrong way or jump to conclusions], called John Hurford Stone, what we then begin to see is a possible reference to him in this poem, for in real life, Stone paid a 12,000 Franc fee to help a friend’s husband escape from prison in that time. That in itself may be the boon to which this poems refers.

Williams was an extremely political woman in her life so we have to read on to understand further what she is trying to say.  So when we then read the words “His soul sincere, his generous worth,” we can now think she is referring to her friend and maybe, the first person in this poem is not her, but that the poem is written from the position of her friend’s friend’s wife [Google Williams to see]. Either way, the boon paid shows the level of friendship that one man has for his the people he knows at the time, if indeed it is not a simple dowry.

That generosity “might well this bosom move” she adds, showing how such generosity can move the heart, a heart that loves the relationship the body is in. But then we see a new direction, a more pointed angle appearing before our eyes, for she writes “and when I asked for bliss on earth,” which if read on its own would make the reader think this was a polemic of some sort, but followed closely by “I only meant his love” then makes the reader all too aware that this is an intensely personal message to the reader about her love for another person.

Verse three states what she wishes from this relationship in that even though she is “in search of gain,” there is only one thing she wishes for amongst all other jewels and that is her love being reciprocated. She states that “love is all I prize,” which may be a question but may as well be read as a statement. The following verse then continues this theme as it allows the reader to see that she only wishes for the simple things in life, “the frugal meal, the lowly cot,” along with “that simple fare, that humble lot,” showing that even if she has only meagre things, so long as she is with the love of her life, then she is happy. This is “more than wealth” in her eyes.

But then, in verse five, we see something of the negative in this relationship. She has already mentioned the lover travelling and now mentions “dangerous ocean” waves and how her tears “vainly flow” in terms of pity, as if she is asking us to pity her in her plight. Now perhaps, this is set or written in the time before Hurford Stone came to her in Luxembourg? If so then the “she” in the poem is in turmoil, for she cannot have the one thing she loves in this life, the love reciprocated by the man she loves. That is an extremely powerful emotion at play in this poem and it is compounded by the last verse where we read, “The night is dark, the waters deep, yet soft the billows roll; Alas! at every breeze I weep — The storm is in my soul.”

The word “storm” is indicative of turmoil in her heart but words like “night, rain, billows” and “roll” are all suggestive of severe weather, almost foreshadowing the truth of their relationship. She has a love that cannot be returned, no matter how hard both of them try. Her love is one that leads to negativity, to unfulfilled passion, to abject frustration and this poem teems with examples of that. Seen as a love poem, it is indeed just that, but it is more like a poem about the abject misery that love for the wrong person can bring. It is, in essence, the same as most other love poems. Think for example, of all the love songs you know. They are all poems of one form or another. How many of them are painful to read? How many are about relationships breaking down? That is why they are so successful. That is why they are good quality, emotive love poems.