A look at a relationship with someone special It is better to be together Ruth Miller

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2 A look at a relationship with someone special It is better to be together Ruth Miller Ruth Miller was a South African poet. Born in 1919 in Uitenhage she grew up in the northern Transvaal and spent her adult life in Johannesburg. She worked as a school secretary and later English teacher. The accidental home death by electrocution of her son, aged 14, clouded the last six months of her life; she produced nothing for some time, and subsequently wrote some of her finest work. She died of cancer in It is better to be Together. Tossed together In a white wave, than to see The ocean like an eagle. 5 It is better to lie In the stormy seething Than to judge the weather In an eagle s eye. Cold is the bird 10 Who flies too far In the clear vision Which saints and eagles share: Their faraway eyes are bitter With darkened prayer. 15 O, it is better to try With the white wave, together 17 To overturn the sky. 1. Identify and explain the figure of speech used throughout the poem. (3) 2. Identify and explain the figure of speech in Together.Tossed. (3) 3. How is the eagle set up to contrast with the speaker? (2) 4. What similarities are there between eagles and saints according to the poem? (3) 5. What does the poet say about the possibilities of being together?(2) 6. In a paragraph, explain the poet's intention.(3) 7. What is the effect of the enjambment used throughout the poem? (2)

3 A look at a relationship with parents Poem for my mother Jennifer Davids 1 That isn't everything, you said on the afternoon I brought a poem to you hunched over the washtub with your hands 5 the shriveled burnt granadilla skin of your hands covered by foam. And my words 10 slid like a ball of hard blue soap into the tub to be grabbed and used by you to rub the clothes. 15 A poem isn't all there is to life, you said with your blue ringed gaze scanning the page once looking over my shoulder 20 and back at the immediate dirty water and my words being clenched smaller and 25 smaller

4 Questions 1. What is the narrative (story) of the poem? (2) 2. What could "That" be in the first line? (1) 3. What does the mother say to her daughter in the poem? What could this indicate about the life she has lived? (2) 4. Explain the metaphor in the first stanza? Is this an effective image? Explain (4) 5. Why is "your hands" repeated? (2) 6. Explain the simile in the second stanza.(2) 7. What does the poet mean by a "blue-ringed gaze" in the third stanza? (Provide 2 meanings) (2) 8. What is the significance of the mother just scanning the page looking over the poet's shoulder?(2) 9. What is happening to the poet's words in stanzas 2 and 4? (1) 10. What feeling is created at the end of the poem? Quote to support your answer (Also make reference to the structure).(3) 11. What is the poet's intention in writing this poem? (2) A note on Poetic techniques: Repetition Satire Hyperbole Emotive language Enjambment Pathetic fallacy

5 My Father Began As A God- Ian Mudie My father began as a god, full of heoric tales of days when he was young. His laws were as immutable as if brought down from Sinai, which indeed he thought they were. He fearlessly lifted to me to heaven by a mere swing to his shoulder, and made me a godling by seating me astride our milch-cow's back, and, too upon the great white gobbler of which others went in constant fear. Strange then how he shrank and shrank until by my time of adolescence he had become a foolish small old man with silly and outmoded views of life and of morality. Stranger still that as I became older his faults and his intolerances scaled away into the past, revealing virtues such as honesty, generosity, integrity. Strangest of all how the deeper he recedes into the grave the more I see myself as just one more of all the little men who creep through life not knee-high to this long-dead god. Questions : 1.1 What is the poet s view of his father in stanza 1 and 2? Give reasons for your answer.(3) 1.2 How does the poet s view of his father change as he grows older?(1) 1.3 Why do you think his view of his father changes? (2) 1.4 Provide a synonym for outmoded (stanza 3).(1) 1.5 What is the tone of this poem? (1) 1.6 What realisation does the poet come to in the final stanza? (2)

6 A look at a spiritual relationship On his blindness John Milton 1 When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent 5 To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide, Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd? I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need 10 Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best Bear his milde yoke, they serve him best. His State Is Kingly: Thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest; 14 They also serve who only stand and wait. Vocabulary Spent: used up Talent: skill or ability AND an ancient form of currency Lodged: fixed Bent: determined Returning: in reply Chide: to scold Exact: to demand Fondly: foolishly Yoke: burden Bidding: commands

7 Notes Milton was a famous English poet who featured during the turbulent times of the English Revolution in 1649, one hundred and forty years before the French Revolution. He is best known for his grand-scale epic poem Paradise Lost, in which he skilfully and delicately details the workings of Creation as outlined in the book of Genesis. Milton was a very religious man. In this sonnet, the speaker meditates on the fact that he has become blind (Milton himself was blind when he wrote this). He expresses his frustration at being prevented by his disability from serving God as well as he desires to. He is answered by "Patience," (One of the fabled seven virtues of godly men) who tells him that God has many who hurry to do his bidding, and does not really need man s work. Rather, what is valued is the ability to bear God s "mild yoke," to tolerate whatever God asks faithfully and without complaint. As the famous last line sums it up, "They also serve who only stand and wait." Questions 1 Briefly discuss the literal and figurative meanings of light and spent in line 1.(2) 2 What are the two meanings of the word Talent in line 3? (2) 3 What is the true account to which Milton refers in line 6?(1) 4 Account for the change of tone between the octave and the sestet. (2) 5 What realization does the poet come to in the sestet?(3) 6 What is the meaning of the word yoke in the context of this poem? (1) What to look for when studying a poem: Imagery (What image is created in your mind? What does the image convey? Is it a positive or negative image? Is it an effective image?) Structure (Look at the Rhyme scheme, number of stanzas, line lengths) Diction (Ask yourself why the poet chose to use that word over another. What does this word convey?) Repetition (what is being repeated and why? Are they words or ideas?) Subject matter (What is the poem about and why has the poet written on that topic) Writer s attitude to the subject matter (this is called tone and can generally be gained by looking at diction) Sound devices Do they influence speed, either slowing down or speeding up? Do they mimic what is actually happening in the poem (say the poem was about a snake and then there were many S words, as you say all those words you sound like you are hissing like a snake )? Have they changed the tone? Are they emphasising? What are they emphasising?

8 A look at a relationship with others Mending Wall Robert Frost "Mending Wall" is a metaphorical poem written in blank verse, published in 1914, by Robert Frost ( ). The poem appeared in Frost's second collection of poetry, North of Boston. It is set in the countryside and is about one man questioning why he and his neighbour must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. It is perhaps best known for its line spoken by the neighbour: "Good fences make good neighbours." The poem's narrator displays a disdain for the expression and the walls erected between people, and yet he also shows a grudging acceptance (albeit sadly) of the line's truth in its application to human relationships. The line is listed by the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as a mid 17th century proverb, which was given a boost in the American consciousness due to its prominence in the poem. 1 Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. Abreast: alongside 5 The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, 10 No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbour know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. 15 We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'

9 20 We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. 25 My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbours.' Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: 30 'Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. 35 Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, Elves: Mythical woodland creatures But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top 40 In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. Savage: brutal, uncivilized person He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well 45 He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbours.'

10 Introduction The speaker shows how the walls, which are built to separate the neighbouring farms, fall down in the winter time, even though no-one sees them doing so, and it is difficult to find an explanation for their falling. Each spring he and his neighbour meet to rebuild the wall,, yet it is not necessary, for there are no cattle to be kept in or out. However, the neighbour feels that a wall is necessary, for there has always been one. If a wall was felt to be necessary in his father s day, then it is just as necessary today. Questions: 1. According to the poem, what doesn t love a wall? (See first five lines)(1) 2. What causes the wall to break each time? (2) 3. What appears in the wall without anyone seeing or hearing? (1) 4. Why do the speaker and his neighbour meet? (1) 5. What is the tone of the lines we have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned?' (1) 6. According to the speaker, when is it appropriate to build a wall? (2) 7. Why does the speaker feel that there is no need for the wall? (1) 8. What would the speaker ask before he built a wall? (1) 9. What does the speaker s neighbour say to him? (1) 6. What does the wall symbolize? (2) 7. Explain what the speaker means by this line: He moves in darkness as it seems to me (2) 8. What do the positions of the speaker and the neighbour as they mend the wall symbolize? (2) 9. The speaker says, Something there is that doesn t love a wall. What doesn t? Which character makes an attempt at friendship? How does he make this attempt? What is ironic about the wall? (4) 10. Why might the neighbour want to have a wall where one is not absolutely necessary? What does the neighbour s desire for a wall tell you about him? (3) 11. How does the neighbour look, according to the speaker? What reveals that the speaker doesn t totally trust his neighbour? (3) 12. Considering the relationship, who makes a better neighbour and why? (2) 13. This poem is a picture of two different mentalities- discuss this statement. (3)