My Nine Year Old Self

Question 1

Title

Answer 1

Personal and nostalgic

Question 2

‘You must forgive me’

Answer 2

Forceful, regret, enjambment, erratic energy

Question 3

‘Eager to be gone’

Answer 3

Energy - contrast with tired person

Question 4

‘Balancing’

Answer 4

Child is able to do anything

Question 5

‘Tightrope’

Answer 5

Caesura, breaks the Rhythm

Question 6

‘Spoiled this body’

Answer 6

Semantic field, injury, loss of joy, weakened version of poet

Question 7

Stanza two

Answer 7

Joyful ness in stanza one is dulled

Question 8

‘Look at the scars’

Answer 8

Imperative beth, too young to comprehend what ageing is

Question 9

‘Bad back of a bruised foot’

Answer 9

Monosyllabic, king and slow representing old age, alliteration

Question 10

‘We’d’

Answer 10

Trying to draw the child close to her

Question 11

‘Summer morning’

Answer 11

Pathetic fallacy, nostalgia, sun - joy

- rhetorical question

Question 12

‘That dream we had’

Answer 12

Past tense

Question 13

‘White paper’

Answer 13

Purity and innocence juxtaposes ‘cloud your mourning’

Question 14

Hyphen

Answer 14

More constant speech

• emblem of excited youth
• enjambment and freedom - lack of restraints

Question 15

Taste

Answer 15

Sherbet lemons

Question 16

‘Summer of ambition’

Answer 16

Tone changes to pessimistic take on life, ranger

Question 17

‘Nothing in common’

Answer 17

Bitter, disassociating herself

Question 18

‘Tuppence a pound’

Answer 18

Emphasises age gap, imperial rather than metric

Question 19

‘Scared lanes’

Answer 19

Full of fear

Question 20

‘Swings from that tree’

Answer 20

Adventure, returned difference ‘ tree’ ‘long buried’

- mental division, physical distance, bliss is over

Question 21

‘Cloud your morning’

Answer 21

Faded and grey, can’t return to childhood

Question 22

Varies between

Answer 22

1st and 2nd person

Question 23

‘We’ ‘I’ ‘you’

Answer 23

Pronouns illustrate change, pieces don’t fit together

Question 24

3 rapid change

Answer 24

Quick and unstrained nature of childhood

- mourning past

Question 25

Concrete noun

Answer 25

‘Tightrope’

- believable and reliable

Question 26

Tone

Answer 26

‘Walk’ ‘run’ ‘climb’

Question 27

Last stanza

Answer 27

Echoes first stanza 1st person

Question 28

‘I leave you’

Answer 28

Distance and disconnection between current narrator and 9 year old

Question 29

‘Ripe scab’

Answer 29

Sadder version of childhood

Question 30

‘Scar’

Answer 30

New and exciting

Question 31

‘Scab’

Answer 31

Old age

Question 32

2nd person

Answer 32

Represents lack of youth