Poetry Anthology P2 (35mins) COPY

Question 1

What is walking away about?

Answer 1

The speaker(the father) is remembering about his child’s first day of school, when he first let his child go. He feels sad about it but thinks it was the best thing for him.

Question 2

What is the context of walking away?

Answer 2

Walking away was dedicated to Cecil Lewis’s first son.

His poetry is often autobiographical .

Question 3

What is follower about?

Answer 3

Follower is about a relationship between father and son, shifting in perspective from past to present
Giving the sons reaction to the passing of time and his father growing old

Question 4

What is the context of Follower?

Answer 4

It is an autobiographical poem, that throws a light on the speakers observations as a child and the influence of the father as he worked the land with the child following

Question 5

What is Before you were mine about?

Answer 5

It is a love poem that Duffy is addressing to her mother, she is recreating how she imagines her mother’s life must have been like when she was a young woman.

Question 6

What is the context of Before You Were Mine?

Answer 6

Duffy said the poem was written in response to an old photo of her mother with her friends.
-the title plays with the idea of possession

Question 7

What is Mother, Any distance about?

Answer 7

On face value this is a poem about a young man whose mother is helping him decorate his house.
On a deeper level it is also about the affectionate and sometimes trying relationship of a mother and her child.

Question 8

What is the context of Mother, any distance?

Answer 8

From the book of matches. It is to be read by the light of a single burning match.
-this focuses on the passage of time

Question 9

What is Eden Rock about?

Answer 9

The speaker is imagining about his childhood memories when he was on a picnic with his family and likens this to his perception of heaven.
-the moral of the poem is that leaving your parents is hard

Question 10

What is the context of Eden Rock?

Answer 10

Carsley’s father died when he was very young so this could be one of his very last memories with him.
His parents are dead- poem about loss

Question 11

What are the poems about loss you have studied?

Answer 11

When we two parted
Neutral Tones
The Farmer’s bride

Question 12

What is When we two parted about?

Answer 12

The speaker recalls the day he and his lover parted (she didn’t seem to have any affection for him)
Although time has passed he still finds it hard, he thinks he will always feel hurt

Question 13

What is the context of When we two parted?

Answer 13

Byron had an affair with Lady Frances Webster, this poem is believe to be about it

Question 14

What is Porphyria’s lover about?

Answer 14

A man sits in his cold cottage on a stormy night, Porphyria arrives and makes the cottage warm and comfortable
He decides that she loves him and she belongs to him, he wants to preserve this so he strangles her with her hair
He opens her eyes and spends the rest of the night sitting with her dead body

Question 15

What is the context of Porphyria’s lover?

Answer 15

Porphyria is a disease which can result in madness

Question 16

What is Neutral tones about?

Answer 16

The speaker remembers an unpleasant day when he and his lover stood by a pond
He describes his lovers behaviour, he believes she has fallen out of love with him
Whenever he has been hurt by love since, he remembers that day by the pond

Question 17

What is the context of neutral tones?

Answer 17

Thomas Hardy possibly wrote this poem at the end of an affair

Question 18

What is Love’s philosophy about?

Answer 18

The speaker is trying to persuade his lover to be with him

Question 19

What is the context of Love’s philosophy?

Answer 19

Percy Shelley was a romantic poet
He left his wife for another woman
Philosophy suggests a statement of belief
In the romantic period air and water were seen as masculine elements and earth and fire were seen as feminine, Shelly mingles the two

Question 20

What is Sonnet 29 about?

Answer 20

The narrator tells her lover how much she thinks about him when they are not together

• she is worried that her thoughts may obscure what he is really like
• she reassures him that her thoughts do not compare to the reality of him

Question 21

What is the context of Sonnet 29?

Answer 21

-Elizabeth Browning was writing to her husband Robert Browning
-it is from the collection ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese, she wanted to avoid how personal they were by originally claiming they were translations of Portuguese poems
Follows typical Victorian gender roles
Sonnets are love poems

Question 22

What is letters from Yorkshire about?

Answer 22

A man is working in his garden and sees the first lapwings and writes to the narrator about it
The narrator reflects on their different lives (he lives in Yorkshire and works outside, she lives in the city working inside a long way away)
-the narrator wonders whether life is more fulfilling for him since he’s closer to nature

Question 23

What is the context of Letters from Yorkshire?

Answer 23

• it is unclear in the poem if the man is a family member or friend
• the writer lived in Yorkshire a few years before moving to London

Question 24

What is farmer’s bride about?

Answer 24

A farmer has been married for three years, and his bride is scared of him and other men

• he questions where their relationship went wrong (never thinks he could be responsible)
• he finds her rejection unbearable, and struggles to resist taking her by force by the end

Question 25

What is the context of the Farmer’s Bride?

Answer 25

-men had the power to choose who they wanted to be married to, often a young virgin (women had no say or power, meant to be subservient to men)

Question 26

What is Winter Swans about?

Answer 26

A couple take a walk round a lake after two days of bad weather (their relationship is troubled)
The swans seem to change the mood between the couple
the couple carry on walking now holding hands

Question 27

What is the context of Winter Swans?

Answer 27

-taken from a collection called skirrid hill, ‘skirrid’ associated with divorce and separation and the whole collection deals with the ends of relationships

Question 28

What is Singh Song! about?

Answer 28

The narrator talking about his life working in his father’s shop

• he has just got married and keeps sneaking upstairs to spend time with his wife
• he neglects his shop`

Question 29

What is the context of Singh Song!?

Answer 29

• Nagra has made a conscious effort to reflect the culture of the first generation of immigrants to Britain
• uses transliterated spellings to reflect their language (punglish)
• title is a pun, by using a common sikh male name as singh
• explores the stereotypes of the time (and defies them)

Question 30

What is climbing my grandfather about?

Answer 30

the narrator imagines climbing his grandfather, using a continuous metaphor of himself as a climber and his grandfather as the mountain

Question 31

What is the context of climbing my grandfather?

Answer 31

Andrew Waterhouse was an environmentalist who particularly associated with maintaining landscapes, they are often parts of his poetry but used metaphorically