Poetry Progresstion Exam - Larkin Flashcards
In what year was Mean Time published?
1993
What was ‘top of the form’, on which Duffy’s poem is based?
The tv quiz show
In Duffy’s ‘Captain…’, name 2 songs or artists from the 1960s that are referenced.
Pretty Woman and The Beatles
The speaker ‘lived in a kind of __ hope.|Gargling with Vimto?”
Fizzing
What adjective does the speaker use to describe the smell of his satchel?
Clever
What adjective does the speaker use to describe his wife?
Stale
What adjective does the speaker use to describe his kids?
Thick
And what do the kids do as he asks them quiz questions?
Wince
Write the two meanings for the word ‘litany’, which forms the title of the second poem.
A list and a religious text
What, according to the same poem, embarrassed the ‘stiff-haired wives’?
Their language/their serious conversations. Eg, about cancer
What adjective describes the ‘marriages [that] cackled’?
Terrible
What did a ‘boy in the playground’ tell the speaker to do?
Fuck off
In the final line, the ‘taste of’ what, ends the poem?
Soap
What is the occupation of the characters who leave the mountains, in ‘Nostalgia’?
Mercenaries
The ‘strange food’ feels like what, ‘in the belly’?
Stones
What adjective describes the ‘pain in the heart’?
Sweet
The ‘music of home’ is played on ‘__ pipes summoning’?
Sad
When ‘one returned’ home, what word describes what had happened to ‘everything’?
Changed
In ‘The Cliche Kid’, who is the speaker addressing throughout?
A doctor/therapist
In the same poem, name one reference that relates to the speaker’s father.
He wears dresses
With which punctuation mark does every stanza end?
With an ellipsis
What are ‘Ma|and her pals (doing) up late in the poem? (Name one of two possible answers)
Playing poker
What is ‘Big Bertha’ doing ‘under the stars’?
Weeing
The kid is ‘so unpopular’, which friend leaves them?
Their imaginary friend
What kind of ‘bars’ does the speaker go to, looking ‘butch in my boots’?
Macho
In Duffy’s ‘The Cliche Kid’, name one mixed up (disrupted) idiom the speaker uses at the end?
Freshly mown bread
In ‘Small Female Skull’, the female blows ‘in its eye’ and likens it to what musical instrument?
The ocarina
What does the speaker ask for as she looks in the mirror, ventriloquizing with the skull?
A gottle of geer.
What does the speaker ‘murmer to the skull’?
Love
Name one of the two adjectives used to describe her hands, as she holds the skull at the end.
Passionate (+trembling)
The days|we are adjectives, nouns. In Moments of Grace|we were’ what?
Verbs
In the final stanza of the same poem, what does the speaker’s partner do whilst ‘passing’?
Kiss her on the neck
What religious term does the speaker end the poem with, to define this act?
A blessing
In ‘First Love’, ‘a dream of first love forming real words|as close to my lips as’ what?
Lipstick
What is ‘long dead’ and ‘seems precisely|the size of a tear’?
A star
At the end of the poem, what ‘suddenly pierce and sweeten the air’?
The unseen flowers
In ‘Valentine’ what does the speaker give her addressee instead of a ‘red rose or a satin heart’?
An onion
Its ‘scent will cling to your fingers’, but what else will its scent cling to?
A knife
From which novel is the character ‘Havisham’ taken and who was it’s author?
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
In the opening line, the speaker refers to the man who jilted her as ‘Beloved sweetheart bastard.’ Name two literary devices Duffy uses in this phrase?
Juxtaposition/oxymoron and plosive alliteration or assonance.
The speaker prays so hard that she has what, for eyes, and what is on the back of her hands?
Green pebbles and ropes
What word describes what she does to the wedding cake?
Stabs
At the end of the poem, what ‘b-b-b-breaks’?
The heart
Name any two of the animals that are ‘Stuffed’ in the poem of that name.
A crocodile and an owl
Name any one of the three adjectives used to describe his ‘doll’ in the final stanza.
Mute
Also in the final stanza, name one of the things that the speaker likes his ‘doll’ to do.
To kneel and to be naked
And in the final line, what does he like her not to do?
To tell
In the poem ‘Disgrace’, the couple ‘had not been home in our __ for months.’ Where?
Hearts
Their words changed into what, ‘in a web’? (Two words)
Dead flies
In the final stanza, what adjective describes the stars that the couple woke to?
Meaningless
The poem features a number of connected words: ‘disgrace’, ‘faithless’, ‘unpenitent’. What kind of imagery do these negative words relate to?
Religious imagery
When, in ‘Mean Time’, the ‘clocks slid back an hour’, what did it steal from the speaker’s life?
Light
What is the speaker ‘mourning’ as she ‘walked through the wrong part of town’?
Love
The speaker feels ‘my heart __ at all our mistakes’. What verb is missing?
Gnaws
In the final line, ‘these are the shortened days’ and what kind of ‘nights’?
Endless
What is the name of the final poem in the collection?
Prayer
What ‘gift’ does the woman ‘stare’ at in the poems first stanza? ‘The minims sung by a __’.
Tree
In the second stanza, what ‘enters our hearts’, although ‘we are faithless’?
The truth
What poetic technique can be seen in the penultimate line: ‘Darkness outside. Inside the radio’s prayer -‘?
Caesura. (Also pathetic fallacy and juxtaposition)
In the final line, she hears the radio: ‘Rockall, Malin, Dogger, Finisterre’. What programme do these words come from?
The shipping forecast
In what year was The Whitsun Weddings published?
1964
In ‘A Study of Reading Habits’, reading ‘Cured most things short of __.’ What?
School
What simile describes how the speaker ‘broke them [women] up’?
Like meringues
What, using his words, does he choose to do instead of reading by the end of the poem?
‘Get stewed’ (drink)
In the ironically titled ‘Wild Oats’, what metaphor is used to describe the ‘bosomy’ girl that the speaker fails to date?
English Rose
What was she trying not to do (so the speaker thought) when he met her?
Laugh
What is the friend wearing who the speaker ‘could talk to’?
‘Specs’
To whom was it unknown when they met in ‘cathedral cities’?
The clergy
In ‘Love Songs in Age’, the songs reminded her of ‘the unfailing sense of being…’
Young
What has ‘the glare of that much-mentioned brilliance’?
Love
Name one of the three things it promises to do.
Solve
What does the old lady do as she piles the songs back?
Cries
What, according to the title of a Larkin poem, is an ‘emblem of two people being honest’?
Talking in Bed
In ‘Take One Home for the Kiddies’, how does the poem suggest the class of the ‘kiddies’?
How they speak
What game do they play at the end of the poem?
Funerals
In ‘Sunny Prestatyn’ how is what the ‘girl on the poster’ wearing described?
Tight, white and satin
‘She was __ up one day in March’: which punning verb is missing?
Slapped
What is written on the poster that replaces the original one?
Beat cancer
In ‘Essential Beauty’, what are the missing adjectives: ‘a __ knife sinks into __ butter’?
Silver and golden
The adverts ‘proclaim __ crust, __ foam,|__coldness’. What word is missing?
Pure
What does the speaker find, in ‘Dockery and Son’, when he tries the door of where he used to live?
It’s locked
‘To have no son, no wife|No house or land still seemed quite__’?
Natural
In the same poem, the speaker grimly suggests that ‘life is at first __, then __’. What two things are life?
Boredom and fear
In ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ the speaker didn’t initially notice ‘what a __|The weddings made.’
Noise
He passed ‘grinning and pomaded, girls|In __ of fashion’.
Parodies
What is ‘an uncle shouting’ as the train leaves?
Smut
The girls wore ‘nylon gloves and jewellery __’. What?
Substitutes
Girls ‘stared|At a religious __’. What?
Wounding
The newlyweds have ‘all the power|That being __ can give’.
Changed
At the end, what is ‘sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain’?
An arrow-shower
In ‘An Arundel Tomb’, what gives the speaker a ‘sharp tender shock’?
The statues holding hands.
‘The earl and countess lie in stone’. Identify and explain the pun in this line.
Double meaning. ‘Lie in stone’ - lying about something or lying down.
At the end of the poem, what does the speaker almost believe ‘will survive of us’?
Love
