English Tuition for Australia and New Zealand
XQUISITE TUTORIALS
Poetry
You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.
I ask you, what would you do
if you had two tongues in your mouth,
and lost the first one, the mother tongue,
and could not really know the other,
the foreign tongue.
You could not use them both together
even if you thought that way.
And if you lived in a place you had to
speak a foreign tongue,
your mother tongue would rot,
rot and die in your mouth
until you had to spit it out.
I thought I spit it out
but overnight while I dream,
(munay hutoo kay aakhee jeebh aakhee bhasha)
may thoonky nakhi chay)
(parantoo rattray svupnama mari bhasha pachi aavay chay)
(foolnee jaim mari bhasha nmari jeebh)
(modhama kheelay chay)
(fullnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh)
(modhama pakay chay)
Search For My Tongue
by Sujata Bhatt
it grows back, a stump of a shoot
grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins,
it ties the other tongue in knots,
the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth,
it pushes the other tongue aside.
Everytime I think I've forgotten,
I think I've lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth
Valentine
by Carol Ann Duffy
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or a kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.
This is Love (for David)
by Karlo Mila
you’ve taken / the roots of / my thoughts on / what love is /
this understanding I’ve created over the years /
so ripe / so red / in your big hands / brown / custodial
you put them in a pot / large bucket / on your front
doorstep / a place in the Papatoetoe sun / this is love you
say / watering / tending / a careful eye at the end of the day
it is seeds sown in the hopeful spring / hiccups of hope /
scattered sheets / seed spread bed / it is shedding dead leaves
in autumn / and you prune / me / cutting fingertips
tenderly / bleeding softly into soil / blistering gently / the
test is you say / whether we will survive winter / there
will be many winters / soaked with rain / frost on car
window mornings
this is love you say / endurance through / every / every day /season
this is what I have learned.
love is not a bunch of red roses / blossomed into the peak
of their beauty / cut at the height of their passion / long
stemmed /bikini lined / full lipped / red perfect
love is / the watering / the watching / the pruning / the
tending / the providing of new buckets / the finding of
new doorsteps /
love is not something one simply wears
behind their ears
in full bloom
Wilfred Owen
Disabled
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees,
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,—
In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.
There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now, he is old; his back will never brace;
He's lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,
After the matches carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,
He thought he'd better join. He wonders why.
Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts.
That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,
He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of; and no fears Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes; And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears; Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits. And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal. Only a solemn man who brought him fruits Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul. Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes, And do what things the rules consider wise, And take whatever pity they may dole. To-night he noticed how the women’s eyes Passed from him to the strong men that were whole. How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, old like beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas - shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime. -
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, -
My friend you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
-
Who is speaking?
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Who is the poem aimed at?
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Where are the events taking place?
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Where is the narrator writing from?
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When are the events taking place?
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What are the main images in the poem? Why do you think they are used?
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Which of the senses does Owen use to describe the experience in each section?
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Why do you think the poem is entitled Dulce et Decorum est?
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
-- Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Anthem for Doomed Youth
Mr Bleaney
by Philip Larkin
‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.’ Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,
Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. ‘Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.’
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook
Behind the door, no room for books or bags —
‘I’ll take it.’ So it happens that I lie
Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
On the same saucer-souvenir, and try
Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
I know his habits — what time he came down,
His preference for sauce to gravy, why
He kept on plugging at the four aways —
Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
Who put him up for summer holidays,
And Christmas at his sister’s house in Stoke.
But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread
That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don’t know.
Here
by Philip Larkin
Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows
And traffic all night north; swerving through fields
Too thin and thistled to be called meadows,
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields
Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river’s slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud,
Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,
And residents from raw estates, brought down
The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,
Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires –
Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies,
Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers –
A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling
Where only salesman and relations come
Within a terminate and fishy-smelling
Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum,
Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed wives;
And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges
Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges,
Isolate villages, where removed lives
Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
A Valentine
by Eugene Field
Your gran'ma, in her youth, was quite
As blithe a little maid as you. And, though her hair is snowy white,
Her eyes still have their maiden blue,
And on her checks, as fair as thine,
Methinks a girlish blush would glow
If she recalled the valentine She got, ah! many years ago.
A valorous youth loved gran'ma then, And wooed her in that auld lang syne;
And first he told his secret when
He sent the maid that valentine,
No perfumed page nor sheet of gold Was that first hint of love he sent,
But with the secret gran'pa told--- "I love you"---gran'ma was content.
Go, ask your gran'ma if you will,
If---though her head be bowed and gray---
If---though her feeble pulse be chill---
True love abideth not for aye;
By that quaint portrait on the wall,
That smiles upon her from above,
Methinks your gran'ma can recall
The sweet divinity of love.
Dear Elsie, here 's no page of gold---
No sheet embossed with cunning art---
But here 's a solemn pledge of old:
"I love you, love, with all my heart."
And if in what I send you here You read not all of love expressed, Go---go to gran'ma, Elsie dear,
And she will tell you all the rest!
1. Which sentence summarizes the speaker's thoughts in A Valentine?
a. Love requires fancy notes and gifts.
b. A simple "I love you" is good enough.
c. Grandma looks the same as when she was young.
d. Grandma has started to look a lot older and has white hair.
2. Which lines from the poem show evidence of the answer to Part A?
a. And, though her hair is snowy white,/Her eyes still have their maiden blue,
b. No perfumed page nor sheet of gold/Was that first hint of love he sent,
c. But with the secret gran'pa told---/"I love you"---gran'ma was content.
d. If---though her head be bowed and gray---/If---though her feeble pulse be chill---
3. What is the meaning of the word wooed from line 10 of the poem?
a. complimented
b. tried to get their attention
c. sought the love of
d. angered
4. Which lines from the poem best demonstrate the answer to Part A?
a. And first he told his secret when/He sent the maid that valentine,
b. By that quaint portrait on the wall,/That smiles upon her from above, c. Dear Elsie, here 's no page of gold---/No sheet embossed with cunning art---
d. Go---go to gran'ma, Elsie dear,/And she will tell you all the rest!
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise,
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints -I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! -and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Think about how poem 1 (A Valentine) and poem 2 (How Do I Love Thee) communicate ideas by using different structures.
For each structural element listed below, determine whether it fits poem 1, poem 2, or both.
Dialogue __________
Rhyme scheme __________
First person __________
Multiple stanzas __________
The Hill We Climb
by Amanda Gorman
When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.
We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken,
but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
This effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith, we trust,
for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared it at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour,
but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked, ‘How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?’ now we assert, ‘How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be:
A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
With every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the west.
We will rise from the wind-swept north-east where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country,our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
Dark Unmarried Mothers
by Oodgeroo Noonuccal
All about the country,
From earliest teens,
Dark unmarried mothers,
Fair game for lechers –
Bosses and station hands,
And in town and city
Low-grade animals
Prowl for safe prey.
Nothing done about it,
No one to protect them –
But hush, you mustn’t say so,
Bad taste or something
To challenge the accepted,
Disturbing the established.
Turn the blind eye,
Wash the hands like Pilate.
Consent? Even with consent
It is still seduction.
Is it a white girl?
Then court case and headline
Stern talk of maintenance.
Is it a dark girl?
Then safe immunity;
He takes what he wants
And walks off like a dog.
Was ever even one,
One of all the thousands
Ever made responsible?
For dark unmarried mothers
The law does not run.
No blame for the guilty
But blame uttered only
For anyone made angry
Who dares even mention it,
Challenging old usage,
Established, accepted,
And therefore condoned.
Shrug away the problem,
The shame, the injustice;
Turn the blind eye,
Wash the hands like Pilate.
Write one paragraph to address the following question:
"Explore Noonuccal's portrayal of relationship power imbalances, and their consequences, in the poem "Dark Unmarried Mothers"?
Your paragraph should be approximately 400 words, and use two to three pieces of evidence.
Dark Unmarried Mothers by Oodgeroo Noonuccal highlights the power imbalances in a relationship between a white man and an Aborignal women.
Light Love
by Christina Rossetti
‘Oh, sad thy lot before I came,
But sadder when I go;
My presence but a flash of flame,
A transitory glow
Between two barren wastes like snow.
What wilt thou do when I am gone,
Where wilt thou rest, my dear?
For cold thy bed to rest upon,
And cold the falling year
Whose withered leaves are lost and sere.’
She hushed the baby at her breast,
She rocked it on her knee:
‘And I will rest my lonely rest,
Warmed with the thought of thee,
Rest lulled to rest by memory.’
She hushed the baby with her kiss,
She hushed it with her breast:
‘Is death so sadder much than this—
Sure death that builds a nest
For those who elsewhere cannot rest?’
‘Oh, sad thy note, my mateless dove,
With tender nestling cold;
But hast thou ne’er another love
Left from the days of old,
To build thy nest of silk and gold,
To warm thy paleness to a blush
When I am far away—
To warm thy coldness to a flush,
And turn thee back to May,
And turn thy twilight back to day?’
She did not answer him again,
But leaned her face aside,
Weary with the pang of shame and pain,
And sore with wounded pride:
He knew his very soul had lied.
She strained his baby in her arms,
His baby to her heart:
‘Even let it go, the love that harms:
We twain will never part;
Mine own, his own, how dear thou art.’
‘Now never teaze me, tender-eyed,
Sigh-voiced,’ he said in scorn:
‘For nigh at hand there blooms a bride,
My bride before the morn;
Ripe-blooming she, as thou forlorn.
Ripe-blooming she, my rose, my peach;
She woos me day and night:
I watch her tremble in my reach;
She reddens, my delight,
She ripens, reddens in my sight.’
‘And is she like a sunlit rose?
Am I like withered leaves?
Haste where thy spiced garden blows:
But in bare Autumn eves
Wilt thou have store of harvest sheaves?
Thou leavest love, true love behind,
To seek a love as true;
Go, seek in haste: but wilt thou find?
Change new again for new;
Pluck up, enjoy—yea, trample too.
‘Alas for her, poor faded rose,
Alas for her her, like me,
Cast down and trampled in the snows.’
‘Like thee? nay, not like thee:
She leans, but from a guarded tree.
Farewell, and dream as long ago,
Before we ever met:
Farewell; my swift-paced horse seems slow.’
She raised her eyes, not wet
But hard, to Heaven: ‘Does God forget?’
Compare how two poems, Dark Unmarried Mothers by Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Light Love by Christina Rosetti, convey valuable ideas about relationships.
Hera Lindsay Bird
If You are an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Hate
I am carving dirty hieroglyphics
into the wall of your tomb.
If you are a dead French aristocrat
I am the suspicious circumstances
surrounding your death.
If you are a shape shifting wizard
I am the shape you are shifting into.
If you are a fast moving cloud
I am an entire field of deer
looking up.
If you are a sceptical cop
I am a haunted fax machine.
If you are a catapult
I am the medieval knight
you are catapulting.
I fly over the dark fields of my enemies
corkscrewing the dawn.
This is what missing you feels like.
Without you I am just
the suspicious circumstances
surrounding nothing.
Without you I am just
a regular medieval knight
settling ongoing tenancy disputes
and doing other knight related activities
like dying thousands of years ago.
I rise from the grave to lean
like a ancient wind against your house.
Your roof a red eyelid
closed against the sky.
When I’m not with you I am like
a lonely wrestler with nobody to break chairs on.
When you take off your clothes
the whole room darkens to light you.
Your nakedness a pale kite
I want to take you to the river that runs behind my house
and show you where the dark water vanishes between the rocks,
but I can’t
because nothing runs behind my house
not even a lonely commercial highway.
I want to stand with you
on the edge of a lonely commercial highway
waiting for the jumper cables
that will restart this engine
and take us somewhere far beyond
the confines of this poem.
I need to have a reason
for the aisles of trees we sailed through
and your hand on my knee in reckless disregard
for road safety recommendations.
I need to have a reason
for so many nights of watching you recede from me
like the ass end of a horse
in the credits of a western.
I need to have a reason
for drinking beer in your parents’ swimming pool at night
and how you lay face down in the water
like a body in a celestial crime scene.
The stars like so many knives
in the small of your back.
Some people are meant to be forgiven
and others are meant to be hated forever…..
……………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………….
I don’t think it’s right to hate people
It’s just that I don’t care
To wake each day in a snakeskin negligee
and light myself on fire with such ethical behaviours
Once………………I tried to give hate up
But I was born to feel a great pettiness
To lie face-down in my catholic schoolgirl outfit
and pound the cobblestones of the Royal Albert hall
Hate is an old fashioned spirituality
To know that pain will take care of itself
It’s a lean justice that doesn’t serve anyone
Only itself, like a long retired butler
Well I don’t like life without a modicum of hate
This was once a righteous indignation
But now…………………………….it is a self pleasuring exercise
A literary revenge is the most humiliating of all punishments
To be stretched on the racks of the poetry industrial complex
Hate only hurts the hater, says conventional wisdom
But conventional wisdom’s dead, and I am still alive
If this hurts, it hurts like self inflicted ass slaps
O tell me I’m a bad girl, with a…………….stunted empathy complex
Some people are meant to hate forever
and other people are meant to have appropriate reactions
Some people believe in forgiveness
and other people believe in………..dwelling on things
Hate is a rare emotion, because nobody dares feel it
Nobody! ………………………………………….at least not by name
Everyone thinks their hate is just wrong behaviour objections
But there are wrong behaviour objections and then there are
…………wrong behaviour objections
Hate is a white crepe box, with voluminous spite ruffles
It’s a friendly push off a Tuscan cliff
Hate is a private joke, with only one punchline
or a statue in the courtyard with a bad attitude
To hate is to glory in bygone hurts
Like an antique canon you never have to load
My hate is a genial hate, with ‘a modern vintage aesthetic’
like clocking someone with a non-stick frying pan
As a child, my dance instructor once told me to stop rolling my eyes
I was very petulant, and accustomed to lavish praise
I’m not rolling my eyes, I said, I’m looking at the ceiling
And I was ……………………………………..with modern jazz contempt
Hate is an emotional aristocracy fallen on hard times
It’s like eating nothing off a gold leaf plate
To hate is a cruel vintage festivity
Like a hand-made pinata filled with bees
Hate is a luxurious futility, like a velvet birdbath
Someone wise once said that, and that person was me
And if you don’t like it………………………………………..well
buy me a drink and you can finish the poem
Once I tried to understand my enemy
But some people it is less eyerolling not to understand
To hate is a bad behaviour
But I have to feel it anyway
The more they want me less to hate them
The more I smile like a sickle coming down
& they’re the bad bad grass
I tell my hate to my girlfriend and she laughs
she laughs and laughs and laughs
she laughs until she cries, at the ungenerous things I say
and then looks kind of worried………………………………
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.
A Litany for Survival
by Audre Lorde
