FIVE POEMS

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FIVE POEMS

• ELA 30-1

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the poems
PAGE TITLE POET
10 "Guilt" Leona Gom
19 "Field of Vision" Seamus Heaney
20 "Where There's A Wall" Joy Kogawa
33 "The Uninvited" Dorothy Livesay
41 "Refugee Mother and Child" Chinua Achebe

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Guilt Leona Gom

• your mother giving you a set of dishes
• and all you said was but I move around
• so much and you can never forget
• her hurt face turning away.
• the best friend you accused of
• flirting with your boyfriend when
• all the time you knew it was him
• you just couldnt face it.
• the argument with your father about
• not having seen his damned magazine
• then finding it in your room
• and never admitting it.
• telling your office mate you
• agreed with her motion then
• voting with the others after all.

• thousands of them, little knots
• you cant shake loose from your memory
• its too late now to say youre sorry.
• they contract along your nerves
• to consciousness, whenever you think
• you are not a bad person, there
• they come, little lumps of guilt
• making their daily rounds,
• like doctors, keeping you sick.

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Guilt Leona Gom

• 1. What are the sources of the narrators guilt?
• 2. Explain the significance of the poems title.
  
• 3. What metaphors does Gom use to describe guilt
  in stanza two of her poem? Why do you think the
  author chose these metaphors?

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Field of Vision Seamus Heaney

• I remember this woman who sat for years
• In a wheelchair, looking straight ahead
• Out the window at sycamore trees unleafing
• And leafing at the far end of the lane.
• Straight out past the RV in the corner,
• The stunted, agitated hawthorn bush,
• The same small calves with their backs to wind
  and rain,
• The same acre of ragwort, the same mountain.
• She was steadfast as the big window itself.
• Her brow was clear as the chrome bits of the
  chair.

• She never lamented once and she never
• Carried a spare ounce of emotional weight.
• Face to face with her was an education
• Of the sort you got across a well-braced gate
• One of those lean, clean, iron, roadside ones
• Between two whitewashed pillars, where you could
  see
• Deeper into the country than you expected
• And discovered that the field behind the hedge
• Grew more distinctly strange as you kept standing
• Focused and drawn in by what barred the way.

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Where Theres a Wall Joy Kogawa

• Where theres a wall
• theres a way through a
• gate or door. Theres even
• a ladder perhaps and a
• sentinel who sometimes sleeps.
• There are secret passwords you
• can overhear. There are methods
• of torture for extracting clues
• to maps of underground passages.
• There are zeppelins, helicopters,
• rockets, bombs, battering rams,
• armies with trumpets whose
• all at once blast shatters
• the foundations.

• Where theres a wall there are
• words to whisper by loose bricks,
• wailing prayers to utter, birds
• to carry messages taped to their feet.
• There are letters to be written
• poems even.
• Faint as in a dream
• is the voice that calls
• from the belly
• of the wall.

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Field of Vision Seamus HeaneyWhere Theres
a Wall Joy Kogawa

• 1. After a close reading of both poems, explain
  the thematic connection between the two. Refer
  to specific evidence from the poems to support
  your interpretation.
• 2. Analyze the significance of each poems
  title. Support your analysis with reference to
  the poems.

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Heaney and Kogawa continued

• 3. Kogawa employs parallel structure and
  repetition of Where theres a wall and
  theres or there are in her poem. What might
  her purpose be in repeating Where theres a
  wall only twice, while following these lines
  with seven phrases beginning with there is or
  there are?
• 4. a) What techniques does Heaney use in his
  poem to create the sense of time passing slowly?
• b) What kind of diction and imagery does
  Heaney use to describe the woman who is the
  protagonist of his poem? What can you infer
  about the woman from the diction and imagery?

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The Uninvited Dorothy Livesay

• Always a third ones there
• where any two are walking out
• along a river-bank so mirror-still
• sheathed in sheets of sky
• pillows of cloud --
• their footprints crunch the hardening earth
• their eyes delight in trees stripped clean
• winter-prepared
• with only the rose-hips red
• and the plump fingers of sumach

• And always between the two
• (scuffing the leaves, laughing
• and fingers locked)
• goes a third lover his or hers
• who walked this way with one or other once
• flung back the head snapped branches of dark
  pine
• in armfuls before snowfall
• I walk beside you
• trace
• a shadows shade
• skating on silver
• hear
• another voice
• singing under ice

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The Uninvited Dorothy Livesay

• 1. a) Who are the uninvited? What other nouns
  and adjectives are used in the poem to describe
  the uninvited? What impression do these words
  create?
• b) Why are the uninvited always there?
• 2. To whom does the pronoun their in their
  footprints (line 6) and in their eyes (line 7)
  refer?

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The Uninvited continued

• 3. a) The narrator uses third-person pronouns in
  stanzas one and two, but in stanza three, she
  switches to the first-person pronoun and point of
  view. The reader then realizes that all along,
  she was describing a personal situation.
  Identify the third-person pronouns in stanzas one
  and two. What is the effect of having a narrator
  describe her own situation from the third-person
  point of view?
• b) What does the switch to the first-person
  pronouns in the last stanza reveal about the
  narrator?

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The Uninvited still continued

• 4. a) How does Livesay create a sense of mystery
  at the beginning of the poem?
• b) The dash at the end of the fifth line in
  the poem can be seen as a kind of turning point.
  How do the words and images before this point
  compare with those following it? Explain how
  this change foreshadows the ending of the poem.
• 5. What is the theme of this poem?

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Refugee Mother and Child Chinua Achebe

• No Madonna and Child could touch
• that picture of a mothers tenderness
• for a son she soon would have to forget.
• The air was heavy with odours
• of diarrhoea of unwashed children
• with washed-out ribs and dried-up
• bottoms struggling in laboured
• steps behind blown empty bellies. Most
• mothers there had long ceased
• to care but not this one she held
• a ghost smile between her teeth
• and in her eyes the ghost of a mothers
• pride as she combed the rust-coloured
• hair left on his skull and then

• singing in her eyes began carefully
• to part it . . . In another life this
• would have been a little daily
• act of no consequence before his
• breakfast and school now she
• did it like putting flowers
• on a tiny grave.

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"Refugee Mother and Child" - Chinua Achebe

• 1. What images in this poem suggest death? How
  does the poet create images of life to imply a
  sense of life-in-death?
• 2. Explore the connotations of the reference to
  the Madonna and Child. What emotions might the
  two images of motherhood share?
• 3. What is the effect of the absence of sound in
  the poem? Given this absence, what might the
  image singing in her eyes mean?

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"Madonna and Child" c.1503 Raphael

• In some forms of Christianity, the Madonna is the
  sacred representation of the archetypal female
  experience of motherhood. The allusion in the
  poem carries the idea of reverence for maternal
  devotion. The mother wistfully cares for a son
  she soon would have to forget because the child
  will die.
• Artistic representations of the Christian Madonna
  usually show her in contemplative poses
  suggesting stillness and sorrow at the
  foreknowledge of her childs death. The African
  mother and the Christian Madonna share the
  sheltering, sustaining emotions of motherhood and
  the sorrow in the inevitable loss of a child. By
  suggesting a kinship between the mother and the
  Madonna, the speaker enlarges the frame of
  reference in order to convey the fortitude of the
  suffering mother, linking her to a representation
  of motherhood itself.

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"Refugee Mother and Child" - continued

• 4. In the first and last sentences of the poem,
  the speaker implies a commentary on the scene he
  or she is describing. What values and attitudes
  lie behind the speakers responses to seeing this
  mother and her child? What responses do the
  speakers comments evoke from the reader?