COYOTE versus ACME by Ian Frazier

Coyote V. Acme

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT,SOUTHWESTERN DISTRICT, TEMPE, ARIZONACASE NO. B19294, JUDGE JOAN KUJAVA, PRESIDINGWile E. Coyote, Plaintiff -v.-Acme Company, Defendant

Opening Statement of Mr. Harold Schoff, attorney for Mr. Coyote:

My client, Mr. Wile E. Coyote, a resident of Arizona and contiguous states, does hereby bring suit for damages against the Acme Company, manufacturer and retail distributor of assorted merchandise, incorporated in Delaware and doing business in every state, district, and territory. Mr. Coyote seeks compensation for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering causes as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company, under Title 15 of the United States Code, Chapter 47, section 2072, subsection (a), relating to product liability.
Mr. Coyote states that on eighty-five separate occasions he has purchased of the Acme Company (hereinafter, "Defendant"), through that company's mail-order department, certain products which did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labelling. Sales slips made out to Mr. Coyote as proof of purchase are at present in the possession of the Court, marked Exhibit A. Such injuries sustained by Mr. Coyote have temporarily restricted his ability to make a living in his profession of predator. Mr. Coyote is self-employed and thus not eligible for Workmen's Compensation.
Mr. Coyote states that on December 13th he received of Defendant via parcel post one Acme Rocket Sled. The intention of Mr. Coyote was to use the Rocket Sled to aid him in pursuit of his prey. Upon receipt of the Rocket Sled Mr. Coyote removed it from its wooden shipping crate and, sighting his prey in the distance, activated the ignition. As Mr. Coyote gripped the handlebars, the Rocket Sled accelerated with such sudden and precipitate force as to stretch Mr. Coyote's forelimbs to a length of fity feet. Subsequently, the rest of Mr. Coyote's body shot forward with a violent jolt, causing severe strain to his back and neck and placing him unexpectedly astride the Rocket Sled. Disappearing over the horizon at such speed as to leave a diminishing jet trail along its path, the Rocket Sled soon brought Mr. Coyote abreast of his prey. At that moment the animal he was pursuing veered sharply to the right. Mr. Coyote vigorously attempted to follow this maneuver but was unable to, due to poorly designed steering on the Rocket Sled and a faulty or nonexistent braking system. Shortly thereafter, the unchecked progress of the Rocket Sled brought it and Mr. Coyote into collision with the side of a mesa. (a flat topped natural elevation)
Paragraph One of the Report of Attending Physician (Exhibit B), prepared by Dr. Ernest Grosscup, M.D., D.O., details the multiple fractures, contusions, and tissue damage suffered by Mr. Coyote as a result of this collision. Repair of the injuries required a full bandage around the head (excluding the ears), a neck brace, and full or partial casts of all four legs.
Hampered by these injuries, Mr. Coyote was nevertheless obliged to support himself. With this in mind, he purchased of Defendant as an aid to mobility one pair of Acme Rocket Skates. When he attempted to use this product, however, he became involved in an accident remarkably similar to that which occurred with the Rocket Sled. Again, Defendant sold over the counter, without caveat ( a warning or explanation to prevent misinterpretation) , a product which attached powerful jet engines (in this case, two) to inadequate vehicles, with little or no provision for passenger safety. Encumbered by his heavy casts, Mr. Coyote lost control of the Rocket Skates soon after strapping them on, and collided with a roadside billboard to violently as to leave a hole in the shape of his full silhouette.
Mr. Coyote states that on occasions too numerous to list in this document he has suffered mishaps with explosives purchased of Defendant: the Acme "Little Giant" Firecracker, the Acme Self-Guided Aerial Bomb, etc. (For a full listing, see the Acme Mail Order Explosives Catalogue and attached deposition, entered in evidence as Exhibit C.) Indeed, it is safe to say that not once has an explosive purchased of Defendant by Mr. Coyote performed in an expected manner. To cite just one example: At the expense of much time and personal effort, Mr. Coyote constructed around the outer rim of a butte (an isolated hill or maountain with steep sides) a wooden trough (a long shallow v shaped receptacñe tp feed animals) beginning at the top of the butte and spiralling downward around it to some few feet above a black X painted on the desert floor. The trough was designed in such a way that a spherical explosive of the type sold by Defendant would roll easily and swiftly down to the point of detonation indicated by the X. Mr. Coyote placed a generous pile of birdseed directly on the X, and then, carrying the spherical Acme Bomb (Catalog #78-832), climbed to the top of the butte. Mr. Coyote's prey, seeing the birdseed, approached, and Mr. Coyote proceeded to light the fuse. In an instant, the fuse burned down to the stem, causing the bomb to detonate.
In addition to reducing all Mr. Coyote's careful preparations to naught, the premature detonation of Defendant's product resulted in the following disfigurements to Mr. Coyote:

1 Severe singeing of the hair on the head, neck, and muzzle.

2 Sooty discoloration.

3 Fracture of the left ear at the stem, causing the ear to dangle in the aftershock with a creaking noise.

4 Full or partial combustion of whiskers, producing kinking, frazzling, and ashy disintegration.

5 Radical widening of the eyes, due to brow and lid charring.

We now come to the Acme Spring-Powered Shoes. The remains of a pair of these purchased by Mr. Coyote on June 23rd are Plaintiff's Exhibit D. Selected fragments have been shipped to the metallurgical laboratories of the University of California at Santa Barbara for analysis, but to date no explanation has been found for this product's sudden and extreme malfunciton. As advertised by Defendant, this product is simplicity itself: two wood-and-metal sandals, each attached to milled-steel springs of high tensile strength and compressed in a tightly coiled position by a cocking device with a lanyard release (to release it you have to pull a cord). Mr. Coyote believed that this product would enable him to pounce upon his prey in the initial moments of his chase, when swift reflexes are at a premium.
To increase the shoes' thrusting power still further, Mr. Coyote affixed them by their bottoms to the side of a large boulder. Adjacent to the boulder was a path which Mr. Coyote's prey was known to frequent. Mr. Coyote put his hind feet in the wood-and-metal sandals and crouched in readiness, his right forepaw holding firmly to the lanyard release. Within a short time Mr. Coyote's prey did indeed appear on the path coming toward him. Unsuspecting, the prey stopped near Mr. Coyote, well within range of the springs at full extension. Mr. Coyote gauged (measured) the distance with care and proceeded to pull the lanyard release.
At this point, Defendant's product should have thrust Mr. Coyote forward and away from the boulder. Instead, for reasons yet unknown, the Acme Spring-Powered Shoes thrust the boulder away from Mr. Coyote. As the intended prey looked on unharmed, Mr. Coyote hung suspended in air. Then the twin springs recoiled, bringing Mr. Coyote to a violent feet-first collision with the boulder, the full weight of his head of forequarters falling upon his lower extremities.
The force of this impact then caused the springs to rebound, whereupon Mr. Coyote was thrust skyward. A second recoil and collision followed. The boulder, meanwhile, which was roughly ovoid in shape, had begun to bounce down a hillside, the coiling and recoiling of the springs adding to its velocity. At each bounce, Mr. Coyote came into contact with the boulder, or the boulder came into contact with Mr. Coyote, or both came into contact with the ground. As the grade was a long one, this process continued for some time.
The sequence of collisions resulted in systemic physical damage to Mr. Coyote, viz., flattening of the cranium, sideways displacement of the tongue, reduction of length of legs and upper body, and compression of vertebrae from base of tail to head. Repetition of blows along a vertical axis produced a series of regular horizontal folds in Mr. Coyote's body tissues---a rare and painful condition which caused Mr. Coyote to expand upward and contract downward alternately as he walked, and to emit an off-key, accordionlike wheezing with every step. The distracting and embarassing nature of this symptom has been a major impediment to Mr. Coyote's pursuit of a normal social life.
As the Court is no doubt aware, Defendant has a virtual monopoly of manufacture and sale of goods required by Mr. Coyote's work. It is our contention that Defendant has used its market advantage to the detriment of the consumer of such specialized products as itching powder, giant kites, Burmese tiger traps, anvils (block of iron), and two-hundred-foot-long rubber bands. Much as he has come to mistrust Defendant's products, Mr. Coyote has no other domestic source of supply to which to turn. One can only wonder what our trading partners in Western Europe and Japan would make of such a situation, where a giant company is allowed to victimize the consumer in the most reckless and wrongful manner over and over again.
Mr. Coyote respectfully requests that the Court regard these larger economic implications and assess punitive damages in the amount of seventeen million dollars. In addition, Mr. Coyote seeks actual damages (missed meals, medical expenses, days lost from professional occupation) of one million dollars; general damages (mental suffering, injury to reputation) of twenty million dollars; and attorney's fees of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Total damages: thirty-eight million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. By awarding Mr. Coyote the full amount, this Court will censure Defendant, its directory, officers, shareholders, successors, and assigns, in the only language they understand, and reaffirm the right of the individual predator to equal protection under the law.

The NATO alphabet

PHONETIC ALPHABETS The NATO phonetic alphabet, more formally the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet. It assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet so that words can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential.
We are going to use this spelling alphabet when we check the results of our mock tests together.

A as for Able
B as for Baker,
C as for Charlie,
D as for Dog,
E as for Easy,
F as for Fox,
G as for George,
H as for How,
I as for Item,
J as for Jig,
K as for King,
L as for Love,
M as for Mike,
N as for Nancy,
O as for Oboe,
P as for Peter,
Q as for Queen,
R as for Roger,
S as for Sugar,
T as for Tom,
U as for Uncle,
V as for Victor,
W as for William,
X as for X-Ray,
Y as for Yoke,
Z as for Zebra

Two poems by Sheenah Pugh

Print these two poems and bring then to class

The craft I left in was called Esau, Sheenah Pugh

The craft I left in was called Esau,
at least that name was scratched on the smooth doorI went in by.
Someone said the engineers gave them all names, I don't know.
The stars outside were what I noticed first;
they looked so incongruously normal.
People joked nervously; just like a plane flight.
They found seats, wondered if bags would fit,
gestured at the stars and told each other:
'Be seeing those in close-up soon'.
No bother,no big deal.
I can't recall feeling sad,not then.
I think I was too interested in the achievement, the technicalities.
And when we took off, there were the night skies ahead;
still, so still, a new ocean.
It seemed natural to look for an horizon,
as a captain would look where he was bound,not back to port.
Then the ship turned,just slightly,
and there was our long bright wake already closing,
and we looked back along it
to where you could still trace
charted coastlines on the bluish mass,
quite small really; uncanny with distance,
our late guesthouse; our inheritance.


'Do You Think We'll Ever get to See Earth Sir?' Sheenah Pugh

I hear they're hoping to run trips
one day, for the young and fit, of course.
I don't see much use in it myself;
there'll be any number of places
you can't land, because they're still toxic,
and even in the relatively safe bits
you won't see what it was; what it could be.
I can't fancy a tour through the ruins
of my home with a party of twenty-five
and a guide to tell me what to see.
But if you should see some beautiful thing,
some leaf, say, damascened with frost,
some iridescence on a pigeon's neck,
some stone, some curve, some clear water;
look at it as if you were made of eyes,
as if you were nothing but an eye, lidless
and tender, to be probed and scorched
by extreme light. Look at it with your skin,
with the small hairs on the back of your neck.
If it is well-shaped, look at it with your hands;
if it has fragrance, breathe it into yourself;
if it tastes sweet, put your tongue to it.
Look at it as a happening, a moment;
let nothing of it go unrecorded,
map it as if it were already passing.
Look at it with the inside of your head,
look at it for later, look at it for ever,
and look at it once for me.

damascened :To decorate (metal) with wavy patterns of inlay or etching.
Iridescence: is the property of certain surfaces to change their colour depending on the angle under which they are viewed

Another example of unseen literature paper for you to practise

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS
International General Certificate of Secondary Education
READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST
If you have been given an Answer Booklet, follow the instructions on the front cover of the Booklet.
Write your Centre number, candidate number and name on all the work you hand in.
Write in dark blue or black pen.
Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid.
Answer either Question 1 or Question 2.
You are advised to spend about 20 minutes reading the question paper and planning your answer.
At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.
All questions in this paper carry equal marks.

Answer either Question 1 or Question 2.
EITHER
1 Read carefully the following poem. In it the poet invites you, the reader, to experience the sights
and sounds of the island scene in front of him.
How does the poet use language to communicate his different feelings as he contemplates
the sights and sounds of the scene before him? How does he help you, the reader, to feel
as though you are at his side observing the scene with him?
To help you answer these questions, you might consider:
• the dramatic ways he presents the scene in the first two stanzas (lines 1–14)
• the sounds of the poem and their effect
• the changes of tone and the impact of the last stanza (lines 15–21).
On This Island
Look, stranger, on this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable1 here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear 5
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.
Here at the small field’s ending pause
When the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges
Oppose the pluck 10
And knock of the tide,
And the shingle scrambles after the sucking
surf, and the gull lodges
A moment on its sheer 2 side.
Far off like floating seeds the ships 15
Diverge on urgent voluntary errands,
And the full view
Indeed may enter
And move in memory as now these clouds do,
That pass the harbour mirror 20
And all the summer through the water saunter.3
1stable: firm
2sheer: steep
3saunter: move in a leisurely way

OR
2 Read carefully the following passage. In it the writer presents the world as seen from his own
perspective as a three-year-old child.
What do you find interesting about the ways the writer shows us how the world seemed
to him as a three-year-old child? How does the writing make the scene vivid for you, the
reader?
To help you answer these questions, you might consider:
• the ways he describes the natural world about him
• the way he portrays himself
• his portrayal of his sisters.
I was set down from the carrier’s cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.
The June grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight. It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green, thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leapt through the air like monkeys. I was lost and didn’t know where to move. A tropic heat oozed up from the ground, rank with sharp odours of roots and nettles. Snow-clouds of elder-blossom banked in the sky, showering upon me the fumes and flakes of their sweet and giddy suffocation. High overhead ran frenzied larks, screaming, as though the sky were tearing apart.
For the first time in my life I was out of the sight of humans. For the first time in my life I was alone in a world whose behaviour I could neither predict nor fathom: a world of birds that squealed, of plants that stank, of insects that sprang about without warning. I was lost and I did not expect to be found again. I put back my head and howled, and the sun hit me smartly on the face, like a bully. From this daylight nightmare I was awakened, as from many another, by the appearance of my sisters. They came scrambling and calling up the steep rough bank, and parting the long grass found me. Faces of rose, familiar, living; huge shining faces hung up like shields between me and the sky; faces with grins and white teeth (some broken) to be conjured up like genii with a howl, brushing off terror with their broad scoldings and affection. They leaned over me – one, two, three – their mouths smeared with red currants and their hands dripping with juice. ‘There, there, it’s all right, don’t you wail any more. Come down ’ome and we’ll stuff you with currants.’
And Marjorie, the eldest, lifted me into her long brown hair, and ran me jogging down the path and through the steep rose-filled garden, and set me down on the cottage doorstep, which was our home, though I couldn’t believe it. I sat on the floor on a raft of muddles and gazed through the green window which was full of the rising garden. I saw the long black stockings of the girls, gaping with white flesh, kicking among the currant bushes. Every so often one of them would dart into the kitchen, cram my great mouth with handfuls of squashed berries, and run out again. And the more I got, the more I called for more. It was like feeding a fat young cuckoo.

example of literature unseen paper to practise

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS
International General Certificate of Secondary Education
LITERATURE (ENGLISH) 0486/03
Paper 3 Unseen May/June 2007
1 hour 20 minutes
Answer either Question 1 or Question 2.
EITHER
1 Read the following poem carefully. In it the poet imagines the thoughts of a woman in wartime who has picked up an abandoned child and is taking it with her on her walk to safety.
What are your feelings about the woman and her outlook on life, and how does the poem
make you feel this way?
To help you answer, you might explore:
• the way the poet shows the woman’s feelings about the child and her action in attempting to
save the child
• how the poet shows the woman’s thoughts and feelings about the future
• the impact the poem as a whole has on you.
Road 1940
Who do I carry, she said,
This child that is no child of mine?
Through the heat of the day it did nothing but fidget and whine,
Now it snuffles under the dew and the cold star-shine,
And lies across my heart heavy as lead,
Heavy as the dead.
Why did I lift it, she said,
Out of its cradle in the wheel-tracks?
On the dusty road burdens have melted like wax,
Soldiers have thrown down their rifles, misers slipped their packs:
Yes, and the woman who left it there has sped
With a lighter tread.
Though I should save it, she said,
What have I saved for the world’s use?
If it grow to hero it will die or let loose
Death, or to hireling1, nature already is too profuse2
Of such, who hope and are disinherited,
Plough and are not fed.
But since I’ve carried it, she said,
So far I might as well carry it still.
If we ever should come to kindness someone will
Pity me perhaps as the mother of a child so ill,
Grant me even to lie down on a bed;
Give me at least bread.
1hireling: a hired worker
2already is too profuse: has already created too many





OR
2 Read carefully this passage from a novel set in the nineteenth century.
It tells of a conversation between Catherine and her father. Catherine will inherit a lot of money.
She wants to marry a young man called Mr Townsend. Her father opposes this marriage because he thinks that Mr Townsend is just interested in Catherine for her money. Catherine waits until late in the evening to try to persuade her father to give the relationship another chance.
Show what your feelings are towards Catherine and towards her father as you read through this extract. Refer closely to the text to explain why you feel as you do.
To help you answer, you might consider:
• Catherine’s actions and feelings, and her father’s actions and feelings
• what they say to each other and how they say it
• what this makes you feel towards the two characters and about the way they interact with each other.
At last the clock struck eleven, and the house was wrapped in silence; the servants had gone to bed. Catherine got up and went slowly to the door of the library, where she waited a moment, motionless. Then she knocked, and then she waited again. Her father had answered her, but she had not the courage to turn the latch. She heard him move within, and he came and opened the door for her.
“What is the matter?” asked the doctor. “You are standing there like a ghost!”
She went into the room, but it was some time before she contrived to say what she had come to say. Her father, who was in his dressing gown and slippers, had been busy at his writing table, and after looking at her for some moments and waiting for her to speak, he went and seated himself at his papers again. His back was turned to her – she began to hear the scratching of his pen. She remained near the door, with her heart thumping beneath her bodice; and she was very glad that his back was turned, for it seemed to her that she could more easily address herself to this portion of his person than his face. At last she began, watching it while she spoke.
“You told me that if I should have anything more to say about Mr Townsend you would be glad to listen to it.”
“Exactly, my dear,” said the doctor, not turning round, but stopping his pen. Catherine wished it would go on, but she herself continued: “I thought I would tell you that I have not seen him again, but that I should like to do so.”
“To bid him goodbye?” asked the doctor.
The girl hesitated a moment. “He is not going away.”
The doctor wheeled slowly round in his chair, with a smile that seemed to accuse her of an epigram1 though Catherine had not intended one. “It is not to bid him goodbye, then?” her father said.
“No, Father, not that; at least not forever. I have not seen him again, but I should like to see him,” Catherine repeated.
The doctor slowly rubbed his underlip with the feather of his quill.
“Have you written to him?”
“Yes, four times.”
“You have not dismissed him, then. Once would have done that.”
“No,” said Catherine, “I have asked him – asked him to wait.”
Her father sat looking at her, and she was afraid he was going to break out into wrath, his eyes were so fine and cold.
“You are a dear, faithful child,” he said, at last. “Come here to your father.” And he got up, holding out his hands toward her. The words were a surprise, and they gave her an exquisite joy. She went to him, and he put his arm round her tenderly, soothingly; and then he kissed her. After this he said, “Do you wish to make me very happy?”
“I should like to – but I am afraid I can’t,” Catherine answered.
“You can if you will. It all depends on your will.”
“Is it to give him up?” said Catherine.
“Yes, it is to give him up.”
And he held her still, with the same tenderness, looking into her face and resting his eyes on her averted eyes. There was a long silence; she wished he would release her.
“You are happier than I am, Father,” she said, at last.
“I have no doubt you are unhappy just now. But it is better to be unhappy for three months and get over it, than for many years and never get over it.”
“Yes, if that were so,” said Catherine.
“It would be so; I am sure of that.” She answered nothing, and he went on:
“Have you no faith in my wisdom, in my tenderness, in my concern for your future?”
“Oh, Father!” murmured the girl.
“Don’t you suppose that I know something of men – their vices, their follies, their falseness?”
She detached herself, and turned upon him. “He is not vicious – he is not false!”
Her father kept looking at her with his sharp, pure eye. “You make nothing of my judgement, then?”
“I can’t believe that!”
“I don’t ask you to believe it, but to take it on trust.”
The doctor continued quietly: “Of course; you can wait till I die, if you like.”
Catherine gave a cry of natural horror.
“Your engagement will have one delightful effect upon you; it will make you extremely impatient for that event.”
Catherine stood staring, and the doctor enjoyed the point he had made.


1epigram: a short, witty statement

Short story : Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolfe

Bullet in the Brain :: Tobias Wolff

Anders couldn’t get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid conversation put him in a murderous temper. He was never in the best of tempers anyway, Anders — a book critic known for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.
With the line still doubled around the rope, one of the bank tellers stuck a “POSITION CLOSED” sign in her window and walked to the back of the bank, where she leaned against a desk and began to pass the time with a man shuffling papers. The women in front of Anders broke off their conversation and watched the teller with hatred. “Oh, that’s nice,” one of them said. She turned to Anders and added, confident of his accord, “One of those little human touches that keep us coming back for more.”
Anders had conceived his own towering hatred of the teller, but he immediately turned it on the presumptuous crybaby in front of him. “Damned unfair,” he said, “Tragic, really. If their not chopping off the wrong leg, or bombing your ancestral village, they’re closing their positions.”
She stood her ground. “I didn’t say it was tragic,” she said, “I just think it’s a pretty lousy way to treat your customers.”
“Unforgivable,” Anders said, “Heaven will take note.”
She sucked in her cheeks but stared past him and said nothing. Anders saw that the other woman, her friend, was looking in the same direction. And then the tellers stopped what they were doing, and the customers slowly turned, and silence came over the bank. Two man wearing black ski masks and blue business suits were standing to the side of the door. One of them had a pistol pressed against the guard’s neck. The guard’s eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. The other man had a sawed-off shotgun. “Keep your big mouth shut!” the man with the pistol said, though no one had spoken a word. “One of you tellers hits the alarm, you’re all dead meat. Got it?”
The tellers nodded.
“Oh, bravo,” Anders said. “Dead meat.” He turned to the woman in front of him. “Great script, eh? The stern, brass-knuckled poetry of the dangerous classes.”
She looked at him with drowning eyes.
The man with the shotgun pushed the guard to his knees. He handed the shotgun to his partner and yanked the guard’s wrists up behind his back and locked them together with a pair of handcuffs. He toppled him onto the floor with a kick between the shoulder blades. Then he took his shotgun back and went over to the security gate at the end of the counter. He was short and heavy and moved with peculiar slowness, even torper. “Buzz him in,” his partner said. The man with the shotgun opened the gate and sauntered along the line of tellers, handing each of them a Hefty bag. When he came to the empty position he looked over at the man with the pistol, who said, “Whose slot is that?”
Anders watched the teller. She put her hand to her throat and turned to the man she’d been talking to. He nodded. “Mine,” she said.
“Then get your ugly ass in gear and fill that bag.”
“There you go,” Anders said to the woman in front of him. “Justice is done.”
“Hey! Bright boy! Did I tell you to talk?”
“No,” Anders said.
“Then shut your trap.”
“Did you hear that?” Anders said. “‘Bright boy.’ Right out of ‘The Killers.’”
“Please be quiet,” the woman said.
“Hey, you deaf or what?” The man with the pistol walked over to Anders. He poked the weapon into Anders’ gut. “You think I’m playing games?”
“No,” Anders said, but the barrel tickled like a stiff finger and he had to fight back the titters. He did this by making himself stare into the man’s eyes, which were clearly visible behind the holes in the mask: pale blue and rawly red-rimmed. The man’s left eyelid kept twitching. He breathed out a piercing, ammoniac smell that shocked Anders more than anything that had happened, and he was beginning to develop a sense of unease when the man prodded him again with the pistol.
“You like me, bright boy!” he said. “You want to suck my dick!”
“No,” Anders said.
“Then stop looking at me.”
Anders fixed his gaze on the man’s shiny wing-tip shoes.
“Not down there. Up there.” He stuck the pistol under Anders’ chin and pushed it upwards until Anders was looking at the ceiling.
Anders had never paid much attention to that part of the bank, a pompous old building with marble floors and counters and pillars, and gilt scrollwork over the tellers’ cages. The domed ceiling had been decorated with mythological figures whose fleshy, toga-draped ugliness Anders had taken in at a glance years earlier and afterward declined to notice. Now he had no choice but to scrutinize the painter’s work. It was even worse than he remembered, and all of it executed with the utmost gravity. The artist had a few tricks up his sleeve and used them again and again — a certain rosy blush on the underside of the clouds, a coy backwards glance on the faces of the cupids and fauns. The ceiling was crowded with various drama, but the one that caught Anders’ eye was Zeus and Europa — portrayed, in this rendition, as a bull ogling a cow from behind a haystack. To make the cow sexy, the painter had canted her hips suggestively and given her long, droopy eyelashes through which she gazed back at the bull with sultry welcome. The bull wore a smirk and his eyebrows were arched. If there’d been a bubble coming out of his mouth, it would have said, “Hubba hubba.”
“What’s so funny, bright boy?”
“Nothing.”
“You think I’m comical? You think I’m some kind of clown?”
“No.”
“Fuck with me again, you’re history. Capiche?“
Anders burst out laughing. He covered his mouth with both hands and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” then snorted helplessly through his fingers and said, “Capiche–oh, God–capiche,” and at that the man with the pistol raised the pistol and shot Anders right in the head.
The bullet smashed Anders’ skull and ploughed through his brain and exited behind his right ear, scattering shards of bone into the cerebral cortex, the corpus callosum, back toward the basal ganglia, and down into the thalamus. But before all this occurred, the first appearance of the bullet in the cerebrum set off a crackling chain of iron transports and neuro-transmissions. Because of their peculiar origin these traced a peculiar pattern, flukishly calling into life a summer afternoon some forty years past, and long since lost to memory. After striking the cranium the bullet was moving at 900 feet per second, a pathetically sluggish, glacial pace compared to the synaptic lightning that flashed around it. Once in the brain, that is, the bullet came under the mediation of brain time, which gave Anders plenty of leisure to contemplate the scene that, in a phrase he would have abhorred, “passed before his eyes.”
It is worth noting what Anders did not remember, given what he did remember. He did not remember his first lover, Sherry, or what he had most madly loved about her, before it came to irritate him–her unembarrassed carnality, and especially the cordial way she had with his unit, which she called Mr. Mole, as in, “Uh-oh, looks like Mr. Mole wants to play,” and, “let’s hide Mr. Mole!” Anders did not remember his wife, whom he had also loved before she exhausted him with her predictability, or his daughter, now a sullen professor of economics at Dartmouth. He did not remember standing just outside his daughter’s door as she lectured her bear about his naughtiness and described the truly appalling punishment Paws would receive unless he changed his ways. He did not remember a single line of the hundreds of poems he committed to memory in his youth so that he could give himself the shivers at will–not “Silent, upon a peak in Darien,” or “My God, I heard this day,” or “All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?” None of these did he remember; not one. Anders did not remember his dying mother saying of his father, “I should have stabbed him in his sleep.”
He did not remember Professor Josephs telling his class how Athenian prisoners in Sicily had been released if they could recite Aeschylus, and then reciting Aeschylus himself, right there, in the Greek. Anders did not remember how his eyes had burned at those sounds. He did not remember the surprise of seeing a college classmate’s name on the jacket of a novel not long after they graduated, or the respect he had felt after reading the book. He did not remember the pleasure of giving respect.
Nor did Anders remember seeing a woman leap to her death from the building opposite his own just days after his daughter was born. He did not remember shouting, “Lord have mercy!” He did not remember deliberately crashing his father’s car into a tree, or having his ribs kicked in by three policemen at an anti-war rally, or waking himself up with laughter. He did not remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredom and dread, or when he grew angry at writers for writing them. He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.
This is what Anders remembered. Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects, himself leaning against a tree as the boys of the neighborhood gather for a pickup game. He looks on as the others argue the relative genius of Mantle and Mays. They have been worrying this subject all summer, and it has become tedius to Anders; an oppression, like the heat.
Then the last two boys arrive, Coyle and a cousin of his from Mississippi. Anders has never met Coyle’s cousin before and will never see him again. He says hi with the rest but takes no further notice of him until they’ve chosen sides and someone asks the cousin what position he wants to play. “Shortstop,” the boy says. “Short’s the best position they is.” Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle’s cousin repeat what he’s just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he’s being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn’t it, not at all–it’s that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.
The bullet is already in the brain; it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall or commerce. That can’t be helped. But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, They is, They is.

Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to poetry by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the lightlike a colour slide

or press an ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem´s room

and feel the walls for a light switch

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author´s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

Is tie the poem to a chair with a rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

Future Continuous / Future Perfect : Theory

Future Continuous Profesora Diane Charo
Introduction
My father has many routines
Every morning , he gets up at 7 o’clock. He has his breakfast from 7:30 to 8 and then he reads the newspaper from 8 to 10.He loves reading the newspapers!. At 10:05 he goes shopping. When he arrives back from shopping, from 11 to 12 he prepares lunch.He has lunch from 12:05 to12:45. Then he sleeps a siesta from 1 to 3 in the afternoon.When he gets up from his siesta every afternoon ,he goes out into his garden.He kills ants from 3:05 to 3:30 and he waters his flowers from 3:30 to 4:30.Then he has his tea at 4:35.From 5 to 6:25,he visits his friends .Every evening , he has a shower from 6:30 to 7 p.m . He always shaves from 7 to 7:30 p.m.He has supper at 8p.m , and he watches T.V from 9 to 10 p.Finally he goes to bed at 10:05.He never changes his routine.

Study the affirmative sentences
Tomorrow at 7:15 he will be getting up.
At 7:45 he will be having breakfast.

Check the question forms and the answers
What will he be doing at 8:30 ?
He will be reading the newspaper.
Will he be killing ants at 10:10 ?
No, he will be shopping.

Now think:
Are we talking about the present, the past or the future .
Are we talking about actions that will be in progress in the future or actions that will be finished in the future ?
Are we talking about an action that takes a short or a long of time ?
So we can say that we use the future continuous to talk about actions that take a long time , are in progress, in the future.
Formation
How do we form the future continuous ? Will + BE + Verb....ing
Now you do the same with the other actions.


Future Perfect Profesora Diane Charo
Introduction
Suppose it is 9 o’clock on Monday morning.Will my father be having breakfast ?
No, he will have finished breakfast by this time.
By 9 o’clock he will have got up, he will have had his breakfast.
By 12:50 , he will have read the newspapers , he will have gone shopping , he will have had lunch.
What will he have done BY 7:30 p.m ?

Now think
Are we talking about the present the past or the future?
Are we talking about an action that is in progress or an action that has finished in the future , by a certain time limit ?
So we can say that we use the future perfect to talk about actions that have finished in the future
Formation
How do we form the future perfect ? Will + Have+ Verb (Past Participle form)
Now you do the same with the other actions.

Commentary on The Old Familiar Faces by Charles Lamb

Analysis of “The Old Familiar Faces” by Charles Lamb By Diana Charo
Charles Lamb wrote this poem when he was 23 years old.It is an Elegy.The rhythm is wonderful regardless of what it says, it is a pleasure to listen to it.It is made up of stanzas of three lines and each one contains an idea
There is repetition of the refrain. It relies on this repetition of structure to make the poem so sad.There is also repetition of long vowels and dipthongs .You just can´t read it quickly. It sounds like a bell tolling at the end of each stanza.We find the use of “cisura” an internal pause in the middle of the line to slow down the reading even more.
As we read through it we notice that the pull of the past is so strong that it does not allow him to enjoy the friends in the present.It seems involuntary, as if he can´t avoid the bitterness. We have the euphemism “taken from me” for death or separation .The person does not seem to have died but gone from life. What may embitter someone this way? A tragedy.in his life that he cannot overcome.He is in a fit of depression.We hear from him that childhood was a period of happiness, he was happy for a moment. We also have a lot of problems in our childhoods but then we tend to forget them and idealize this period. He had “cronies” which were not true friends just to go out together and have fun. We see that the different stages of life are over : childhood, adolescence.There is “Ghost-like… “ an inversion to forground the importance that he gave to this kind of the lifestyle. Must shows an obligation. It is closed Notice the use of hyperbaton. I left my friend .Does he feel guilty because he is alive and his friend is dead? Was there a love triangle in which the friend tried to steal his loved one from him? Was he senile? We must become co-authors according to how our imagination fills the holes. Again we have the pull of the past which has become a world of fantasy not the real world. Ask ourselves what kind of pull does your old house/school have on you .
“Earth seemed a desert…” It is a pathetic fallacy. He is sad, so sad that the world seems a desert. The moments when you touch rock bottom, you feel alien to the environment
“Why wert not thou…” There is an address. He is speaking to someone
At the time of writing, Lamb had written an extra stanza which he later chose to miss out.When we read it , we see that if he had included the missing stanza, the poem would have lost its universality.
“Where are the old familiar faces
I had a mother , but she died and left me
Died prematurely in a day of horrors
All, all are gone…”
Of course it was Mary Lamb who, when insane, killed their mother in 1796.
This poem touches two very old familiar Motifs or recurrent themes: The Tempus Fugit , or time flies and the Ubi sunt from Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerent? Where are those who were before us ? A phrase that begins several medieval poems in latin. The phrase evokes the transcience of life, youth, and human endeavour.One other famous motif is not included that is Carpe Diem
Listen to The Beatles : IN my life. This song includes the three recurrent themes or Motifs :
Tempus fugit
Ubi sunt
Carpe diem

The story behind the poem
Mary Lamb :Many know her name and her famous Tales from Shakespeare, but few know that ten years before that classic was written, when Mary Lamb was 31, she killed her mother with a kitchen knife. Her brother, then 21, whisked her into a private madhouse and promised authorities he would take care of her for the rest of his life. Thus began a lifetime of, as Charles called it, “double singleness,” during which time the brother and sister lived together, Mary caring for Charles as much as he cared for her. Some writers say she was her brother’s burden , without whom he would have been a much greater literary success. I challenge that view, believing that she is a noteworthy author in her own right and that the relationship of support between Mary and Charles was mutual. Although no one really knew how things happened, here is an extract of a fictional text that imagines what the evfents might have benn like:
The landlord dashed out of his front door, around to the stairway at the side. Taking the steps two at a time, he met the family’s apprentice girl flying down the stairs, her body akilter, face pinched in horror. She flung herself at him, pulled at him, called out, her eyes wide with fear, then with an inchoate shriek flew past him down the stairs, escaping the scene.
The door to the Lambs’ quarters stood wide open. The landlord hurried down the hallway to their front room. The smells of dinner -- roast mutton and turnips -- sweetened the air. The odor grew more pungent as the landlord looked in. The smell of warm blood stopped him short.
Elizabeth Lamb slumped unnaturally in her favorite chair at the window. A stain of red spread out from a ragged tear in her white muslin bodice. Above her stood her daughter, Mary Anne, eyes gleaming, mouth a taut rictus, suspended in a moment of thoughtless inaction. She held a bloodied carving knife on high.
Beside the body knelt the dead woman’s husband, John Lamb. He pulled desperately on her full skirts, helpless to undo the deed. Two trickles of blood ran down his face from a superficial wound above his left eyebrow. He glanced up at his daughter and cowered under the threat of the knife.
Gasps and wheezes came from the room’s far corner as a fourth family member, John Lamb’s elder sister, backed away in terror. She drew one long, rasping breath and collapsed with a muffled thump, breaking the paralyzed silence. The murderess glanced around as if coming out of a trance. Her muscles relaxed. Her face fell. Her hand dropped, still gripping the knife. She stepped back and drew a long, slow breath. Her eyes softened. She blinked and looked around her.
At that moment, a young man burst in through the door. Pushing past the landlord, he cried out, “Good God! Mary! What has happened here? Why?” Then, quickly, Charles Lamb reached around from behind his sister, taking hold of the knife in her right hand. She succumbed to his grasp and gave up the weapon willingly. In that moment, she rested in his strength. Gently, he seated her in one of the dining chairs she had just arranged. The joint of meat meant for dinner sat untouched in the middle of the table. The gravy had started to coagulate. Gray turnip globes sat trapped in a thin white sheet of fat.
Charles Lamb placed the knife on the table, beyond Mary Lamb’s reach, beside the leather case in which it was ordinarily stored. Slowly he moved around the room, assessing the chaos. All that could be heard were the meek sobs of his father, now crumpled on the floor and clutching his wife’s left ankle, and tense chatter from the hallway, where the apprentice girl had returned and was heatedly describing to the landlord what she had seen. The air was electric with the smell of blood and held breath.
Charles Lamb gathered the utensils scattered all over the wooden floor. Blood stains marked the carving fork’s tines. From its position in the room, Charles determined it to be the object that had struck his father in the forehead. He did not have to look at his sister to feel her spirit in retreat. She sat silently, sidelong to the table, just as Charles had placed her, motionless, staring downward. Only her hands moved, folding and unfolding, one then the other hand on top, fingers madly flying. Seizing one quiet moment, Charles sat in a chair facing Mary and took those wild hands in his. He looked intensely into her eyes. She dared to look back at him, face flickering with guilt and trepidation. Their eyes met, and for that one moment, she felt saved.

Analysis of Before the sun by Charles Mungoshi

Before[D1] the Sun Charles Mungoshi
Intense blue morning[D2]
promising early[D3] heat
and later[D4] in the afternoon,
heavy rain.

The bright[D5] chips 5
fly from the sharp axe
for some distance through the air,
arc,[D6]
and eternities later,
settle down in showers 10
on the dewy grass.

It is a big log:
but when you are fourteen
big logs
are what you want[D7] . 15

The wood gives off
a sweet nose-cleansing odour[D8]
which (unlike sawdust)
doesn’t make one sneeze.
It sends up a thin spiral 20
of smoke[D9] which later straightens
and flutes out
to the distant sky: a signal
of some sort,
or a sacrificial[D10] prayer. 25
The wood hisses[D11] ,
The[D12] sparks fly.
And when the sun
finally[D13] shows up
in the East like some 30
latecomer[D14] to a feast
I have got two cobs of maize
ready for it.

I tell the sun to come share
with me the roasted maize 35
and the sun just winks[D15]
like a grown-up.

So I go ahead, taking big
alternate bites:
one for the sun, 40
one for me.
This one for the sun,
this one for me:
till the cobs
are just two little skeletons[D16] 45
in the sun.
Charles Mungoshi: ‘Before the Sun’ Profesora Diane Charo
Background
Charles Mungoshi, born in the Chivhu area of Zimbabwe in 1947, is known for his novels and short stories,and poems including prize-winning children’s stories. He was the son of a farmer and in his boyhood he spent much of his time helping his parents in the fields. Often he would walk alone, herding cattle in the nearby forest. 'Almost always, the Mungoshi persona provides a private contemplative voice…with the aid of free verse and short,almost hesitant, cascading lines.There is a sense of a persona who sees without being seen and talks without rushing to suggest.'
Notes
All titles are like a handshake with the poems.In this case, we can predict something about the poem from it. The pronoun “before” with which the poem´s title starts, has a double interpretation as it can mean either time or place,so the poet presents to us a “pun” that is, a play with words that leads the readers to be open to two ways of reading the title and to expect any of the two interpretations, or the two at the same time . If we take it to indicate place, the poem is set in a place that is in front of the sun, as if it had been in honour of the sun, as if on a table that we might want to see as an altar because of the religious hints that we can find in the poem of a religious celebration .If we take it to indicate time , we can say that the poem is set in a period of time before the sun rises
In the first stanza there is a kind of a weather forecast. It is tropical climate or is he speaking metaphorically? The weather forecast given in the first stanza can be read as a metaphor for stages of life.
Surely you can explain in your own words i) ideas about youth suggested by the words "intense blue morning promising early heat" and ii) ideas about adulthood suggested by the words "later in the afternoon heavy rain". Is there relief?
The moment the poem starts it is before Dawn. It concentrates on visual images like “intense blue morning” .There are no verbs, it is all phrases not sentences.This makes you carry on reading
. It is a very sensuous poem. Touch and smell images abound.
The speaker is a 14 year old boy. He shows a great knowledge of the area. Heat and rain are what the crops need to develop.A young person also needs heat and rain.
The tone of a poem is seen in the attitude of the person speaking.In this poem we find a tone of optimism and self confidence.
In the next stanza we get a description of what he is doing. This second stanza describes wood chips flying from the log in a slow motion, the image is very precise and detailed and even the shape of the stanza communicates the action described. The single-word line "arc" has great impact because the poet makes his readers slow down in their reading and actually stop to watch the chip of wood arching in the sky.
Eternities: speaker is a very young person, because for the young people seconds are an eternity. He is impatient.He is exaggerating.
The vocabulary of this poem is deceptively simple .We say deceptively because it looks simple but it is really much more complex.The resonances of the words,are profound, as the boy, on the threshold of maturity but still a boy, communes with nature and the universe and intuits an understanding of life.
Stanza 3 :The language of this stanza is very simple but why do you think the narrator asserts "when you are fourteen big logs are what you want"? What does he mean? How does the placing of line breaks help to convey the boy's activity?
Stanza 4:What impression do the words ,"a sweet nose-cleaning smell" give you? Why do you think the comparison to sawdust is made?
Stanza 5: The boy has now chopped the wood and made the fire; this stanza describes the fire and the rising of the morning sun. Why is the stanza so much longer than the preceding stanzas?
The word "flutes" describe the straightening of the smoke spiral. What other significant connotations does the word have? the smoke rising is reminiscent of either a smoke signal or the smoke from a burnt offering.An offering is what appears in a mass, a religious celebration. In a religious celebration, the priest offers bread and wine. The wine comes in a wine glass, a kind of goblet with the shape of a flute
The smoke drifting upwards is described as "a signal of some sort, or a sacrificial prayer" suggesting the fire either carries a message or is a form of religious worship. What message might the fire carry? What type of prayer or religious idea is suggested to you? Does any type of sacrifice take place in the poem?
The sun is personified as the boy's guest, "finally shows up", "like some latecomer to a feast". Comment on the language used to describe the sun here. How is the relationship between the boy and the sun presented here? How does the boy seem to consider the sun - as a friend, an equal, or an important visitor?
Why do you think a simple meal of roasted maize cobs is alluded to as "a feast"?The idea of a sacrifice (‘sacrificial prayer’) is further developed in the boy’s offerings of the cobs of maize to the sun.
What does the placing of line breaks help to convey about the boy's actions in this stanza?
Comment on the impact of the final words of the poem, "just two little skeletons in the sun". Do you think the word "skeletons" just relates to how the cobs look or is another idea suggested?

• It is early morning before the sun has risen; the sky promises heat and then rain. What might the significance of this be for a boy on the threshold of adult life? Think both at a literal level and at a metaphorical level.
•Consider the persona’s description of the chopping of the wood in the second stanza. Read it aloud, slowly. How does the shape of the verse communicate the impact of the activity on the young boy?
What is the effect of the very short line 8?
• Look at the way the poet describes the smell and sight of the smoke. How does it reflect his mood and how does the poet communicate this to the reader?
• The smoke drifting upwards is like 'signal of some sort, or a sacrificial prayer'. Discuss your views about what the significance of this is. Does it bring in a religious dimension? Is this developed elsewhere in the poem?
• Consider how the boy interacts with the sun when it rises, looking at the way he speaks to it. What do you make of his wish to share the cobs with the sun? How does this action relate to the idea of sacrifice?
• The eaten cobs are ‘two little skeletons’. What is the effect of this image? Is it an effective metaphor for how the cobs look to the boy? Are there darker meanings at work? Compare their viewpoints with others in the group.
Thematic Links with set poems
Childhood: Rising Five; Little Boy Crying; Carpet-Weavers; Morocco; Plenty
Nature and mortality: Rising Five; She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Relationship with environment: Farmhand; She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Looking at language in more detail:
1) TIME
There are many references to time in the poem. Pick out all the language relating to time, consider the words and phrases you have identified and comment on how they help to present ideas about growing up and mortality.
The Distortion of Time. defamiliarizing literary devices
Active language enables the writer to slow down events effectively. The poet manipulates the reader's sensations by using highly descriptive language and emphasizing the actions as they occur. The distortion of time is achieved by means of slowing down actions and events, enabling the process and its implications to take precedence over the act itself. The defamiliarizing technique of time distortion transforms the simple task of cutting wood by incorporating details and active language. By slowing his prose down so precisely, the poet recreates the simple act of cutting wood, adding an element of importance to the movements and sensations involved. This slowing down of actions has an important overall effect on the reader because it emphasizes the centrality of the senses and begins to inform us of the poet's admiration for the African emphasis on sensation and emotion. Thus, the boy cutting wood is meticulously described, his actions slowed down, and time magnified so that he begins to take on a hyper-real existence.
2) THE SENSES
The poem contains may words and phrases relating to the senses. Identify language describing the senses and comment on the impression given. Why do you think the poet has chosen to describe what the boy sees, hears, smells and feels in so much detail?
3) VERBS
The poem is written in the present tense. Why is this choice of verb tense particularly effective for expressing the feelings and ideas of the poem?
Although we sense that the boy is very active in the first half of the poem, chopping wood and making the fire, he is not the subject of any verbs until near the end of the poem ("I have got two cobs of maize ready for it", "I tell the sun", "I go ahead"). In the first part of the poem the wood, the smoke and finally the sun are the subject of verbs, "bright chips fly...arc...settle", "the wood gives off ...sends up", "smoke straightens and flutes out", "wood hisses", "sparks fly", "the sun finally shows up". What impression does this use of subjects and verbs in the poem give?
The verb "fly" is used twice, what feelings are evoked by the word "fly"?
5) JUST & SOME
The determiner "some" is used several times in the poem, "some distance", "of some sort", like some latecomer". "Some" gives the nouns an unspecified quality and creates an informal tone. How does the effect of "some" contribute to the ideas or atmosphere in the poem as a whole?
"Just" is used twice in the poem, "the sun just winks" and "just two little skeletons". What is the function and effect of the word "just" in these two examples and in relation to the poem as a whole?
ESSAY QUESTIONS
Comment on the way ideas about the natural world are explored in this poem.
What is your impression of the narrator's character in relation to his environment? Discuss the aspects of language and style which convey the personality, feelings and thoughts of the boy.
Write about the importance of time in the poem.



[D1]This preposition might refer to place or to time. If we want to consider it as time, it would refer to dawn.It could also refer to period in life . If we want to consider it as place ,it means in front of, in the prescence of


[D2]childhood

[D3]adolescence

[D4]old age

[D5]visual imag

[D6]one word sentence highlighs importance of wod and slows down eading

[D7]they present a challenge

[D8]smell image

[D9]smoke signal

[D10]linked to title

[D11]onomatopoeic word

[D12]

[D13]shows impatience

[D14]friendly treatment

[D15]like an adult who joins in the fun

[D16]death

essay titles to revise before the exam

Explore the ways in which the Wordsworth presents Lucy in She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways.
Norman Nicholson uses childhood as a means of exploring other ideas in Rising Five. Identify the ideas of the poem and comment on the ways in which they are presented.
Explore the ways in which Mervyn Morris presents the relationship between a small child and an adult in Little Boy Crying.
How does James K. Baxter develop our understanding of character in Farmhand?
Comment on the ways in which ideas are presented in Before the Sun.
Explore the ways in which memories of childhood are presented in Plenty.
Comment on the ways in which changes in perspective between childhood and adulthood are explored in two of the following poems: Plenty, Rising Five, Little Boy Crying.
Explore the significance of the ways in which Liz Lochhead presents the Storyteller and Storytelling.
Consider the significance of the ways in which women are presented in two of the following poems: Muliebrity, Plenty, She dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways.
Consider the ways in which Charles Lamb reminisces and conveys regret in The Old Familiar Faces.
Consider the ways in which one or two of the following poems present ideas about social injustice and lack of liberty: Caged Bird, Song to the Men of England, Monologue, Spectator Ab Extra, Carpet weavers, Morocco.
Explore the ways in which Maya Angelou uses the caged bird metaphor to present her ideas.
Consider the ways in which one or two of the following poems present ideas about work: Song to the Men of England, Carpet weavers, Morocco, Monologue, Muliebrity, Storyteller.
Consider the ways in which one of the following poems present ideas about work: Song to the Men of England, Carpet weavers, Morocco, Monologue, Muliebrity, Storyteller.
Some poems create a sense of sadness. Which poem in your opinion does this most powerfully? Justify your choice by exploring in detail the words that make it so powerful for you.
Good poems have a way of encouraging readers to see things they have not seen before. Explore one poem from this section which has this effect on you, bringing out the words that encourage you to see the subject in a new way.
Some poems—such as Rising Five, Mid-term Break, and She dwelt among the untrodden ways—have death or dying as their subject. Consider the words of two such poems so as to bring out the poets’ feelings for the subject of their writing.
Sometimes a poem is centered on one apparently ordinary event or incident which the poet sees as having a deeper meaning. Look in detail at one poem where you think this is so, and show how the poet’s words create the deeper meaning.
Some poems paint a rather dark view of the world. Choose one of the following poems and show how it vividly conveys this view to you. Remember to support your ideas with detail from the poetry: Song to the Men of England; from Spectator ab Extra.
Comment on the ways in which Heaney presents the experience of grief in Mid-Term Break.
Explore the ways in which Sujata Bhatt presents her memory of the girl in Muliebrity.
Comment on the way the relationship between individuals and the natural world is presented in two of the following poems: Farmhand, Before the Sun, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways.
Comment on the way character is created in two of the following poems: Before the Sun, Farmhand, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, Spectator Ab Extra, Monologue.
Explore the ways in which the poet has used language and other poetic devices to present ideas in Caged Bird

useful to revise all the poems before your exam

WHICH POEM…?
Review of 15 poems from Songs of Ourselves


. Directions: Identify the poems described by putting the numbers of the poems in the blank.
__________ 1. Which poems have nature in them?
__________ 2. Which poem deal with social injustice and poverty?
__________ 3. Which poems deal with childhood or childhood memories?
__________ 4. Which poems are about an experience that the person remembers and holds as important: a pivotal moment or something s/he wants to remember always because it is special?
__________ 5. Which poems discuss the mortality of men?
__________ 6. Which poems have first person narration?
__________ 7. Which poems deal with work or working experiences?
__________ 8. Which poems address relationships between children and adults?
__________ 9. Which poems address the problems of getting along with others?
__________ 10. Which poems are written in iambic pentameter?
__________ 11. Which poems are free verse?
__________ 12. Which poems were written in the 19th century?
__________ 13. Which poems were written in the 20th century?
__________ 14. Which are portrayals of the lives of women?
__________ 15. Which poems were clearly affected by the background and/or training of the poet?
__________ 16. Which poems were written by women?
__________ 17. Of the poems listed above, which ones were written by poets who died young?
__________ 18. Which poems draw a portrait of an individual or character?
__________ 19. In which poems do the people struggle with a lack of freedom or choice?
__________ 20. Which poems are written by poets who were not from England?

B. Directions: Match the term with its meaning and give an example of each (if it has a line following it).
____ 1. Alliteration ______________________a. The mood of the piece—e.g., depressed, angry.
____ 2. Assonance______________________b. Something that stands for something else
____ 3. Metaphor_______________________ c. The main ideas or topics of the text
____ 4. Metric patterns d. The rhyming pattern in a stanza (e.g. AABBCA)
____ 5. Iambic pentameter________________e. A group of lines in a poem—like a poem paragraph
____ 6. trochaic tetrameter _______________f. Comparing things using “like” or “as”
____ 7. spondaic foot____________________g. a 14 line poem—with 2 stanzas: octave (8 lines) and sestet (6)
____ 8. onomatopoeia ___________________h. How formal or informal the text is—e.g. slang? formal?
____ 9. personification ___________________i. A word that sounds like the noise it is describing.
____10. simile __________________________j. Something inanimate is spoken of as though it were alive.
____11. sonnet k. The regular pattern of stressed & unstressed syllables in a poetry line
____12. symbol_________________________l. The atmosphere or feeling that a piece of writing creates.
____13. subtext m. The person telling the story.
____ 14. audience n. five iambic feet in each line
____ 15. rhyming couplet o. Something is described by comparing it to something else (but not using “like” or “as”)
____ 16. dialect p. four trochaic feet in each line
____ 17. image q. a picture to help the reader see something clearly
____ 18. emotive language r. People from different places have different versions of the same language
____ 19. mood s. a pair of rhyming lines in a poem
_____20. narrator t. Language and words used to make a reader feel a particular emotion
____ 21. stanza u. The people who read or listen to what is being said.
_____22. theme v. Words close to each other have the same vowel sounds
_____23. tone w. Words close to each other have the same initial consonant sound
_____ 24. rhyming scheme x. All the words are emphasized in the poetry line