Religious themes

I agree with Artqueen when she says that On My First Sonne contains a lot of religious reference e.g. the idea that the poet committed a "sinne" to love his son so much.
Other poems with reference to religion could be Tichborne's Elegie, if only because he died for his religion, wanting Mary Queen of Scots, a Catholic, on the throne of England instead of Elizabeth.
There's also religious reference in Storm on the Island, if you want to see it as a metaphor for the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland (The Troubles), and in Clarke's poem A Difficult Birth, which refers to the Easter story (the stone rolled back from the tomb), and, I guess, to the Christmas story, in that it deals with a birth, and Jesus is called "Lamb of God" in the Anglo-catholic mass.
Any more ideas for links to religion in the anthology poems?

Seamus Heaney - use of sound

Heaney is known for using sound as a major literary device in his poetry. In Mid-Term Break, he talks about "counting bells nelling classes to a close", and the alliteration of the "c" gives the line a beat, just as a funeral bell has a steady beat.
Then the letter "c" is repeated in the next stanzas - his father is "crying", and the baby "cooing". All three sounds are linked by the "c", so that the alliteration stands out when the poem is read, and the reader connects them in his/her mind. Later, we have consonance of the letter "s" which is a quiet, shushing sound. The bedside is "soothed" and peaceful.
In Digging we have a "clean rasping sound", and the "squelch and slap", the "curt cuts" in which he uses alliteration to suggest the sound the spade makes as it goes through the earth.
Then you have Death of a Naturalist and all the delicate sounds of a childhood Spring day, followed by the ugly "coarse croaking" and the "slap and plop" of summer, and the day the frogs were mating.
If I was going to concentrate on the use of sound in poems, I'd compare any one of these poems with The Field-Mouse because Clarke uses sound in her poem too. The long grass is a "snare drum", and the air "hums" with jets, it's "stammering with gunfire".
She also uses metaphors of fighting and physical damage, "wounding my land" and the field "lies bleeding", and so does Heaney in Death of a Naturalist.

Death of a Naturalist

Heaney uses sound a lot in this poem.
Firstly, the enjambment makes you read it as if Heaney is speaking, so that it sounds as if he is sharing a childhood memory with you. Then it is divided into two sections - the first is a happy childhood memory, with sounds like bubbles which "gargle delicately", as if they are too polite to do it loudly, and the "gauze of sound" with another suggestion of delicacy, and the "z" sound, like the buzz of insects.
Heaney also uses alliteration, to make certain phrases stick in the mind, "jampotfuls of the jellied specks", which sounds like something sweet, and thus attractive.
Then there is the second stanza, with very different sounds.
The croaking is now "coarse" and the alliteration there makes sure we remember the nature of the sound. The "bass chorus" sounds like a choir, or the chorus of an opera, and bass voices do sound more powerful and threatening, and that is made clearer with "slap" and "plop", as heaney uses onomatopoeia to suggest the rather ugly sounds the frogs makwe as they move about in the flax-dam. The final sound is their "blunt heads farting" which suggests that their heads are their anuses - a disgusting image, and one that comes complete with the idea of a forbidden sound and a nasty smell.
It's interesting that his other poems incorporate childhood memories, or sounds; he clearly gets a lot of his material from his sense of sound, and from his childhood. Do you remember things via sound, or smell? Or are your memories mainly visual?
If I were to be asked to compare this poem with another in the anthology, I'd look for poems which include a lot of sound, or are to do with death or childhood memories.

The Laboratory

Browning has used a rather jaunty rhythm in this poem, which sounds almost comic in contrast to the subject matter. He also has his speaker move jerkily from one thing to another, as if she is distracted by what she sees around her in the chemist's shop.
Everyone's idea of the speaker will be different, but I see her as quite young, rather silly, and obviously with a jealous and vindictive nature.
There is a rather lengthy but comprehensive analysis of the poem here
and a powerpoint presentation which explains the subject matter and language in a simpler way here.
I'd be happy to hear any other ideas about the young woman in the poem, but Browning has certainly created a real character, and a believable setting for her.

On The Train

On the Train contrasts the everyday, "Darling, I'm on the train", that overused sentence you hear all the time from people on their mobiles, calling to tell wife or boyfriend that they are on their way home, with the horror of the Paddington rail crash, and the people who would never see their homes again, whose phones "ring in the rubble" while "wolves howl into silent telephones."

GillianClarke mentions 9/11 in the Q&A about this poem on her website, and there is something dreadful about the idea of mobiles still ringing after their owners are dead.
There is a useful analysis of the poem here.

When answering a question about this poem, I wouldn't spend too much time on 9/11, but if you make a reference to Clarke's own comment on her site, and share your own thoughts on the way mobile phones are used, you will be working towards an A/A* grade because you are showing that you are making connections, and setting the poem in a social context.

If I were going to compare this to one of the pre 1914 poems, I might compare it to On My First Sonne as it deals with mortality, and with love of family. Any other ideas? Which Seamus Heaney poem could you use as contrast to this?

On My First Sonne

I think you can link this with any one of several poems in the Anthology, but Catrin (because it's about the relationship between a parent and child) and Mid-Term break (because it's about the death of a child) seem the ones that you could talk most about.

For some help on the poems of Seamus Heaney, and a good Venn diagram showing links between his poems, try http://62.8.97.161/images/587-T2.pdf.

Both Johnson and Heaney really make me understand how terrible it is when the person who has died is a child. Although Johnson tries to come to terms with the death, suggesting that he son was only "lent" to him, and that he is lucky to have "scaped worlds and fleshes rage", meaning that his son has not had to deal with all the awful things that can happen to somebody during a lifetime, he is clearly devastated.

He says that his son was his "best piece of poetrie" and for a famous poet, presumably proud of his poems, this says it all. When he hopes that his son rests in "soft peace", I can see that he loved him. The word "soft" implies gentleness and quiet and I imagine his son asleep under a silk sheet.

Heaney creates a similar image in Mid term Break, when he talks about the snowdrops and candles, which "soothed" the bedside. To soothe somebody is to calm them and care for them, and again, I have this picture of a child asleep under a white sheet. The fact that the only sign that he has been hurt is the "poppy bruise" (another reference to flowers) on his temple, makes it seem even more likely that he is only asleep, not really dead.

However, it is the last line of the poem which really does for me every time.It makes the death so final, standing as a line all by itself at the end of the poem, "A four foot box, a foot for every year". It's such a poignant image - that small coffin - bringing it home to the reader that this was a very, very young child.

What Were They Like?

Look at this site for comparison suggestions and in-depth analysis of the poem....
http://www.boardthebard.com/attachments/1578.pdf

The poet uses simple questions and answers to describe what happened to the people and culture of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The horror of what happened is understated, the person replying to the questions always polite, always addressing the questioner as "Sir", while describing the horrors of the war, "there was time only to scream", in contrast to what had gone before, "when peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies".


One group of students performed this poem as if the questioner was a torturer/interrogator, and the person replying a victim. That brought out the hidden violence in the poem very well.
You only have to look at the picture here - Vietnamese children running from an airborne attack - to see the truth underlying the matter of fact tone of the poem.