Introduction
These notes are a brief analysis of the selected poems for IGCSE English Literature for the May/June 2014 examinations in the USA. They are intended for high-ability students, to aid discussion among themselves, or with their teachers.
Poetry is sometimes difficult to analyse and comment upon, as one person’s interpretation may not be another’s. Please be aware that the notes are my interpretation of each poem, and should be used in conjunction with other materials, resources, and worksheets to have the best results. Nonetheless, these notes can be a useful starting point for students and teachers, and to stimulate discussion for each poem.
Poetry selection:
From Songs of Ourselves: The University of Cambridge International Examinations Anthology of Poetry in English:
124 – The Bay, James Baxter
125 – Where Lies the Land?, Arthur Hugh Clough
127 – The Man With Night Sweats, Thom Gunn
128 – Night Sweat, Robert Lowell
129 – Rain, Edward Thomas
130 – Any Soul to Any Body, Cosmo Monkhouse
132 – From Long Distance, Tony Harrison
134 – Funeral Blues, W. H. Auden
136 - From Song of Myself, Walt Whitman
138 – The Telephone Call, Fleur Adcock
139 – A Consumer’s Report, Peter Porter
141 – On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book, Charles Tennyson Turner
142 – Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley
143 – Away, Melancholy, Stevie Smith
The Bay, by James Baxter
Background
James Baxter was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1926, and produced a large number of poems in his short life (he died at the age of 46). He wrote about New Zealand society and the landscape, about love, religion and myth. Baxter described his own poems as ‘part of a large subconscious corpus of personal myth’ and also commented that what ‘happens is either meaningless to me, or else it is mythology’[1].
Baxter struggled with alcoholism and yet continued to write. Religion was an important influence on his life, and he was baptized as an Anglican, and then as a Catholic, before taking on the spiritual aspects of Maori life. Although Baxter died early from a heart attack, he produced many poems of note, and he is still well known in New Zealand. This poem, The Bay, is one of his earlier published poems.
Structure and language
This poem is written in free verse, as there is no fixed metrical pattern, nor are there rhyming lines. The only noticeable rhymes within the poem come in the first stanza, in the middle of line 1 and at the end of line 3 (bay, say), and in the last stanza, in the middle of line 19 and at the end of line 20. In the first stanza, the word ‘say’ is followed by a colon to stop the reader and introduce the next thought. Again Baxter uses ‘bay’ in the middle of line 19, and then ‘away’ as the last word of the stanza. This has the effect of making the sounds of ‘bay’ and ‘say’, or ‘bay’ and ‘away’ resonate a little longer in the reader’s mind – perhaps an intentional emphasis of the poet.
The poem consists of six lines in the first two stanzas and then eight lines in the last stanza. Baxter uses colons to abruptly stop a thought and introduce a musing in lines 4 and 6; commas within a line also give the reader pause for thought, and perhaps to take in the imagery that Baxter presents (see lines 5, 11, 12, and 14). This shows a feature called caesura, and enjambment (the running of one line to the next) is frequently found with caesura.
Reading the poem as if someone was reminiscing about the past helps to understand how Baxter might have written this or spoken the poem aloud. It also makes it more obvious to see the transition in mood between the three stanzas – the first introduces the bay and the child’s memories, as well as hinting at a certain melancholy; the second stanza further describes the child’s memories; and the last stanza jolts the reader and poet back to the reality of the present time.
For effect, Baxter uses alliteration ‘cliffs with carved names’ (l.7), ‘boats from the banks’ (l.9), ‘carved cliffs’ (l.11), ‘thousand times’ (l.13), ‘stand like stone’ (l.20) – all examples can be used to emphasise the images, such as the harsh ‘c’ sound of cut cliffs with carved names, or to emphasise the words such as ‘thousand times’ (hyperbole - an exaggeration).
Baxter’s only simile in the poem, ‘stand like stone’ (l.20) can be felt from either the child’s or grown man’s perspective. More important to Baxter than personification, or other abstract forms of figurative language, it appears important to the poet to make this childhood place vivid and true to the reader (as it might have been to him). So, each stanza is peppered with descriptive terms, such as:
‘a lake of rushes where we bathed’ (l.1-2)
‘changed in the bamboos’ (l.2)
‘the alley overgrown’ (l.5)
‘cliffs with carved names’ (l.7)
‘beside the Maori ovens’ (l.8)
‘banks of the pumice creek’ (l.9)
and so on
Tone
To define this poem, it could be argued that it is a lyrical elegy. That is, it is a songlike poem that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet, and is elegiac as Baxter mourns something lost (his childhood perspective, simpler pleasures, wasted time?).
At first glance, it seems to be a straightforward description of a childhood playground, but there is a hint of conflict, or retrospect, as in ‘How many roads we take that lead to Nowhere’ (l.4). This also has a similar theme to Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, and Thomas Hood’s Past and Present.Does Baxter feel that time has been wasted in childhood, or mistakes made in the paths taken in his present life? This conflict is also presented in line 6, ‘Not that veritable garden where everything comes easy’. Is this a reference to Eden, and the fact that he sees his Eden is as lost as his childhood? The ambiguity that Baxter introduces in the stanza may be as much for his own benefit as for the readers, who will draw their own conclusions based off their particular experiences.
The second stanza also has conflicting tones – that of wistful memories of racing boats or swimming, and of the physically colder memories of ‘autumnal shallows growing cold in amber water’ (l.10-11) or of the menacing Maori ‘taniwha’ (l.12). It appears that Baxter cannot shake the more sombre adult perspective from his childhood memories, as the third stanza shows evidence of the ominous ‘little spiders’ (l. 13) that are in fact ‘poisonous and quick’ (l.14).
The third stanza also reveals that perhaps the bay ‘never was’ (l.19), but he remembers it in this poem – perhaps Baxter remembers an idealised childhood, or wants to remember and stay in that moment, as he ends the stanza with a vision standing like stone and being unable to turn away.
Remember, tone is a very subjective aspect of a poem to analyse – my personal interpretation is based on my life experiences, and may or may not reflect the poet’s intention. Thus, one interpretation of Baxter’s poem may be of happy childhood memories, whilst another interpretation may read far more into the melancholy undertones of an Eden lost as the child grows up.
Themes
There are a few themes here that can be expanded upon by using the poem to amplify meaning. Obvious themes include childhood memories, mourning lost innocence, conflict between childhood and adulthood. Link themes in with the way Baxter uses poetic form for meaning. For example, the first stanza could be spoken in an easy tone up to the third line. After that, lines 3-6 can be read in a more mature and clipped way, to highlight the change in thought from child to adult. Baxter’s words in lines 1-2 flow far easier off the tongue than ‘Now it is rather to stand and say’ (l.3) as the use ofconsonance slows speech.
The Bay
James Baxter
On the road to the bay was a lake of rushes
Where we bathed at times and changed in the bamboos.
Now it is rather to stand and say:
How many roads we take that lead to Nowhere,
The alley overgrown, no meaning now but loss:
Not that veritable garden where everything comes easy.
And by the bay itself were cliffs with carved names
And a hut on the shore beside the Maori ovens.
We raced boats from the banks on the pumice creek
Or swam in those autumnal shallows
Growing cold in amber water, riding the logs
Upstream, and waiting for the taniwha.
So now I remember the bay and the little spiders
On driftwood, so poisonous and quick.
The carved cliffs and the great outcrying surf
With currents round the rocks and the birds rising.
A thousand times an hour is torn across
And burned for the sake of going on living.
But I remember the bay that never was
And stand like stone and cannot turn away.
(1948 approx. date)
For further reading:
Thomas Hood, Past and Present
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Norman MacCaig, Summer Farm
Now make your own notes based on annotating this poem, using quotations, and categorizing your notes under headings like: poem summary/overview; structure and poetic devices; language; themes; tone.
Where Lies the Land? by Arthur Hugh Clough
Background
Arthur Clough (pronounced ‘cluff’) was born in 1819 in Liverpool but moved to the South Carolina,USA when he was a young boy. He travelled quite a bit as he went back to England for his education (aged nine) but also went to France, Italy, back to America and then back to England, as well as visiting Greece and Turkey. Inspiration for this poem came from his sea voyages as well as from a poem by William Wordsworth, as the first line to the poem is ‘Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go’.
Structure and Language
This lyrical poem has a recognisable structure, written in four quatrains (4-lined stanzas) with a very rhythmic metre. The metre is in iambic pentameter (favoured by Shakespeare and Chaucer), that is, five pairs of syllables (unstressed and then stressed). Each pair of lines rhyme at the end, and this is the particular style called heroic couplets.
Iambic pentameter is a common metre used in poetry, especially at the time that Clough was writing – it also requires thought and discipline to create a poem that follows such a structure. In this instance, using the rhythmic pattern of stressed/unstressed iambs and rhymes, Clough could also be subliminally mimicking the waves at sea on this voyage, thus doubling up the purpose of the poem’s structure.
Not only is the pattern and rhythm an important strength to the poem, Clough has used repetition to emphasise or reinforce meaning. You can see this as the first and last stanzas are repeated, so ‘topping and tailing’ the poem, or introducing and reinforcing the main theme of travel to the reader. In addition, each line is rhymed with the next, and such end rhymes resonate longer in the mind as a result. Clough liked the ‘oh’ sound so he repeats it in the second stanza (below, go) – different interpretations can be given for his purpose.
Poetic devices used by Clough include plenty of alliteration in each stanza, to create rhythm, and comfort in the repetition of sounds. This is to give an upbeat attitude towards travelling to unknown places, rather than introducing apprehension of the unknown. In addition, to add a more natural rhythm to the lines, Clough uses caesura and enjambment for effect. For example, ‘And where the land she travels from? Away’ uses caesura to give a pause after the question. Enjambment, where the line continues to the next line of verse with no pause in punctuation, is also used – ‘watch below the foaming wake’ is an example of Clough’s desire to keep the natural conversation going.
This poem can be interpreted at two levels, I believe, and as long as examples from the poem support the interpretations, both can stand as true. Firstly, this poem can simply be seen as a journey by sea from one port to another – we know Clough travelled and that he would have experiences as a result. So the first stanza is the start of the journey, with the travelers going ‘far, far ahead’ with the seamen. By leaving everything ‘far, far behind’, the travelers are leaving the comforts of home behind. The second stanza illustrates the good times on the ship with ‘sunny noons’, friends being ‘linked arm in arm’, ‘reclining’ and watching the waves ‘foaming’. The third stanza introduces stormy weather, ‘stormy nights when wild north-westers rave’ and shows how the seamen bravely face the storms. Their delight at getting through the bad weather is described by Clough as an exulted dripping sailor. The last stanza, which repeats the first, brings the traveler back to shore and to the beginning of his or her next journey – unknown to all, but also unafraid.
At a deeper level, Clough may have been using the imagery of the ship and the journey as a metaphor for life and the journey that we take. With this interpretation, the first stanza is the start of our journey, as we leave the comforts of home and leave our childhood behind. The second stanza then represents the good times in life, such as the ‘sunny’ times, friendship with arms linked, the ‘pleasant …pace’, and the relaxing state that we are in. Clough makes an effort to show that the traveler and sailors are enjoying the ride, enjoying life. The third stanza represents the storms and troubles that people undoubtedly face, and yet his perspective is proud and strong as we ‘fight’ and ‘exult’ when life’s battles are won. The last stanza, back to the beginning, is actually the start of another journey in life, with its ups and downs to come, that does not faze anyone taking the journey.
Linking this poem to a metaphorical journey of life can also be seen in Clough’s use of cycles (as in life). Time is illustrated with ‘sunny noons’ and ‘stormy nights’ and the pleasant unknown journey of life seems to be a trip that all want to take. It is as if being on the ship, or taking the journey of life in stride, is better than the destination, and that there will always be another trip to take (the complete cycle is portrayed by the identical first and last stanzas).
Tone
Though this journey, whether it is a simple ocean voyage or symbolic of life, is one where the destination is unknown, the tone is joyful, almost excited. The first stanza does not give clues to the destination, but Clough teases the reader as the seamen neither know nor can say much. There is also pride in the journey when it is hard, as the sailors (and the travelers facing trials in life) ‘fight wind and wave’ (either nature or life’s challenges). Their pride continues as they bravely exult in victory over the elements and ‘scorn to wish it past’.
Themes
Taken at a superficial level, the themes of travel, exploring, joy (with travel), living in the moment (the carpediem perspective) all come to mind. If the poem is interpreted as symbolic for life, the same themes run through as we take on the joy of life, exploring, seizing the day (good or bad) and doing it all over again.
Where Lies the Land?
Arthur Hugh Clough
Where lies the land to which the ship would go?a
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.a
And where the land she travels from? Away, b
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.b
On sunny noons upon the deck’s smooth face,c
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace!c
Or, o’er the stern reclining, watch belowa
The foaming wake far widening as we go.a
On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave,d
How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!d
The dripping sailor on the reeling maste
Exults to bear and scorns to wish it past.e
Where lies the land to which the ship would go?a
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.a
And where the land she travels from? Away, b
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.b
(1852)
Compare Clough’s poem to William Wordsworth’s poem, Where Lies the Land
For further reading, find Arthur Clough on this website:
Now make your own notes based on annotating this poem, using quotations, and categorizing your notes under headings like: poem summary/overview; structure and poetic devices; language; themes; tone.
The Man With Night Sweats, by Thom Gunn
Background
Thom Gunn was born in Gravesend, England in 1929. Both his parents were journalists, and Gunn remembers the house full of books. His parents divorced and his mother committed suicide, which were obviously traumatic experiences. Gunn went to Cambridge University and began publishing his poems, many of which had an existential thread running through them (about will, action, self-knowledge).