ADL002
UNIVERSITY OF BOLTON
BOLTON SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
BA (HONS) CULTURAL AND CREATIVE STUDIES
ENGLISH
SEMESTER ONE EXAMINATION 2016/2017
PERSPECTIVES OF POETRY
MODULE NO: EST5003
Date: Thursday 12th January 2017
Time: 10.00 am – 12.00 noon
INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES:
There are TWO sections to this
paper.
Write a short essay that gives a
‘close reading’ to ONE poem in
each of Sections A and B.
Start each answer in a fresh
answer book
Page 2 of 6
Bolton School of the Arts
English Studies
Trimester ONE Examination 2016/2017
Perspectives of Poetry
Module No. EST5003
SECTION A
Write a short essay that gives a close reading to one of the following four pre1940s poems. Remember: a close reading means to analyze the poem in fine
detail, to consider the ways in which form and content together are working
towards meaning.
Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
– They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing….
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter by Ezra Pound
After Li Po
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
Page 3 of 6
Bolton School of the Arts
English Studies
Trimester ONE Examination 2016/2017
Perspectives of Poetry
Module No. EST5003
Please turn the page
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed
You went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me.
I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Chō-fū-Sa.
Rain by Edward Thomas
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying tonight or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.
Page 4 of 6
Bolton School of the Arts
English Studies
Trimester ONE Examination 2016/2017
Perspectives of Poetry
Module No. EST5003
Please turn the page
A Chameleon by Marianne Moore
Hid by the august foliage and fruit of the grape-vine
twine
your anatomy
round the pruned and polished stem,
Chameleon.
Fire laid upon
an emerald as long as
the Dark King's massy
one,
could not snap the spectrum up for food as you have done.
SECTION B
Write a short essay that gives a close reading to one of the following four
Post-1940s poems. Remember: a close reading means to analyze the poem in
fine detail, to consider the ways in which form and content together are
working towards meaning.
Sad Steps by Philip Larkin
Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.
Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There’s something laughable about this,
The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)
High and preposterous and separate—
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
Page 5 of 6
Bolton School of the Arts
English Studies
Trimester ONE Examination 2016/2017
Perspectives of Poetry
Module No. EST5003
Please turn the page
Sonnet by Elizabeth Bishop
Caught – the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed – the broken
thermometer's mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!
Sonnet 13 by John Berryman
I've found out why, that day, that suicide
From the Empire State falling on someone's car
Troubled you so; and why we quarreled. War,
Illness, an accident, I can see (you cried)
But not this: what a bastard, not spring wide!...
I said a man, life in his teeth, could care
Not much just whom he spat it on... and far
Beyond my laugh we argued either side.
'One has a right not to be fallen on!...'
(Our second meeting... yellow you were wearing.)
Voices of our resistance and desire!
Did I divine then I must shortly run
Crazy with need to fall on you, despairing?
Did you bolt so, before it caught, our fire?
Applicant by Sylvia Plath
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Page 6 of 6
Bolton School of the Arts
English Studies
Trimester ONE Examination 2016/2017
Perspectives of Poetry
Module No. EST5003
Please turn the page
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
END OF QUESTIONS