The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

1)      What was the overall tone/mood of the collection?

2)      Thinking about the title poem “The Whitsun Weddings” – who is the speaker in the poem? What is your impression of the speaker? How would you describe his attitude to what he sees? Did the layout and the stanza breaks add anything to your reading of the poem?

3)      What function do you think Mr Bleaney performs in the poem Mr Bleaney?

4)      What impression did you get of Larkin’s views of humanity? Marriage?

5)      What was your favourite/least favourite poem? Why?

6)      Did you notice anything about the forms of the poems or the rhyme schemes?

7)      How did you feel about Larkin’s use of language?

8)      What do you think Larkin was trying to achieve in the poem about the shop “The Large Cool Store”? Are the shop and the clothes it sells analogies for something else?

9)      Did you notice any pre-occupations or emerging themes within the collection?

10)  Poems like “The Whitsun weddings” and “Nothing to be Said” give a sense of changing ways of life and the passing of time, how life ultimately leads to death – do you think Larkin does this effectively? Are lines like “Life is a slow dying” too melodramatic?

11)  Does the collection give away anything about the writer’s state of mind?

12)  Did you enjoy the collection as a whole? What did you particularly like/dislike about it? Did the order of poems work for you? 

13)  Larkin is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century – would you agree with this? Why?

The Water Table by Philip Gross

1.      Gross lays many of the poems out in unusual or irregular form (e.g. Amphora and The grounds). Did you understand why he chose each particular form? Do you think these poems are successful? Did you think that it worked better for some poems than others? Which (if any) did you think were more/less successful?

2.      Who or what did you think First Dog was in the poem First Things?

3.      The poem To Build a Bridge is a villanelle; did you notice any other traditional forms amongst the poems? Why do you think Gross chose a villanelle for this particular subject matter?

4.      There is a sequence called Betweenland that is spread out through the book – would you have  rather seen these poems together or do you think they work better spread out? Did you enjoy the sequence?Why? What was the gist of the sequence? Did you understand why the poems were connected?

5.      Gross often mixes the colloquial with the scientific e.g. "we've punched clean into heaven: snow- // dazzle plains of stratocumulus around us, the paleo-arctic…(Ice Man Dreaming); do you think this works? Did you like it?

6.      The Water Table won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize in 2009, do you think it was a good choice? Why?

Glossary

Jeremy Hooker  (Stilt City) – an English poet who lived for eleven years in Wales.

Amphora - An amphora (plural: amphorae or amphoras) is a type of vase-shaped ceramic container with two handles and a long neck narrower than the body. 

Visigoth (The Presence) - A member of the western Goths that invaded the Roman Empire in the fourth century a.d. and settled in France and Spain.

Gillian Clarke (Globe) – a Welsh poet and playwright.

The Rosetta Stone (Thinks Bubble) – an ancient Egytian piece of granite inscribed with words in two languages – Egyptian and Greek.

Petroglyphs – rock engravings.

The Cinder Path – Andrew Motion

1) Some of the poems in this collection are very conversational in tone – almost prosy – what effect does this have? Did you like it?
2) In some of the poems Motion uses very long lines, does this work? Did you like dislike it? Why?
3) Motion makes direct allusion (by name) to other poets (ie Robert Frost, Rupert Brooke) and he also echoes other poets like Andrew Marvell in poems like The Mower – did these poems work? Do you think footnotes or endnotes might have been beneficial or do they stand alone successfully?
4) There is an epigraph at the beginning of the book taken from Cinkante Balades by John Gower – why do you think there was no translation of this? Did you want one?
5) The last part of the book is made up of elegies to Motion’s father. How did you feel about these poems? Did you like them? Did they fit in with the general tone of the collection?
6) Did you notice anything about the form of the poems?
7) Did you notice any rhyme schemes? How did they work with the subject matter?
8) How did you feel about the group of sonnets about Harry Patch? Did they fit the subject matter? Would you have liked to know more about Harry Patch?
9) It has been said that some of these poems sound like poems written by a poet laureate – that they were written specifically to mention particular people or places. Did you notice this? Does it matter?

Rapture - Carol Ann Duffy

1. "Rapture" is a collection of love poems - what was your overall feeling about the collection? Did you enjoy it/dislike it? Why?
2. How did you feel about the two main characters (the writer and the addressee)?
3. What was the relationship like? Did it seem healthy/dysfunctional? Why?
4. How did you feel about the use of rhyme within the collection?
5. Duffy uses a lot of old fashioned and 'poetic' words in these poems (i.e. grace, pardon, gold) and these words crop up several different poems. What do you think Duffy was trying to achieve by using this type of  language? Does it work?
6. Did you have a favourite/least favourite poem? Why?
7. What do you think of Duffy's use of form in this collection - for example there are quite a few sonnets, does the form fit the subject matter? What did you think about the way that the poems were laid out on the page?
8. What was the cumulative effect of the collection on the reader? Is it too much/just right? How did it make you feel? 
9. Could you relate to the sentiments conveyed?
10. Did this book make you more likely/less likely to read another collection by the same author?
11. Carol Ann Duffy is the poet laureate, did this collection have any bearing on your feelings about that?

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

·         How did you feel about the inclusion of the notes? Were they useful or did you find them unnecessary?

·         What poetic effect do the first seven lines of the poem make?

·         How did you feel about the religious imagery within the poem?

·         Death by Water has been described as a lyrical interlude, a poem of serenity and a

       negative acceptance of death. What is your view?

·         What purpose do you think that the Tarot pack served within the poem? Do you think that this device worked well?

·         What effects do the words of the thunder have in the final section of the poem?

·         What does the poem show us about Eliot’s attitude to the past?

·         It has been said that Tiresias acts as the central consciousness of the poem – do you agree with this?

·         What do you think of Eliot’s description of people in the pub? Was it realistic or unrealistic? Is Eliot too detached from the lives of ordinary people?

·         At the end of The Fire Sermon Eliot breaks off his sentences – what effect does this have? Why does he end this section with the word burning?

·         Were there too many cultural and literary/biblical references within the poem or just the right amount?

·         What effect do the words of the thunder have in the final section?

·         How much do you think the sequence is a comment on the political/world events of the time?

Glossary

1. The Burial of the Dead

Stambergersee – a lake near Munch

Hofgarten – a public park in Munich

“Bin gar…” – “I am not Russian at all, I come from Lithuania, pure German.”

“Frisch…du”  - “The wind blows fresh towards the homeland; my Irish child, where are you waiting?” The lines are from the beginning of the opera Tristan and Isolde by Wagner.

“Ded…das Meer” – “waste and empty is the sea.” From Tristan and Isolde.

Madame Sosostris – there was a similar character to this in Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley.

“Those are pearls that were his eyes” – a line from The Tempest.

Mylae – a battle in the first Punic War between the Romans and the Carthaginians.

2. A Game of Chess

Laquearia – a panelled ceiling.

“The change of Philomel…” – Philomena was raped by her brother in law King Tereus and he cut out her tongue to stop her telling her sister. The Gods turned her into a nightingale.

‘jug jug’ to dirty ears – the song of the nightingale (from Elizabethan poetry), jug is also a form of sexual address.

3. The Fire Sermon

Waters of Leman – like the rivers of Babylon.

“Et, O ces…” – “And, O those children’s voices were singing in the dome!” from Parsifal by Paul Verlane.

4. Death by Water

Phlebus the Phoenician – according to Eliot a further aspect of Mr Eugenides the one-eyed merchant.

5. What the Thunder Said

Ganga – The Ganges.

Himavant – a holy mountain in the Himalayas between India and Tibet.

Datta – Give.

Dayadhvam – sympathise. Be compassionate.

Damyata – control.

Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis by Wendy Cope

1)      This collection has often been referred to as light verse (a label that Cope understandably dislikes) – do you think that this label is justified or not? Why?

2)      Some of the poems in this collection are parodies or pastiches of other poets (the Wasteland limericks, “A Nursery Rhyme” and “My Lover” for example). Did you think that these poems worked? Which was the most/least successful? Do you need to know the work of the parodied poet to understand them?

3)      What did you think of the sequence written in the voice of her alter-ego Joseph Strugnell? Did you like/dislike it? Why?

4)      Cope employs a range of traditional rhymed forms in this collection (triolet, Villanelle etc),  did you notice it? Did you like it/dislike it?

5)      What do you think was the intention behind this collection? Did you notice any themes?

6)      Did you discover any serious poems amidst the humour? Did you want more of these or less?

7)      The book is littered with references to artists, composers, scientists etc and these nestle alongside colloquial, everyday speech and modern consumerist references (eg Omo). Did you think that this mix and match style worked? Is Cope trying to be too clever? Does it alienate the reader?

8)      Did you want footnotes or a glossary for any of the references?

9)      What was your favourite/least favourite poem?

Seeing Stars by Simon Armitage

·         These poems have been called prose poems or story poems. How do they differ from normal poems? Are they poems or mini stories? Did you find this a satisfying form? If not why not?

·         Were there poems that you felt were more poems than others/or more stories than poems?

·         Did you think “Seeing Stars” was an apt title for the book? What does the title suggest?

·         Have you read anything else by Simon Armitage? If so how did this collection compare?

·         Some of the poems seem to be comic monologues or prose pieces but they have a turn or change near to the end where the poem becomes more serious or magical - “The English Astronaut” for example. Does this make them more like poems?  What effect do you think this change has on the reading of the poem? Is it effective?

·         It has been said that these pieces are more performance pieces than page poems – would you agree with this?

·         What do you think the poem “My Difference” is about? What do you think the difference is that the narrator refers to?

·         Which was your favourite/least favourite poem in the collection? Why?