Summer Homework 2

Greetings, Year 11!

I have returned from my holibobs (Lovely. Thank you for asking.) and will now share your second piece of work for me. This time we are going to try analyzing a piece of unseen poetry. It is worth pointing out now that going on Sparknotes will not benefit you in any way as you are training yourself to respond to a poem you haven’t seen. I would suggest printing out the poem and scrawling all over it personally, but then hey, I’m just the English Teacher…

Write about the poem and its effect on you.

You may wish to include some or all of these points: 

• the poem’s content – what it is about; 

• the ideas the poet may have wanted us to think about; 

• the mood or atmosphere of the poem; 

• how it is written – words or phrases you find interesting, the way the poem is structured or 

organised, and so on; 

• your response to the poem.                                                            [10] 

In The Can

Every second is a fishbone that sticks

In the throat. Every hour another slow

Step towards freedom. We’re geriatrics

Waiting for release, bribing time to go.

I’ve given up trying to make anything

Different happen. Mornings: tabloids, page three.

Afternoons: videos or Stephen King,

Answering letters from relatives who bore me.

We’re told not to count, but the days mount here

Like thousands of identical stitches

Resentfully sewn into a sampler,*

Or a cricket bat made out of matches.

Nights find me scoring walls like a madman,

Totting up runs: one more day in the can.

ROSIE JACKSON

*a type of embroidered picture

As part of your answer you might want to structure it using the Two Small People Very Wise In School Office approach we touched on last term. For the forgetful of you here is the structure to give you a hand.

Again, don’t kill yourselves with this task, just give me some fairly detailed bullet points under each heading and don’t forget to answer all the points in the question too!