Poetry, that most subtle of arts, is annually turned into the Grand National of literature, with odds on who will 'come up' at Higher Level Leaving Cert. Get ready for lots more anguish now on the airwaves, Twitter and elsewhere, as the bookies' two favourites, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney, finished out of the frame this afternoon. Absurdly, the prescribed poetry, worth 50 out of 400 marks (only just over twice the Unseen Poem), dominates discussion nation-wide.
The more important single text, this time Hamlet for our candidates (almost all of whom tackle the exam at Higher Level), gave as its two options a discussion of the central character's 'madness' or the more general corrupted world (easy enough for anyone familiar with the rottenness of the state of Claudius's Denmark). The comparative modes were Vision and Viewpoint (the reader's attitude to a central character or the range of emotional responses in a reader) and Literary Genre (techniques in shaping memorable characters or the effects of setting in texts - which our candidates practised recently). All straightforward there. Sheenagh Pugh's 'The Beautiful Lie' was the Unseen poem ... [amended text on 08.06.2012 - see the author's point about the view in the first Comment below]. This was a very challenging one to tackle unseen, but concentrating on particular moments could take a candidate through.
And so finally to the infamous poetry section: Thomas Kinsella (decay and darkness), Adrienne Rich in the year of her death (powerful feelings, thought-provoking images), Philip Larkin (moments of sensitivity leavening disappointment and cynicism, and Patrick Kavanagh (unique poetic language). As has been the trend recently, these questions were more directed and specific than in the early years of the course.
No doubt there will be a fair amount of commentary on an 'unfair' paper, but this looks like a balanced, sensible test which properly tests the candidates, and no properly-prepared candidate will be upset by it.
Can I just mention that I am the writer of "The Beautiful Lie" and it is emphatically NOT "the story of a mother remembering her son's first lie". It is part of the point of the poem that it deliberately never identifies the people or their relationship; to try tio guess at it is misguided, but I can tell you for nothing that it was based on life, though fictionalised, and the people concerned were not mother and son.
ReplyDeleteSheenagh Pugh
Thank you, Sheenagh, for taking the trouble to comment, and we humbly stand corrected...
ReplyDeletei didnt think it was about a mother/son relationship at all, especially in light of the last few lines! i thought it was more about memory and how we construct our own ideas of what happened. im an englush teacher and am looking forward to asking my lc students what they thought of it.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely so, Anonymous. I do in fact refuse to answer the question I sometimes get in email, "who were the people?" because the whole point is that it's fiction; the reader will never know who the people were, or to what extent they even existed, rather than being created or reconstructed by the writer. We are licensed liars, that's our trade, and most enjoyable it is too.
ReplyDelete