Poetry quotes

errlloyd

Hey I made a list of the ones I am learning off for Bishop, anyone got anything similar for Longley, Rich or anyone else ?

The Filling Station

“oil-soaked, oil-permeated”

“Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit that cuts him under the arms”

“Several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him”

“Some comic books prove the only note of colour”

“esso—so—so—so”

“They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret”

“Somebody loves us all”


The Fish

“I caught a tremendous fish”

“Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wall paper”

“Wet and weaponless”

“like medal with their ribbons”

“a five-haired beard of wisdom”

“and victory filled up the little rented boat”

“until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

“and I let the fish go”


First death in Nova Scotia

“in the cold cold parlour”

“on his white frozen lake, the marble topped table”

“Arthur’s coffin was a little frosted cake”

“he was all white like a doll that hadn’t been painted yet”

“they invited Arthur up to be the smallest page at court.”



The Prodigal

“the sty was plastered halfway up with glass smooth dung.”

“he hid the pints behind a two-by-four”

“the lantern – like the sun, going away”

“the pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.”

“But it took up to go home.”

Dante

I've learned off most of Longley's poems....although I'm hoping Keats will come up!

Got a fair load for Keats,
may aswell type them out to help me remember although I know nobody will read them......

Bight Star:

"Bright star would i were stedfast as thou art not in lone splendour but hung aloft the night and watching with eternal lids apart like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite."

"Or gazing upon the mask of new soft-fallen snow upon the mountains and the moors"

"No, Yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, to fell forever its soft fall and swell, awake forever in a sweet unrest"

La Belle Sans Merci:

"The sedge hath wither'd from the lake and no birds sing."

"O what can ail thee knight-at-arms, so haggard and woe begone."

"I see a Lily on thy brow."

"With anguist moist and fever dew and on thy cheeks a fading rose fast withereth too."

"she look'd at me as she did love, and made sweet moan."

"The sedge hath wither'd from the lake and no birds sing" again

When I Have Fears:

"When i have fears that i may cease to be before my pen has gleam'd my teeming brain"

"before high pilled books, in character, hold like garners the fully ripen'd grain, or gaze upon the night's starr'd face and think i may never live to trace their shadows"

"Never have the relish in the faery'd power of unreflecting love"

and I'm yet to learn Ode to a Nightengale!

errlloyd

Thanks for that, I would read if I was doing Keats.

Fringe

People have got loads. I've only got some for Walcott.

St Lucia's First Communion
"pinned with their white satin moths"

Pentecost
"Better a jungle in the head than rootless concrete"

To Norline
"salt-sipping tern"
"and someone else will come."

Omeros
"watched the frigate steer into that immensity"

Endings
"as the foam drains quick in the sand"
"they fade"

Forgot the name but it's about the dead boy
"as if his closing grave were the smile of the earth"

The Young Wife
"she smiles that cancer kills everything but love" (something like that)

DDC1990

I know this is off topic a bit but what do people expect to come up.
We've been aiming towards:

Keats - Premodern
Walcott- Modern
Longley- Irish
Bishop- Female

Also how many are ye all studying?
I've only got Walcott so far with a few days to the exam!!!

errlloyd

I'm just writing answers, learning quotes and reading every single set of notes I can get my hands on. I also (this sounds too cheesy) recorded myself reading the quotes and play it on a loop, although the sound of my own voice will soon make me cry.

piggies

i haven't studied any english yet! leaving it all until sunday monday and tuesday, and wednesday after paper 1!
Hopefully everything will be fresh in my head then

turgon

Tbh, four (proper) quotes per poem and minimum four poems per poet is what id say if you wana score above C. So thats 80 quotes in total for five poets.

It will have helped if youve learned quotes all through the year, but its a bit late to be saying that

haloauto

I'm just learning the 10 or so I put into each of my personal response essays.
I'll just learn the quotes that Im actually able to thoroughly deal with.

Swizz

errlloyd wrote: »

Hey I made a list of the ones I am learning off for Bishop, anyone got anything similar for Longley, Rich or anyone else ?

Cool you gonna tie them in.

errlloyd

You what ?

jkbrackens11

Our teacher told us when they were at some meeting the chief examiner was saying that they would prefer to see a good detailed description of three or four poems as opposed to kind of a brief skimming through 5 or 6?

ImJohn

I think it's the opposite lol

QueenOfLeon

I find this site pretty good for Michael Longley: http://www.teachnet.ie/ckelly/

for critical commentary and linking in poems

errlloyd

Ok here is my list of important Longley Quotes...

/ means line break, however I only do it when I think its necessary for pronunciation, so err sometimes its there sometimes its not.

Badger

"Pushing the wedge of his body between the cromlech and the stone circle"

"He excavates down mine shafts and back into the depths of the hill"

"His path straight and narrow"

"Returns underground to die"

"A name that parishes borrow"

"It is a difficult delivery, once the tongs take hold"

"Vulnerable his pig snout, that lifted cow pats for beetles, hedgehogs for the soft meat"



Wounds



"Here are two pictures from my fathers head, I have kept them like secrets until now"

"First, the Ulster division at the Somme / Going over the top with '**** the Pope' / 'No Surrender!' a boy about to die"

"Screaming give em one for the Shankill"

"Wilder than Gurkas' were my fathers words of admiration and bewilderment"

"Next comes the London Scottish Padre / resettling kilts with his swagger stick / With a stylish backhand a prayer"

"Over a landscape of dead buttocks my father followed him for fifty years"

"At last a belated casualty"

"I am dying for king and country, slowly"

"I touched his hand, his thin head I touched"

"I bury beside him three teenage soldiers, their bellies full of bullets and Irish beer"

"Also a bus conductors uniform"

"By a shivering boy who wandered in"

"I think 'Sorry Missus' was what he said"



Wreaths



"He was preparing an Ulster fry for breakfast"

"A bullet entered his mouth pierced his skull"

"The books he had read, the music he could play"

"Later his widow took a hammer and chisel, and removed the black keys from his piano"

"He ran a good shop and he died serving even the death dealers"

"With holly wreaths for Christmas and fir trees on the pavement"

"Christs teeth ascended with him into heaven"

"Spectacles, Wallets, small change and a set of dentures"

"Before I can bury my father once again / I must polish the spectacles, balance them / upon his nose, fill his pockets with money / And into his dead mouth slip the set of teeth."




Last Requests



"But your lungs surfaced to take a long remembered drag"

"I thought you blew a kiss before you died / but the bony fingers that waved to and fro / Were asking for a woodbine"

"Thoughtfully, each one like a sacrament"

"I who brought peppermints and gapes only / couldn't reach you through the oxygen tent"




Ceasefire



"Laid out in uniform, read for Priam to carry / Wrapped like a present home to Troy"

"It pleased them both / To stare at each other's beauty as lovers might. Achilles built like a god, Priam good looking still"

"I get down on my knees and do what must be done / and kiss Achilles hand, the killer of my son"

Jack Sheehan

good ones to connect are: 'I touched his hand, his thin head I touched' and 'cradled like driftwood the bones of his dwindling father.'

xOxSinéadxOx

I know all of longely's poems and walcott's poems that I'm doing off by heart!

aine-maire

Walcott :

Sailor Sings to the Casuarinas

"trailing like masts the cirrus of torn sails"
"you would have to be colonial"
"the pain of history words contain"
"that we,by careful mimicry, might become men"

For Adrian
"vestal authority"
not a "goodbye" but a "different welcome"
"a wisdom,not a silence"
"I would not make you suffer,and you should know it"
"howling like statues"
"sitting in a corner of her pain"
"the muscle of a galloping lion or a bird flying low over dark canes"
"as if his closing grave were the smile of the earth"

A Letter from Brooklyn
"pellucid as paper"
"spidery style" "filament" "skein" < spider web metaphor
"as touch one thread and the whole web will feel"
"perpetually bowed"
he is..."doing greater work"
"God bless your tense"
"his yearly dying"
"he was called home"
"restores my sacred duty to the Word"
"again I believe / I believe it all, and for no man's death I grieve"

The Young Wife
"soothe the covers"
"armchair's ridge"
"drapes' dead foliage"
"valley of the shadows"
"clouds, though you wipe it clean!"
"like the wind clicking shut the bedroom door"
"the edge of that promise"
"the heart" blossoming "into grief"
the children "startle you when they laugh"
"close in space...a chair removed"
"loved and now deeper loved"
"the burden...on this heavier side of the grave"
"she sits there smiling"
"cancer kills everything but Love"

Pentecost
"better a jungle in the head / than rootless concrete"
"fireflies' crooked street"
"self-increasing silence of words dropping from a roof"
"a seraph"
"what...used to be called the Soul"

Endings
"things do not explode/they fail,they fade"
"like sunlight fading from the flesh"
"the silence that surrounds Beethoven's head"

Disclaimer: I just did that all from memory,so there may be a couple of mistakes...in which case I apologise!
Also,quotes aren't in order,unless you count order as the order they popped into my head...in which case they are.