Insane
11-18-2013, 08:46 PM
I really need help with these two poems. I have researched and decoded as much as I can
but I'm not very good with poems like these.
I am suppose to find similarities and differences between the theme of the two poems.
I wrote that both poems say that all children have passion and creativity but the galvanization of education stamps them out as they joint he race to succeed. I'm not sure if this is correct..
I have many questions and I would really appreciate if someone who is good with English can assist me.
Poem: Portrait by Anne Marriott, & Examiner by F.R Scott
Portrait:
Book-thin behind the desk
with fingers rigid as pencils she stamps
stacks returns, read or unread
she cares not.
Bloodless as paper she, and lifeless as dead words on dull binding are her eyes,
looking not in or out, only seeing
date-print on card and flyleaf;
and mute
as volumes never off the shelves her tongue -
the rubbered pencils used to point
the novel overdue she scanty fine.
O life - love - something - burst the resisting doors -
ignore the silence sign - vault the tall desk
and on her locked blank pages
write a living tale.
Examiner:
The routine trickery of the examination
Baffles these hot and discouraged youths.
Driven by they know not what external pressure,
they pour their hated self-analysis
through the nib of confession, onto the accusatory page.
I, who have plotted their immediate downfall,
I am entrusted with the divine categories,
ABCD and the hell of E
the parade of prize and the backdoor of pass.
In the tight silence
Standing by a green grass window
Watching the fertile earth graduate its sons
with more compassion - not commanding the shape
of stem and stamen, bringing the trees to pass
by shift of sunlight and increase of rain,
for each seed the whole soil, for the inner life
the environment receptive and contributory -
I shudder at the narrow frames of our text-book schools
In which we plant our so various seedlings.
Each brick-walled barracks cut into numbered rooms, black-boarded,
Ties the venturing shoot to the master's stick;
The screw-desk rows of lads and girls
Subdued in the shade of an adult-
their acid subsoil-
shape the new to the old in the ashen garden.
Shall we open the whole skylight of thought
to these tiptoe minds, bring them our frontier worlds
and the boundless uplands of art for their field of growth?
or shall we pass them the chosen poems with the foot-notes,
ring the bell on their thoughts, period their play,
make laws for averages and plans for means,
print one history book for a while province, and
let ninety thousand reach page 10 by Tuesday?
As I gather the inadequate paper evidence, I hear
across the neat campus lawn
The professional mowers drone, clipping the inch- high green.
but I'm not very good with poems like these.
I am suppose to find similarities and differences between the theme of the two poems.
I wrote that both poems say that all children have passion and creativity but the galvanization of education stamps them out as they joint he race to succeed. I'm not sure if this is correct..
I have many questions and I would really appreciate if someone who is good with English can assist me.
Poem: Portrait by Anne Marriott, & Examiner by F.R Scott
Portrait:
Book-thin behind the desk
with fingers rigid as pencils she stamps
stacks returns, read or unread
she cares not.
Bloodless as paper she, and lifeless as dead words on dull binding are her eyes,
looking not in or out, only seeing
date-print on card and flyleaf;
and mute
as volumes never off the shelves her tongue -
the rubbered pencils used to point
the novel overdue she scanty fine.
O life - love - something - burst the resisting doors -
ignore the silence sign - vault the tall desk
and on her locked blank pages
write a living tale.
Examiner:
The routine trickery of the examination
Baffles these hot and discouraged youths.
Driven by they know not what external pressure,
they pour their hated self-analysis
through the nib of confession, onto the accusatory page.
I, who have plotted their immediate downfall,
I am entrusted with the divine categories,
ABCD and the hell of E
the parade of prize and the backdoor of pass.
In the tight silence
Standing by a green grass window
Watching the fertile earth graduate its sons
with more compassion - not commanding the shape
of stem and stamen, bringing the trees to pass
by shift of sunlight and increase of rain,
for each seed the whole soil, for the inner life
the environment receptive and contributory -
I shudder at the narrow frames of our text-book schools
In which we plant our so various seedlings.
Each brick-walled barracks cut into numbered rooms, black-boarded,
Ties the venturing shoot to the master's stick;
The screw-desk rows of lads and girls
Subdued in the shade of an adult-
their acid subsoil-
shape the new to the old in the ashen garden.
Shall we open the whole skylight of thought
to these tiptoe minds, bring them our frontier worlds
and the boundless uplands of art for their field of growth?
or shall we pass them the chosen poems with the foot-notes,
ring the bell on their thoughts, period their play,
make laws for averages and plans for means,
print one history book for a while province, and
let ninety thousand reach page 10 by Tuesday?
As I gather the inadequate paper evidence, I hear
across the neat campus lawn
The professional mowers drone, clipping the inch- high green.