TIME’S FOOL - PowerPoint Presentation

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TIME’S FOOL

BY RUTH PITTERSlide2

GET FLIRTY!!!

Focus on the

form

of the poem , looking at the structure, punctuation, line lengths and the arrangement of the poem’s stanzas. How do these features add interest and meaning to the poem? Also examine the arrangements of the words, phrases and sentences in the poem.Examine the language used in the poem, looking at the meaning of words and whether they have negative or positive connotations. Look at the techniques, imagery and poetic language that has been used? How do these techniques bring out the main themes and ideas in the poem? How does the poet make use of rhyme, repetition and rhythm? Why does he do this?What are the poet’s main ideas that he brings out in the poem and how does he do this? Explain the feelings that the poet conveys throughout the poem. Describe the poet’s attitude to his subject. Does this change as the poem progresses? Carefully examine the tone throughout the poem and find vocabulary to back up your discussion.How do you react to this poem? Does it bring any particular thoughts to mind? Which poems would you compare this one with?

F

L

I

R

T

YSlide3

FLIRTY

F –

3 stanzas / 6 lines per stanza, regular, conventional form.

Use of : (colon – to divide a line up) – and – (hyphen) to compound descriptions.L – heart/ youth / heat – kettle /candle / fire – personification “roots creeping” and “time’s fool” – “shoots up” / “vine” I – youth / things thrown away / things of use – plants and animals / things which have outlived their usefulness – negative connotations -“shoots up” / “vine” R – “comfort… was ... dry branchTYSlide4

RUTH PITTER

Her poetry was recognised by

Philip Larkin

who included her in his Oxford Book of Modern Verse, and by various awards including the Hawthornden Prize and the William E Heinemann Award. In 1955 she became the first woman to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. She was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1974 and was appointed CBE in 1979.Slide5

TIME’S FOOL

Time's

fool, but not heaven's: yet hope not for any return.

The rabbit-eaten dry branch and the halfpenny candleAre lost with the other treasure: the sooty kettleThrown away, become redbreast's home in the hedge, where the nettleShoots up, and bad bindweed wreathes rust-fretted handle.Under that broken thing no more shall the dry branch burn.Poor comfort all comfort: once what the mouse had sparedWas enough, was delight, there where the heart was at home:The hard cankered apple holed by the wasp and the bird,The damp bed, with the beetle's tap in the headboard heard,The dim bit of mirror, three inches of comb:Dear enough, when with youth and with fancy shared.I knew that the roots were creeping under the floor,That the toad was safe in his hole, the poor cat by the fire,The starling snug in the roof, each slept in his place:The lily in splendour, the vine in her grace,The fox in the forest, all had their desire,As then I had mine, in the place that was happy and poor.Slide6

Literal reading – Stanza 1Slide7

Stanza 2Slide8

Stanza 3Slide9

Background

Emma Thomas "Ruth"

Pitter

, (7 November 1897 - 29 February 1992) was a 20th century English poet. Career Pitter was born in Ilford (Essex). She worked in the War Office from 1915 to 1917, later working as a painter at a furniture company in Suffolk, Walberswick Peasant Pottery Co., where she worked until 1930.In Suffolk, she befriended Richard and Ida Blair, the parents of George Orwell, and later helped Orwell find lodgings in London in 1927, taking a vague interest in his writing, of which she was generally critical. Slide10

BACKGROUND

Later,

Pitter

and her life-long good friend, Kathleen O'Hara, operated Deane and Forester, a small firm that specialized in decorative, painted furniture. The business closed when WWII began. Pitter took work in a munitions factory. After the war, she and O'Hara opened a small business painting trays. Pitter was skillful at the flower-painting used in both furniture and tray decorating.From 1946 to 1972, she was often a guest on BBC radio programs, and from 1956 to 1960, she appeared regularly on the BBC's The Brains Trust, one of the first television talk programs.Slide11

Background

Pitter

began writing poetry early in life under the influence of her parents, George and Louisa (Murrell)

Pitter, both primary schoolteachers. In 1920, she published her first book of poetry with the help of Hilaire Belloc. Despite her business and factory work, Pitter managed to spend a few hours a day writing poetry.She went on to publish 18 volumes of new and collected verse over a 70-year career as a published poet. Many of her volumes met with some critical and financial success.She received the Hawthornden Prize in 1937 for A Trophy of Arms, published the previous year. In 1954 she won the William E. Heinemann Award for her book, Ermine (1953).Slide12

Background

Style and influences

Pitter was a traditionalist poet—she avoided most of the experimentations of modern verse and preferred the meter and rhyme schemes of the 19th century.Poet Pitter began writing poetry early in life under the influence of her parents, George and Louisa (Murrell) Pitter, both primary schoolteachers. In 1920, she published her first book of poetry with the help of Hilaire Belloc. Despite her business and factory work, Pitter managed to spend a few hours a day writing poetry. She went on to publish 18 volumes of new and collected verse over a 70-year career as a published poet. Many of her volumes met with some critical and financial success. She received the Hawthornden Prize in 1937 for A Trophy of Arms, published the previous year. In 1954 she won the William E. Heinemann Award for her book, Ermine (1953).Slide13

Background

Pitter

, in contrast to T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W. H. Auden, is a traditional poet in the line of George Herbert, Thomas Traherne, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, W. B. Yeats, and Philip Larkin. Unlike the modernists, she rarely experiments with meter or verse form, nor does she explore modernist themes or offer critiques of modern English society. Instead, she works with familiar meters and verse forms, and her reluctance to alter her voice to follow in the modernist line explains in part why critics have overlooked her poetry. She is not trendy, avant-garde, nor, thankfully, impenetrable. Don King, "The religious poetry of Ruth Pitter," Christianity and Literature, June 22, 2005Slide14

Background

Because of this,

Pitter

was frequently overlooked by critics of her day, and has only in recent years been seen as important: her reputation was helped by Larkin's respect for her poetry (he included four of her poems in The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse).She was a good friend of C. S. Lewis, who admired her poetry and once said, according to his friend and biographer George Sayer, that if he was the kind of man who got married, he would have wanted to marry Ruth Pitter. In correspondence between the two, Lewis often critiqued her work and made suggestions.[3] Pitter is considered by many Lewis scholars to have had an effect on his writing in the 1940s and 1950s.W. B. Yeats, Robin Skelton and Thom Gunn also appreciated Pitter's work and praised her poetry. Lord David Cecil once remarked that Pitter was one of the most original and moving poets then living.Slide15

Pitter’s

Christian Faith

Christian faith influences

Pitter described her spiritual debt to C. S. Lewis:“As to my faith, I owe it to C. S. Lewis. For much of my life I lived more or less as a Bohemian, but when the second war broke out, Lewis broadcast several times, and also published some little books (notably "The Screwtape Letters"), and I was fairly hooked. I came to know him personally, and he came here several times. Lewis's stories, so very entertaining but always about the war between good and evil, became a permanent part of my mental and spiritual equipment.”Letter, Ruth Pitter to Andrew Nye, dated May 18, 1985. “Did I tell you I'd taken to Christianity? Yes, I went & got confirmed a year ago or more. I was driven to it by the pull of C. S. Lewis and the push of misery. Straight prayer book Anglican, nothing fancy [...] I realize what a tremendous thing it is to take on, but I can't imagine turning back. It cancels a great many of one's miseries at once, of course: but it brings great liabilities, too. “ Letter, Ruth Pitter to Nettle Palmer, dated Jan. 1, 1948. (Cited in The anatomy of a friendship: the correspondence of Ruth Pitter and C.S. Lewis, 1946-1962, Don W. King Bibliography of works, 1945).Slide16

Questions for analysis

The poem resembles an

elegy

. Show evidence to support this idea.Consider the unattractiveness of much of the description – the ‘hard cankered apple’, the ‘damp bed’ and ‘dim bit of mirror’. Nevertheless, these were ‘Dear enough’. What do these descriptions suggest about ‘youth’ and ‘fancy’? (are they resilient, blind or self-deceiving?). Explain and support.What imagery is constructed in the first stanza and how does this establish the tone of the poem? Support your answer.How is the narrator’s existence described in stanza 2?How does the final stanza contrast the narrator with plants and animals? Consider the final line.To whom is the poem addressed? Who is ‘time’s fool’?Does the poem lament the loss of youth, a simpler former time, or a person with whom that time was shared? Slide17

Analysis

This gently elegiac poem recreates a time past, a time of simplicity. Just as the rhymes work from the outer lines to the centre, the description of this past time comes in the central stanza, the heart of the poem. Consider the unattractiveness of much of the description – the ‘hard cankered apple’, the ‘damp bed’ and ‘dim bit of mirror’. Nevertheless, these were ‘Dear enough’. Does this suggest that ‘youth’ and ‘fancy’ are resilient, blind or self-deceiving? Slide18

More analysis

The first stanza considers the present and its

imagery of neglect

establishes the tone of the poem, with emphasis on ‘lost’, ‘Thrown away’ and ‘no more’. The final stanza contrasts the narrator with animals and plants, each of which have their place and are ‘safe’, ‘snug’, ‘in splendour’. The final line connects them with the narrator’s existence described in the second stanza, ‘happy and poor.’ The reader might consider how convincing this comparison is, and to whom the poem is addressed. Who is time’s fool? Does the poem lament the loss of youth, a simpler former time, or a person with whom that time was shared? Slide19

Compare Time’s Fool to….

Elegy for My Father’s Father

One Art

Because I Could Not Stop for DeathCold in the Earth A DreamA Quoi Bon DireSlide20

Further Reading

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7081 Slide21

Essay Question

COMMENT CLOSELY ON THE FOLLOWING POEM, DISCUSSING WAYS IT

PRESENTS

THE EFFECTS OF THE PASSING OF TIME.=How does Pitter present the effects of the passing of time?What are the effects of the passing of time?What techniques are PRESENT?Implicit in this question – is this question.What is the purpose and relevance of this poem to:The poetThe society in which she livedMe, and / or the society in which I live