AQA Relationships poems summary

A summary of poems from the AQA Moon on the Tides Anthology

1. Poetry – Relationships cluster summary
Poem Summary Themes Feelings Links to… Key quotes
‘The
Manhunt’ by
Simon
Armitage
- The narrator is the wife of a
soldier who has come home from
war with serous gun shot
wounds.
- It is more difficult to see and
understand his mental scars and
the problems these cause.

Pain and
suffering
Time (the
father will
not be able
to protect
his son as he
grows up)
Caring
Patience
Pain
‘Nettles’ - the
suffering of a
loved one


‘Praise Song’ –
relationship
between parent
and child
-‘the parachute silk of his punctured lung’
- ‘I picture the scan,/the foetus of metal’
- ‘ a sweating unexploded mine/buried deep
in his mind’
- ‘I come close’
‘Hour’ by
Carol Ann
Duffy
- Describes and hour spent between
the narrator and her lover
- The poet personifies time as love’s
enemy
- Love almost manages to make time
stand still
- Love against
time
- Fairy tale
love does not
last
- cherishing
the moment
- strong
belief in love
- Physical
pleasure
- ‘To His Coy
Mistress’ – time as
the enemy of love

-‘Sonnet 116’ – time
and love,
personification
- ‘Love’s time’s beggar’

- ‘For thousands of seconds, we kiss’

-‘Now. Time hates love,’

-‘Love spins gold, gold, gold from straw’
‘In Paris with
You’ by James
Fenton
-The narrator is upset about love –
he’s split up with someone and sees
himself as a victim
-He’s gone to Paris with someone
else, but still seems unhappy
- He doesn’t want to go out in the
city – he’d rather stay in the hotel
room
-Negative
emotions

-Hurt


-Self pity

-Bitterness

-humour

-lust
-‘To His Coy
Mistress’ – narrator
as seducer; humour

-‘Sister Maude’ –
anger

-‘Quickdraw’ – being
hurt by someone
-‘I get tearful when I’ve downed a drink or two’

-‘I’m a hostage’

-‘Don’t talk to me of love’

-‘all points south’
‘Quickdraw’
by Carol Ann
Duffy
-The poem compares phone calls
and texts in a relationship to a gun
fight in a western movie
-The narrator always seems to come
off worst, and is left hurt
-What ‘finishes her off’ isn’t cruelty,
but text message kisses, which hit
her like bullets
-Attitudes
towards love

-hurt
-Hurt

-Expectation

-Tension
-‘The Farmer’s Bride’
and ‘In Paris with
You’ – hurt from love

-‘The Manhunt’ -
communication
-‘like guns, slung from the pockets of my hips’

-‘your voice a pellet/in my ear’

-‘the silver bullets of your kiss’

-‘high noon, calamity, hard liquor/In the old Last
Chance saloon’

2. ‘Ghazal’ by
Mimi Khalvati
-The narrator is talking about intense
feeling of love
-In each stanza, she creates a new
message to portray love through
imagery
-Attitudes
towards love
-Lust
-Love poetry
(the ghazal
structure)

-Intense love
-playfulness
-Pleasure
‘The Farmer’s Bride’
and ‘Nettles’ and
‘Hour’ – natural
imagery

-‘To His Coy
Mistress’ and ‘Hour’
-lust
‘iron fist in the velvet glove’

-‘charmer, use your charm, weave a spell and
subdue me’

-‘don’t hand/on my lips’

-‘I’ll be twice the me’
‘Brothers’ by
Andrew
Forster
-The narrator remembers a moment
from childhood when he and his
older brother had to look after their
younger brother
-They are fed up with him, but
excited to be out on their own
-They send their younger brother
home to get the bus fare, then run
off, leaving him behind
-Family
relationships

-Sibling
relationships
-Frustration

-Guilt

-Freedom

-regret
-‘Nettles’ – reflecting
on a childhood
incident as an adult

-‘Sister Maude’ – an
unhappy event in a
sibling relationship
‘Saddled with you’

-‘spouting six-year old views’

-‘we must stroll’

-‘unable to close the distance’
‘Praise Song
for my
Mother’ by
Grace Nichols
-The mum in the poet was the whole
world to her child
-The narrator compares her mum to
water and food – vital for life
-Also compares her mum to moon
and the sun (both masculine and
feminine role in her life)
-Parental love

-Being
prepared for
life


-Gratitude

-Joy

-Prase
-‘Nettles’ – parent
child relationships

-‘Ghazal’ – natural
imagery
-‘You were water to me’

-‘deep and bold and fathoming’

-‘replenishing replenishing’

-‘Go to your wide futures’
‘Sonnet 116’
by William
Shakespeare
-Shakespeare is writing about how
constant true love is
-True love doesn’t change when
circumstances change
-‘He says that if what he says isn’t
true, then he never wrote anything
and nobody has ever been in love.
Since we know he did write and
people have loved, he’s saying his
words are true.
-Attitudes
towards love

-True love is
not fickle and
does not
change over
time
-Devotion

-Constancy

-True love
-‘To His Coy
Mistress’ – the
effects of ageing on
love

-‘The Manhunt’ –
constancy and true
love
‘Time’s fool’

-‘edge of doom’

-‘it is the star to every wand’ring bark’

-‘Admit impediments’
‘To His Coy
Mistress’ by
Andrew
-The narrator is telling the woman
that he loves that she shouldn’t play
hard to get – there isn’t time
-The passage
of time

-Impatience

-Urgency
-‘Sonnet 116’ – the
effects of time and
death

- ‘Deserts of vast eternity’

3. Marvell -The poem is structured into a three
part argument - the first part
explaining how much he would
worship her and what they would do
together if there was time
-the second part describes how
there is not time and shows what
will happen when they grow old
-the third part declares that they
must live for the moment , make the
most of their youth
-Seduction

-Death

-Physical
desire

-Reluctance

-‘Hour’and ‘In Paris
with You’ – lust and
physical love
- ‘My vegetable love should grow’

- ‘A grave’s a fine and pleasant place’

- ‘Now’

- ‘like amorous birds of prey’
‘The Farmer’s
Bride’ by
Charlotte
Mew
-The farmer has been married for 3
years, but his bride is still frightened
of him
-He tells the story of how the
relationship went wrong
-He finds her rejection almost
unbearable. By the end he seems to
be struggling to resist taking her by
force
-Unhappy love


-Frustration

-Desire

-Fear
-‘Hour’ and ‘In Paris
with You’ – love seen
as an intense
experience

-‘To His Coy
Mistress’ –
frustrated narrator
-‘Shy as a leveret, swift as he’

-‘Straight and slight as a young larch tree’

-‘poor maid’

-‘her hair, her hair’
‘Sister Maude’
by Christina
Rossetti
-The poem’s narrator has kept her
boyfriend a secret from her parents
– but her sister has told them about
him
-The narrator is angry with her sister
for this and her boyfriend’s death
-The narrator is also jealous that her
boyfriend may have desired her
sister
-Intense
emotions

-Family
relationships

-Sibling
relationships
-Betrayal

-Jealousy

-Anger
-‘Sonnet 116’ –
intense feelings

-‘Brothers’ – family
relationships
-‘comeliest corpse’

-‘Cold he lies, as cold as stone/ With his clotted
curls’

-‘shall get no sleep/ Either early or late’

-‘Bide you with death and sin’
‘Nettles’ by
Vernon
Scannell
-The narrator’s son has fallen in a
bed of nettles and is badly stung
-His father comforts him, then cuts
down the nettles. However, they
grow back two weeks later
-The story shows how parents can’t
always protect their children from
pain
-Feelings
about loved
ones

-Family
relationships
-Anger

-Revenge

-Tenderness

-
Helplessness
-‘Born Yesterday’ –
the hopes and fears
that adults have for
children

-‘Sister Maude’ –
anger; family
relationships
-‘regiment of spite’

-‘those green spears’

-‘blisters beaded’

-‘that fierce parade’

4. -The poet uses an extended military
metaphor to express the threat from
the nettles
‘Born
Yesterday’ by
Philip Larkin
-Larkin wrote this poem the day
after the birth of his friend’s
daughter
-He takes the fairy tale idea of giving
out wishes to a new born, but his
wish is not for great beauty or
exciting things – he wishes for
practical, useful talents which he
knows will help her most to be
happy (as Larkin knows how hard it
is to be happy)
-Priorities

-Family
relationships

-Happiness

-Surviving life
-Tenderness

-Scorn

-Realism

-Cynicism
-‘Sonnet 116’ – the
idea that beauty is
not necessary for
real love/happiness

-‘Nettles’ – an adult’s
hopes and concerns
for a child

-‘Hour’ – the fairy
tale is not important
for love – the simple
things count far
more
-‘Tightly-folded bud’

-‘May you be ordinary’

‘Not ugly, not good-looking’

-‘skilled,/Vigilant,flexible,/
Unemphasised,enthralled/Catching of happiness’