### SECTION A: UNSEEN POEM
**1.** Read the poem below and answer the questions that follow. **(30 Marks)**
> Two neighbours, who were rather dense,
>
> Consider that their mutual fence
> Were more symbolic of their peace
> (Which they maintained should never cease).
> If each about his home and garden
5
> Set up a more substantial warden.
> Quickly they cleared away the fence
> To build a wall at great expense;
> And soon their little plots of ground
> Were barricaded all around:
10
> Yet still they added stone to stone,
> As if they never would be done;
> For when one neighbour seemed to tire
> The other shouted: Higher! Higher!
> Thus day by day, their unease,
15
> They built the battlements of peace
> Whose shadows, like a gathering blot,
> Darkened on each neglected plot,
> Until the ground, so overcast,
> Became a rank and weedy waste.
20
> Now in obsession, they uprear;
> Jealous, and proud, and full of fear:
> And, lest they halt for lack of stone,
> They pull their dwelling-houses down.
> At last, by their insane excess,
25
> Their ramparts guard a wilderness;
> And hate, arousing out of shame,
> Flares up into a wondrous flame:
> They curse; they strike; they break the wall
> Which buries them beneath its fall.
30
### QUESTIONS
- a) What is the subject matter of this poem?
- b) Comment on the form of the poem.
- c) Identify four (4) figures of speech in the poem.
- d) The neighbours claim that their fences were symbolic of their peace — what does it really symbolize?
- e) Why does he make this contrast with the present scene?
- f) What is unusual about the phrase — Battlements of peace (line 16)?
---
### SECTION B: NON-AFRICAN POETRY (25 Marks)
**Answer ONE (1) Question from this Section**
#### WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS: SELECTED POEMS
2. With close reference to four (4) poems, discuss Yeats' fascination with 'beautiful lofty things'.
3. Yeats looks backward rather than forward in his poems. With close reference to three (3) poems, justify this assertion.
---
#### JOHN DONNE: SELECTED POEMS
4. With close reference to four (4) poems, examine the preoccupation of John Donne in his *Love Poems.*
5. Discuss the striking qualities of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. Refer to four (4) poems in his *Selected Poems.*
---
### SECTION C: AFRICAN POETRY (25 Marks)
**Answer ONE (1) question from this section**
#### JARED ANGIRA: SILENT VOICES
6. What do you consider to be the preoccupation of Jared Angira in *Silent Voices*?
7. Examine Jared Angira's fascination with issues of religion in *Silent Voices.*
---
#### DENNIS BRUTUS: LETTERS TO MARTHA
8. With reference to four (4) poems, discuss Brutus' *Letters to Martha* as a liberal ideological response to the apartheid system.
9. Comment on the title of the collection 'Letters to Martha'.
---
# IJMB Literature-in-English Paper III: Poetry — Full Answers
---
# SECTION A: UNSEEN POEM
## Question 1(a) — Subject Matter
The subject matter of the poem is **human folly, neighbourly conflict, and the self-destructive nature of fear and mistrust.** The poem narrates how two neighbours, initially at peace, allow paranoia, pride, and obsession to drive them into building walls instead of maintaining fences. What begins as a symbolic act of peace escalates into mutual destruction. The poem ultimately addresses how human beings, driven by fear and ego, destroy themselves and everything around them in the name of self-protection.
---
## Question 1(b) — Form of the Poem
The poem is written in **rhyming couplets** (AA BB CC pattern), giving it a regular, controlled structure. It has **30 lines** divided into **two stanzas** — the first stanza (lines 1–20) narrates the progressive building of the wall, while the second stanza (lines 21–30) depicts the climax of obsession and ultimate destruction.
The poem is written in **iambic tetrameter** (mostly four stressed beats per line), giving it a rhythmic, almost ballad-like quality. The consistent rhyme scheme ironically mirrors the neighbours' rigid, obsessive behavior. The structured form contrasts with the chaotic, destructive events being described, creating a sense of tragic inevitability. It can be classified as a **narrative poem** with **satirical undertones**.
---
## Question 1(c) — Four Figures of Speech
**1. Metaphor (line 16):**
*"They built the battlements of peace"* — The wall is metaphorically described as "battlements of peace," comparing their supposed peace-keeping structure to a military fortification. This is an extended metaphor running through the poem, where the wall represents conflict disguised as protection.
**2. Simile (line 17):**
*"Whose shadows, like a gathering blot"* — The shadows cast by the wall are compared to an ink blot spreading across the land, suggesting the creeping destruction caused by the neighbours' obsession.
**3. Irony (line 16):**
*"Battlements of peace"* is deeply ironic — battlements are military defensive structures associated with war, yet the neighbours claim to be building for peace. This irony reveals the contradiction in their actions.
**4. Personification / Imagery (lines 27–28):**
*"And hate, arousing out of shame, / Flares up into a wondrous flame"* — Hate is personified as something that awakens and flares like fire. This vivid imagery shows how suppressed shame transforms into destructive hatred.
**Bonus — Alliteration (line 29):**
*"They curse; they strike; they break the wall"* — The repetition of "they" creates a rhythmic, hammering effect emphasizing the frenzied climax of destruction.
---
## Question 1(d) — What the Fence Really Symbolizes
While the neighbours **claim** their mutual fence symbolizes peace and goodwill, the fence **actually symbolizes**:
- **False peace and superficial harmony** — the fence was only a thin boundary masking underlying tensions, insecurity, and distrust between the two men.
- **The fragility of human relationships** — just as a fence can be torn down and replaced, their "peace" was never deep or genuine.
- **The boundary of ego and pride** — the fence represents the invisible psychological barriers people erect between themselves out of pride and the desire to possess and protect.
In reality, the fence was not a symbol of genuine peace but of **separation, suspicion, and unspoken rivalry**. True peace would not need a warden or a wall to sustain it.
---
## Question 1(e) — Why the Poet Makes the Contrast
The poet contrasts the **initial state** (a simple fence, symbolic peace, manageable neighbourliness) with the **present scene** (a massive wall, obsession, destruction, and wilderness) to:
1. **Highlight the tragic irony** of human nature — what begins as a small, symbolic act of peace ends in catastrophic destruction.
2. **Satirize human foolishness** — the contrast shows how needless and avoidable the destruction was. The neighbours began with peace but manufactured their own ruin.
3. **Emphasize the theme of escalation** — the contrast shows how unchecked fear, pride, and obsession can transform something innocent into something monstrous.
4. **Create a moral lesson** — by showing what was lost (peace, productive gardens, homes) versus what exists now (wilderness, hatred, ruin), the poet warns readers against allowing pride and paranoia to govern human relationships.
The contrast serves as the poem's central argument: **human beings destroy the very peace they claim to protect.**
---
## Question 1(f) — What is Unusual About "Battlements of Peace" (Line 16)?
The phrase **"Battlements of peace"** is an **oxymoron** — it combines two contradictory concepts. "Battlements" are the defensive, toothed parapets found on medieval castles and fortifications, strongly associated with **war, aggression, and military conflict**. "Peace" is the complete opposite — the absence of conflict and hostility.
This juxtaposition is unusual and striking because:
- It **contradicts itself** — you cannot logically have a military structure that represents peace.
- It **exposes the self-deception** of the neighbours — they genuinely believe their aggressive wall-building is an act of peacekeeping, when it is in fact an act of war against each other.
- It functions as **the thematic heart of the poem** — the entire poem explores this contradiction: actions meant to protect peace that actually destroy it.
- It is an example of **paradox** — the wall meant to preserve peace becomes the instrument of their mutual destruction (line 30).
---
# SECTION B: NON-AFRICAN POETRY
## Question 2 — Yeats' Fascination with 'Beautiful Lofty Things'
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet whose work is characterized by a deep nostalgia for beauty, greatness, and the idealized past. His fascination with "beautiful lofty things" — a phrase from his own poem of that title — reflects his lifelong preoccupation with nobility, heroism, artistic excellence, and transcendent beauty.
**1. "Beautiful Lofty Things" (the poem itself):**
In this poem, Yeats celebrates specific moments of greatness he witnessed in real people — his father John Butler Yeats speaking defiantly in the Abbey Theatre, Maud Gonne at a public meeting, Lady Gregory, and Standish O'Grady. He elevates these people to the status of Olympian gods, comparing them to immortal figures. The poem is a meditation on how brief moments of human greatness become eternal. He sees in these ordinary moments a transcendent nobility — "Olympians" walking among ordinary mortals. His fascination is with how human beings can, in fleeting moments, embody something divine and lasting.
**2. "The Second Coming":**
Here Yeats expresses his longing for a lofty, ordered world by lamenting its collapse. The poem opens with the image of a falcon losing contact with the falconer — a metaphor for civilization losing its noble center. The "rough beast" approaching Bethlehem represents the destruction of everything beautiful, ordered, and elevated. Yeats' fascination with lofty things is implicit in his horror at their destruction — he loves beauty and order so deeply that their disintegration fills him with apocalyptic dread.
**3. "Sailing to Byzantium":**
This is perhaps Yeats' most explicit exploration of beautiful lofty things in the realm of art and immortality. Yeats sees Byzantium as a symbol of eternal artistic perfection — a place where art transcends the decay of the physical body. He contrasts the dying, sensual world of youth with the golden, immortal world of art. The "sages standing in God's holy fire" represent timeless, elevated artistic and spiritual achievement. His desire to become a golden mechanical bird — singing eternally — reflects his belief that great art is the highest, most lofty human achievement.
**4. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree":**
Here, Yeats' fascination with beautiful lofty things takes a natural, spiritual dimension. Innisfree represents an idealized, peaceful refuge — a place of spiritual elevation and natural beauty far from the noise of modern life. The poem elevates the simple, rural, and natural to a state of transcendence. The "bee-loud glade" and "midnight's all a glimmer" are images of profound natural beauty that Yeats elevates to spiritual longing.
**Conclusion:**
Across his work, Yeats consistently seeks to preserve, celebrate, and immortalize moments of human greatness, natural beauty, and artistic perfection. His fascination is rooted in his belief that beauty and nobility are eternal truths in a world of change and decay.
---
## Question 3 — Yeats Looks Backward Rather Than Forward
W.B. Yeats is fundamentally a retrospective poet — his imagination is anchored in the past: Irish mythology, personal memory, historical cycles, and a romanticized older world. Rather than embracing the modern age, Yeats consistently mourns what has been lost and seeks meaning in history, legend, and memory.
**1. "The Second Coming":**
Rather than looking forward with hope to the post-World War I era, Yeats looks backward to the Christian civilization of the past two thousand years, lamenting its collapse. The "rough beast" is not a symbol of future progress but of the destruction of an ordered, beautiful past. Yeats applies his cyclical theory of history (the "gyres") to argue that civilization moves in spirals — and the best is always behind us.
**2. "Sailing to Byzantium":**
Yeats explicitly rejects the present — "That is no country for old men" — and looks backward to the ancient Byzantine Empire as a model of spiritual and artistic perfection. He does not look to a future utopia but to a historical golden age where art and spirit were unified. His journey is backward in time, not forward.
**3. "Easter, 1916":**
In this poem, Yeats looks backward to memorialize the leaders of the Easter Rising — Pearse, Connolly, MacDonagh, and MacBride. Rather than speculating about Ireland's future, the poem is an elegy for the past and for the men who sacrificed themselves for an ideal. The repeated refrain "A terrible beauty is born" is both backward-looking (mourning the dead) and ambiguous about the future.
**Conclusion:**
Yeats was deeply suspicious of modernity and progress. His imagination was nourished by Irish mythology, personal memory, historical cycles, and classical civilization. He looked backward because he believed that truth, beauty, and nobility belonged to the past — and that the modern world represented a falling away from that greatness.
---
# SECTION B (JOHN DONNE)
## Question 4 — Preoccupation of John Donne in His Love Poems
John Donne (1572–1631) is the foremost metaphysical poet in English literature. His love poems are remarkable for their intellectual complexity, passionate argument, and the use of elaborate conceits (extended metaphors). His central preoccupations in his love poems include the nature of love, the relationship between body and soul, the power of mutual love, and the insignificance of death and separation to true lovers.
**1. The Nature and Supremacy of Mutual Love:**
In "The Good-Morrow," Donne explores how true mutual love creates a perfect, self-sufficient world. The lovers' bedroom becomes their entire universe — "one little room an everywhere." He argues that their love is so complete that it transcends the physical world. His preoccupation is with love as the highest possible human experience — more real than geographical discovery, more permanent than the physical world.
**2. The Relationship Between Body and Soul:**
In "The Ecstasy," Donne wrestles with the tension between physical and spiritual love. He argues that while souls communicate in a spiritual ecstasy, they must eventually return to the body — since souls need bodies to express and communicate love to the outside world. This reflects his metaphysical preoccupation: love is neither purely physical nor purely spiritual, but a union of both.
**3. Defiance of Separation and Death:**
In "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," Donne uses the famous compass conceit to argue that true lovers need not grieve separation. The two legs of a compass — one fixed, one roving — represent the lovers: though physically apart, they remain spiritually connected. His preoccupation here is proving that genuine love is not diminished by physical absence.
**4. Wit, Argument, and Seduction:**
In "The Flea," Donne uses the conceit of a flea that has bitten both the speaker and his beloved to argue that they have already been "joined" and that yielding to him involves no real loss. This shows Donne's preoccupation with using intellectual argument and wit as instruments of love — love as debate, logic, and persuasion.
**Conclusion:**
Donne's love poetry is preoccupied with elevating love to a philosophical, almost religious status. He treats love not sentimentally but intellectually, arguing for its supremacy, permanence, and spiritual dimension.
---
## Question 5 — Striking Qualities of John Donne's Holy Sonnets
Donne's Holy Sonnets represent some of the most powerful religious poetry in English literature. Written in the Petrarchan/Italian sonnet form, they are characterized by dramatic urgency, paradox, elaborate conceits, and intense personal engagement with God, death, and salvation.
**1. Dramatic Urgency and Direct Address:**
One of the most striking qualities of the Holy Sonnets is their intensely dramatic, direct address to God or Death. In "Death, Be Not Proud," Donne directly confronts and challenges Death, stripping it of its power and pride. The poem opens with a bold, defiant declaration — addressing Death as though it were a person to be argued with and defeated. This dramatic quality — almost theatrical in its intensity — sets the Holy Sonnets apart from conventional devotional poetry.
**2. The Use of Paradox and Oxymoron:**
Donne's Holy Sonnets are rich in paradox — contradictions that reveal deeper truths. In "Batter My Heart," he asks God to overthrow him in order to free him, to imprison him in order to liberate him, to ravish him in order to make him chaste. These paradoxes mirror the genuine contradictions of faith — that weakness is strength, that surrender is freedom, that death leads to life.
**3. Elaborate Metaphysical Conceits:**
In "Batter My Heart," Donne compares himself to a town captured by an enemy (sin), needing God to "batter" down the walls to recapture it. This extended military/siege metaphor is a characteristic metaphysical conceit — surprising, intellectually complex, yet emotionally powerful.
**4. Intense Personal Engagement with Mortality and Salvation:**
In "Death, Be Not Proud," Donne meditates on death and concludes triumphantly that death is not truly powerful — because after death comes eternal life, and "death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die." The sonnet reflects Donne's preoccupation with mortality, resurrection, and the Christian hope of salvation. The personal, confessional quality of the sonnets — the poet wrestling with his own sinfulness, fear, and longing for God — makes them deeply moving and psychologically complex.
---
# SECTION C: AFRICAN POETRY
## Question 6 — Preoccupation of Jared Angira in *Silent Voices*
Jared Angira (b. 1947) is one of Kenya's foremost poets. His collection *Silent Voices* reflects the concerns of post-independence East Africa, combining social critique with personal meditation.
**1. Political Corruption and Disillusionment:**
Angira's central preoccupation is the betrayal of post-independence African ideals. He examines how African leaders who inherited power from colonial rulers became oppressors themselves. He depicts a continent where political promises have been broken and ordinary citizens suffer under corrupt, self-serving governments. His poetry is a critique of the misuse of power and the silence forced upon the oppressed — hence "silent voices," those who cannot or dare not speak.
**2. Social Injustice and Poverty:**
Angira is deeply concerned with the plight of ordinary African people — the poor, the marginalized, and the voiceless. His poems depict the stark contrast between the wealthy ruling class and the suffering masses, highlighting economic inequality as a defining feature of post-independence Africa.
**3. Death and Mortality:**
Death is a recurring preoccupation in *Silent Voices*. Angira uses death not only literally but symbolically — the death of hope, idealism, and the promise of independence. His tone is often elegiac, mourning what Africa could have been.
**4. Identity and the African Experience:**
Angira also explores questions of African identity, the legacy of colonialism, and the search for authenticity in a post-colonial world. He engages with the tension between tradition and modernity.
**Conclusion:**
Angira's *Silent Voices* is fundamentally a collection of social protest — a poet giving voice to those silenced by political oppression, poverty, and injustice in post-independence Africa.
---
## Question 7 — Angira's Fascination with Religion in *Silent Voices*
Religion is a significant thread running through Jared Angira's *Silent Voices*, though his treatment of it is complex, critical, and sometimes subversive.
**1. Religion as a Tool of Oppression:**
Angira examines how religion — particularly Christianity introduced by colonizers — was used to pacify and control African people. He is critical of how religious institutions sometimes aligned themselves with political power rather than the poor and oppressed.
**2. Disillusionment with Religious Promises:**
Angira's poetry reflects a generation that was promised redemption — both political and spiritual — but received neither. He questions the efficacy of religious faith in the face of concrete social suffering and political tyranny. His "silent voices" are often people whose prayers have gone unanswered.
**3. Syncretism and African Spirituality:**
Angira also engages with the tension between imported Christianity and traditional African spiritual beliefs, exploring how Africans negotiate multiple spiritual identities in a post-colonial world.
**4. Biblical Imagery and Irony:**
He frequently employs biblical imagery — but often ironically, using the language and symbols of Christianity to expose hypocrisy and the gap between religious ideals and social reality. Leaders who claim religious sanction for their actions are satirized through the very biblical language they invoke.
---
## Question 8 — Brutus' *Letters to Martha* as a Liberal Ideological Response to Apartheid
Dennis Brutus (1924–2009) was a South African poet and anti-apartheid activist who was imprisoned on Robben Island alongside Nelson Mandela. *Letters to Martha* consists of poems written after his release, reflecting on his prison experience and the apartheid system.
**1. Humanization of the Prisoner:**
In poems such as "Letters to Martha 1," Brutus presents the prisoner not as a broken victim but as a thinking, feeling human being who retains dignity, memory, and intellectual life. This is a fundamentally liberal response — asserting the irreducible humanity of those the apartheid state sought to dehumanize. Liberalism insists on the inherent dignity of every person, and Brutus enacts this by giving prisoners an interior life that the state cannot imprison.
**2. Critique of State Power Without Revolutionary Violence:**
Unlike more radical responses to apartheid, Brutus' poetry does not call for armed revolution. Instead, he bears witness — he documents, reflects, and testifies. In "Letters to Martha 3," he describes the psychological strategies prisoners use to survive — small mental exercises, maintaining hope, holding onto humanity. This measured, non-violent resistance is characteristic of liberal ideology.
**3. The Value of Individual Conscience:**
Throughout the collection, Brutus emphasizes the importance of individual conscience and moral integrity in the face of state brutality. His poems reflect on how individuals maintain their values under extreme pressure — a liberal preoccupation with the moral individual against the oppressive state.
**4. Hope and the Possibility of Change:**
Brutus does not succumb to despair. His letters retain a note of hope — that injustice will eventually be overcome through persistence, moral witness, and human solidarity. This optimism about human progress and the eventual triumph of justice is a hallmark of liberal ideology.
**Conclusion:**
*Letters to Martha* is a liberal response to apartheid in that it resists through humanization, moral witness, and the assertion of dignity rather than through revolutionary ideology. Brutus protests not with a weapon but with a pen — insisting that the human spirit cannot ultimately be imprisoned.
---
## Question 9 — Comment on the Title 'Letters to Martha'
The title *Letters to Martha* is significant on multiple levels:
**1. The Epistolary Form:**
The word "letters" suggests personal, intimate communication — messages from one person to another. This gives the collection a confessional, human quality, as if the reader is allowed to read private correspondence. It makes the brutal subject matter of imprisonment and apartheid feel personal rather than abstract.
**2. Who is Martha?**
Martha was Dennis Brutus' sister-in-law. After his imprisonment, Brutus was forbidden by law from publishing his writings or having them distributed. By framing the poems as "letters" to a family member rather than as political poems for public consumption, Brutus found a way around this censorship. The title therefore represents **an act of resistance in itself** — smuggling political testimony in the form of private correspondence.
**3. Symbolic Significance:**
The name "Martha" also carries biblical resonance — Martha in the New Testament is the practical, grounded sister who attends to earthly needs while Mary contemplates the spiritual. This may suggest that the poems are addressed to someone who represents everyday human reality — grounding the spiritual and political suffering in concrete, domestic terms.
**4. Intimacy as Resistance:**
By addressing his poems to a specific, named individual rather than to an anonymous audience or a political movement, Brutus insists on the personal dimension of political suffering. Apartheid was not just a political system — it destroyed families, separated loved ones, and inflicted personal anguish. The title insists on this personal, human cost.
**5. Subversion of Censorship:**
The title represents Brutus' ingenuity in the face of repression — by disguising political poetry as personal letters, he subverted the apartheid state's attempt to silence him, making the title itself a symbol of the liberal values of free expression and the indestructibility of the human voice.