Jonah and the Big Fish by Sharla Guenther

 Jonah and the Big Fish by Sharla Guenther

 

One day God asked a man named Jonah to go to a place called Nineveh and tell the people living there to stop being bad.  The only problem was that Jonah didn't want to help the people there.  He knew they were bad and he wanted them to be punished for their mistakes.

So instead of listening to God, Jonah thought he would run away from Nineveh and not do what God asked him.  He ran to the sea where he found a ship that was going to another city.  He paid the captain, went in the lower part of the boat and went to sleep.

Shortly after the boat left the shore, a very bad storm came up and started tossing the boat around.  All the men were very afraid so they started to throw all their packages and bags overboard in hopes that they wouldn't drown.

The captain soon went to find Jonah who was still sound asleep in the boat.  He said to Jonah, "How can you sleep?  Get up and pray to your god, maybe he can help us!"  The captain didn't realize that Jonah didn't just believe in any God but the one true God and that He could help them.

Meanwhile, the other sailors decided that the storm was Jonah's fault.  He must have done something wrong to make his god so angry.  So they asked Jonah, "What have you done?  What god do you believe in?  What can we do to make this storm stop?"

Jonah told them, "I believe in the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land and I am running away from something God asked me to do.  It is my fault this is happening.  If you throw me into the sea the storm will stop."

The men didn't want to hurt Jonah by throwing him off the boat so they tried to row the best they could, but the storm just got worse.  So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea.  The storm immediately calmed and the sea became still.  The men on the boat realized that Jonah believed in the one true God and prayed to Him.

Then the captain and the crew looked out to sea as a huge fish came and swallowed up Jonah.  God actually sent the fish to keep Jonah from drowning.  Jonah stayed in the fish for three days and three nights.

Just think for a second what it would be like to be inside a fish.  There are no windows, and lots of strange things floating around that you can't see because it's so dark.  Other than that I'm not sure what it would be like, but Jonah probably didn't know if he would ever see daylight again.

While Jonah was trapped inside the fish he did a lot of praying to God.  He asked God to forgive him for running away.  He also thanked God for not allowing him to drown.

After the third day God told the fish to spit Jonah out onto dry land.  And the fish did just that.  Jonah was happy to be out of the dark belly of the fish, but boy, did he need a shower.  He was slimy and smelly.

Then the Lord told Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh and tell the people there to stop being bad.  This time Jonah obeyed God and left for Nineveh right away.

When Jonah got there he told the people what had happened to him.  He warned them that God said that they should stop doing bad things or in forty days the city and everything in it would be destroyed.  To Jonah's surprise the people listened to him and they prayed to God and they said sorry for all the bad things they had done.

Soon the king of Nineveh heard what was going on and he ordered that everyone to listen to God and to stop doing bad things.  And when God saw that they were trying to good instead of bad He felt love for them and did not destroy their city.

That could be the end of the story except Jonah left the city very angry.  He was mad that God didn't punish the people.  He knew that God was a loving God and didn't want to destroy anything if he doesn't have to.

So Jonah went on a hill and sulked.  God saw Jonah and knew how he was feeling so he explained to Jonah that He loves everyone (after all He made us).  He doesn't like to destroy people who are doing things bad, God would rather see us turn from our bad ways and do good again.

An Easy Passage by Julia Copus

Julia Copus

An Easy Passage by Julia Copus

Once she is halfway up there, crouched in her bikini
on the porch roof of her family's house, trembling,
she knows that the one thing she must not do is to think
of the narrow windowsill, the sharp
drop of the stairwell; she must keep her mind
on the friend with whom she is half in love
and who is waiting for her on the blond
gravel somewhere beneath her, keep her mind
on her and on the fact of the open window,
the flimsy, hole-punched, aluminium lever
towards which in a moment she will reach
with the length of her whole body, leaning in
to the warm flank of the house. But first she
steadies herself, still crouching, the grains of the asphalt
hot beneath her toes and fingertips,
a square of petrified beach. Her tiny breasts
rest lightly on her thighs. – What can she know
of the way the world admits us less and less
the more we grow? For now both girls seem
lit, as if from within, their hair and the gold stud
earrings in the first one's ears; for now the long, grey
eye of the street, and far away from the mother
who does not trust her daughter with a key,
the workers about their business in the drab
electroplating factory over the road,
far too, most far, from the flush-faced secretary
who, with her head full of the evening class
she plans to take, or the trip of a lifetime, looks up now
from the stirring omens of the astrology column
at a girl – thirteen if she's a day – standing
in next to nothing in the driveway opposite,
one hand flat against her stomach, one
shielding her eyes to gaze up at a pale calf,
a silver anklet and the five neat shimmering
oyster-painted toenails of an outstretched foot
which catch the sunlight briefly like the
flash of armaments before
dropping gracefully into the shade of the house.

Answer the questions below. Support each answer with a short quotation from the poem.

 

1	What do you notice about the form of the poem? [shape, rhyme scheme, rhythm, line structure]
2	Who is speaking?
3	What is the setting? [physical surroundings, time of day, time of year]
4	What is the poem about? [narrative, description, reflection]
5	Identify important language features [phonetic techniques, imagery, language features]
6	How do these techniques influence readers?
7	Comment on a theme in the poem

Tell the story of the poem about the two girls?

How are the girls presented in the poem? 

Kamikaze by Beatrice Garland

Beatrice Garland

Kamikaze by Beatrice Garland

Her father embarked at sunrise
with a flask of water, a samurai sword
in the cockpit, a shaven head
full of powerful incantations
and enough fuel for a one-way
journey into history

but half way there, she thought
recounting it later to her children,
he must have looked far down
at the little fishing boats
strung out like bunting
on a green-blue translucent sea

and beneath them, arcing in swathes
like a huge flag waved first one way
then the other in a figure of eight,
the dark shoals of fishes
flashing silver as their bellies
swivelled towards the sun

and remembered how he
and his brothers waiting on the shore
built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles
to see whose withstood longest
the turbulent inrush of breakers
bringing their father’s boat safe

- yes, grandfather’s boat – safe
to the shore, salt-sodden, awash
with cloud-marked mackerel,
black crabs, feathery prawns,
the loose silver of whitebait and once
a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.

And though he came back
my mother never spoke again
in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes
and the neighbours too, they treated him
as though he no longer existed,
only we children still chattered and laughed

till gradually we too learned
to be silent, to live as though
he had never returned, that this
was no longer the father we loved.
And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered
which had been the better way to die.

Beatrice Garlarland reading Kamikaze

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos William

 The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

The Prelude [extract] by William Wordsworth

 The Prelude [extract] by William Wordsworth

One summer evening (led by her) I found

A little boat tied to a willow tree

Within a rocky cove, its usual home.

Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in

Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth

And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice

Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;

Leaving behind her still, on either side,

Small circles glittering idly in the moon,

Until they melted all into one track

Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,

Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point

With an unswerving line, I fixed my view

Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,

The horizon's utmost boundary; far above

Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin pinnace; lustily

I dipped my oars into the silent lake,

And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat

Went heaving through the water like a swan;

When, from behind that craggy steep till then

The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,

As if with voluntary power instinct,

Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,

And growing still in stature the grim shape

Towered up between me and the stars, and still,

For so it seemed, with purpose of its own

And measured motion like a living thing,

Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,

And through the silent water stole my way

Back to the covert of the willow tree;

There in her mooring-place I left my bark, -

And through the meadows homeward went, in grave

And serious mood; but after I had seen

That spectacle, for many days, my brain

Worked with a dim and undetermined sense

Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts

There hung a darkness, call it solitude

Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes

Remained, no pleasant images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;

But huge and mighty forms, that do not live

Like living men, moved slowly through the mind

By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

Horses by Pablo Neruda

Horses by Pablo Neruda

From the window I saw the horses.

I was in Berlin, in winter. The light
had no light, the sky had no heaven.

The air was white like wet bread.

And from my window a vacant arena,
bitten by the teeth of winter.

Suddenly driven out by a man,
ten horses surged through the mist.

Like waves of fire, they flared forward
and to my eyes filled the whole world,
empty till then. Perfect, ablaze,
they were like ten gods with pure white hoofs,
with manes like a dream of salt.

Their rumps were worlds and oranges.

Their colour was honey, amber, fire.

Their necks were towers
cut from the stone of pride,
and behind their transparent eyes
energy raged, like a prisoner.

There, in silence, at mid-day,
in that dirty, disordered winter,
those intense horses were the blood
the rhythm, the inciting treasure of life.

I looked. I looked and was reborn:
for there, unknowing, was the fountain,
the dance of gold, heaven
and the fire that lives in beauty.

I have forgotten that dark Berlin winter.

I will not forget the light of the horses.

Answer the questions below. Support each answer with a short quotation from the poem.

 

1	What do you notice about the form of the poem? [shape, rhyme scheme, rhythm, line structure]
2	Who is speaking?
3	What is the setting? [physical surroundings, time of day, time of year]
4	What is the poem about? [narrative, description, reflection]
5	Identify important language features [phonetic techniques, imagery, language features]
6	How do these techniques influence readers?
7	Comment on a theme in the poem

Comment on the use of the senses and elemental language in this poem

Pike by Ted Hughes

 

Pike by Ted Hughes

Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.
|
Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads –
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year’s black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: fed fry to them –
Suddenly there were two. Finally one

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two foot long.
High and dry in the willow-herb –

One jammed past its gills down the other’s gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks –
The same iron in his eye
Though its film shrank in death.

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them –

Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,

Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night’s darkness had freed,
That rose slowly towards me, watching.

Click here to hear Ted Hughes reading the poem Pike

Answer the questions below. Support each answer with a short quotation from the poem.

 

1	What do you notice about the form of the poem? [shape, rhyme scheme, rhythm, line structure]
2	Who is speaking?
3	What is the setting? [physical surroundings, time of day, time of year]
4	What is the poem about? [narrative, description, reflection]
5	Identify important language features [phonetic techniques, imagery, language features]
6	How do these techniques influence readers?
7	Comment on a theme in the poem

What does the poet or narrator of the poem think of the Pike?

Support your answer with evidence from the poem.

Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes

Ferruginous Hawk

Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.

No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this

Click here to hear Ted Hughes read Hawk Roosting