2. Poetry Anthology – Revision Session 3
Remember
Sonnet 116

3. Wednesday
Poem at 39
Wednesday
Piano/The Tyger
Wednesday
Remember/Sonnet 116
Wednesday
Telephone Conversation
Wednesday
Mother in a Refugee Camp
Wednesday If
Wednesday
Do Not Go Gentle

4. Themes (links) Love Family War Memories Hopes for the future Racism
Childhood
Conflict
Parent and child
Close relationship
Images of
Behaviour
Hopes and fears
Tell stories
Death
Life
Childhood
Memories
People
Pain and suffering
Thoughts and feelings

5. Quatrain 1 Remember me when I am gone away,
The focus of the poem is the opening word. We will explore the idea of memory.
Repeated but strengthened suggesting the finality of death
1st person focus
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
euphemism
2nd character introduced

6. Quatrain 2 Remember me when no more day by day
Reinforces the subject under discussion
Quatrain 2
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
2nd character seems to be controlling – not nec bad thing
Consider : why are these words set in opposition? What is suggested?
Not asking much – no need to memorialise

7. After the VOLTA Yet if you should forget me for a while
Highlights a new direction of thought
1st part of conditional sentence
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Imperative: strength
Conditional is completed. The poem has totally changed direction.

8. IDEAS? LOVE AND LOSS Attitudes to love
Compare with sonnet Here love should include allowing a partner to forget… a kindness. Shakespeare will suggest that love lasts until “the edge of doom”.
Nature of the relationship – the 2nd character is controlling. Does the first voice complain or simply comment?
Find links with other poems in the anthology…

9. Themes?
Love
Death
All
About
Remember is about the poet addressing her beloved and asking him to remember her after her death. She does give him her permission to forget her towards the end of them poem.
Memories
Message
To celebrate love and life rather than grieve for it.
Fade
Feelings of the speaker/voice/character
Acceptance of death
A deep and eternal love for her husband
She wants her husband to be happy even if this means forgetting her
Like
Language – poetic techniques – that link to the theme(s)
‘silent land’ = personification/metaphor – death
‘our future that you had planned’ = direct address – love
‘forget and smile’ = oxymoron = the real meaning of love
Soft
Structure
Repeated word ‘remember’
First octave (8 lines) tone of contemplation and the past
The volta (change in the sonnet) offers a different tone – she wants him to remember her
Rainbows
Reader response
True love is eternal
If you love someone you want them to be able to love someone else if you should part

10. Shakespeare says that love is constant and unchanging through any difficulties.
In line six, love is compared to the north star and Shakespeare says that love will not fade but will last forever.
Marriage of true minds is a metaphor for people who get on well intellectually.
love is timeless. The edge of doom refers to the religious notion of doomsday.

11. Imagery
“wandering bark”
“Tempests” are violent and windy storms. This suggests that love is challenging.

12. Themes?
Love
All
About
Sonnet 116 is about love in its truest form. He believes that love is built on understanding and trust.
Memories
Message
That true love should be able to withstand any problem and that the couple should be able to do this together.
Fade
Feelings of the speaker/voice/character
He feels that love should be built on trust
He feels that true love is almost unbreakable
Like
Language – poetic techniques – that link to the theme(s)
‘which alters when alteration finds’ = love
‘it is the star’ = metaphor
‘the edge of doom’ = religious reference/metaphor
Soft
Structure
Sonnet
Repetition
A journey through the relationship
Rainbows
Reader response
Love is something that should be easy, that it should be fair. True love is a meeting of minds rather than just an attraction.