Friday, March 12, 2010

O'levels: the flip side

" Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness


Traveling across the wet mead to me here


You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness


Heard no more again far or near"


The Voice, Thomas Hardy





Today was the second session of O' level literature "tuitions" I carried out for my brother.

This is truly something I never thought I'd be doing, but I have to say it was the fastest hour and half that went by in a long time. Whether that meant I was talking to much, or whether I actually helped A. in someway is a question I'd rather not over-analyze just yet.

As I read the first poem, inwardly gathering the multitude of metaphorical ramifications swimming through my head, my first high-strung utterance was cut off with matter-of-fact, thoroughly non-wishy-washy statement: "It's about his wife." My second [utterance] with: "She dies."

There were definitely a few other things that I learned - like the fact that you would never say "stanza 3," but only "third stanza." An outright rejection of Cafe Mocha (a clever way, I assured myself, of introducing my innocent to the wiles of caffeine and getting him to focus just that much more), and a summing of up of the dynamic T2F as "different," and Thomas Hardy, me and A. were out the door.

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