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READ THIS
This is the story of sweetheart romance that has turned sour. She has left him but he cannot get her out
of his mind, dwelling on their breakup year after year, expounding on it regularly to all his friends. Now
it seems she really has gone, but still he talks about her . . .
ABOUT THE POET
Stephen Watson was born and educated in Cape Town. He has been described as "an intensely
regional poet" in that his poetry mostly deals with Cape Town and its environs where he has
spent most of his life.
It is possible to describe much of his poetry as focussing on Cape Town's winter where conditions are
dark and gloomy. In other words, Watson's focus is primarily on the darker side of human relationships
which happen when Cape Town is wet and depressive.
This poem definitely fits that description. But it is also about the inability to recover from betrayal, and the
inability to stop talking about it even when one's friends are no longer interested.
Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
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TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:
"It had been commonplace enough, for his time and place.
'He'd met her back in Durban, when she was still in school.
Within a month they'd set up house, her parents disowning her.
She'd leave their bed, a Berea flat, for one last year in school;
he for his job, as shipping clerk, on Durban's waterfront."
- What is the meaning of "commonplace"? (2)
[Need help?]
"Commonplace" means "lacking originality" or an "ordinary topic of conversation" or
an "everyday saying".
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- Why does the poet call his poem "Commonplaces"? (4)
[Need help?]
It would seem that the poet means all of the above ideas for "commonplace". Hence, the young
man lacks originality, and speaks about this affair so often that it has become his ordinary topic of
conversation, and is an everyday boring interest for him.
It is possible too that the experience that the young man is going through is commonplace. It is something
that most people experience but do not talk about. Or they experience it and they do talk about it.
It is possible too that the poet is hinting that most people's conversations are commonplace and boring.
The conversation in the poem is just one example of such a boring conversation.
Notice, however, that the poet uses a plural form of the word, something that is not usually done. And so
everything -- and there are so many things -- are not just commonplace but "commonplaces".
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- Why does the poet say, "He'd met her back in Durban" rather than "He'd met her
in Durban"? (4)
[Need help?]
The poet prefers to situate his poetry in Cape Town. By saying "he'd met her back in Durban" he
tells the reader that the young man is now living in Cape Town but the incident he talks about occurred
earlier while he was living elsewhere.
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- Why had her parents disowned her? (4)
[Need help?]
It was common (and possibly still is) for parents to disown their daughter when she moved in with her
boyfriend, especially when she was so young and still at school.
It indicates that the parents were ashamed of their daughter because she was displaying publicly that she
had no morals.
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"It takes four years, even five -- so the textbooks say --
to get over a bad jilting. So none of this surprised us much --
nothing like the day he mentioned, quite in passing,
he'd lost all contact with her, hadn't heard a word in months."
- What is the purpose of the dashes in the first line of this verse? (4)
[Need help?]
The dashes mark parenthesis, do they not? Parenthesis is the supplying of additional information
that is not entirely necessary to the sentence.
It is the saying of something extra, in this case that scholars say it takes some time to get over a jilting.
It is not necessary for us to know that, but the poet gives us that knowledge anyway.
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- Why would none of this news have "surprised us much"? (2)
[Need help?]
All his friends knew that it took quite some time to recover from being jilted and therefore they were not
at all surprised that the man should continue to think about it so much, although they were bored by his
conversation.
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- Explain what it was that did indeed surprise his friends. (4)
[Need help?]
What did surprise them was that one day -- quite suddenly -- the man appeared to have at last
recovered from the jilting.
They would have expected him to recover gradually, to talk less and less about his ex-lover. But the
opposite appeared to happen. One day he was still obsessed with her, the next he claimed he had quite
recovered.
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" 'She's history now,' he said, 'something over. Of the past.'
She was no more, by now, than one phrase among the many,
the plain and final phrases, all but painless, that consign
lives to the great rubbish-heap of anyone's past loves, dead hates."
- What does the repetition in this verse tell you about the man's current attitude towards his ex-
lover? (4)
[Need help?]
"Methinks the man doth protest too much!"
The repetition tells the reader that the man was still very much obsessed with the girl, that he was still
talking about her just as much. It was merely the focus of his argument that had changed.
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- Do you believe him when he says, "She's history now"? Explain. (4)
[Need help?]
I don't believe him. Do you?
As has already been said, one would have expected him to stop talking about his ex-lover gradually. His
apparent conversion has, however, happened far too suddenly.
And his repetition of the fact that he was over his obsession tells us quite clearly that he is still thinking just
as much about her.
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- What figure of speech is found in the words "past loves, dead hates"? Why is the poet using
this language device? (4)
[Need help?]
This is antithesis, is it not? Antithesis is the placing of words of opposite meaning close to one
another, in this case "loves" and "hates".
Why has the poet used antithesis? Is it because he wishes to point out that love and hate are often
inextricably entwined. One can love someone and then, suddenly, hate them.
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It is said that Stephen Watson's poems mostly deal with Cape Town.
- Is this true of "Commonplaces"? Explain your answer. (2)
[Need help?]
The poem does deal with Cape Town, does it not? The young man has moved from Durban to Cape
Town, and it is in Cape Town that he constantly tells his new companions of his "tragedy".
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