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."
- Why does the poet specifically mention the man's job and where he worked? (4)
[Need help?]
There is a class association with the man's job. A shipping clerk has always been associated with
"working class".
On the other hand, working at the harbour has also always had "lower class" connotations. The
poet is therefore associating the man and his lover with "lower class" society.
Is the poet being elitist by placing his poem within this class?
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- What is the implication of "She'd leave their bed"? Why does the poet not rather say, "She'd
leave their home"? (4)
[Need help?]
Speaking about "leaving their bed" paints a sordid sexual image of their relationship. The man and
his lover had built their relationship upon sex, not upon a loving and mutually comforting home
relationship.
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"Nor was it that unusual when one year to the day,
their young romance already old, she ran off with his best friend.
Six, seven years have passed since then. She's long since
left that friend as well. She never finished school."
- Comment carefully on the paradox found in the words, "their young romance already
old". (4)
[Need help?]
The couple were both young. Indeed, she was still at school. Their "romance" was only one year
old, which was still very young.
But, because it was sexually based, the couple had already tired of each other -- at least, she of him.
And so the romance which should have been still young, had already grown old even to the point of
extinction.
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- Explain the irony of "she ran off with his best friend". (4)
[Need help?]
When one thinks of "best friends", what images are conjured up? Trust? Faithfulness? Someone
in whom one can always confide. Someone who will always be there as a support?
And yet the best friend in this poem has betrayed all of this and has run off with the man's lover. It is the
ultimate of irony that a "best friend" can turn his back on such faithfulness, trust and support, and
stab one in the back.
The fact too that sexual intimacy is the deepest form of intimacy, the best friend's running off with the
man's lover is therefore also the severest form of betrayal.
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- Why does the poet mention "She never finished school"? (4)
[Need help?]
The fact that she did not finish school indicates a basic lack of application in the girl. She had moved in
with her lover and was supposed to continue studying while he supported her.
Instead she appears to have played around, and ultimately played around even with his best friend.
Somehow the expression "she never finished school" encapsulates all the fickleness that
punctuates her sordid little life.
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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."
- Explain the man's attitude towards his ex-lover. (4)
[Need help?]
The man is obsessed with his ex-lover, is he not? Six or seven years had passed since she had jilted him
-- long enough for the average person to get over it -- but he was still obsessed with her, still talking
about her and how perhaps they might get back together again. He simply could not let go and move on.
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- Why does the poet add the words "so the textbooks say"? (4)
[Need help?]
The words "so the textbooks say" are placed within dashes, are they not? This is called
parenthesis -- the adding of extra information that is not fully necessary to fulfill the meaning of
the sentence.
The poet also wishes to bring our attention to the fact that the accepted time of hurt is four or five years.
We and the man's friends, however, know that six or seven years have already passed by, far longer than
the average person needs to recover.
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- Explain what it was that did indeed surprise his friends. (4)
[Need help?]
His friends are surprised because the man seems to have changed quite suddenly and unexpectedly.
One would have expected the change to occur over months. Yet one minute he was moping over the
woman and the next he was claiming that she meant nothing to him any more.
For people who had had to listen to his moping for some six or seven years, this sudden change would
indeed have come as quite a surprise.
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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."
- Comment on the use of repetition in these lines. (4)
[Need help?]
The repetition indicates over-exaggeration, does it not? When someone has to repeat the argument so
many times, it would seem to lack conviction. Indeed, he has not got over the jilting at all. He has merely
altered his expression of it.
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- The poet says "all but painless". What language device is being used here? What is its
purpose? (4)
[Need help?]
We are faced here with another example of parenthesis, are we not? Parenthesis happens with
dashes, brackets or commas -- and supplies the reader with extra information which is not entirely
necessary.
The author is throwing in another brief argument that the pain, which should have disappeared, is still
there. The comment is not entirely necessary to the overall argument -- it is just a little extra to what the
poet is saying.
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- Comment on the image in "the great rubbish-heap of anyone's past loves, dead
hates". (4)
[Need help?]
The image of "the great rubbish-heap of anyone's past loves, dead hates" is the poet's telling us
that what he has described here applies to everyone. It is "anyone's past loves, dead hates".
There is, however, a general negativity in his conviction about "the great rubbish-heap" of
everyone's lives, as though everyone goes through this love/hate situation and that it is a great rubbish-
heap in our lives?
Would you agree with the poet?
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Comment carefully on the style of this poem. (4)
[Need help?]
The poet uses a very simple style, does he not? There is nothing complicated in the verses, no words that
tax our understanding. There is no rhyming scheme. The lines mostly run on.
Indeed, it is very chatty -- almost as if the poet is speaking to us over a drink in the pub, telling us a little
story to humour us. It is almost as if we are the man's friends, doomed to the boredom of the man's
incessant moping about his lost lover.
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