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Relationships: family bonds
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Four poems show love between grandparents, parents and children: tender, protective, faded and hidden. The three modern poems are in copyright, so they are described here in our own words.
What each poem is about
Nettles (Vernon Scannell): a father describes his three-year-old son falling into a bed of nettles. The parents comfort him; the father angrily cuts the nettles down with a billhook and burns them. Within two weeks they have grown back, and he realises his son will be hurt again.
One Flesh (Elizabeth Jennings): a grown-up child watches their elderly parents in separate beds: one reads without really reading, the other stares at the shadows. Their passion has faded, yet they are still bound together.
My Father Would Not Show Us (Ingrid de Kok): the speaker sees her father's body after his death and remembers how he hid his illness and his dying from his family, so they never had the chance to say goodbye. The title phrase returns through the poem.
Themes and ideas
Love that changes with time: Jennings shows long marriage cooling into distance; the title comes from the Bible's description of marriage making two people 'one flesh', which makes the separate beds ironic.
Love that is not expressed: de Kok's father hid his dying from his family, so grief is mixed with resentment, regret and a sense of distance.
Children watching parents: both Jennings and de Kok are written by an adult child looking at parents with love, puzzlement and sadness.
Good comparisons: Nettles with Catrin or Poppies (a parent's fear for a child); One Flesh with Neutral Tones or The Manhunt (closeness and distance); My Father Would Not Show Us with A Child to his Sick Grandfather (facing an older relative's death).
Methods and how to write about them
One Flesh: three six-line stanzas with regular rhyme, calm and orderly like the parents' routine; similes compare the leftover love to things washed up after a storm; it ends with a question.
My Father Would Not Show Us: free verse with enjambment, so thoughts run on like memory; repetition of the title phrase; contrast between the cold, formal room and memories of the family home. De Kok is a South African poet, born in 1951.
A Child to his Sick Grandfather: regular stanzas and the child's simple, direct speech make the scene tender and the uncertain ending more moving.
To write well, link the method to the feeling: for example, the neat rhyme in Nettles contrasts with the father's rage, as if he is trying to keep control.
Write an analytical paragraph: how does Scannell present a parent's love in Nettles?
- Point: the father's love is fiercely protective but cannot stop all pain.
- Method and where: the extended military metaphor turns the nettles into an army he must fight; he cuts them down and burns them.
- Effect: the war imagery shows how seriously he takes his son's small injury, like a soldier defending him.
- Development: the nettles grow back within two weeks, so the ending admits his powerlessness; his son will be hurt again.
Answer: Scannell presents a love that is protective and almost aggressive: the military metaphor makes the father a soldier fighting the nettles, yet their return in two weeks shows that no parent can protect a child from every future pain.
Baillie: a child comforts a dying grandfather. Nettles: a father's protective rage and powerlessness (military metaphor). One Flesh: elderly parents apart in separate beds (ironic biblical title). De Kok: a father who hid his illness and dying, remembered after his death.
The interactive lesson includes the diagrams for this topic.
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