adrienne rich essay leaving cert

• Junior Cert
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Emily Dickinson
• Seamus Heaney
• Thomas Kinsella
• Derek Mahon
• All 2014 guides on CD
• Sylvia Plath
• Eavan Boland (LC 2012)
• Patrick Kavanagh (LC 2012)
• Adrienne Rich (LC 2013)
• Gerard Manley Hopkins (LC 2013)
• Cancelled Order
• Thank You for your order

Poetry Study Guides

So instead I came up with the idea of “teaching” people the poets on the course using mp3’s. Each study guide is about an hour long and is divided into seven tracks. The first is a short biography of the poet, then a discussion of six (or occasionally seven) of the prescribed poems by this poet and each guide is approximately an hour long. We recorded them in a studio so the sound quality is very good and they’re carefully edited to get rid of any ‘ah’ ‘um’ or occasional cursing when I made a mistake! All you need to do is download them, then stick them on your phone or iPod or whatever mp3 player you’re having yourself. And don’t forget your headphones 😉

I think the beauty of them as an idea is that you can listen to them wherever and whenever you like – on a bus, in a car, when you’re out for a walk or a jog. They fall into the new category of “on-demand” media that’s so popular at the moment. You can pause, rewind, repeat if there’s something you don’t understand and listen to them as often as you like. Hopefully, learning the poetry will be a lot easier this way and at €2.49, a hell of a lot cheaper than €30 an hour grinds!

If you’d like to hear a sample of how the guides sound, here’s my analysis of Patrick Kavangh’s Shancoduff :

Available study guides:

• William Butler Yeats
• Eavan Boland (L.C. 2012)
• Patrick Kavanagh (L.C. 2012)
• Gerard Manley Hopkins (L.C. 2013)
• Adrienne Rich (L.C. 2013)

Update : Some folks were having difficulties unzipping the downloaded files.  Please check out the help page if you too are in need of assistance.

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• Leaving Cert. English (Higher) 2020: Paper 2 Section III Poetry B
• Back to the question >

2. Emily Dickinson

Without doubt, Dickinson has an innovative and unique approach to language. However, I disagree that she balances beauty and horror in her imagery in order to relieve some of the darker aspects of her poetry. One of the reasons for her popularity as a poet is her unstinting honesty and her refusal to compromise on the ideas and style she wishes to craft. 

An example of her innovative style is her striking use of punctuation, especially the use of dashes and capitalisation, which Adrienne Rich described as ‘jagged, personal and uncontrollable’. This creates an intense experience for the reader where they are confused but also greatly intrigued.

'I Felt a Funeral in my Brain' horrifies from start to finish. The poet does not want the darkness to be relieved. It is a nightmare vision of death. Her unique approach to punctuation added to the intensity of the poem. One of the many interpretations of this poem involves the exploration of death from the dead person's perspective. The ‘Mourners’ are ‘all seated’ as:

‘A Service, like a Drum — 

Kept beating — beating — till I thought

My mind was going numb —’

The dashes here helped to create a sense of disorientation and added to the ambiguity of the poem. The dashes between ‘treading’ and ‘beating’ serve to suggest that the sounds and movements are repetitive and oppressive.  

The idea of one's mind being trapped in one's body as you are being lowered or ‘dropped down, and down —’ into your grave is highly disturbing. The alternative interpretation of the poem being about mental breakdown where ‘a Plank in Reason, broke’ is equally intense. 

The poet manages to disorient the reader through her language choices. When the reader expects a concrete word like ‘bells’, she surprises by inserting an abstract word like ‘Space’. It carries a haunting suggestion of emptiness and depression, which one would normally associate with silence. However, Dickinson again dramatically reverses our expectations. She explains that:

‘As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race’.

The capitalisation here is confusing at first but when you put the capitalised words together, you realise they are the essence of the poem. Despite her religious upbringing, there is little comfort in death. In the final stanza, the speaker drops:

‘And hit a World, at every plunge, 

And Finished knowing — then —’

The capitalisation of ‘Finished’ suggests closure but there is a dash at the end of the line and we are left wondering. Once again, this is deeply confusing for the reader but it is also simultaneously intense and intriguing. This is pure horror and darkness and it is supposed to be.   

'There's a certain Slant of light' is another poem where Dickinson uses her innovative style to explore intense experiences. The poem sheds light on Dickinson’s mental landscape. Her use of imagery is interesting because she uses it to convey theme and tone rather than for mere decorative purposes. The poem opens with a striking simile:

‘There's a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons — 

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes —’

She links the darkness of winter afternoons with the sound of church music that can often vibrate through you. This is very clever; what begins as a visual image is then described in terms of weight and vibration. The blurring of the senses is disturbing, as is the idea that despair is a ‘Heavenly Hurt’ that can ‘scar’ the soul. Her use of capitalisation emphasises the serious nature of the hurt. It suggests that the despair is so intense that it cannot be taught, understood or explained:

‘None may teach it — Any — 

Tis the Seal Despair —’

The dark, dramatic nature of the poem is intensified by Dickinson's use of dark sound effects. However, the poem's ending is both dramatic and disturbing:

‘When it goes, 'tis like the Distance

On the look of Death — ’.

The use of the dash suggests that the despair could easily return, just like a shadow invades the light. The poem is confusing at first but both the style and the subject matter is compelling. There is no balance between beauty and horror. The winter landscape is dark and oppressive.  

Thankfully, not all of Dickinson's poetry is so sombre. Darkness and horror are very far away from her poem ‘I taste a liquor never brewed’ but her approach is still intense and unique. Whilst all of her poems are intense, Dickinson uses an extended metaphor to share her delight with her readers and the result is intriguing, particularly when you consider her conservative and religious background. Her originality is demonstrated by her decision to compare being intoxicated to being euphoric with the beauty of nature. She creates fabulous images of ‘Tankards scooped in Pearl’, ‘endless summer days’ and ‘inns of Molten Blue’. 

The fun in the poem is driven by the sheer energy and excess. Dickinson employs a witty and striking metaphor:

‘When 'Landlords' turn the drunken Bee

Out of the Foxglove's door —’

Her delight continues as she declares when everyone else stops, she ‘shall but drink the more!’ This heady excitement is infectious and one cannot help but feel intoxicated (sorry for the pun!) by it. It is hard not to envy the ‘little Tippler’ leaning against the sun in a state of total abandonment! Personally, I cannot read this poem without intense feelings of delight. 

Dickinson’s unique approach to language continues in 'A Bird came down the Walk’. As always, Dickinson picks an ordinary subject but looks at it in a new and innovative way. This poem is constructed as a narrative with a dramatic moment of discovery for both the bird and poet. She watches him like a voyeur as he ‘came down the Walk’. Our clichéd view of the bird is disturbed as it is presented in a realistic manner:

‘He bit an Angle Worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw’. 

The sounds, length and punctuation of the lines mirror the bird's restless movements. She vividly portrays the bird with ‘rapid eyes’ like ‘frightened Beads’. Once again, Dickinson builds the drama of their possible meeting. She offers ‘him a Crumb’. She employs beautiful imagery to suggest the bird's departure and this adds to the intensity of the experience.

The final poem I will discuss demonstrates how Dickinson’s horror in her imagery is never compromised. ‘The Soul has Bandaged Moments’ is a really disturbing poem and Dickinson combines her unique approach to language with vivid imagery to appall the reader. The poet capitalises ‘Bandaged’, thus reinforcing its importance. The soul is bandaged because it has been hurt before but also because it is bound. There is a sense of helplessness as it is ‘too appalled to stir’. The unique employment of the dash is evident as the writer creates a horrific image of the ‘Lover — hovered — o’er’. Even when there are images of beauty, they are destructive. The Soul experiences ‘escape’ and dances but the imagery connected with it is dangerous. Dickinson employs the simile of a ‘Bomb’. It is destructive. 

To conclude, Dickinson has a unique and intense approach to her poetry that does not want balance. She seeks to provoke intense experiences in her readers so uses imagery to its fullest effect. 

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Poems & Poets

Adrienne Rich

During her life, poet and essayist Adrienne Rich was one of America’s foremost public intellectuals. Widely read and hugely influential, Rich’s career spanned seven decades and has hewed closely to the story of post-war American poetry itself. Her earliest work, including  A Change of World  (1951) which won the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Award, was formally exact and decorous, while her work of the late 1960s and 70s became increasingly radical in both its free-verse form and feminist and political content. Rich’s metamorphosis was summed up by Carol Muske-Dukes in the  New York Times Book Review ; Muske wrote that Rich began as a “polite copyist of Yeats and Auden, wife and mother. She has progressed in life (and in her poems …) from young widow and disenchanted formalist, to spiritual and rhetorical convalescent, to feminist leader ... and  doyenne  of a newly-defined female literature.” Her poetry of the 1970s and 1980s serve as central texts for the second-wave feminist movement. When she died in 2012, she was one of the most respected American poets.

 Beginning with  Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962  (1963), Rich’s work has explored issues of identity, sexuality, and politics; her formally ambitious poetics have reflected her continued search for social justice, her role in the anti-war movement, and her radical feminism. Using the cadences of everyday speech, enjambment, and irregular line and stanza lengths, Rich’s open forms have sought to include ostensibly “non-poetic” language into poetry. Best known for her politically-engaged verse from the tumultuous Vietnam War period, Rich’s collection  Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972  (1973) won the National Book Award. Rich accepted it with fellow-nominees Audre Lorde and Alice Walker on behalf of all women. Rich’s numerous essay collections, including  A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society  (2009) also secured her place as one of America’s preeminent feminist thinkers. In addition to the National Book Award, Rich received many awards and commendations for her work, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and a MacArthur “Genius” Award. She made headlines in 1997 when she refused the National Medal of Arts for political reasons. “I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House,” she wrote in a letter published in the  New York Times, “because the very meaning of art as I understand it is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration.”   Adrienne Rich was born in 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was a renowned pathologist and professor at Johns Hopkins. Her mother was a former concert pianist. Rich’s upbringing was dominated by the intellectual ambitions her father had for her, and Rich excelled at academics, earning her degree from Radcliffe University. In 1953 she married Alfred Conrad, an economics professor at Harvard. She had three children with him, but their relationship began to fray in the 1960s as Rich became politically aware—she later said that “the experience of motherhood was eventually to radicalize me.” Rich’s work of the 1960s and 70s begins to show the signs of that radicalization. Moving her family to New York in 1966, Rich’s collections from this period include  Necessities of Life  (1966),  Leaflets  (1969), and  The Will to Change  (1971), all of which feature looser lines and radical political content. David Zuger, in  Poet and Critic,  described the changes in Rich’s work: “The twenty-year-old author of painstaking, decorous poems that are eager to ‘maturely’ accept the world they are given becomes a ... poet of prophetic intensity and ‘visionary anger’ bitterly unable to feel at home in a world ‘that gives no room / to be what we dreamt of being.’” Conrad died in 1970 and six years later Rich moved in with her long-term partner Michelle Cliff. That same year she published her controversial, influential collection of essays  Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Institution and Experience  (1976). The volume, following on the heels of her masterpiece  Diving into the Wreck , ensured Rich’s place in the feminist pantheon. Rich was criticized by some for her harsh depictions of men; however, the work she produced during this period is often seen as her finest. In  Ms.  Erica Jong noted that “Rich is one of the few poets who can deal with political issues in her poems without letting them degenerate into social realism.” Focusing on the title poem, Jong also denies that Rich is anti-male. A portion of the poem reads: “And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair / streams black, the merman in his armored body. / We circle silently / about the wreck. / We dive into the hold. / I am she: I am he.” Jong commented, “This stranger-poet-survivor carries ‘a book of myths’ in which her/his ‘names do not appear.’ These are the old myths ... that perpetuate the battle between the sexes. Implicit in Rich’s image of the androgyne is the idea that we must write new myths, create new definitions of humanity which will not glorify this angry chasm but heal it.” Rich’s prose collections are widely acclaimed for their erudite, lucid, and poetic treatment of politics, feminism, history, racism, and many other topics.  On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978  (1979) ,  continues Rich’s feminist intellectual project and contains one of Rich’s most celebrated essays, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” in which Rich clarifies the need for female self-definition. Publishing a new collection every few years, in 2009 Rich released  A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society . Rich again explored the intersection of poetry and the political in essays and reviews.  San Francisco Gate  contributor Michael Roth noted that in the book “Rich continues to refuse to separate the artistic from the political, and she articulates in powerful ways how a truly radical political agenda can draw upon an aesthetic vision.”   Rich’s poetry has maintained its overtly political, feminist edge throughout the decades since the Vietnam War and the social activism of the 1960s and 70s. In collections like  Your Native Land, Your Life  (1986) , Time’s Power: Poems, 1985-1988  (1988) ,  and  An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems, 1988-1991  (1991) ,  Rich begins to address the Jewish heritage that she was forced to hide during her early life. Throughout all three books, Rich uses personal experience, first-person narratives, and rich and varied language. Rich’s later poetry engages the personal and political in ambitious ways. Though  Midnight Salvage, Poems, 1995-1998  (1999) is a quieter collection that focuses on “the quest for personal happiness,” according to Rafael Campo who reviewed the volume for the  Progressive , it also circles “the problem of defining ‘happiness’—in an American society that continues to exploit its most defenseless citizens, and in the face of a larger world where contempt for human rights leads to nightmare.” Such an emphasis on the social conditions of private lives has been a mainstay in Rich’s later work, which often explores the influence of contemporary world events.  The School among the Ruins: Poems, 2000-2004  (2004), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, attempts to capture the myriad events that have defined the beginning of the 21st century. The predominantly short prose poems in  The School Among the Ruins  are free verse meditations on “the displacement of exiles, the encroachment of modernity on human dignity, and the effects of America’s war against terror on the stateside psyche,” wrote Meghan O'Rourke in  Artforum.  Although O'Rourke felt the collection veered too much into “rhetoric,” other critics found the juxtaposition of cellphone and television dialogue stunningly effective.   Rich’s 2007 collection  Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth  was her 24th; however, since the mid-50s, Rich has conceived of her poetry as a long process, rather than a series of separate books.  Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth  continues to use open forms, including notebook-like fragments. The book as whole, noted Lee Sharkey in the  Beloit Poetry Journal,  is concerned with “dissolution and disappearance…The Rich persona who for half a century has been engaged in a continual process of undoing her own certainties owns up to how those certainties have blinded her.” Layering images and utilizing a stripped-down line help contribute to “the new, still more difficult perspective she has achieved,” Sharkey noted, though Rich “allows no point of resolution in the poem beyond juxtaposed images of cultural, environmental, and personal dissolution.” Through over 60 years of public introspection and examination of society and self, Adrienne Rich has chronicled her journey in poetry and prose. “I began as an American optimist,” she commented in  Credo of a Passionate Skeptic, “albeit a critical one, formed by our racial legacy and by the Vietnam War ... I became an American Skeptic, not as to the long search for justice and dignity, which is part of all human history, but in the light of my nation’s leading role in demoralizing and destabilizing that search, here at home and around the world. Perhaps just such a passionate skepticism, neither cynical nor nihilistic, is the ground for continuing.”

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Complete Guide: H1 Leaving Cert English 2025

The 2025 guide is for students who plan to graduate in 2025. If you are graduating in 2026, please use the Complete Guide: H1 Leaving Cert English Guide 2026 .

Leaving Cert English 2025 notes, sample essays, text analysis, examiners’ advice, video – it’s all in there. Contents:

Essentials Paper I

Section I Section II Quotations in essays Speech/Talk/The Language of Persuasion Article / Opinion piece / Discursive Essay / Language of argument Report/The language of information Personal essay Letter – Letter to the Editor – Personal letter Descriptive essay Short story

Introduction Themes Style Sample essay: “In King Lear the villainous characters hold more fascination for the audience than the virtuous ones.” (2010) Sample essay: “In the play, King Lear, the stories of Lear and Gloucester mirror one another in interesting ways.” (2006) Sample essay: “Reading or seeing King Lear is a horrifying as well as an uplifting experience.” (2006) Sample essay: “ In King Lear honour and loyalty triumph over brutality and viciousness. ” (2010) Sample essay: ” King Lear is not only a tragedy of parents and children, of pride and ingratitude, it is also a tragedy of kingship “. (2010) Short notes on other recent questions (2021, 2018, 2016 – both titles from each year)

Frankenstein

Themes Style Quotations Characters Key question Sample essay: “The consequences of Victor Frankenstein’s passion for scientific knowledge and experimentation in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, are both fascinating and disturbing.” (2022) Sample essay: “Is the Creature a child? Discuss the idea of parenthood and childhood in relation to Frankenstein.” Sample essay: Discuss the role of Robert Walton in Frankenstein. Consider Walton’s contribution to the themes and style of the novel. Sample essay: Discuss the importance of companionship in shaping the reader’s understanding of the characters and the events of Frankenstein. Sample essay: Discuss the narrative purposes served by Mary Shelley’s inclusion of letters between various characters throughout her novel, Frankenstein. (2022) Sample essay: Discuss how the use of imagery and symbolism plays an important part in the themes of Frankenstein.

Comparative

General guidance Link words Cultural Context General Vision and Viewpoint Theme or Issue Comparisons: making a comparative table (examples Educated, Never Let Me Go, Ladybird , Frankenstein, Rebecca, The Shawshank Redemption, Pride and Prejudice, Knives Out , Sive, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Where the Crawdads Sing)

Unseen poetry

General guidance Sample answer

Prescribed poetry

General guidance

Eavan Boland

Introduction Detailed analysis of each poem individually The War Horse Child of Our Time The Famine Road The Shadow Doll White Hawthorn in the West of Ireland Outside History The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me This Moment The Pomegranate Love Sample essay: “Boland’s reflective insights are expressed through her precise use of language.” Write your response to this statement, supporting your answer with suitable reference to the poetry on your course.

Emily Dickinson

Introduction Detailed analysis of each poem individually “Hope” is the thing with feathers There’s a certain Slant of light I felt a Funeral, in my Brain A Bird came down the Walk I heard a Fly buzz – when I died The Soul has Bandaged moments I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to A narrow Fellow in the Grass I taste a liquor never brewed After great pain, a formal feeling comes Sample essay : “Dickinson’s use of an innovative style to explore intense experiences can both intrigue and confuse.” Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Emily Dickinson on your course.

Introduction Detailed analysis of each poem individually The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Preludes Aunt Helen A Game of Chess Journey of the Magi III, Usk IV, Rannoch, near Glencoe East Coker Sample essay: “The poetry of T.S. Eliot often presents us with troubled characters in a disturbing world.” Write a response to this statement with reference to both the style and the subject matter of Eliot’s poetry. Support your points with suitable reference to the poems on your course

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Introduction Detailed analysis of each poem individually God’s Grandeur Spring As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame The Windhover Pied Beauty Inversnaid I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day No worst there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief Sample essay: “Hopkins’ innovative style displays his struggle with what he believes to be fundamental truths.” In your opinion, is this a fair assessment of his poetry? Support your answer with suitable reference to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins on your course. (2013)

Patrick Kavanagh

Introduction Detailed analysis of each poem individually Iniskeen Road: July Evening Shancoduff Advent A Christmas Childhood Epic Canal Bank Walk Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin The Hospital On Raglan Road Sample essay: “Aspects of Kavanagh’s poetry could be seen as dated and irrelevant, but his unique poetic language has enduring appeal.” Do you agree with this assessment of his poetry? Support your points with suitable reference to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh on your course.

Derek Mahon

Introduction Detailed analysis of each poem individually Grandfather Day Trip to Donegal Ecclisiastes After the Titanic As It Should Be A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford  Rathlin The Chinese Restaurant in Portrush  Kinsale, Antractica Sample essay: “Mahon uses language and imagery to transform personal observations into universal reflections.” Write your response to this statement with reference to the poems by Derek Mahon on your course.

Sylvia Plath

Introduction Detailed analysis of each poem individually Black Rook in Rainy Weather The Times are Tidy Morning Song Finisterre Mirror Pheasant Elm Poppies in July The Arrival of the Bee Box Child Sample essay: “Plath makes effective use of language to explore her personal experiences of suffering and to provide occasional glimpses of the redemptive power of love.” Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to both the themes and language found in the poetry of Sylvia Plath on your course.

Tracy K. Smith

Introduction Detailed analysis of each poem individually Joy (Elegy One) Dominion Over the Beasts of the Earth The Searchers Letter to a Photojournalist Going In The Universe is a House Party Museum of Obsolescence Don’t you wonder, sometimes? It’s Not The Universe as a Primal Scream The Greatest Personal Privation I am 60 odd years of age Ghazal Sample essay: “Tracy K. Smith’s demanding subject matter and formidable style can prove challenging.” Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Tracy K. Smith on your course.

This guide aims to replace a revision course for 2025. Everything is in one place. We know how hard it can be, and it is our passion to make it easier for the students who come after us. Our team, composed of people who got 625+ points, distilled our own best notes, past paper answers and tips on each part of the course – so that you don’t have to fight these battles on your own or reinvent the wheel. Whether you want 625 points, or to simply maximise your points, the Leaving Cert English 2025 guide will – guaranteed – have useful insights to make your life easier.

This Leaving Cert English 2025 guide is especially useful if:

✔ you are stuck at a given grade despite all your effort

✔ your teacher’s approach isn’t perfect for you

✔ you don’t know what to do to improve

✔ you are counting English for points

You will get:

✔access to the key Leaving Cert English skills video

✔access to 625Lab: we will give you feedback on one typed up essay corrected. Use the 625Lab submission form

✔priority access for Leaving Cert study advice. Email [email protected] with your query

✔notes as detailed above (383 pages, or 125 thousand words)

What does the guide  not  cover ?

The guide has a wealth of useful information. As the syllabus required each student to choose from over 40 individual texts and over 50 poems it was neither required, nor feasible to cover everything. 

Does it come in the post? It’s a download, so there’s no need to wait for the postman. You automatically get a download link straight into your email inbox. If you run into any problems with the download, we will sort you out – simply reply to the email you get from us.

Can I print it?

Yes. All notes are printable.

• Post author: Martina
• Post published: August 1, 2021
• Post category: English

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