UNSW Poetry and No Friend But the Mountains Essay

In your essays, make sure that you support your central claims by quoting and closely analysing the text.

Because these are short essays, you will need to be very selective about what aspects of the text (it’s important to have identified for yourself why these are the most important features f the text).

You should make use of scholarly literary resources to guide and inform your thinking and your analysis of the text by consulting the MLA International Bibliography. You may also use JStor to locate scholarly material.

You should provide at least ONE scholarly reference for each of the two short essays.

You need to provide a list of references including all secondary critical material and the text itself.

We do not specify a referencing style, but you should use a Humanities-focused style such as MLA or Chicago (NOT APA).

There are two parts of the questions

Part 1: Poetry (750 words)

What good is poetry? What is poetry for? Working from a close analysis of two poems studied in week 7-8 of this course, write a brief response to these questions. You MUST choose one pre-1900 poem (ie poems/extracts from Homer, Psalm 23, Lucretius, Caedmon, Spenser, Barbauld) and one post-1900 poem (poems by Yeats, Fogarty, Gorman, Kaur).

*I have attached the poem list and pdf as below*

Poems set

Homer, Iliad, 2.484-759: https://archive.org/stream/in.gov.ignca.748/748#page/n109/mode/2up

Psalm 23: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+23&version=KJV

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 5.510-54: https://archive.org/stream/onnatureofthings00lucruoft#page/212/mode/2up

Caedmon’s Hymn: https://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/medieval/caedmon.html

Edmund Spenser, “Prothalamion”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45217/prothalamion-56d224a0e2feb

Set readings for lectures and tutorials Week 2:

Anna Laetitia Barbauld, “The Rights of Women”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43615/the-rights-of-women

W. B. Yeats, “Easter, 1916”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43289/easter-1916

Rupi Kaur, poems and images: https://www.instagram.com/rupikaur_/

Lionel Fogarty, “Caused Us To Be Collaborator” (pdf)

Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”: (pdf)

Part 2: Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But the Mountains (750 words)

Choose ONE of the following questions:

EITHER:

Question 2a

“A river re-emerges from the caverns of history, a river full of bends and turns, a river that maps the earth in a way that writes its own destiny, a river that mirrors a history inextricably encrusted and embedded with chestnuts. Upon the zenith one can see the river with ease; it is possible to see the slithering, looping snake that emerges from deep inside the faraway mountain ranges. Those faraway mountain ranges are decorated with a milky colour. Over and beyond those mountain ranges, there are other mountain ranges. And over and beyond those mountain ranges, there are other mountain ranges. And it continues, reflecting a chain of mountain ranges, mountains the colour of milk, mountains becoming milkier in colour, mountains become more translucent.

The river surges through the mountain ranges until it arrives at the ranges that cradle the summit, the peak on which I fell in love. We shared company with the scent of prickly artichokes and fresh soil. I sojourned there, under a lone chestnut oak tree that crowned the zenith. My dog accompanied me there. Just moments ago, perhaps, it has left me to hunt rabbits. But I sense its presence.” p. 284

Using this passage as your starting point, write a short essay exploring the dynamics of memory, space and place in Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains.

OR:

Question 2b

In his Victorian Premier’s Literary Award acceptance speech Behrouz Boochani said “I believe that literature has the potential to make change and challenge structures of power. Literature has the power to give us freedom . . . I have been in a cage for years but throughout this time my mind has always been producing words, and these words have taken me across borders, taken me overseas and to unknown places. I truly believe words are more powerful than the fences of this place, this prison”’

Write a short essay on the relation between language, power and freedom in No Friend But the Mountains. In your answer you may also wish to consider the following lines from Boochani’s poem, “Freedom in a Cage”:

“Freedom is a gift/ An intolerable gift/”

Marking rubrics