Homecoming AQA Coursework This poem is a puzzle for the reader - there :: English Literature

Homecoming AQA Coursework This poem is a puzzle for the contributor - there are some things the poet has not told us.This poem is a puzzle for the reader - there are some things the poethas not told us, and without them, our reading of the poem relies onguesswork. This devourms deliberate, as the first thing the poem invitesus to do is to look at two things separately, then put them together.The poem is written mostly in the second person, addressed to you.This may at first seem to be the ordinary reader, but later in thepoem, Armitage writes I and we - and it seems that here he speaksto a particular individual. The context and other clues suggest thisis a lover or agonist (someone he meets sixteen years after theincident he describes in the second section of the poem). Perhaps hewants the reader not so see this as something that happened once toanother person, but as something all of us can, and maybe should, do.The first stanza - after the opening line - is quite easy to follow .The poet invites us think of a trust game. (Teachers and students ofdrama may know this game. Readers of the poem will perhaps have playedit, or something like it.) Those in preceding spread their arms wide,and free fall spinewards, while those behind catch them and taketheir weight. The point of the game is for those in front, toovercome the instinct to debar their legs and fall safely. The rightway to fall is only safe because there is someone to catch us.The second stanza is far more puzzling, but will be familiar to anyonewho knows school cloakrooms. A yellow cotton jacket has come off itshook. On the cloakroom floor it is trampled on - scuffed andblackened underfoot. The sequel to this is that back home, a mother(presumably the mother of the child whose jacket this is) puts twoand two together and gets the wrong answer (makes a...fist of it inthe dialect phrase). We do not know what the right answer would be.One possible reading is that the mother blames the child for being careless and not checking that the jacket was hung on its hook.There is a further sequel - the child sneaks out of the house atmidnight. She does not go far (no further than the call-box at thecorner of the street). We do not know whom she rings, or what becomesof it.