THE PIONEER SCHOOL - CBSE

English
Poem -1 My Mother at sixty six

Grade : XII _______________________________________________________________________

I. Short questions :
1. What is the kind of pain and ache that the poet feels?
2. Ageing is a natural process , have you ever thought about what our elderly parents expect
from us ?
3.. What was the poet’s childhood fear ?
4. In the last line of the poem , ‘My mother at sixty - six , ‘ Why does the poet use the word
“smile” repeatedly?
II. Long answers:
1..Comment on the tone of the poem with references to “ My mother at sixty six”
2. Bring out the poetic devices used in the poem .
3.What is the central idea of the poem ?
III. Extract questions:
1.familiar ache, my childhood’s fear,
but all I said was, see you soon,
Amma,
all I did was smile and smile and
smile
(a) What does the phrase, ‘familiar ache’ mean?
(b) What was the poet’s childhood fear?
(c) What do the first two lines tell us about the poet’s feelings for her mother?
(d) What does the repeated use of the word, ‘smile’ mean?
2.————-I saw my mother,
beside me,
doze, open-mouthed, her face ashen like
that
of a corpse and realised with
pain
(a) Who is ‘I’?
(b) What did ‘I’ realise with pain?
(c) Why was the realisation painful?
(d) Identify and name the figure of speech used in these lines.
3.Driving from my parent’s
home to Cochin last Friday
morning, I saw my mother,
beside me,
doze, open-mouthed, her face
ashen like that
of a corpse and realised with pain
(a) When and where was the poetess driving to?
(b) Who was sitting beside her? What did the poetess notice about her?
(c) What does the poetess compare her mother’s face with and why?
(d) Name the poem and the poetess.
…that she was as old as she
looked but soon
put that thought away, and
looked out at Young
 Trees sprinting, the messy children spilling
out of their homes,
(a) What did the poetess realise? How did she feel?
(b) What did the poetess do then?
(c) What did the poetess notice outside?
(d) Explain: “the merry children spilling out of their homes”.
(e) What do young sprinting trees signify?
(f) Which thoughts did the poetess put away?
4.I looked again at her, wan,
Pale as a late winter’s moon and felt that
an old familiar ache, my childhood’s fear.
(a) Who do ‘I’ and ‘her’ refer to? How does her face appear?
(b) What does the ‘familiar ache’ refer to?
(c) Name and explain the poetic device used in the second line.
5.….. and felt thatOldfamiliar ache, my childhood’s fear
but all I said was, see you soon,
Amma,
all I did was smile and smile and smile…
(a) What do some of the poetess parting words of the poetess suggest?
(b) Why did she ‘smile and smile’?
(c) Why did the poetess suppress her pain in the presence of her mother at the airport?

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