A Photograph by Shirley Toulson

 Poem 1: A Photograph by Shirley Toulson

(A)          Short Answer-type Questions (About 30-40 words each)

Q1.Why does the poetess use ‘cardboard’ for the photograph? Whose photograph is being described here? Why is the word ‘cardboard’ used here?

Ans. The poetess uses the ‘cardboard’ for the photograph of her mother. The photograph was very old. So it has been called cardboard.  In the old days, cardboard was used to paste a photograph on it. It gave the photograph a firm base.

Q2. What has the camera captured?

   Ans. The camera captured three girls in their teenage. They were standing with their smiling faces in the shallow water of the sea beach. The narrator’s mother stood in the middle, while her cousins stood on both sides of her.

Q3. The poetess’s mother laughed at the snapshot. What did this laugh indicate?

 Ans. It shows that the mother was amused to see her photograph along with her two cousins. She might have thought about how they looked at that small age in their dresses. It is natural to laugh when one watches his or her childhood photograph.

 Q4. How does the poetess describe the photograph? Who were there in it?

Ans. The poet describes three girls in the photograph. The tallest of them was the poet’s mother. She was about twelve years old at that time. The girls who stood on both sides were her cousins. Each of them held the mother’s hands. They were out on the beach to enjoy the cool touch of the wet sand.

Q5. What does the phrase “...some twelve years or so” mean?

Ans. The phrase “...some twelve years or so” shows that the poetess was not definite about the exact age of her mother. She might have been approximately twelve years.

Q6. How were the three girls posing for the photograph? Who was the person clicking it?

Ans. All three girls stood motionless smiling through their hair when their uncle was about to click the photograph from his camera. They were holding the hands of the girl who stood in the middle.

Q7. What does the phrase ‘smile through the hair’ mean?

Ans. The words ‘smile through the hair’ show that the wind was moving the hair that was falling on their faces. So the moving hair might have been covering the lips also. That is why the word ‘through’ has been used here.

Q8. What does the poetess say about her mother’s face? What has not changed yet?

Ans. The poetess says that her mother’s face was sweet at the time when she (the poetess) was not born. It went through a change after that with the passage of time. One grows older as time passes. But the sea has undergone fewer changes since that day on which the photograph was clicked.

Q9. What is the symbolic significance of the words ‘transient feet’ and ‘the sea’? What is the role of Time in the physical world?

Ans. Here ‘the sea’ stands for nature that is long-lived. The words ‘transient feet’ stands for human life, that is mortal Time has its ravaging (destroying) effect on mortal (perishable: those are prone to die) things only. There is alliteration in the words: ‘....terribly transient’.