Often, however, he was more subtle in his effects. In "Sam," for instance, the stanzaic breaks give the text a clear structure, with the very short final stanza adding a definite bite to the poem. The longer first stanza tells the story of Plath on a runaway horse, this is then commented upon and analyzed, and finally Hughes draws a four-line comparison to the way he was treated by Plath: "you strangled me... flung yourself off and under my feet." The abrupt turn and end of this poem is used to elicit a specific response of shocked sympathy from the reader, which marks only one of Hughes attempts in Birthday Letters to exonerate himself for Plath's suicide.
Neither of the two above-mentioned poems are entirely consistent in tone, however, and the length of their lines and/or stanzaic structure can of course be read in several ways. In "The Shot," however,…...
" Unlike ethereal muses, Hughes' inspirational animals are earthy smelling like "The Thought Fox," or old and maggot-ridden scavengers like that of the Crow, providing jewels of inspiration and images of hideousness and rot. (208-220)
This muse-like relationship between poet and animals is not only true of poets who write, but even persons who are poetic in spirit like the young woman of "Macaw and Little Miss," enclosed in a cage "of wire ribs." (23) of "The Dove Breeder." "Love struck into his life Like a hawk into a dovecote," writes Hughes of a dove-breeder eaten alive by love, like a bird of prey eats a bird of peace. (26)
Thus, animals inspire humans to better conceptualize and philosophically understand their experience, like poets inspire humans, but a fixed interpretation of the animals in the real world eludes a final explanation, ultimately the reader only has his or her own thoughts, rather…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hughes, Ted. Collected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2003.
Crow & Hawk: the ird Spirit Poetry of Ted Hughes
Poets and prophets from Aesop to Isaiah to lake have traditionally used animal figures to convey a criticism of existing culture, endowing the natural with metaphoric import. In most preliterate cultures, animals were equally endowed with metaphoric importance more immediately interpreted into mythologies and shamanistic rituals that enabled people to address and interact with their world. In the modern ritish and Irish context, it is common to use such animal characters to analyze or criticize society and moreover to redirect human attention to natural qualities within the human soul that in our civilization we have overlooked or purposefully disrespected. So when Ted Hughes focuses significant poetic attention on birds, one is not surprised by the parallels he draws between these winged creatures and the evolution of the soul. What may seem surprising is the degree to which he subverts modern symbolic…...
mlaBibliography
Eddins, Dwight. "Ted Hughes and Schopenhauer: the poetry of the will." Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 1999, http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0403/1_45/54895477/print.jhtml
Skea, Anna. "Ted Hughes and Crow." 1998. http://www.zeta.org.au/~annskea/Trickstr.htm
Moreover, Hughes employs phallic imagery to underscore the theme of war: the sons appear "Stiff with weapons," and not "with stiff weapons." Aurally, Hughes' imagery is enhanced through alliteration, like the "hoeing hands of men," and the repetition of the "s" consonant throughout the verses. Auditory imagery adds to the overall impact of violence that pervades the poem. Yet "Thistles" conveys no moral meaning, no judgment against the plant or human warriors.
Imagery in Hughes' "Thistles" therefore serves a number of key functions. First, imagery conveys the multi-sensory impact of war and violence. Because it can be felt viscerally, viewed, and heard, violence is pervasive in nature. Second, violence is a neutral force and is integral to nature's endless cycle of death and birth. hether with weeds or whole civilizations, violence and war are inevitable.
orks Cited
Hughes, Ted. "Thistles." Retrieved Aug 2, 2006 at http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/417.html...
mlaWorks Cited
Hughes, Ted. "Thistles." Retrieved Aug 2, 2006 at http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/417.html
Creation is unending carnage, a cycle of bloodiness that must be broken, and can be broken, Hughes suggests. Death owns all, even crow's feet and beak, but despite this knowledge, rather than retreating to a room, or dreaming of a false past, like Beckett's characters, Crow wrangles with the elements in anger and incantation.
Although Beckett may not find a solution in "Endgame," Beckett is not entirely hopeless. Beckett does offer some hope for conversation and human connection towards the end of his play, such as this exchange:
CLOV:
This is what we call making an exit.
HAMM:
I'm obliged to you, Clov. For your services.
CLOV (turning sharply):
Ah pardon, it's I am obliged to you.
HAMM:
It's we are obliged to each other.
These exchanges do not take place in a state of fury, like Crow's rejection of the world created by God. Rather, the hope Beckett finds is a transient ability of two individuals to aid…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hayman, David. "Endgame: Overview" From The Reference Guide to English Literature. 2nd ed. Edited by D.L. Kirkpatrick, St. James Press,
Hoffman, Daniel. "The Art of Ted Hughes. "The New York Times Book Review. April 18, 1971, pp. 35-6.
Sagar, Keith. Ted Hughes Poetry. 1975.
Indeed, they are both supporter of Communism and here we are already talking about the mature period of Communist in its fight against the Imperialists (certainly, these are the same imperialists that would have paid Rivera for painting Rockefeller Centre) and the meeting between the couple and Trotsky is defining for the late phase of their relationship.
Artistic practices and values
Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and Frida and Diego are extremely relevant for this category. First of all, Frida and Diego are members of the artistic community of Mexico and not only (and we are referring here to their presence in France during a time of artistic effervescence, as well as to their trip in the United States), this is the community that influences them and from where they draw their identity as artists. Additionally, it is their art that pulls them together each time the fall apart on any…...
mlaBibliography
1. Cleopatra VII - Ptolemaic Dynasty. On the Internet at retrieved on December 11, 2006http://www.pcf-p.com/a/m/rig/rig.html.Last
Cleopatra VII - Ptolemaic Dynasty. On the Internet at
Poetic Comparison:
"Hawk oosting" by Ted Hughes and "Grass" by Carl Sandburg
Both "Hawk oosting" by Ted Hughes and "Grass" by Carl Sandburg are narrated in the voices of silent, living objects in the natural world. Hughes' poem is told in the first person of a hawk while Sandburg's poem is narrated by the grass. Through personification both poets examine the place of humanity in a larger context, highlighting the extent to which what people think is important seems small when seen in relation to the big picture of nature. Hughes' poem achieves this by showing how in the eyes of an ordinary hawk, the bird is all-powerful because of his predatory capacity. The grass of Sandburg's poem is similarly powerful as it blankets the dead, without any apparent concern for the heroism the soldiers might have shown in battle or in any other facet of their lives.
The hawk's triumphant view of…...
mlaReferences
Hughes, T. (1960). Hawk roosting. All Poetry. Retrieved from:
http://allpoetry.com/Hawk-Roosting
Sandburg, C. (1918). Grass. Retrieved from:
oman Loves her Father, Every oman Loves a Fascist:
The Politics and Poetics of Despair in Plath's "Daddy"
Sylvia Plath is one of the most famous poets to emerge in the late 20th century. Partially due to the success of her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, which details her partial recovery from suicidal depression, Plath's poetry has been frequently analyzed through the lens of her clinical mental problems. "Dying is An Art," the critic George Steiner titles of his essay on Plath, referring not only to a line from her poem "Lady Lazarus" but the critical elision of the poet's personal suicidal depression with the source of her confessional poetic gift. For instance, Plath's masterpiece, "Daddy," is a dramatic monologue in the voice of a German woman whose father was a Nazi. Yet despite the 'assumed' nature of "Daddy's" voice and the apparent divergence of poet from the speaker, the poem…...
mlaWorks Cited
Plath, Sylvia. "Daddy." From The Norton Introduction to Literature Edited by Jerome
Beaty, et. al. Eighth Edition.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Harper & Row, 1971.
Howe, Irving. "The Plath Celebration: a Partial Dissent." From The Norton Introduction to Literature Edited by Jerome Beaty, et. al. Eighth Edition.
Hawk Roosting" and "Eagle"
Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Eagle" and Ted Hughes' "Hawk Roosting" both reflect on the relationship between birds of prey and the rest of the world due to their unique perspective, and although either poem is written from a slightly different perspective, they both nonetheless celebrate the view the bird of prey has of the world, and the serenity which seemingly stems from this. By examining the similarities between the two poems, one is able to see how Hughes' and Tennyson's views of nature coincide in the form of the solitary, stoic bird of prey that seemingly embodies the dual peace and chaos of the natural world.
The first crucial similarity to note about both poems is that in many ways, they describe the same image from slightly different perspectives. Tennyson's poem describes an eagle roosting as "he clasps the crag with crooked hands," whereas Hughes' narrator is…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hughes, Ted. "Hawk Roosting" in Schmidt, Michael, ed. Eleven British Poets. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980. 171-172. Print.
Lord Tennyson, Alfred. "The Eagle." Poetry Foundation. Web. 20 Nov 2011.
.
Eventually, Esther sneaks into the cellar with a bottle of sleeping pills -- prescribed to her for the insomnia she was experiencing, without any other real attempts to understand or solve the underlying problems of her mental upset -- having left a note for her mother saying she was taking a long walk. Esther then swallows as many of the pills as she is able, and it appears to be several days (it is never conclusively stated in the text) before she is found and taken to the hospital, where she awakens to learn that she has yet again been unsuccessful.
Following her physical convalescence, Esther is subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, which she notes has a soothing effect on her depression. Things begin to look somewhat better for Esther; she is being well-cared for at a private hospital paid for by a rich benefactress and admirer of Esther's work. The…...
mlaWorks Cited
Buell, Frederick. "Sylvia Plath's Traditionalism." Boundary 2-5(1) (1976), pp. 195-212.
Gilson, Bill. "Biography of Sylvia Plath." Accessed 3 April 2010. http://www.poemhunter.com/sylvia-plath/biography/
Liukonnen, Petri. "Sylvia Plath." Accessed 3 April 2010. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/splath.htm
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper, 2000.
Apparently Plath wrote the poem during her stay in the hospital, which can be a depressing place notwithstanding all the nurses and orderlies dressed in white. The appendectomy followed a miscarriage that Plath had suffered through, so given those realities in the poet's life -- especially for a woman to lose a child she had been carrying -- one can identify with the bleak nature of the poem. Confronted with the birth that turned out to be death, and then a painful appendectomy, the tulips are used as something of an abstraction and the redness of them gives her pain because it "corresponds" to the wound in her body from the surgery.
The opening stanza's first few lines seem rather peaceful and restful: "The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here / look how white everything is / How quiet, how snowed-in / I am learning peacefulness / lying…...
mlaWorks Cited
Brower, Reuben a. (1963). The Poetry of Robert Frost: Constellations of Intention. New York:
Dobbs, Jeannine. 1977. "Viciousness in the Kitchen: Sylvia Plath's Domestic Poetry.
Modern Language Studies, 7(2).
Frost, Carol. (2012). Sincerity and inventions: On Robert Frost. Poets. Retrieved May 3,
"Doctor Gordon twiddled a silver pencil. "Your mother tells me you are upset." I curled in the cavernous leather chair." (Plath, 1999, p.128) "A few more shock treatments, Mrs. Greenwood," I heard Doctor Gordon say, "and I think you'll notice a wonderful improvement." (Plath, 1999, p.145) Insulin therapies merely make her miserable and gain weight. Only her own bonding with the female psychiatrists on staff, and overcoming her sexual frustrations and hang-ups provides her with some tenuous relief at the conclusion of the book.
Thus, the Bell Jar can be seen as a portrait of a uniquely feminist crisis of the self, of the adolescent self in a normal but fragile and frustrating juncture of development, or of modern psychiatry's inability to deal with such a crisis, except in very ineffectual ways. Esther feels conflict as a woman frustrated to choose between masculine professional ideals and maternity, although upon closer…...
mlaWorks Cited
Borgen, William a. And Norman E. Amundson. (2005) "Stages of Adolescent Development." (2005) From Amundson, N.E., Borgen, W.A., & Tench, E. "Personality and intelligence in career education and vocational guidance counseling." In DH Saklofske & M. Zeidner, Editors. International Handbook of Personality and Intelligence. New York: Plenum.
Kaplan, Cora. (1990) "Language and Gender." The feminist critique of language. Routledge: London and New York.
Plath, Sylvia. (1999) the Bell Jar. New York: HarperPerennial.
Plath, Sylvia. (1992) the Collected Poems. New York: HarperPerennial.
His belief that literature is a magical blend of thought and emotion is at the very heart of his greatest works, in which the unreal is often made to seem real.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge effectively freed British (and other) poetry from its 18th century Neo-classical constraints, allowing the poetic (and receptive) imagination to roam free.
orks Cited
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Kublai Khan. In The Portable Coleridge, I.A. Richards
Ed.). New York: Penguin, 1987. 157-158.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In The Portable Coleridge, I.A. Richards
Ed.). New York: Penguin, 1987. 80-105.
Moore, Christopher. "Introduction." Samuel Taylor Coleridge. New York:
Grammercy, 1996. 10.
Nokes, David. Raillery and Rage: A Study of Eighteenth Century Satire. New York: St. Martin's, 1987. 99.
Pope, Alexander, The Rape of the Lock. Representative Poetry Online. Retrieved September 22, 2005, from: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:0gO7fceq2_
AJ:eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1644.html+text+of+Pope%27s+The+Rape+of+the+Lock&hl=en&lr=&strip=1.html>.
Romanticism." ikipedia. 3 Apr. 2005. Retrieved September 22, 2005, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)" Prentice Hall Literature:
Author Biographies. Retrieved September 22, 2005, from: http://www.phschool.com/atschool/literature/author_biographies/coleridge_…...
mlaWorks Cited
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Kublai Khan. In The Portable Coleridge, I.A. Richards
Ed.). New York: Penguin, 1987. 157-158.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In The Portable Coleridge, I.A. Richards
Ed.). New York: Penguin, 1987. 80-105.
Talking Styles
In order to create lasting, worthwhile relationships with people individuals must possess the ability to communicate effectively. At least this is the argument posited by Spitzberg (1999). Further, he states that interpersonal communication or rather the lack thereof is what creates the potential for harmful situations when humans interact (Spitzberg 1999,-page 20). ithout the ability to communicate effectively and meaningfully with others, it becomes unlikely that an individual will be well adjusted as an adult. Conversely, individuals who do possess those qualities will likely develop relationships which are highly rewarding, including their relationships with family members, friends, and in their romantic relationships. The article "Shared Talking Styles Herald New and Lasting Romance" by author Bruce Bower (2010) postulates that people who can converse along the same lines are more likely to become a romantic pairing.
It makes sense that people who have the same communication level and those who have…...
mlaWorks Cited
Bower, B. (2010). Shared talking styles herald new and lasting romance. Science News.
Pennebaker. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.utpsyc.org/synch/feedback.php
This is justified by the argument that the original Homeric language was accessible to Homer's audience and as prose is more accessible to contemporary readers it is a better way to mimic the first reception of Greek audiences. Other classicists translate the works into a form of poetry which attempts to more accurately mimic Homeric verse. Some ancient texts are radically modernized in their language to make them seem more visceral and real, or foreign texts are denuded of their foreign phrases to convey the ordinariness of the events. All of this is an interpretive choice and quite often the most popular translations are by persons who are not able to actually speak the ancient language at all, but rather use a technical or literal translation to render the emotion and feeling of the first work into emotionally 'translatable' terms to a modern audience. But this can produce 'Ted…...
Ted Hughes frequently uses the imagery of wind in his poetry to convey power and force. In many of his poems, wind is portrayed as a relentless and unstoppable natural force that can shape and destroy the world around it. The wind is often described as roaring, howling, or raging, emphasizing its intensity and strength.
Hughes uses vivid and evocative language to describe the impact of the wind on the landscape, conveying its ability to cause chaos and destruction. In his poem "Wind," for example, Hughes describes the wind as a "tongue of death," suggesting its power to bring about destruction....
Ted Hughes's poetry harnesses the imagery of wind to evoke a profound sense of power and force. Through vivid and evocative language, he transforms wind into a dynamic entity that embodies both the destructive and transformative forces of nature.
In "The Wind," the titular force is depicted as a violent, relentless entity that wields immense power: "He is the one who will save us all / He is the one who will blow us away." Hughes personifies the wind, imbuing it with a malevolent agency that threatens to annihilate everything in its path. The repetition of "he" emphasizes the wind's absolute....
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