Analysis of Ted Hughes Poetry
TABLE OF CONTAINS 1. Wind by Ted Hughes 1.1 The main idea 1.2 Grammatical analysis 1.2.1 Form 1.2.2 Syntax 1.2.3 Language 1.3 Images analysis 1.3.1 Content 1.3.2 Images 2. Thistles by Ted Hughes 2.1 The main idea 2.2 Grammatical analysis 2.2.1 Form 2.2.2 Syntax 2.2.3 Language 2.3 Images analysis 2.3.1 Content 2.3.2 Images 3. Bibliographical references
1. WIND BY TED HUGHES This house has been far out at sea all night, the woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, winds stampeding the fields under the window loundering black astride and blinding wet. Till day rose; then under an orange sky the hills had new places, and wind wielded blade-light, luminous black and emerald, flexing like the lens of a mad eye. At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as the coalhouse door. Once I looked up -through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes the tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope, The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace, at any second to bang and vanish with a flap; the wind flung a magpie away and a blackback gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house rang like some fine green goblet in the note that any second would shatter it. Now deep in chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought, or each other. We watch the fire blazing, and feel the roots of the house move, but sit on, seeing the window tremble to come in, hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
1.1 Main Idea The idea which the poem transmits me is a a feeling of great loneliness because the world is very big and I am small in comparison with the world. It is a sunrise, and the sky is orange and rose, It is a very amazing landscape too. It transmits me happiness, because of the variety of colors, sounds and feelings.
1.2 Grammatical analysis 1.2.1 Form of the poem This poem has stanzas with four verses and eleven syllables. It looks like a sonnet poem, but the sonnet has fourteen verses. It is a nature poem. This poem has twenty four verses, so It can ´t be a sonnet. The stanzas have always the same length, four verses. This poem, is very complex because It hardly ever has verses with more or less of eleven syllables. It has in the first stanza different rhymes in comparison with the rest of this poem. The rest of the poem has the same rhyme of ABAB and ABBA always. It hasn´t a rhyme scheme, so these rhymes are disordered. 1.2.2 Syntax of the poem The lines are broken usually at the end of the stanza, and the rest of the times are broken at the last verse of the stanza. These lines have a meaning each other and there isn´t duality of meaning in the lines. The lines don´t break their meaning. All the stanzas have verbs in past simple and present perfect tenses, except the last stanza, which has verbs in present simple tense. It means that in the last stanza he speaks about something which happens now, and in the rest of the stanza, the poet speaks about something which happened in the past. The poet uses in this poem a combination of complete sentences and fragments of sentences. There is a pattern because the sentences of the lines have almost always the same structure with a lot of wealth of adjectives. I had to read the poem a lot of times to understand it, because the adjectives are very colloquial and I had to look for it. There are a lot of signs of punctuation, so there are a lot of commas and full stops. I think that some of the signs of punctuation aren´t needed in this poem, It´s the same meaning without them. 1.2.3 Language of the poem The language of the poet is very rich and varied. He uses a lot of words which I didn´t know. Although it makes me difficult to read it, I think that It´s good. There are some colloquial words that were difficult to find their meaning, for example blade-light, or guyrope. The rhythm is defined because there are six stanzas with four verses each other. 1.3 Images analysis 1.3.1 Content The speaker is the poet. He is the person who is talking about the wind, and he is sat looking out of the window watching the wind. It shows the powerful of the wind. The poet says to us the feelings which he feels when he is watching the fields beaten to the wind. The poem inspires me a feeling of great loneliness, and this form to feel the nature; it remembers me the romantic thoughts, although the poet lived in the XX century. The poet is amazed by the landscapes like a romantic of the XIX century. The conflict is about nature, which is the only
theme of the poem. Ted Hughes died in 1999, but this poem makes me think that he is a romantic person. He didn´t have the issues of that time. He had his own issues. 1.3.2 Images The images in this poem are figurative and abstract, and these images aren´t the same in all the poem. The poem has a chronological order because first the house is at night, next in a sunrise, late the noon, the evening and the night too. It is a succession of a day and the feelings of the wind in all the moments of the day. There are many symbols for example in the verse “This house has been far out at sea at night”. It refers to the movement of the house and the sounds of the wind look like the house is sailing in the sea. In the poem there are a lot of metaphors and comparisons and similes that are used to get to express the feelings of the poet like he felt to the wind, for example in the verse “hearing the stones cry out under the horizons”, it refers to the song of the wind in the horizon. 2. THISTLES BY TED HUGHES Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men Thistles spike the summer air And crackle open under a blue-black pressure. Every one a revengeful burst Of resurrection, a grasped fistful Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up From the underground stain of a decayed Viking. They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects. Everyone manages a plume of blood. Then they grow grey like men. Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.
2.1 Main Idea This other poem makes me feel emotional because this poem represents the fighting spirit of the people who are oppressed by their enemies. I think that the meaning of the poem is that the people never have to give up against the adversities although they are bigger than you, we can always face those adversities.
2.2 Grammatical analysis 2.1.1 Form of the poem The lines of this poem are ordered in four stanzas of three verses each. The stanzas have always three verses, but the verses haven´t all the same number of syllables. The rhymes of this poem are undefined. This rhyme can be different in some stanzas. 2.1.2 Syntax of the poem The lines are broken in the first stanza at the end of the stanza and in the other stanzas at the first line of the next stanza. Most sentences have three lines and the other sentences have one or two. The verbs are in the active form, there isn´t any verb in passive form. These sentences were easy to read. I haven´t any problem to read and understand this poem. The words of some verses are disordered but It is not a difficult thing. There are a lot of full stops but there aren´t many commas in the poem. 2.1.3 Language of the poem The words which are used by the poet are conversational and It makes me easier reading the poem. There are some words that I don´t know but there aren´t particular words. There is an Identifiable rhythm in the poem. The stanzas have a rhythm of three verses only but the number of syllables in each verse can vary. 2.2 Images analysis 2.2.1 Content In the poem, the poet speaks about the cycle of the thistles and how difficult it is growing up. The poet compares the growth of this plant with the generations of old warriors, how this plant fights for growing up. The battle for the land against superior enemies as the cows or the farmers. In this poem the narrator is omniscient and it is easier to understand in comparison of the other poem “Wind”. The poet was very creative in this poembecause I couldn´t imagine that he compares the growth of thistles with the ancient warriors. The conflict in this case represents the fight of the thistles to survive against the elements, so It´s a physical internal conflict. This poem was written in the year 1978. 2.2.2 Images This poem is full of images. The principal image is the comparison of the fight of the thistles to grow up with the fight of the ancient warriors, the Vikings and the Icelandics: -“Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air” -“Of resurrection, a grasped fistful Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up” -“From the underground stain of a decayed Viking. They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.”
The last stanza means the growth of thistles is a feud, because the thistles have to fight to survive: -“Then they grow grey like men. Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.” This poem is a big simile, a big comparison: the thistles are like the Icelanders, they have to survive. There are some metaphors to express the feelings of the poet.There are some metaphors to express the poet’s feelings. For example:”Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men”. These are the principal symbols of the poem.
3. REFERENCES •
Cover image: http://lenguayliteratura4eso.blogspot.com.es/2012/10/cuadros-de-laepoca-del-romanticismo.html (visited the 24/2/2012)
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Image one about wind: http://illustration2012.blogspot.com.es/ (visited the 28/2/2012)
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Image two about wind: http://rhymeandreason3.blogspot.com.es/2011/03/verse-ofday-ted-hughes.html (visited the 28/2/2013)
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Image one about thistles: http://armedwithvisions.com/2012/07/12/ted-hughesthistles/ (visited the 26/2/2012)