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Final Term 2020

University of Okara

Subject: Semester: Session:

2oth Century Poetry 4th 2018-2020
Class: Section: Shift: Morning
M.A English B
Name: Roll No.: Miss Iqra
Waqas Ahmad 1124 Khadim
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Open Book Review

Topic: TED HUGHES AS A MODERN POET
Edward James Hughes, famously known as Ted Hughes, was an
intelligent child of William Henry and Edith Hughes. He was born on
the 7th of August in 1930 in Mytholmroyd in the West Riding of
Yorkshire. This iconic figure died of cancer on the 28th of October in
1998.
Ted Hughes is a very important modern British poet. As a poet, he
commands full individual technical superiority over most of his
contemporaries. He understands modern sensibility and contemporary
issues; but writes in his own perspective. He creates before us worlds
which delight and instruct us and elevate us emotionally, intellectually
and esthetically. Unlike some modern poets so believe that a poem
should not mean but be, Ted Hughes is profoundly concerned with the
subject matter of his poetry.
The major theme of his poetry is of course man, that is, the question of
human existence, man’s relation with the universe, with the natural
world and with his own inner self. He is awfully serious about this last
aspect of the problem of being, namely, the problem of human
consciousness. His subjects range from animals, landscapes, war; the
problem posed by the inner world of modern man, to the philosophical
and metaphysical queries about the status of man in this universe. His
moods and methods of presentation reveal a similar variety. Ted Hughes
says about his vigor and vitality (usually associated with violence):
“Any form of violence—any form of vehement activity-invokes the
bigger energy. To accept the energy, and find method of turning it
to good. The old method is the only one. My poems are not about
violence but vitality. Animals are not violent; they are so much more
completely controlled than me”
The main theme in his poetry is this energy which has to be turned into a
positive force. Violence is misunderstood in his poetry. Most of
Hughes’s poetry can be said to be an attempt to negotiate with these
energies as we see his argument in the case of Hawk. This poem is often
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criticized on the ground that the hawk is a mouthpiece of fascism. What
is forgotten, however, is Hughes’s assertion that the Hawk symbolizes
“Nature thinking.” Secondly, the point of view in this poem is the
hawks; that is to say, the hawk is as mortal and part of creation as any
other creature, violent or timid. Right from his childhood, Ted Hughes
has been interested in animals. When his parents lived in the Calder
valley, Ted Hughes had a chance to see the world of the animals from
close quarters. Hughes learnt the first lesson that animals were by and
large victims. The wild world of the animals was at the mercy of the
ordered human world. Yet, as Hughes realized and emphasized in his
poetry, the human world was fascinated by the world of the animals
because it had pushed into the unconscious what the animal world still
possessed: vat, untapped energies. As depicted in ‘That Morning’:
“Two gold bears came down and swam like men…
Eating pierced salmon off their talons”
Here, the untamed natural impulses have been beautifully externalized
as the two bears representing the two visitors to the lake. He writes
violence chiefly of savage animals, but violence also in human nature.
Indeed, violence is one of the dominant themes in Hughes’s poetry; and
for this reason he has often been regarded as a poet of violence. But
these poems of violence by Hughes are certainly genuine poetry; and we
certainly enjoy reading them. And it is not only the sadistic persons
among us who would appreciate these poems. Even the normal reader
can find a certain degree of pleasure in them, especially because they are
perfectly realistic, and very vivid, in their depiction of brutality and
cruelty. But not violence alone but treats nature in a unique way as in:
“A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and
the clank of a bucket –”
Nature is one of the most prevalent scenes in his poetry. In a way
Hughes’s poetry continues the tradition of nature poetry. But unlike
Wordsworth who found Nature a “nurse, guide and guardian,” and
Tennyson who found Nature “red in tooth and Claw” Hughes tries to
take both the Wordsworthian and Tennyson approaches to Nature. In
poems like “Full Moon and Little Frieda” Hughes can describe Nature to
continue the Wordsworthian tradition, but in poems like “Hawk
Roosting” the “That Morning” Hughes recognizes the powerful, vital,
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violent and predacious Nature without commenting on it. It doesn’t
mean that he copies their style. One of the causes underlying Hughes’s
greatness as a modern poet is his maturity and originality of style.
Hughes has experimented with several different styles, ranging from the
Wordsworthian and ‘their metaphysical to that of the modern East
European poets. In each case, he has made the style his own as in
‘Thought-Fox’.
“The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed”
He can convey his meaning and tone through the use of diction. As in
the above extract, as soon as the thought-fox springs into action, the
vowels are short: “brilliantly, concentratedly.” The action reaches its
climax in the last line which is virtually monosyllabic: “And the page is
printed.” The poem thus shows a fine blending of vowels and
consonants so as to provide a fusion of sense and sound. At other times,
he uses animals as symbols. In each case, there is a remarkable mastery
over the medium, whether it is to depict a scene, portray an animal, tell a
story, or present a one-sided vision as that of Hawk. Even the theme of
violence is handled with the lexical entities. Ted Hughes is primarily
concerned with material reality not simply the reality of a superficial
urbanity but the one that governs larger questions of life and death,
Nature and the animal world, and above all, the inner world of man as in
‘Full Moon and Little Frieda’:
“A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk”
Instead of shutting his eyes to the metaphysical and spiritual questions
about life, Hughes tries to go to their bottom. He brings round that blood
can be spilled as mercilessly as milk and water. The reality is depicted in
the ‘boulders’ troubles of life. Like Blake he shows a fourfold vision
which progresses from knowledge of the surfaces seen from singular and
therefore one-sided perspectives to the mature philosophic perspective
which goes to the heart of the matter. He finds a close kinship between
the ambivalent but powerful forces within man and the inscrutable and
terrible working of the world of Nature. Equally remarkable is the fact
that Hughes has treated of many modern concerns, like war and
violence, with an awareness which is lacking in many of his
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contemporary poets. His poetry evokes a concentrated imaginative
awareness of experience in a specific emotional response through
language that he chooses and arranges for its meaning, sound, rhythm
and a purpose.
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Project Work
Topic: Poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath
About Poetess:
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S and
died on February 11, 1963 in London, England. She is an American poet
whose best-known works, such as the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”
and the novel The Bell Jar, starkly express a sense of alienation and self-
destruction closely tied to her personal experiences and, by extension, the
situation of women in mid-20th-century America.

Summary:
"Daddy" is a poem written by American Confessional poet Sylvia Plath.
The poem was written on October 12, 1962, four months before her
death and one month after her separation from Ted Hughes. It
was published posthumously in Ariel during 1965 alongside many other
of her poems leading up to her death such as "Tulips” and "Lady
Lazarus."
The speaker creates a figurative image of her father, using many
different metaphors to describe her relationship with him. He's like a
black shoe that she's had to live in; like a statue that stretches across the
United States; like God; like a Nazi; like a Swastika; and, finally, like a
vampire. The speaker, faced with her father as a giant and evil Nazi,
takes the part of a Jew and a victim.

Yet, with this poem, the speaker gets her revenge, claiming that she's
killed both her father and the man she made as a model of her father –
her husband. This poem shows her struggle to declare that, no matter
how terrible her father was and how much he remains in her mind, she is
now through with him.
Analysis:
"Daddy" is perhaps Sylvia Plath's best-known poem. It has elicited a
variety of distinct reactions, from feminist praise of its unadulterated
rage towards male dominance, to wariness at its usage of Holocaust
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imagery. It has been reviewed and criticized by hundreds and hundreds
of scholars, and is upheld as one of the best examples of confessional
poetry.
It is certainly a difficult poem for some: its violent imagery, invocation
of Jewish suffering, and vitriolic tone can make it a decidedly
uncomfortable reading experience. Overall, the poem relates Plath's
journey of coming to terms with her father's looming figure; he died
when she was eight. She casts herself as a victim and him as several
figures, including a Nazi, vampire, devil, and finally, as a resurrected
figure her husband, whom she has also had to kill.
Though the final lines have a triumphant tone, it is unclear whether she
means she has gotten "through" to him in terms of communication, or
whether she is "through" thinking about him.
In other words, contradiction is at the heart of the poem's meaning.
Neither its triumph nor its horror is to be taken as the sum total of her
intention. Instead, each element is contradicted by its opposite, which
explains how it shoulders so many distinct interpretations.
This sense of contradiction is also apparent in the poem's rhyme scheme
and organization. It uses a sort of nursery rhyme, singsong way of
speaking. There are hard sounds, short lines, and repeated rhymes (as in
"Jew," "through," "do," and "you"). This establishes and reinforces her
status as a childish figure in relation to her authoritative father. This
relationship is also clear in the name she uses for him - "Daddy"- and in
her use of "oo" sounds and a childish cadence. However, this childish
rhythm also has an ironic, sinister feel, since the chant-like, primitive
quality can feel almost like a curse. One critic wrote that the poem's
"simplistic, insistent rhythm is one form of control, the obsessive
rhyming and repeated short phrases are others, means by which she
attempts to charm and hold off evil spirits." In other words, the childish
aspects have a crucial, protective quality, rather than an innocent one.
"Daddy" is evidence of her profound talent, part of which rested in her
unabashed confrontation with her personal history and the traumas of the
age in which she lived. That she could write a poem that encompasses
both the personal and historical is clear in "Daddy.