Analysis of Wind by Ted Hughes

                                                        

THE POET: Ted Hughes, the husband of Sylvia Plath, lived bewteen 1930 and 1998. He was an English poet also known for writing content that fits the children category.

THE POEM BACKGROUND: Hughes particular sailing experience is shared in the poem titled “Wind” though the word related to travelling was never seen in the poem (a prove that Ted Hughes is a very talented writer) but the mental images and repeated use of “Wind” in the poem tells the reader there was a journey going on. The first stanza had scenes of night time, while the second stanza was in the morning, there was also seedy scene to prove that the events in the poem were in motion_ take for example the forth stanza:

“The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,

At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:

The wind flung magpie away, and a black”

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SUMMARY: In the first stanza, the poet sailed through the wet rainy night with a fierce wind. The poem still portrayed the heaviness of the wind in the second stanza of the poem though it was already daytime and sun created an orange sky. In the third stanza, the poem speaker strolled around the ship at noon but the fifth and the last stanza showed Hughes state of relationship with his companion (a fellow traveller).

SETTING AND DICTION: The diction is simple and the setting is in the ship or referrably on the sea, sailing.

THE CATEGORY OF THE POEM:  It falls under travel based on the fact that the events in the poem detailed the poet’s sailing experience but from another angle, the poem belongs to nature where many natural things are given attention; the wind which at a point in the poem was considered stampeding, the hills which were booming, the sky which was also referred as orange, etc.  It is important to also note that the poem reveals the supremacy of the inanimate over the animates with the wind (the inanimate) tormented the poet (the animate) and another classic poem that glorifies the inanimate over the animate is “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by John Keats where the urn held love far longer than two lovers who’s love are easily vanished by death.

THE MESSAGE IN THE POEM: The message of the poem is traced to the title “Wind” as it is mentioned multiple times in the poem “Wind stampeding the fields under the window” as seen in line three of the poem, “Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes” in line eleven of the poem, “The wind flung a magpie away, and a black” in line fifteen. So many factors called for the title of the poem and the first remains the impact it had on the journey. The second is how the wind influenced the poets relationship with his accompanied traveller as seen in the fifth stanzas of the poem “In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip/ Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought/ Or each other.”

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THE FIGURES OF SPEECH: I try look through the poet’s choice of beautifying words and I felt like the line 20-21 have a zeugma where the word “entertain” seems overused “...cannot entertain book, thought/ Or each other”. Others are “This house” in line one is a synecdoche used for representing the whole ship, “the stones cry out” is a personification, “wind wielded” is an alliteration, “orange sky” is a symbolism for a sunny afternoon, “flexing like the lens of a mad eye” is a simile, “burnt wind” is an oxymoron, “blade-light” is an imagery.

Enunwa Chukwudinma S. aka samueldpoetry

(the Leo with wings flying)

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Analysis Of Relic By Ted Hughes

DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE POEM 

"Relic" by Ted Hughes is a descriptive poem. It lays its setting to the sea with irregular end rhyme pattern and two stanzas of unequal number of lines. Based on observation of naijapoets.com.ng, Hughes made use of imaginative description; he told an undefined entity how the jawbone got to the sea as if he witnessed it "broken by the breakers or tossed/ To flap for half an hour and turn to a crust" but the use of "or" between "breakers or tossed" showed that his description was imaginative.

The poem is about a jawbone found deep down the sea. If one claims that Ted Hughes had love for water, sailing and the things relating to the sea; it will not be disputed. He told of how he found the jawbone, how it was thrust, living in the sea among other things like claws, skulls, crabs, dogfish, etc. He told of how the jawbone lived gnawing and stretching to feed but later ended at the beach. The poet described the deep sea as a battleground where friendship does not exist "In that darkness camaraderie does not hold" (line 5) then at the end line of the poem tagged the jawbone "a cenotaph". From lines 14-16, he claimed that nothing gets better in the sea and thereby described the sea's digestion of things into its seabed as its biggest achievement.

The tittle of the poem generalized the interest of the poet. The first stanza of the poem is 11 lines while the second stanza is 5 lines; which looked like the summary of the first stanza. Grammatically, the clause "I found this jawbone" made it look spoken than written, as if someone was standing in front of the poet and could as well see the jawbone himself/herself. "Continue the beginning" sounds poetic genius, which means "lets go back to the description of the sea". Besides the large use of imagery, personification existed in great amount from line 6-9 "And the jaws, Before they are satisfied or their stretched purpose/ Slacken, go down jaws; go gnawn bare. Jaws/ Eat and are finished and the jawbone comes to the beach". Line 12 "Time in the sea eats its tail," happens to be personification as well. "This curved jawbone did not laugh" is also a personification.

The jawbone was described in many forms, he symbolised it in different ways by calling it "Indigestibles" in line 13. It was metaphorically called a cenotaph: "A cenotaph is a monument erected to honour the dead whose bodies lie elsewhere; especially members of the armed forces who died in battle".

"In that darkness" symbolized the sea, "The deep" also symbolized the sea. Other poetic devices in the poem are enjambments, alliterations, etc.

Few among the many themes to deduce from this poem is the longevity in things than beings, the unwholesome experience deep down the sea, and the havoc of duration. In accordance with the description of the poet, the jawbone had lasted very farther than the animal that owned it.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)

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