Activity 1 (Group work)
Instructions
1) Students are to be in their 5 groups. Each group will be assigned one out of the two unseen poems.
2) Identify two poetic devices (with reference to the blogpost on literary techniques) used in the poem.
3) As a group, write a 500 word analysis of how these poetic devices are used to describe the poet’s intention and post it on the class blog.
How to write the 500 word analysis:
For each poetic device identified by your group, give two accompanying explanations of how this device was used to provide meaning to the poem.
Poem A
Pike by Ted Hughes
Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.
Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.
In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds
The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date:
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.
Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: red fry to them-
Suddenly there were two. Finally one
With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-
One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.
A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them-
Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast
But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,
Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly toward me, watching.
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.
Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.
In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds
The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date:
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.
Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: red fry to them-
Suddenly there were two. Finally one
With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-
One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.
A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them-
Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast
But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,
Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly toward me, watching.
Poem B
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
So kiss'd to sleep.
And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd--"La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
The poet, Ted Hughes, in writing this poem challenges the reader to view nature in a totally new perspective by exploring the power and violence in it by through the symbol of one animal in river life, the Pike, since the Pike is the supreme species of fish in river life. He uses it to full extend to show the power and violence of nature.
ReplyDeleteHughes start with the poem with “Pike, three inch long, perfect” using this to start to describe the pike, as he begins to paint an imagery of the Pike as a predator. Its malevolent and voracious disposition, cruelty and cannibalistic nature cover the core of the poem. Outwardly it is a charming fish of fresh water with green stripes over its golden body. As the poet points out, pike is a killer fish; it is born to kill. Even a newly born pike has an ancient, spiteful grin. Pikes ravel in dancing on the surface of water as they are very aware of the powers they hold. This understanding of their capacity to dominate over other fishes gives a continual motion and joy to their nature. Despite their frightful nature, the author also paints an imagery that the Pike are exquisite with their majestic grandeur in their color and movement which can be seen how they “stunned by their own grandeur”; sometimes they are awe-struck at their own beauty. Their shapes produce on the onlookers an impression of mixed delicacy and horror. Even though they are small to our human eyes, they are very large in the world to which they belong. To the smaller creatures, which they kill under the water, they appear very large. They dwell in ponds where they lie still in the darkness beneath the surface. They lie on the last year's black leaves, which are submerged in the water and from there they look upwards. Their jaws are likened to the shape of a hooked clamp and inside the jaws are their teeth whose sharpness cannot be blunted at this stage of their existence which has been mould by their environment. They dominate over other fishes despite their tiny, little size. In the sub-terranean world they are held as monarchs. With machine-like jaws they wait for other creatures and when they see a victim they open up their jaws and half-swallowing other pikes or fishes they crunch their teeth within them.
The poem is also anti-romantic for even as it describes in minute detail the beauties of nature it reminds the readers of the violence and evil lurking deep inside it and relates it to our everyday life, this can further reinforce by the simile ‘it was as deep as England’. Darwin's theory of 'survival of the fittest' which is so vividly captured in the description of the two dead pikes is equally true to the human condition:"one jammed past its gills down the other's gullet." The pond where the pike live and survive by eating one another is as deep and complex as the web of human relationships in England: "it was as deep as England."
Therefore, this poem reveals Ted Hughes's thoughts about the evil nature of human being through the features of a ferocious fish Pike.
Group 1