Summary Of Thrushes By Ted Hughes

Langston Hughes’s personal narrative and Howard Zinn’s essay are comparable in several ways. Since the bullies are more powerful than their victims in both stories, they

Poetry as a literally work in which the expression of ideas and feelings is given strength has had great authors overtime who took different perspectives in this genre of literature. These poets used distinctive rhythm and style to express their styles, poetic themes, outlook on life, and had their share of influence on the American society. This paper uses the basis of these styles, themes, outlook on life and subsequent influence on the American society to compare three prolific poets who ventured into this literature genre: Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, and Maya Angelou. Robert Frost (1874-1963) holds a unique and almost sole position in the career span which mostly encompasses

“Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom”(Erickson). During the 20th century, British writers switched their writing style to mimic the values of the modernism period. The main values of this period include psychology and science, the effects of war, social and personal concerns, and streams of consciousness. “The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas and “The Naming of Cats” by T.S. Eliot all embody these values in some way. The Modernism period gave authors a more open approach to express psychological feelings and also gave the reader the chance to criticize warfare while also being able to praise individual growth.

The author, Norman Mailer, uses similes in “The Death of Benny Paret” to support his claim that even the strongest person has their weaknesses. He does this by creating contrasting views from the first paragraph where Paret is a proud champion, to the second paragraph where he is weak and being “demolished.” Mailer described Paret’s opponent, Griffith as being “like a cat ready to rip the life out of a huge boxed rat” and his attack on Paret with his “right hand like a piston rod which has broken through the crankcase” as well as “like a baseball bat demolishing a pumpkin.” The use of these similes show that Norman Mailer had viewed Benny Paret’s opponent, Griffith, as a savage, fierce, and uncontrollable competitor. The comparisons between the fists and pistons and the use of diction like “demolishing” help illicit images and excitement into the reader

In 1963 on a cold winter day of February 11th, Sylvia Plath ended her life. She had plugged up her kitchen, sealing up the cracks in doors and windows before she was found with her head inside of her gas oven inhaling the dangerous fumes. She was only thirty years old, a young woman with two small children and an estranged ex-husband. A tragic detail of her life is that this is the second time she had tried to commit suicide. Plagued with mental illness her whole life, which is evident within her poetry. She would write gripping, honest portrayals of mental illnesses. Especially within Ariel, the last poetry book she wrote, right before she took her life. Although it’s hard to find a proper diagnosis for Sylvia Plath, it is almost definite that she at least had clinical depression with her numerous suicide attempts and stays in mental hospitals undergoing electroshock therapy. Sylvia Plath is now famously known for her writing and the more tragic parts of her life. Such as the separation from her husband, Ted Hughes, mental illness, etc… Plath may not have intended for her life and art to become inspiration to many people but that has become the end result. Sylvia Plath writing shows symptoms of her suicidal thoughts. To study specific moments in Sylvia Plath’s life, it can be connected to certain writing’s of her’s, such as “Daddy”, The Bell Jar, and “Lady Lazarus”.

In his article “Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment,” Tony Hoagland argues that modern poetry is “oblique,” “fractured,” and “discontinuous”. He believes that poems no longer have systematic structure or development, making them appear random with skittish tendencies. Because of the poems that Hoagland feels are different, he categorizes most new poems to be like the kind he describes in his article. He further evaluates new poetry by claiming that “narrative poetry is tainted by overuse” and that the time we live in is “simply not a narrative age.” He uses several poems to support his argument such as, “Couples” by Mark Halliday and “First Person Fabulous” by Matthea Harvey. He utilizes these poems because they possess no true focal point and the structure restricts them from having a clear narrative.

The notion of truth being a defined reasoning and represented as a one sided argument is unmistakably how most audiences visualize it. The concept cannot be interpreted in such close mindedness, as to tell the truth is to speak what appears “truthful” to “you”. Conflicting perspectives arise when the visualization of how feasible or veracious something is differs between individuals. The controversy surrounding Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, contentious poets of the twenty first century portray their own reality through their semi-confessional poetry. Sylvia Plath frequently extends her cereal obsession with her dead father as

After the affair Plath grew increasingly depressed and eventually committed suicide. He said that “Plaths death was inevitable, she had been on that track most of her life,” but he could not contend with the additional suicide of Wevill in 1969, which he said was “utterly within her power, and it was an outcome of her reaction to Sylvia’s action,” which led to Wevill’s suicide.” These past horrific experiences strongly affected Hughes future relationships and poetry.

In ‘The Minotaur’ Hughes showcases the ambiguity of emotion in both Plath and himself as he disproves critics that he is the sole driving force of her suicide. In the first two stanzas Hughes removes blame from himself as he recounts an argument from his previously unheard of perspective, as the victim of Plath’s rage and violence. T- this is depicted with aggressive verbs -E- of “smashed” “swung” and “demented” and his own justification “demented by my being 20 minutes late” uses enjambment -E- to cause disruption in the rhythm of the poem, just like the argument.T- The visual symbolism of Plath smashing his mother’s heirloom sideboard E- transcends the action itself as Plath consciously chooses the the item E- “mapped with the scars of my

Ted Hughes illustrates a vital view in his poem to describe to his audience that what we perceive may not always be true. Often times, the first impression that nature gives is one that is calm and beautiful. However, as the artist prepares to paint the scene, he’s challenged with trying to fit in the entire view of nature. The artist’s task is to paint the water lily, but is having difficulty as there are many other features that are hard to see. Hughes reveals the speaker’s attitude toward nature as being not only beautiful, but also dark and violent.

Poetry is an art borne of a love for language and a want for individual expression. Especially evident during times of transition, poetry can be used to define exisistence or accentuate fantasy. The Modernist movement provided room for experimentation and provocation, proclaiming, "out with the old, in with the new”. Edward Estlin Cummings illustrated himself as an exemplar example of the Modernist poetry and challenged the expectations of contemporary poetry.

Poetry is much different than any other style of writing. Poets have a way of communicating their message in a much more indirect way than regular writers. One reader may interpret a poem in a way that is drastically different than another. To truly understand a poem, one must understand the author as well. Sharon Olds, an American poet, who is known for her morbid and unhappy poems, writes about various themes including political violence, family relationships, and sexuality (Gale). In Olds’ poem, “The Death of Marilyn Monroe” we see her examining sexuality not only in 20th century, but in today’s age as well. Olds uses the death of a famous sex icon to really show how women were, and are still being sexualized in society.

The agitation symbolizes her fragility due to old age and also her emotional instability. Her anxiety, fear, and/or nervousness causes her hands to shake rapidly in response to the feeling. Therefore, the woman’s jittery hands reflect her anxiety due to her recent acceptance of her aging and the fear of people’s judgments. Also, the woman’s experience with the belly of the whale connects to the author’s suicidal death. Although sources do not know the cause of her loss, poems often reveal thoughts of the author on certain situations such as society’s cruelty. Sylvia Plath points out the opinionated people in the world by describing the mirror as “unmisted by love or dislike” (Plath 3). In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston also attempts to regain his memory about his past. This shows his detachment to Oceania’s control through his efforts to figure out what happened before the disappearance of his parents and siblings. In fact, he talks to a Prole who consists of more freedoms than the Outer Party about his background before the Party existed and the war began. His small action of speaking to a Prole breaks many rules of the state

Confessional Poetry was the term given to the works of a group of American poets—including Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, W. D. Snodgrass, and less often Theodore Roethke and Allen Ginsberg—who were writing verse in the late nineteen-fifties and sixties. This label, “confessional,” was so named— misnamed—by critic M. L. Rosenthal in a 1959 review of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, because of the personal voice and colloquial style the volume presented which was unlike the formality of Lowell’s previous collections. For their subject matter these poets used parts of life not ordinarily presented in the public domain, such as frank revelations about marital infidelities, experiences with drug and alcohol addictions, mental breakdowns, and suicide attempts. Yet Rosenthal’s term, “confessional,” radically simplified the work that it labeled. Not only did many famous figures such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and John Berryman committed suicide in this school but also used their poems as a public forum for engaging in literal and philosophical

is our job to search it out. In the case of the poem, the narrator now