Concerning the water, the river, we notice many sides if it which are expressed through positive aspects: reality and dream, as well as pragmatism and poetry; but also through a negative aspect: it is that a river is calm at the source of it but it can become dangerous later on and kill.
There is a complicity, a union, a relationship between men and nature. And this is what Alice Oswald is trying to show us. The only contrast is that nature is benign, condescending, while men sometimes use the water and the nature for his personal needs, not caring for the nature's personal comfort; men own, control, dominate and even pollute rivers and nature. For short, men disturb the peace of nature.
So we have here two sets of voices: one poetic -where the man respects the nature-, and one pragmatic -where the man disturbs the nature.
Through this whole first part of the poem, we notice shifts of voice and of point of view: it starts with the point of view of the poet who sees the old man and describes him and his acts (“He consults his map”), and then, at “An old man”, it switches to the walker's point of view. The subject changes from “he” to “I” with which it seems easier to understand why this man here for is. But nevertheless we don't, because he actually doesn't: “I don't know, all I know is walking”. We therefore share a feeling of ignorance and blindness while moving forward the path and the poem.
Because of some changes, the poem seems sometimes disconcerting: we notice a lack of clear links between sections that are describing nature. For example when we move from full lines to a range of one-word lines:
“listen,
a
lark
spinning
around
one
note
splitting
and
mending
it”
or when the voice or the language becomes oral looking:
“[...] and I
I don't know, all I know is walking. Get dropped off the military track [...]”.
These changes suggest nature's complexity, as well as the difficulties (the) man has in understanding and finding a form in which to express it.
Go Fishing, in turn, directs us imaginatively through the process step-by-step: “Join water, wade in underbeing/ Let brain mist into moist earth”. Imaginatively is actually the right word to use because the twice-written expression “As if” suggests an unreal situation and therefore imagination.
Furthermore, the single action of going fishing -as said in the title- is something calm and peaceful during which man thinks, dreams and imagine things. It is a way, I think, to free your dreamer side, among many others of course.
The meaning of this poem is structured around its emotional content and impact through the use of the imperative form of several verbs. The accumulation of these imperatives helps us to feel the experience of the poet further in his communion with nature because the verbs order, force and push us to do and/or imagine what is told.
Moreover, the tone of the poem being calm, passionate and poetic will give us an even more effective result in terms of revealing the emotions the poet wished us to feel.
The final verb “Heal” is in link with the words “hospital” and “busy with urgency”. And this gives more sense to the story, the experience, and helps believing in and interpreting it.
By the way, the environment of stress and precipitation of the hospital and the urgencies links in a sense with the imperatives because it seems like there was not enough time to construct full and polite phrases. Although this doesn't mean the poet didn't want to be polite, but it simply shows the poet wished to keep this atmosphere of contrast between calm and stress -hence the opposition between going fishing and the hospital, the urgencies.
And so, by the very end of the poem, the poet has taught us how to attempt this magical, this ritual transformation.
To conclude, these two poems are both about nature, they both include contrasts. But Alice Oswald's Dart looks more at changes, complexity and different points of view, unlike Ted Hughes' Go Fishing which is more concentrated on imagination, interpretation and atmosphere. However, they both underline that nature is something we can control, but that cannot own us.
Word count: ~1015 words
by
dhove (student)
