In the time that Claire was writing this poems was seeing nature through rose coloured glasses, but he was also summing up what people of his time thought of nature. The whole world at this time was in complete awe of nature, as they did not understand it.
The poem Work and Play is very easy to follow and understand, It is straight forward and it is easy to read between the lines to pick up any hidden messages, for example the green environmental parts of the poem.
It is clearly a poem of our times. It talks of ‘roasting and basting’ and lying ‘nude as tomatoes’ and bearing your body to get a tan is a very recent trend. I feel that it because of this why I can relate to the poem so well.
The context of Summer Images is a very typical of an early 1800’s poem, in the way of its language etc ‘with waking blossom play, and breathe Aeolian song’.
The poem Work and Play consists of four stanzas. The first three follow the same paten- first three lines describe the free moving swallow and the lines that follow describe the traffic jam, serpents (cars) and its organs (the humans going to the beach). However this is all reversed in the last stanzas (the traffic and humans described first and then the swallow of summer second). The lines in which are written about the traffic and humans are short and snappy to give it a some what dense feeling where as the lines about the swallow are long running and flowing to give us a feeling of a light, flowing, elegant bird.
The way the poem flows in Summer Images is quite similar to that of the long flowing parts in Work and Play, however in Summer Images the flowing part lasts practically through out the whole of the poem (except the last two lines in each stanzas which is shorter and snappier). There are seven stanzas that are practically identical in rhyme, scheme and structure. In the poem the last two lines of each stances simultaneously rhyme ‘ His bright side scatters dew and early lark from its bustle flies, to hail his matin new; and watch him to the skies’
The two poems are similar in the way of structure, each poem has a long flowing part then a shorter more dense part but they both use different techniques to get the feeling or sounds that they are after.
In the poem Work and Play alliteration is applied a great deal ‘the swallow of summer’, ‘the seamstress of summer’, ‘she scissors the blue into shapes and sews it’. Ted Hughes uses the repetition of the letter s and creates a rhyming type sound. Ted Hughes also applies some use as metaphor into his poem ‘cars that crawl through the dust’ ‘nude as tomatoes’. Metaphor, in the poem Summer Images is John Claire’s biggest technique he uses to get the feeling he desired into his poem ‘Blossom play, and breathe Aeolians song’, ‘far spread the laughing sky’, ‘rich music breathes in summers every sound’. He also uses alliteration in his poem as well, much like Ted Hughes however he doesn’t use nearly as much, ‘sweet summer’, ‘side scatter’.
Work and Play creates vivid images in ones mind created mostly by his use of metaphor, for example ‘whiplash swimmer’, ‘serpent of cars’, ‘fish of the air’. The words such as whiplash remind us of a sudden crack of the whip the sort of energy and speed, of movement we see in the swallow. Just as the fish moves with speed in the water so the swallow seems to swim through the air.
Also in this poem there is a very fresh use of language for example when Hughes takes a noun and turns it into a verb i.e. in his use of the word headache, ‘and headache it homewards’.
In comparison of the two poems I noticed that the use of language in both poems couldn’t be more different. Hughes uses such words as ‘voltage’, ‘whiplash’ and ‘electricity’ (which is the language of our times, words we can relate to) where as Claire uses such words as ‘ Aeolian song’, ‘ebon cloud’ and ‘wind-enamoured aspen’ which most people have never heard of. But one does have to take it into account that these poems were written at completely different times and in completely different eras, and that Summer Images is most defiantly not a poem of our times.
Summer images uses a lot of very romantic language such as summer, sweet, timid, and refreshed, which can only really paint one picture, and that is glorified nature, nature at its best.
Although I can see merits in both poems I must say that I prefer work and play, this is because I can relate to it (a poem of my time) I can easily understand the language and easily picked up on the message that Hughes was trying to put by via his poem - that nature is full of beauty, and all the creatures it processes work alongside it and this is what adds to the beauty, then there’s us, Humans even when ‘relaxing’ were ugly and are clearly nature at its worst. Apart from the fact that I can relate to the poem I also prefer the way it flows and sounds when being read.
Summer Images, although I do like the poem and can instantly tell it is a poem of much beauty, I couldn’t really understand the language and found it very hard to get a picture in my head because of this (unlike Work and Play were through out the poem I have vivid pictures pooping into my head, the swallow, the cars etc).
As I am a person of my era I have an understanding of nature and am not in as much awe as people of his time, yet again another reason why I found it hard to relate. I don’t really like the flow of the poem either or the rhythmic paten that it follows. The poem just seemed to long in my perspective. But over all understanding was the thing that I based my decision on.
In this essay I was asked to compare the way Ted Hughes and John Claire write about the theme of nature. I was asked to write about the poet’s attitude to their environment and the times in which they lived.
After summing up my essay I conclude that in the time of writing Summer Images John Claire had a very one sided view of nature all he saw was the beauty and blocked out all of the nasty things (that in most cases are more natural than any think else) for example animals preying on one another. He just focused on the good things, ‘silver lining to the sun’, ‘swallow heed on the smoke-tanned chimney-top’. He took any thing he wanted and made it sound nice and beautiful i.e. ‘jetty snail’. To sum it up this poem was written by John Clair why wearing rose coloured glasses, but yet the typical view of the people in his time.
However when Ted Hughes was writing Work and play he saw nature as it was, with extreme beauty but with extreme ugliness as well. He tells of the whole picture rather than just seeing one side. Which once again is how people of our time see things.