Every word counts in these poems, if for example a line or even a verse was skipped, it would be a bit tragic and it would turn the whole of the poem around. It is vital for each poem verse to be there to explain the poem, like in jaguar again, if you took out the first verse, then it wouldn’t really be very good, because you need the detail of the yawning apes and the shrieking parrots to show how fierce and wilful the jaguar is.
All the four poems that I was given have got some many things in common with each other and this adds to Hughes’s uniqueness in his poems. They all have the same sort of exploration, like the jaguar and the pikes; all four are violent in one way or another and fury, rage, eagerness and passion are all displayed.
In all the poems, the animals seem to be compared to something. For example, in Thrushes, ‘Mozart’s brain had it’, though that isn’t a comparity, it is basically a sort of common object that both of them have but it sort of does compare. In Jaguar ‘Lie still as the sun’, describing other animals in the jaguar.
All the poems seem to have alliteration and it helps improve the poem and making it get into you. Alliteration is when a phrase or a couple of words begin with the same letter and this gives a ‘spark’ in the poem. For example, in thrushes, ‘waters weep’ this is just a simple few words and it really does subtly twinkles up the line. Or another in the jaguar again ‘fierce fuse’. Although with the same meaning, Sibilance is exactly the same but begins with the letter s, so therefore not as likely and rarer to appear. That is the main reason why I could only find one, in pike ‘still splashes’.
Assonance is when vowel sounds are next to each other in words and also adds spice! This is also rare but mainly the least common out of them all and I couldn’t seem to pick out any. Their isn’t many repetitions to the poem at all, except for example in Hawk Roosting, he repeats all the way that the hawk is king and chief and arrogant and seems that every thing is made for him and is convenient like the trees and everything, so self centred!
There is no rhyming in his poems though this is of course intended. There are indeed many metaphors. These are just describing words as something else. Like, ‘parrots shriek as if they were on fire’ in Jaguar. Or even in pike, ‘As deep as England’. Similes are also common. They are simply describing phrases, but they make sense, but they don’t, like its right, but not literally. Like I hold creation in my foot’ in hawk roosting, or the ‘still splashes’ that I have already used with Sibilance in Pike.
