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Poetry Across Time

Conflict

Establish

Bayonet ChargeBy Ted Hughes

Establish/Discuss

He ascribed that compulsion to three factors: the stories told by his father, who had survived his regiment’s massacre at Gallipoli; a love of Wilfred Owen’s poetry; and the West Yorkshire landscape where he grew up believing that ‘the whole region is in mourning for the first world war’. Despite his best efforts, Hughes never managed to free himself from his subject.

‘When I first started writing,’ Ted Hughes acknowledged, ‘I wrote again and again and again about the First World War.’

Establish/Discuss

1. threshing

2. furrows

3. clod

4. bewilderment

5. bayonet

6. statuary

7. patriotic

Definitions...

What does Drummond think of

Hughes' poetry?

Authors's Ideas and Background

Bayonet ChargeBy Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes was born in 1930 and died in 1998. He was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. Born in West Yorkshire, he studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, later spending most of his life in Devon. He was fascinated by the First World War experiences of his father and uncle, imagining fearful images of trench warfare. As a child, he also gained an interest in the natural world and the violence required to survive in harsh environments.

“It is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside the head and express something — perhaps not much, just something — of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are, from the momentary effect of the barometer to the force that created men distinct from trees… and in that same moment, make out of it all the vital signature of a human being — not of an atom, or of a geometrical diagram, or of a heap of lenses — but a human being, we call it poetry.”

Poem

Bayonet Charge

Suddenly he awoke and was running - rawIn raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedgeThat dazzled with rifle fire, hearingBullets smacking the belly out of the air -He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm;The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eyeSweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest, -

In bewilderment then he almost stopped -In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nationsWas he the hand pointing that second? He was runningLike a man who has jumped up in the dark and runsListening between his footfalls for the reasonOf his still running, and his foot hung likeStatuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows

Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flameAnd crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wideOpen silent, its eyes standing out.He plunged past with his bayonet toward the green hedge,King, honour, human dignity, etceteraDropped like luxuries in a yelling alarmTo get out of that blue crackling airHis terror’s touchy dynamite.

TED HUGHES

Skill: identify the Technique

Language Techniques...

His terror's touchy dynamite

Lugged a rifle as numb as a smashed arm

Bullets smacking the belly

In what cold clockwork of the stars

onomatopoeia simile

metaphor alliteration

Framed

Bayonet Charge

Suddenly he awoke and was running - rawIn raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,Stumbling across a field of clods towards a green hedgeThat dazzled with rifle fire, hearingBullets smacking the belly out of the air -He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm;The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eyeSweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest, -

In bewilderment then he almost stopped -In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nationsWas he the hand pointing that second? He was runningLike a man who has jumped up in the dark and runsListening between his footfalls for the reasonOf his still running, and his foot hung likeStatuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows

Vunerable, confusedstate

Double meaning. Explain them!

What is he?

Confused andfacing gun fire

What poetic technique is this? Used to?

Suggesting that patriotism is irrational

Why does he stop?What is he thinking?

Emphasises the soldier'sinsignificance

Violent imagery

Turned to stone by his indecision

{What hashappened?

What has the poet listed here?Why does this list end with 'etcetera'?

Suggests that the soldier is about to lose control of his emotions

Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flameAnd crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wideOpen silent, its eyes standing out.He plunged past with his bayonet toward the green hedge,King, honour, human dignity, etceteraDropped like luxuries in a yelling alarmTo get out of that blue crackling airHis terror’s touchy dynamite.

TED HUGHES

Skill: Interpreting the Text

1* How does the soldier feel as he wakes?* What physical state is he in? * What does he think as he hears the bullets?* What happened to the tear in his eye? Why?

* What makes him hesitate and nearly stop?* What is he thinking about at this point?* How has instinct taken over?

Interpreting the text:

* Why does he notice the hare?* What does it make him think about?* What does he think as he charges?* Why does he scream?

Skill: Symbolism

King, honour, human dignity, etcetera

Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm

To get out of that blue crackling air

His terror's touchy dynamite.

Endings:

Reflection...* Why does he say king, honour

and human dignity are 'luxuries'?* Is the use of 'etcetera'

important?* What is suggested in the last

line? Explain your ideas.

Look at the images below:

Can you find the quotation/idea that they refer to?

Quick Questions

1. How does the poet show the soldier changing between the start and the end of the poem?

2. Why does the poet use enjambment rather than neat line endings?

3. Why does the poet use the pronoun 'he' rather than naming the soldier?

4. When in the poem does the soldier move from confusion to terror?

5. What does the poem suggest about the poet's attitude to war?

Question Time!

Additional

Spring Offensive

Halted against the shade of a last hill,They fed, and, lying easy, were at easeAnd, finding comfortable chests and kneesCarelessly slept. But many there stood stillTo face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirledBy the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,For though the summer oozed into their veinsLike the injected drug for their bones' pains,Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field -And the far valley behind, where the buttercupsHad blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,Where even the little brambles would not yield,But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;They breathe like trees unstirred.

Till like a cold gust thrilled the little wordAt which each body and its soul begirdAnd tighten them for battle. No alarmsOf bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste -Only a lift and flare of eyes that facedThe sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.O larger shone that smile against the sun, -Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced togetherOver an open stretch of herb and heatherExposed. And instantly the whole sky burnedWith fury against them; and soft sudden cupsOpened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopesChasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high placeLeapt to swift unseen bullets, or went upOn the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence' brinkVentured but drave too swift to sink.The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,And there out-fiending all its fiends and flamesWith superhuman inhumanities,Long-famous glories, immemorial shames -And crawling slowly back, have by degreesRegained cool peaceful air in wonder -Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

WILFRED OWEN

Additional

Dulce et Decorum Est.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,And towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumblingFitting the clumsy helmets just in time,But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.In all my dreams before my helpless sightHe plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungsBitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

WILFRED OWEN

Links and References

Poet biography:http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7078

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poets/ted_hughes.shtml

Footage of the Gallipoli battle unearthed:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-449533/Rare-footage-WWI-Gallipoli-battle-unearthed.html

Ted Hughes discusses his work:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18DdJO9Lg-s

Sincerely, Ted Hughes:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3668375/Sincerely-Ted-Hughes.html

Sylvia - Film of relationship between Plath and Hughes:http://www.youtube.com/user/DragonflyNoir10#g/c/587711353099B61C

Links: