Harold Witt's The Hawk

Updike continues his portrayal of the vast splendor of nature through metaphors, similes, and diction pertaining to a large flock of starlings that flew and over and lit on the gold course where the two men in the poem are playing. The approaching flock of birds seem like a “cloud of dots” (Line 16) on the horizon to observers. The author compares The image of the steadily approaching flock of starlings to iron filings (the birds) stuck to a magnet through a piece of paper (the horizon). The men stand in awe of the black, writhing, approaching mass, much like children do when the magnet picks up the filings through the paper. By comparing the approaching birds to the magnet and iron filing scenario in a simile, Updike subtly likens the men reaction to a small child’s reaction when he/she sees the “magic” of the magnet and the iron filings for the first time. The simile purpose is to show how nature can make grown men feel like small, free little kids when experiencing nature at its best. As the observers continue to watch the looming flock of birds, the flock became one huge pulsating mass of birds that seemed as “much as one thing as a rock.” (Line 22) Updike once again eloquently portrays nature as absolutely stunning to show how nature affects man. The birds descended in a huge “evenly tinted” (Line

Nevertheless, in the poem ‘Nesting time’, Stewart interprets a personal experience in first person of the appearance of a bird that lands upon his daughter and forgets the thought of the harsh world. Stewart’s descriptive language repeatedly explains the poem as if seen in his viewpoint, beginning with an interjection, ‘oh’ communicating of his incredulity of an ‘absurd’ bird. Symbolizing the bird with strong coloured imagery its ‘mossy green, sunlit’, described to be bright and joyful, with sweetness shown with the type of bird, ‘honey-eater’, Douglas Stewart takes the time to describe its admiration juxtaposed to the dangerous world surrounding it. While visualizing the birds actions, ‘pick-pick-pick’ of alliteration and repetition of its

The intensity of the imagery emphasizes Teasdale’s love for nature and her desire for humanity to emulate it. Adding to the ambience is the use of alliteration, which lends a calming fluidity to these lines, and the simplistic rhyme scheme. Yet Teasdale is driven to write this poem because the paradise she describes is being threatened and overshadowed by the vile influence of humankind, as the third couplet makes clear. Humanity is indirectly introduced through the fence-wire that serves as the robin’s perch.

In the poem there is also an idea of man verses nature, this relates to the survival of the fittest. John Foulcher shows this through the use of first person point of view. For example in the second stanza “Then above me the sound drops” this again possesses sensory imagery creating a deeper human aura throughout the poem. Foulcher further uses a human aura to build a sense of natural imagery for example in the last stanza : “I pick up these twigs and leave them” adding closure

The writer makes use of diction to express his feelings towards the literary work and to set the dramatic tone of the poem. Throughout the poem, there is repetition of the word “I”, which shows the narrator’s individual feeling of change in the heart, as he experiences the sight of hundreds of birds fly across the October sky. As the speaker effortlessly recounts the story, it is revealed how deeply personal it is to him. Updike applies the words “flock” and “bird” repetitively to the poem, considering the whole poem is about the sight of seeing so many birds and the effect this has on a person. When the speaker first sees the flock of birds in lines 8-10, alliteration is applied to draw attention to what the narrator is witnessing. In line 29, Updike

The tone in “Hawk Roosting”, the hawk's tone is proud, powerful, and arrogant. Doesn't care what people think or have to say. The speaker believes he is the sovereign of the world and possesses power beyond life and death. In contradiction, Doty creates a poem of a dog’s thoughts and this

In “Hawk Roosting” by Ted Hughes And “Golden Rerivals” By Mark Doty both authors utilize animals and various forms of figurative language to convey different views of the world. Told from an animals perspective, The Speaker, the hawk, in “Hawk Roosting” comes off as arrogant while the speaker, the dog, in “ Golden Retrivals” is more concerned about another rather that focused on himself. The arrogance in “Hawk Roosting” is conveyed with the use of diction. The elevated language and repetition of the word “my” emphasizes that the hawk feels highly of himself and believes that everything belongs to hmi. In “Golden Retrivals” the dog has a less elevated vocabulary and is more simple minded.

The poem Hurt Hawks by Robinson Jeffers is a very spiritual poem about a man who finds an injured hawk that will never be able to fly again. The narrator mentions in the poem that he would rather kill a man than a hawk because a hawk has never done anything to him, but there are many people who have done things to hurt him. He takes the Hawk home with him for about six weeks until he realizes that the Hawk would rather die than not be able to fly. He shoots the Hawk and see his spirt fly off. He mentions that the Hawk not only symbolizes other hawks dying but men as well.

Birds are shown throughout our culture as symbols. Simply by their appearance, they can spark feelings of love, freedom, or wonder in the hearts of people. Birds are creatures that have attributes similar to the beings on earth that are so fascinated with them. Humans are full of constant bewilderment and curiosity, so it is no epiphany that they are entranced by such graceful creatures of the sky. People tend to use birds as symbolism, given the stark similarities between the creatures in the sky and humans. Each can fly with the desire to soar above in the sky and see all that is hidden down below. Both humans and birds can sing songs of revelation to their neighboring friends. Additionally, birds and humans can find themselves being restrained by something. Although such a comparison seems bizarre, Anthony Doerr captured the essence of birds and its connections entirely in his novel, All the Light We Cannot See. Almost every character that is spoken of has an aspect of freedom and flight deep in their story. Doerr’s novel follows the life of two teenagers as they travel through life during the disaster of World War Two. Many characters in the novel exhibit actions and situations in which a bird might find itself in. Werner finds himself fighting restraints, as a bird would to its cage. Marie-Laure is a young birds stretching her wings for the first time. The surrounding friends and characters also face the issues of the war, similar to which a bird struggles with the

Thus, through the initial impression of the man of the bird’s brave and challenging movements by the utilisation of poetic techniques, the reader is able to visualise the bird’s characteristic it inherits and gain a deeper understanding of nature and the impression of humanity distinctively.

The Other is configured in the two writers’ works as victims of power play, their unjust mistreatment subsequently exposing underlying social inequalities. Through adopting the Gothic medium characteristic of Romanticism, the texts induce within the reader emotions of terror and pity towards the marginalised, leaving a profound effect which impactfully conveys the intended social criticism.

“Ink smeared like bird prints in snow” is the first simile that appears in the poem and serves multiple purposes. The most obvious one is the creation of imagery, where it compares the black words the persona writes on paper to the bird’s foot prints that are left behind when a bird walks on snow. The imagery alludes that the persona will leave a “footprint” in the form of a note that people can use to trace her path but she will never be there anymore. From line thirty-six to forty, the poet creates another imagery of a sparrow (a tiny and a delicate bird) flying in windy snowing weather. The sparrow is dizzied and sullied by the violent wind; it encounters a lot of difficulties and fear. In this imagery, the persona compares herself with the delicate bird. She compares the challenges that the sparrow goes through to the suffering she encounters relating to her parents.

The poem then explores power perspectives and dwells specifically, on feminist and gender issues. The professor represents the patriarchal power of the past. The time of “calm age and power”. The “girl with the titian hair” is symbolic of the feminist challenge to such patriarchal

The techniques and systolic structure provides textual integrity by allowing relevance for a large contextual audience, with the themes transcending time and context. The contrast of the swans’ magnificence in their immortal portrayal to Yeats’ anguish in his “twilight years” of mental state establishes two aspects of human nature, developing a sense of ambiguity.

In Helen Macdonald’s memoir, H is for Hawk, she explores her journey of grief and recovery following the death of her father and how a goshawk and the wildness it embodies allows her to rediscover herself and restore her own humanity. In the very first chapter Macdonald takes time to assert her opinion of the sanctity and power of the wild, a world separate from and yet connected to our own, very much like the land of Faery from Gaelic and later English mythologies. To Macdonald the wild is a place and a presence that is both alien and familiar. Macdonald hunts down these places that to her seem to be more deeply connected to that force, wildness within and beyond all things. Macdonald relishes in these places’ beauty, as her father had taught