By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Pike’ is one of the best-known poems by the English poet Ted Hughes (1930-98). Published in his second collection, Lupercal, in 1960, the poem describes the fish known as the pike, which is depicted as deadly and dangerous: a force of nature which obeys its own rules. Like many of Hughes’ poems, ‘Pike’ focuses on the brutality of the natural world.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Emma Lazarus is most famous for writing one poem, ‘The New Colossus’, which adorns the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Written in 1883, the poem helped to shape the popular idea of the Statue of Liberty as a welcoming mother, and of America as the great nation of immigrants.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings!’ This proud exclamation is among the most famous lines in nineteenth-century English poetry. But who wrote them, and what exactly does this quotation mean?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Daddy’ is undoubtedly Sylvia Plath’s most widely studied poem, and it is probably her most famous too. It is also her most controversial. But is ‘Daddy’ a searingly honest exploration of Plath’s own relationship with her father, or something closer to the dramatic monologue in which an invented speaker talks to us about her father?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Along with ‘The Tyger’, perhaps ‘London’ is the best-known of all of the poems by William Blake (1757-1827) which he published under the title Songs of Experience. This volume, which is the companion-piece to his earlier Songs of Innocence (indeed, the two volumes should be viewed as one larger work), sees Blake addressing some of the darker aspects of late eighteenth-century society, such as slavery, poverty, and the deadening effects of industrialisation.