SYLLABUS

Modern and Contemporary British Literature

Course Description: In this course, students will read and engage critically with a diverse selection of modern and contemporary British fiction and verse. Through a combination of brief lectures and class discussions, this course not only locates these literary texts historically, but also explores the myriad ways that these works intersect with literary, social, cultural, political, aesthetic, and philosophical frameworks. Focusing upon the varying stylistic and narratological strategies deployed by these important authors, this course affords students with an opportunity to encounter - and ruminate deeply upon - some of the 20th century's best writing.

Contact Info:

Prof. Jay McRoy

Office: CART 228

Office Hours: T 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Email: mcroy@uwp.edu

Web: www.jaymcroy.com

Required Texts (Available at Campus Bookstore, but available way cheaper elsewhere):

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

High Rise - J.G. Ballard

Dubliners – James Joyce

Watchmen - Alan Moore

Course Guidelines and Expectations:

1) Come to class

2) Come to class on time

3) Turn your work in on time

4) Respect your fellow students

Grading:

Class Attendance and Participation (10%)

Random Reading Quizzes (30%)

Midterm Exam (30%)

Final Exam (30%) Final exam is scheduled for Tuesday, May 16th, from 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm

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Plagiarism Warning:

There is nothing wrong with using other people's words and thoughts as long as you acknowledge your debt. In fact, you can frequently strengthen your writing by doing citing other critics' arguments. However, if you represent other people's words or ideas as if they were your own, then you are plagiarizing. Plagiarism includes: 1) paraphrasing or copying (without the use of quotation marks) someone else's words without acknowledgment; 2) using someone else's facts or ideas without acknowledgment, and, 3) handing in work for one course that you handed in for credit in another course without the permission of both instructors.

When you use published words, data, or thoughts, you should note their use. We will use MLA Guidelines throughout this course. When you use the ideas of friends or classmates, you should thank them in an endnote (e.g. "I am grateful to my friend so and so for the argument in the third paragraph"). If friends give you reactions but not suggestions, you need not acknowledge that help in print (though it is gracious to do so). Collaboration and using the work of others is the backbone of academia. Plagiarism and academic dishonesty destroys the possibility of working together as colleagues. Therefore, all instances of plagiarism in this class will be addressed with the utmost severity. If you have any questions as to whether something you have written for this class constitutes plagiarism, please see me before handing it in for credit.

Content Warning:

This course contains material that relates directly to things that occur in the world. Not all of these things are pleasant, and some may find certain images, sounds, or ideas upsetting, controversial, or offensive. As a mode of self care, spend some time researching the course materials so that you will be aware of what actions or ideas might be explored/discussed in conjunction with a particular text.

This class includes material related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory.

_________________________________________________________________________________ Semester Breakdown: 1/31: Introduction 2/2: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Through Chapter VII) 2/7: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Through Chapter XIV) 2/9: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Finish novel) 2/14: Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est"* & "Anthem, For Doomed Youth"*; Charles Hamilton Sorley's "To Germany"*; A. E. Houseman's "Here Dead We Lie"* 2/16: William Butler Yeats' "Leda and the Swan"* & "The Second Coming"* 2/21: T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" & "The Hollow Men"*

2/23: James Joyce's "The Dead"

2/28: Virginia Woolf's Orlando (Chapters 1 & 2)

3/2: Virginia Woolf's Orlando (Chapters 3 & 4) 3/7: Virginia Woolf's Orlando (Finish Novel)

3/9: In-Class Screening: Orlando (Potter, 1992) 3/14: In-Class Screening: Orlando (Potter, 1992)

ENGL 319 – MIDTERM

In no more than 600 words per answer (1200 words total), answer two of the following three essay questions. This Midterm is due at the start of class on March 16th (the last class before Spring Break).

1) Compare and contrast the characters of Basil, Lord Henry, and Dorian Gray. What is their relationship to one another, and how does this impact the novel’s action on both an immediate narrative and an implicit/allegorical level? How do ideas like aestheticism and hedonism inform our understanding of these characters? 2) Select either “Dolce et Decorum Est” and “Anthem, for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen, “The Second Coming” and “Leda and the Swan” by William Butler Yeats, or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot and explain how the poem’s thematic content and poetic style compliment one another. NB – You will want to be very specific when discussing the poem’s theme(s), as well as when illustrating how the use of specific poetic devices enhance our understanding of the poem’s content. 3) In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf asserts that great writers must have androgynous minds (they must be “man-womanly” and “woman-manly”). Explain how Orlando: A Biography integrates these ideas in its treatment of Orlando, among other characters. Aside from the sex change, how else does Orlando transform (or remain the same) throughout the novel?

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3/16: MID-TERM EXAM DUE 3/21: SPRING BREAK 3/23: SPRING BREAK

3/28: Philip Larkin's "This Be The Verse"* & "Aubade"* & "High Windows"*

3/30: Ted Hughes's "The Thought Fox,"* "Lovesong,"* "Telegraph Wires," & "Hawk Roosting"*

4/4: Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (Part 1) 4/6: Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (Finish Novel) 4/11: J.G. Ballard's High Rise (Through Chapter 10)

4/13: J.G. Ballard High Rise (Finish Novel) 4/18: In Class Screening: High Rise (Ben Wheatley, 2015) 4/20: In Class Screening: High Rise (Ben Wheatley, 2015) 4/25: Alan Moore's Watchmen (Chapters 1-4 and its Addendum Material)

4/27: Alan Moore's Watchmen (Chapters 5-8 and its Addendum Material)

5/2: Alan Moore's Watchmen (Finish It)

5/4: Open/TBA

FINAL EXAM is scheduled for 3:30 - 5:30 pm on Thursday, May 11th, 2023

ENGL 319 - FINAL EXAM:

In no more than approximately 800 words per answer (1600 words total), answer two of the following four essay questions. This Final is due at the start of our scheduled "final" on May 11th (3:30 pm).

1) “Names are important,” Antionette says in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, but she does not elaborate on exactly what she means. In a short critical essay, explore the importance of naming in Wide Sargasso Sea. In what ways do names shift or change throughout the novel, and how are these alterations (or omissions) linked with themes of power and identity? Cite specific examples and be careful to not spend time summarizing the plot.

2) Select one of the poems we read by either Philip Larkin or Ted Hughes and explain how the works’ thematic content and poetic style complement one another in ways that contribute to the poem’s larger meaning. NB – You will want to be very specific when discussing the poem’s theme(s), as well as when illustrating how the use of specific poetic devices enhance our understanding of the poem’s content.

3) Several times throughout J. G. Ballard’s High Rise, it is suggested that the culture of the high rise resembled the world outside, even down to “the same ruthlessness and aggression concealed within a set of polite conventions.” In a brief critical essay, explain how life in the high rise functions as a microcosm of larger social and cultural forces in effect outside of the walls of Royal’s concrete disaster. What roles do characters like Liang, Wilder, and Royal play in this microcosm, and what do you make of the building’s ultimate fate?

4) Alan Moore’s Watchmen presents us with an array of costumed characters who behave in questionably “heroic” ways. Select two members of the Watchmen and explain what their behaviors reveal about their understanding of right and wrong, as well as their philosophical responses to life in the novel’s alternate 1980s. As you write this critical essay, analyze the conflicts these characters encounter, and discuss the moral and ethical implications of their behaviors. Do not spend time summarizing the plot; focus on your critique.

POEMS (*)

“Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our 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 hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime ...

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind 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 blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

“Anthem, For Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing of blinds.

“To Germany” by Charles Hamilton Sorley

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,

And no man claimed the conquest of your land.

But gropers both through fields of thought confined

We stumble and we do not understand.

You only saw your future bigly planned,

And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,

And in each others dearest ways we stand,

And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again

With new won eyes each other's truer form

And wonder. Grown more loving kind and warm

We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,

When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,

The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

“Here dead we lie” by A. E. Housman

Here dead we lie

Because we did not choose

To live and shame the land

From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,

Is nothing much to lose,

But young men think it is,

And we were young.

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock" by T. S. Eliot

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz - He Dead.

A Penny for an old guy?

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us—if at all—not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind's singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death's dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer—

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death's other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death's twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

“Leda and the Swan” by William Butler Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

“The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"High Windows" by Philip Larkin

When I see a couple of kids

And guess he's fucking her and she's

Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,

I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives -

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side

like an outdated combine harvester,

And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if

Anyone looked at me, forty years back,

and thought, that'll be the life;

No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About Hell and that, or having to hide

What you think of the priest. He

And his lot will all go down the long slide

Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words come the thought of high windows:

The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

“This Be The Verse” by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.

“Aubade” by Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.

Till then I see what’s really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

—The good not done, the love not given, time

Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision.

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can’t escape,

Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

"Home is So Sad" by Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,

Shaped in the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back. Instead, bereft

Of anyone to please, it withers so,

Having no heart to put aside the theft.

And turn again to what it started as,

A joyous shot at how things ought to be,

Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:

Look at the pictures and the cutlery.

The music in the piano stool. That vase.

“Lovesong” by Ted Hughes

He loved her and she loved him. His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to He had no other appetite She bit him she gnawed him she sucked She wanted him complete inside her Safe and sure forever and ever Their little cries fluttered into the curtains Her eyes wanted nothing to get away Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows He gripped her hard so that life Should not drag her from that moment He wanted all future to cease He wanted to topple with his arms round her Off that moment's brink and into nothing Or everlasting or whatever there was Her embrace was an immense press To print him into her bones His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace Where the real world would never come Her smiles were spider bites So he would lie still till she felt hungry His words were occupying armies Her laughs were an assassin's attempts His looks were bullets daggers of revenge His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets His whispers were whips and jackboots Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks And their deep cries crawled over the floors Like an animal dragging a great trap His promises were the surgeon's gag Her promises took the top off his skull She would get a brooch made of it His vows pulled out all her sinews He showed her how to make a love-knot Her vows put his eyes in formalin At the back of her secret drawer Their screams stuck in the wall Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs In their dreams their brains took each other hostage In the morning they wore each other's face

“The Thought-Fox” by Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment's forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock's loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move. Through the window I see no star: Something more near Though deeper within darkness Is entering the loneliness: Cold, delicately as the dark snow A fox's nose touches twig, leaf; Two eyes serve a movement, that now And again now, and now, and now Sets neat prints into the snow Between trees, and warily a lame Shadow lags by stump and in hollow Of a body that is bold to come Across clearings, an eye, A widening deepening greenness, Brilliantly, concentratedly, Coming about its own business Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.

"Telegraph Wires" by Ted Hughes

Take telegraph wires, a lonely moor,

And fit them together. The thing comes alive in your ear.

Towns whisper to towns over the heather.

But the wires cannot hide from the bad weather.

So oddly, so daintily made

It is picked up and played.

Such unearthly airs

The ear hears, and withers!

In the revolving ballroom of space

Bowed over the moor, a bright face

Draws out of telegraph wires the tones

That empty human bones.

"Hawk Roosting" by Ted Hughes

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.

Inaction, no falsifying dream

Between my hooked head and hooked feet:

Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!

The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray

Are of advantage to me;

And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -

I kill where I please because it is all mine.

There is no sophistry in my body:

My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.

For the one path of my flight is direct

Through the bones of the living.

No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.

Nothing has changed since I began.

My eye has permitted no change.

I am going to keep things like this.