"Relic"
I found this jawbone at the sea's edge:
There, crabs, dogfish, broken by the breakers or tossed
To flap for half an hour and turn to crust
Continue the beginning. The deeps are cold:
In that darkness camaraderie does not hold.
Nothing touches but, clutching, devours. And the jaws,
Before they are satisfied or their stretched purpose
Slacken, go down jaws; go gnawn bare. Jaws
Eat and are finished and the jawbone comes to the beach:
This is the sea's achievement; with shells,
Verterbrae, claws, carapaces, skulls.
Time in the sea eats its tail, thrives, casts these
Indigestibles, the spars of purposes
That failed far from the surface. None grow rich
In the sea. This curved jawbone did not laugh
But gripped, gripped and is now a cenotaph
Analysis of "Relic"
In this first stanza, the speaker comes across a jawbone that has washed upon the shore. The shore is littered with bones, shells, and other fragments of creatures that used to be alive. Notice throughout the rest of the poem, the way in which he connects the fate of the animals to the fate of mankind: "Hughes simply wishes to imply, that we, too are only animals in the universe, and live and die as helplessly and as unavoidably as any other animal form" (Vendler). Pay special attention to the phrase "continue the beginning". I found this phrase to a theme of not only the poem, but of most of Hughes' work. Also take notice of the way in which Hughes describees the sea: "deep", "cold", "dark"... Not exactly a place that's rolling out the welcome wagon.
The second stanza presents an excellent example of Hughes' style: "Hughes likes violent phrases, thick sounds, and explosive verbs" (Vendler). In the first line the speaker states "nothing touches but, clutching, devours". The words themselves eminate violence and Hughes often uses his words as a method to create movement. See if you can find other examples of his unique language.
The third stanza personifies the sea as a predator that preys on those that live within it: "This curved jawbone did not laugh/ But gripped, gripped and is now a cenotaph". Was the jawbone clinging to it's prey, or trying to cling to life? The sea is personified as a predator and the remains the speaker finds upon the shore are trophies of its conquered prey.
My Analysis
In my opinion, Hughes is talking about the circle of life here. The sea is representative of the way in which we are tossed about in the "waves" of life and then spat back out. He continually uses phrases such as "continue the beginning" and "time in the seal eats its tail" to show his belief that life is one big cycle. This falls directly in line with Hughes' belief that "the animal world is a human mirror" (Vendler). I really love the way that Hughes strips away the humanity from his poetry and instead presents his readers with a more primal, visceral view of the world.
"Lovesong"
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
Her 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-trick 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
Introduction
In this poem Hughes describes a romantic relationship that seems to have more than just a few problems. Make note of the way in which Hughes "insists on demistifying "love" into its most easthetically lethal biological instance" (Vendler). Pay special attention to the language that the speaker uses to describe the interactions between the couple. Vendler states that: "Hughes mixes sexual intercourse into the brew of war and death, and his blighted imagination, though it occasionally mentions joy, tends to speak even of that with with the exhaustion of one wwho knows all the moves in an erotic battle and finds a perverse fascination in the stylization of victimage". Here are a couple of questions to keep in mind while reading:
- Even though the couple's relationship is flawed, do you still see a sense of intimacy between the two?
- What are some examples you can find that exemplify Hughes' style? In what ways does it enhance the relationship between the two characters?
- In what ways does the couple prey upon each other? Do you see a clear victim bvetween the two of them?