An Assessment of C.K. Wiliams and Ted Hughes Essays -- essays papers

There are few positive views of life to be found in C.K. Williams’ The Vigil. His poetry does not present a necessarily negative life-view, but rather sees the world as most others do. He calls out commonplace people, places, and times in the same manner that most of the rest of us do, despite how dark it may seem. Williams uses a lot of punctuation in his poetry. His sentences, although full of commas and semicolons, flow smoothly from line to line. He uses a lot of clauses and qualifications in his writing. Each stanza remains fresh, never becoming mundane or repetitive. He chooses words carefully, painting pictures with broad, smooth strokes rather than wispy phrases that are hard to follow. In his poem entitled â€Å"Grief†, Williams accurately describes his grief at the loss of a loved one. In Part One, the feeling is heavy and overwhelming. The speaker, (most likely Williams), recalls days of sitting bedside with a slow-dying love. Some writers waste time in getting to the heart of the poem, but Williams wastes none. In the first line, he leaves his readers with no question as to what is going on in the poem. He writes, â€Å"Gone now, after the days of desperate, unconscious gasping, the reflexive / staying alive,† (29). All readers are instantaneously reminded of an experience with watching a loved one pass slowly, perhaps painfully. In Part Two of the poem, Williams questions grief as an emotion. He tries to indicate what exactly the emotion of grief entails, and maybe even what it should be. He comes to the conclusion that grief is not clear-cut, but rather like a roller coaster ride, up and down, coming and going in unexpected waves. Readers can identify with this, as we all know that grief is not an appare... ... Hughes writes, â€Å"†¦ to announce to the world / What Life had made of you† (112). Hughes feels happy at this moment, but he knows that Plath’s happiness is too good to be true, and that it probably won’t last. We all know that it couldn’t, and it didn’t. Both Williams and Hughes present life in a manner that may not be pleasant, but is nonetheless true-to-life. Although Williams’ life-view is a bit dark and dreary, we can all read it and relate it to some aspect of our lives. And although Hughes’ poetry is mostly about his life with Sylvia Plath, we can all read it and relate it to someone what we may know. Williams refuses to find a silver lining in every cloud, and Hughes refuses to see Plath as a woman who could be helped. The reason that both of these poets are successful is that they write about life as it is, rather than what we would all like it to be.