Andrew Board

4/22/13

ENGL 475

Hibbett

Not Dropped, But Rooted: Lawrence, Hughes, and Tradition

As the 20th Century continued, a new generation of poets was forced to react to

Modernism. Some viewed it as elitist and obtuse, a demonstration of the poet's learning

and verbal abilities rather than a coherent expression of what was considered worthy of

poetry. Others furthered Modernism's vision of formal experimentation and allusion to

capture the fragmented reality of life in the Post-war world. However, Modernism is not a

specific method, nor even a defined aesthetic, but a generation of poets describing the

modern world and it's realities as they interpreted them. D.H. Lawrence saw much that

disgusted him: war, industry, and repression dehumanized mankind, while the primal

nature must lie hidden beneath our rationality and "accursed human education." To this

end he employed free verse to express what was literally inexpressible in the traditions of

the past centuries. Ted Hughes to a certain extent followed Lawrence, certainly in his free

verse, but also in his brutal, unromantic depictions of man among nature.

Lawrence's "Snake," through a man's description of his encounter with the titualr

creature, dramatizes the conflict between attained "human education" and our primal,

intuitive nature. The speaker sees the snake at his water-trough and feels "like a second

comer, waiting" (15). He intuitively understands the snake's right to drink from his water,

yet his rationality intervenes, "The voice of my education said to me/He must be

killed,/For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous" (22-24).
Rationality is tied in with his sense of manhood, "And voices in me said, If you were a

man/You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off" (25-26). The Bible

teaches in Genesis man rules over nature, and is free to exert his dominion over all its

creatures, especially the snake, traditionally identified with Satan. However, the speaker

cannot simply obey his education, though his misgivings come with a sense of shame,

"But must I confess how I liked him,/How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to

drink at my water-trough/And depart peaceful, pacified,and thankless,/Into the burning

bowels of this earth?" (27-30). In this sense, "Snake" is a confession, a communion

between a man and his bestial nature as represented by a snake he fears and admires.

Hughes' "Wodwo" is pivoltal to the divide between the rational and the primal.

Wodwo itself is "a sort of half-man and half-animal spirit of forests" as Hughes describes

it. It possess the gift (or curse) of consciousness and constantly questions and comments

on its own nature. It is in contrast to the speaker of "Snake": he intuitively fears and

admires nature, while his "education," or rationality, tells him to exert his authority over

it. He comments (and passes judgment) on his primal nature, as represented by the snake.

Wodwo's speech is a tumble of words, a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy in which he is

dimly aware of his alienation from the world around him, "I seem/seperate from the

ground and not rooted but dropped/out of nothing casually I've no threads" (11-12). He

wonders if other things also possess his gift, "Do these weeds/know me and name me to

each other have they/ seen me before, do I fit in their world? (8-10). With consciousness

comes self-consciousness, "I seem to have been given the freedom/of this place what am

I then?" (14-15). This line plays with the aforementioned Biblical idea of man as ruler.

Wodwo describes himself as a type of Adam, "not rooted but dropped," yet after he has
eaten of the tree of knowledge. He does not name the creatures below him but wonder if

they name him. Wodwo understands his otherness from his surroundings - this otherness

he can descrbe as "freedom" which he practices. Despite this, his freedom is tempered by

his primal urges he acts upon, comments upon, and yet cannot comprehend, "And

picking/bits of bark off this rotten stump gives me/no plesure and it's no use so why do I

do it" (15-17).

Lawrence and Hughes both employ free verse in their poetry. Free verse is

essential to their indentities as visionaries or prophets of the primal in humanity.

Traditional forms, as their name implies, carry centuries of history with them; when a

poet writes a sonnet, he or she must consciously or not enter into conversation with

Petrach and Shakespeare. Forms also require the poet, to a degree, to forsake "natural

language" and carefully choose words which harmoniously fit the form . Which is not to

suggest free verse poets do not choose words carefully, though certainly many critics and

readers believe so. Lawrence, and later Hughes, in true modernist fashion, invent new

forms to express their vision with each poem; this allows each poem to be a self-

constructed text, with little to no connection to another. "Snake" employs long lines with

repetition of s sounds to emphasize the serpent imagery, which in turn demonstrates free

verse's connection with traditional forms: form follows function. The speaker of "Snake,"

by his own sheepish admission, is an educated man, and his speech reflects this; he

records his observation of the snake, his instinctive reactions (fear, awe) as well as his

education telling him what he should do. He questions his actions by posing them to the

reader, "Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?/Was it perversity, that I longed to talk

to him?/Was it humuility, to feel so honoured?/I felt so honoured" (31-34). Free verse

allows the speaker (and Lawrence) to converse with himself and the reader using

colloquial language while emphasizing the voice of "accursed human education" (self-

consciousness, insecurity, literary allusions).

Despite the freeness of "Snake," the language and punctuation create a languid,

thoughtful tone. The free verse of "Wodwo" suggests the eponymous figure's impressions

of the environment and himself through clashing statements with little punctuation, "But

what shall I be called am I the first/have I an owner what shape am I what shape am I am

I huge..."(19-21). With the exception of two commas in the first ten lines, quotation

marks number the most significant punctuation. Indeed, the poem begins with "What am

I?" (1). Wodwo possess consciousness, yet is free of human education. His is a truly self-

consciousness, with the sense his utterances and questions are posed towards himself,

rather than another indivdual as the speaker in "Snake" suggests.

Imitation and Tradition are strange to talk about with such experimental poets, yet

it is easy to dismiss Ted Hughes as an imitator of D.H. Lawrence. His reliance on free

verse and focus on humanity and its primal nature might make a reader wonder why

anyone would bother when Lawrence's poetry still exists. To do so, however, would

neglect T.S. Eliot's warning, "He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never

improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same" ("Tradition and the

Individual Talent," 46). With "Wodwo" Hughes distills the conflict of man and beast even

further from the obvious binary of Lawrence's "Snake" to an internal dialogue of one

creature at "the exact center" (25).

Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. "Tradition and the Individual Talent." The Sacred Wood. London:

Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1920

Tuma, Keith. Anthology of Twentieth-Century British & Irish Poetry.

1st. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.