Many Of Fanthorpes Poems Look At The

Familiar Or Known From A Different Or Unusual Point Of View. Discuss What You Have Found Enjoyable In A Selection Of Poems. Essay, Research Paper

In the poems selected, “Hang-gliders in January”, “Horticultural show” and “Soothing and awful”, Fanthorpe does not perhaps always approach the familiar from an unusual angle but spots the pathos of the commonplace where we had not previously looked for it. She has an extraordinary quality of taking something seemingly trivial and developing thoughts and ideas about it that others may have previously considered but dismissed without developing.

The title of the first poem to be considered is ‘hang-gliders in January’ which sounds very matter-of-fact and average somehow, and by being so can cause the reader to perhaps arrive unjustly at a rushed conclusion about the nature and content of the poem to follow. Nothing is done accidentally by a poet (particularly one of Fanthorpe’s quality) and thus there is evidently a reason for her giving the poem such a title. It does give the poem an inexplicable sense of intrigue in that it seems improbable that with such a subject a poem could have a meaningful impact, which means when (and indeed if) it does, it is all the more effective.

The actual theme of the poem is not actually simply ‘hang-gliders’ (although this is the descriptive subject) but something deeper than this; we all take the world around us for granted, but sometimes we are hit with an overwhelming wonder at something considered simple in a day to day context. In this poem Fanthorpe attempts to come at the essence of one such experience so personally and exquisitely expressed that it is plausible to assume it to be her own. Her emphasis is on the ‘miraculous ‘ in the ’simple’ which can be seen through the repetition of these and associated words. In the first three lines miracle appears twice, and once in its adjective form,

“Like all miracles; it has a rational

Explanation; and like all miracles, insists

on being miraculous.”

This repetition in such a short few lines immediately draws the reader s attention to the word. It is important for this to be at the beginning as it is a principle theme in the poem and the reader needs to be aware of it if they are to enjoy the words that follow. It is not though just simple repetition of the word but if we look at the lines closer we can see that it is in fact grammatical parallelism, so there is a repetition of rhythm which makes the lines even more memorable.

LIKE ALL MIRACLES IT HAS A RATIONAL EXPLANATION

LIKE ALL MIRACLES INSISTS ON BEING MIRACULOUS

The lines are memorable for other reasons too. Readers may criticise Fanthorpe for her use of the words ‘rational explanation’ as they are considered a clich in modern times, but she has used them deliberately to give the feeling of a normal person with a story to tell. The tone of the two lines are very different, the first gives the impression of a practical and pragmatic speaker with no belief in the world of magic, but the second reveals a person still clinging to a bit of childhood naivety. The word ‘insists’ shows that the speaker does not feel in control of their beliefs and that however often they are given a ‘rational explanation’ there is always something pulling at them, ‘insisting’ that some things cannot or should not be explained. The notion that things that are miraculous often have a simple explanation but also that simple things can be miraculous when looked at in a different light introduced in these two lines is explored in the poem with reference to hang-gliders.

The poem is written in such a way that it feels like an evocation of the speakers experience, she starts at the beginning, giving us the background information of how it all started out as just trivial dog walk and finishes with a simile about how simply perfect the men and their hang-gliders were,

“Like a bird at home in the sky”

Most important though is what she does in between. She uses thematic imagery as with the use of ’shipless sails’, ‘titanic tropical fish’, ‘mythical river’ and caravels , which are all nautical in theme, this helps to relate ideas and draw the poem together. One of the most stunning part of the poem though is most definitely Fanthorpe’s succinct and original description of an experience that she must have observed quite acutely. This can be enjoyed in the second stanza where she uses a series of totally unique metaphors to describe the vision before her.

She begins with ‘pot-bellied’, a compound adjective common to Fanthorpe’s poetry, which is an exquisite description of the position which the hang-gliders are in during their flight. She has observed so many things about them and has described them in so much detail but with so few words it is quite stunning. We know how they move, precisely what they look like, how big they are and how different they are to anything else she has ever seen; they are ‘tropical’ ‘enormous bats’ titanic’ and ’still’. The words she uses are perfect and almost all adjectives. Then the stanza comes to a close with the speaker s realisation that they were just ‘men’, the word is repeated three times as though being said over and over in a person s mind who is reluctant to believe.

The most interesting part of the stanza though is the words, ‘when we looked’, which hints that