Self-Care Commentary

On Saturday night my sister and I spoke on Skype, and she asked me what self-care I was planning to take during the weekend. I said I would do some knitting and some listening to music. That evening I had set a goal to grade 10 of my 12th graders' commentaries before bed. As soon as I picked up the first one my conscience told me - "How can you properly evaluate their commentaries if you haven't written your own on this poem?" I write my own not in order to set a benchmark for theirs, or to establish what the correct interpretation is, but to establish for myself how a student could show "knowledge and understanding" of the passage, and to get an idea myself of how the "stylistic devices contribute to meaning".

So I set about reading and writing about Ted Hughes's poem Thistles. Writing that commentary, working through that poem, was the most therapeutic action I took this week! Here's the poem, and my commentary (unedited, just like a real paper 1!)

Thistles by, Ted Hughes

by RachelHam

Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
Or crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.

Then they grow grey, like men
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear,
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

"Thistles" Commentary

Thistles, by Ted Hughes, throbs with the anger and hostility of noxious weeds baked by summer. The speaker uses diction associated with hard labor and painful imagery to evoke a feeling of fraught, perhaps futile effort. The thistles are in constant combat with everything, from cows to mowers to age, but, for all their bravado, seem to achieve nothing.

From the first word the poem is unapologetic about its presentation of masculine, unattractive imagery. The unpoetic title makes no promises of a gentle ballad, and the first word introduces the essence of the main subject’s existence, as it is portrayed as constantly fighting “against” outside forces. Among the thistles’ first enemies, the heavy “rubber tongues” express blunt hostility and the alliterative “hoeing hands” sound like the “huh, huh” of the farmer wielding the weapon. Not to be outdone by its uncharitable neighbors, the thistles “spike the summer air”, feistily claiming their space from their lowly, rooted vantage point. When they “crackle” it is under their own “blue-black pressure,” as if they are “cackling” with mirth to be participants in the fight (later a thrilling “feud”) for dominance that is the farm field.

The second stanza reveals the fraught history of the thistles’ ill temper; they exist in protest of some past injustice, since each is a “revengeful burst / of resurrection,” implying that their motives for malevolence can be traced back to an era passed but not forgotten, just like the “decayed Viking”, who “underground,” inspires today’s “dialects” with a “gutteral” quality. The harshness of gutteral sounds is reflected in the uncomfortable imagery of a “grasped fistful of splintered weapons” which, for those hardy enough to take hold, feel like “frost” as they are “thrust up” above ground. While the underground is often considered the more threatening setting, the thistles emphasize that life just above the surface offers no escape from the horrors of the underworld, since their existence bears still the “stain” of those who died before them. The simile comparing the thistles to “pale hair” also evokes images of the pale skulls of the dead. Here one of the most euphonic words in the poem, “plume” describes a monstrous image of spreading “blood” which the thistles “manage” as if with pride, indeed as if worn like a “plume” or feather in their cap.

These dauntless warriors “grow grey” however, and here we get the first direct comparison with “men”. The enjambment allows the reader to guess whether the men or the thistles are “mown down.” Even with age the intensity of the battle doesn’t subside, but remains a “fued” against an uncompromising enemy (a mower). Defeat is not dwelt upon, as the suggestion of battle is followed in the same line as the replacement generation of “sons” appears, prepped for battle, “stiff with weapons”. “Stiff” implies these sons know what is in store and have been conditioned for the same fighting life over the same ground. As the torch passes so seemlessly to the next generation, the chance at reconsidering the conquest seems lost.

This poem would provide an energetic portrait of the fight for life in the natural world, but Hughes’ war-inspired imagery and references to the human arguments with history and death, make a comparison with men hard to escape. Not only are we on a path of vengeance for past wrongs, but so “stiff”ly are we set in our ways that we cannot choose a path other than violence. Our sons are doomed to fight back over the same blood-stained ground; the word “back” both emphasizing the combat-like nature of life and the impossibility of moving “forward” with such a cycle. Violence is at first glorified in the poem for its bravery and robustness, but the image of fighting degrades as it gets lost in esoteric references to forgotten history as in “Icelandic frost” and “decayed Viking”, and the incomprehensible nature of death felt in “plume of blood”. Finally the thistles seem pathetic and mindlessly belligerent as innocent sons march without hesitation into the same gnarly battle for a prize that, significantly, is never identified. The poem powerfully conveys the futility and pervasiveness of violence.