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.
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 al
The characters she depicts in the poem are all chosen for a reason, there is a foreigner 'Friedrichshafen', a 'gaggle' of young grammar school girls, an upper-class 'civilized voice from Cambridge',a probably lower class man from'Dudley' and a conglomerate of 'the young', whose comments fanthorpe makes stand out from the rest in that there is simply a list of four exclamations. It is especially effective when she juxta poses two very contrasting persons, the 'civilized voice of Cambridge' and 'someone from Dudley'. Their comments, like those of the other visitors, are equally unsatisfactory, "Especially noticed the well-kept churchyard" and "nice and cool". Fanthorpe is perhaps trying to point out that even though the man from Dudley only managed two monosyllabic adjectives, his response was more from the heart than the civilized voice obviously trying to sound so. 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.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Zeus Demeter, INSISTS MIRACULOUS, Horticultural Soothing, South Somerset, Casehistory Julie, Anubis El, 'hang-gliders january', Persephone Greek, poem fanthorpe, crocodiles jubilee, jubilee mugs, crocodiles jubilee mugs, , Catherine's Montacute, miracles rational explanation, persephone's fruits, lines memorable, bleeding hearts, miracles insists miraculous, 'civilized voice, 'horticultural show', rational explanation miracles, explanation miracles insists, title poem,
Approximate Word count = 2217
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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