personification in poetry

[cherryblossoms]

Hello all.

I know w/e are never the best time to post but ... need help and also keen to jump into the new format!

Is anyone out there able to think of some good examples of personification in poetry? It's for ds' homework. so far we have a "Hawk" (Ted Hughes) poem .... .

Great poem but T.H. (knowingly) slips into the "personification fallacy" and explores a human-hawk hybrid. Anyone think of a more "simple" poem, where the poet simply tries for, I don't know, "forest-ness" or "water-ness" or "cat-ness", or something? Or even more complicated? Anything, really ... .

Any suggestions v. v. much appreciated.

By the way, I am searching for a new name. Is this one too much like "cherrymonster", do you think? (Was "zenandtheartofbaking".)

Hope everyone's having a lovely weekend.

MMJ - that was quick!

And gorgeous.

Many thanks to you!

Whoa!

That Sylvia one is amazing.

The Eagle
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring?d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

"Summer Grass" by Carl Sandburg

Summer grass aches and whispers
It wants something: it calls and sings; it pours
out wishes to the overhead stars.
The rain hears; the rain answers; the rain is slow
coming; the rain wets the face of the grass.

MMJ - Thank you - That is the most brilliant selection.

Did you manage all that from memory?

I'm actually envious - it must be really great to wander around with all those poems at your fingertips; does it give a fourth dimension to ordinary experience?

I've always wondered about those Victorians who were able to quote reams of Shakespeare, the Bible and classics and whether it actually altered how they experienced the world. (Silly Saturday ponderings).

Anyway, I'm off to grab ds now. That really was absolutely amazing; they are fab.

Oh no! I'll never leave!

Thank you Heated.

Unbelievably, your Tennyson poem has opened up the spectre of intertextuality! It's clear, having read that poem, that the Hughes Hawk hunting poem echoes it. What an strange coincidence. No. 2 makes me feel wistfully old ... . I spend my life now slightly over-concerned about getting rained on.

But how is "The Eagle" personification? I thought that was "imbuing inanimate objects with human qualities"? Am I just being thick?