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For Friday: Hardy, Selected Poems, pp.27-49



Remember that you don't have to read every poem in this series, but do try to read as many as you can, or at least read several of them more than once, to really investigate some of the trickier meanings and connections between poems. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How is a poem like "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?" a comical twist on the earlier poem, "Friends Beyond" (p.12)? Why is it especially ironic that the dead wife is having a conversation with what turns out to be her dog?

Q2: There are three poems entitled "In Tenebris" (in darkness): how do you read this trio of works? Is each one basically a variation on the one before? Does each one offer a progression of the theme into new and darker territory? Does one of them contradict or refute the other? Does III mean the same as I? 

Q3: Several of these poems are elegies or laments, which are songs of extreme sorrow of people and things dead and past. What are Hardy's characters in these poems have trouble accepting or making sense of about the inevitable passing of life? What seems to them unfair or cruel besides the loss of the life itself? Why might they insist on seeing the hand of a malicious force behind it? 

Q4: Whereas the earlier poems often personified God as "Doom and She" or other imaginary, impassive forces, in many of these poems Hardy actually makes God a comic character and has him speak. What kind of character is he, and what is Hardy's point with this perverse personification? 

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