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Written by Timothy Sexton
"Leveling Up"
The guiding theme of not just Cook’s poetry, but most of her prose as well was a process she termed “leveling up.” Cook published her first collection when she was just a self-educated teenager and the result changed her life forever. It was not British upper class that turned her into nearly an overnight sensation, but the working class and the middle class with whom her philosophy of beating the system in place to keep them in place by not daring to have too much ambition. If a 17 year old daughter of a London brazier who had ten other children to tend to could rise to the level of national prominence through self-education, why couldn’t they? Cook hammered this message home again and again in ideological propaganda disguised as simple domestic poetry.
Flag-Waving Patriotism
Time and time again, patriotism has proved to be a theme guaranteed to reach a crowd. In light of some other more radical ideas, Cook’s wholesome and thoroughly unremarkable brand of patriotic fervor can sometimes seem a little out of place. Even so, “Song of the Sailor Boy’s” plaintive appeal to a mother to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of worry over her son heading to war by keeping her eyes set on the glory of the flag doesn’t get more sincere its advice to focus not on the son, but the British flag and British that seems to somehow guarantee a British homecoming. If that appeal flag-based patriotism leaves once unmoved, perhaps the similar “Banner of the Union” will do the trick. If not, there’s always “Flag of the Free.”
Socialist Economics
If the conservative politics of Cook’s flag-based patriotic polemical poetry has convinced you that Cook is predictable, perhaps no poem will more successfully disabuse that notion than “Winter the Season for the Exercise of Charity.” The first three stanzas seem as comfortably at home in promoting all that is wonderful about her native country as her patriotic verse with imagery that gives the harsh cold of England’s winters a definite purpose. And then, out of nowhere comes the fourth stanza:
“But the naked - the poor! I know they quail, With crouching limbs from the biting gale: They pine and starve by the fireless hearth, And weep as they gaze on the frost-bound earth.”
If patriotism is one sure way to build an audience, then appeals to take from the rich and give to the poor can be said to have shown some success in the past as well. The concluding four lines of this poem proceed to become the literary equivalent of passing by a Christmas charity bellringer without dropping so much as a dime into the bucket while pushing a shopping cart overflowing with expensive gifts. It is a particularly effective shaming of those who are blessed with wealth choosing not to share at least a little bit of it with those who need it the most when they can least afford to not have it. This particular poem is just one of the more direct appeals to socialist morality to be found in her body of work as a whole they almost seem to have been written by another person entirely than the poet responsible for all that equally effective patriotic appeal from the right of the spectrum.
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Eliza Cook: Poems Questions and Answers
The Question and Answer section for Eliza Cook: Poems is a great
resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.
Eliza Cook: Poems study guide contains a biography of poet Eliza Cook, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.
Eliza Cook: Poems literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Eliza Cook's poetry.
Socialist Economics
If the conservative politics of Cook’s flag-based patriotic polemical poetry has convinced you that Cook is predictable, perhaps no poem will more successfully disabuse that notion than “Winter the Season for the Exercise of Charity.” The first three stanzas seem as comfortably at home in promoting all that is wonderful about her native country as her patriotic verse with imagery that gives the harsh cold of England’s winters a definite purpose. And then, out of nowhere comes the fourth stanza:
“But the naked - the poor! I know they quail,
With crouching limbs from the biting gale:
They pine and starve by the fireless hearth,
And weep as they gaze on the frost-bound earth.”
If patriotism is one sure way to build an audience, then appeals to take from the rich and give to the poor can be said to have shown some success in the past as well. The concluding four lines of this poem proceed to become the literary equivalent of passing by a Christmas charity bellringer without dropping so much as a dime into the bucket while pushing a shopping cart overflowing with expensive gifts. It is a particularly effective shaming of those who are blessed with wealth choosing not to share at least a little bit of it with those who need it the most when they can least afford to not have it. This particular poem is just one of the more direct appeals to socialist morality to be found in her body of work as a whole they almost seem to have been written by another person entirely than the poet responsible for all that equally effective patriotic appeal from the right of the spectrum.