Notes+on+Adlestrop

**"Adlestrop" annotated**

 * The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat:** This is the first sense perception the narrator has of Adlestrop.


 * And willows, and willow-herb, and grass:** Besides the name of Adlestrop, these pieces of nature (and later the clouds and blackbirds) are all he sees of the land. The continuous use of "and" throughout the next two stanzas causes the reader to see the images one by one, just as the narrator might be seeing and remembering them.


 * blackbird:** [|Information on blackbirds]

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire:** These lines suggest that the scope of the narrator's memory expands from just the Adlestrop sign to the surrounding nature, and then to the surrounding villages and the rest of England.
 * Farther and farther, all the birds

"Adlestrop" discusses experience and memory. From the beginning of the poem, we have the narrator reminiscing of his experience of Adlestrop as if in response to a question. He remembers little things, a man clearing his throat on the platform, a piece of grass, a blackbird. There are elements of romanticism in his discription of nature, but modernist aspects are much more predominant in the work. The reader is reminded that this is a man's memory, and what was important to him then remains in his mind. While the poem does not have all of the elements of the era that later modernism did, the work is no doubt a precursor to the movement.

Back to "Adlestrop" Back to Edward Thomas


 * Additional resources**

[|Adlestrop the icon] [|I Remember Adlestrop by Joseph Gelfer]

**Works cited**
1. Gains, David. "Blackbird". __British Garden Birds__. 6 Dec. 2007. < http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/blackbird.htm#Voice> 2. Gelfer, Joseph. "I Remember Adlestrop". __Perceptive Travel.__ 6 Dec. 2007. <[|http://www.perceptivetravel.com/issues/0306/gelfer.html.>] 3. Thomas, Edward. "Adlestrop". __The Norton Anthology of English Literature Eighth Edition Volume 2__. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc,, 2006. 1956-1957.