the poem dover beach is addressed to love in the modern city.
the poem dover beach is addressed to love in the modern city.
who is the poem dover beach addressed to?
love in the modern city
the anonymous figure to whom arnold addresses his poem becomes the subject of hecht's poem. in hecht's poem she "caught the bitter allusion to the sea", imagined "what his whiskers would feel like / on the back of her neck", and felt sad as she looked out across the channel. "and then she got really angry" at the thought that she had become "a sort of mournful cosmic last resort". after which she says "one or two unprintable things".
dover beach
kenneth and miriam allott, referring to "dover bitch" as "an irreverent "jeu d'esprit"", nonetheless see, particularly in the line "a sort of mournful cosmic last resort", an extension of the original poem's main theme.









































"dover beach" has been mentioned in a number of novels, plays, poems, and films:









































bullet::::- in dodie smith's novel, "i capture the castle" (1940), the book's protagonist remarks that debussy's "clair de lune" reminds her of "dover beach" (in the film adaptation of the novel, the character quotes (or, rather, misquotes) a line from the poem).
dover beach