The Kraken (poem)

Although the poem has fifteen lines, authorities still accept it as a sonnet. One adds that the ABABCDDCEFEAAFE rhyme scheme of three quatrains and a concluding couplet suggests that it is on the Petrarchan (Italian) model rather than the Shakespearean form. ==Background and interpretations==

Laurence Mazzeno's survey finds "wildly differing interpretations." Some critics saw the Kraken as the image of the poet, imprisoned or isolated either in the creative process or in the mind. Isobel Armstrong read the poem politically, seeing the Kraken as representing the "slumbering political might of the working classes." Robert Preyer writes that the poem contains "apocalyptic shapes unseen by the ordinary person" and its "oracular voice" tells of "mindless forces" that are capable of "exploding to the surface in a burst of irrational frenzy that marks the end of its peculiar life-in-death, the end of ordinary living, and also the onset of eternity." The poem does not offer rationalization for its vivid images: "the timeless, mythic voice giving utterance to the oracle is exactly right." ==Influences and uses==

• Benjamin Britten included "The Kraken" in Nocturne, a song-cycle of poems dealing with sleep and darkness. • John Wyndham's 1953 novel The Kraken Wakes is a reference to Tennyson's sonnet. • The folk group WYNN's first album, Tales from Nowhere, included a song called "The Kraken". • The poem was reprinted in the February 1951 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. == References ==