hulit1-6, Exercise 1: Attila Jozsef

Model answer (check the details):

What makes his poetry distinctive: a modern, intense voice combined with simple language, and strong images of childhood, poverty, work, love and the cosmos. He writes about loneliness and class directly and with great feeling, and his plain style makes the poems accessible while their depth keeps them rich. He is the poet of the poor and of the inner life at once.

Why different groups claimed him after his death: he was a communist for a time and was also expelled by the party, he wrote about the working class, and he became a national figure whose birthday is Poetry Day. The communist state presented him as a proletarian poet, while others stressed his personal and spiritual side, or his place in the national canon. Each emphasised the parts of a complex life that suited them.

A careful reader looks at the poems themselves and treats any single label as a simplification.