Ted Hughes Critics

Ted Hughes - London Magazine - January 1971 - Religion

"In the old world God and divine power were invoked at any cost - life seemed worthless without them. In the present world we dare not invoke them" ... "The old method is the only one."

Ted Hughes - Guardian - March 1965 - Violence and nature

"My poems are not about violence but vitality. Animals are not violent, they're so much more completely controlled than men."

Terry Gifford and Neil Roberts - Ted Hughes: A Critical Study - Violence and nature

"The reason for the problem about 'violence' in Hughes's work is his determination to acknowledge the predatory, destructive character of nature, of which man is a part, and not to moralize about it."

Seamus Heaney - Hughes' poems

"the poems were reminders that we are all part of the same fabric"

Simon Armitage - Hughes' poems and the world

"the means by which the surrounding world could suddenly be translated, understood, and experienced."

Simon Armitage - Hughes' poems and the mind

"the work of a poet whose great exploit was to bring the inner workings of the human brain out into the wide world, and at the same time draw the outside world into the mind."

Ian Gregson - Male identity

the struggle "to establish a masculine identity is evoked repeatedly in Hughes' work"

Keith Sagar - Nature

"Hughes' nature had to include suffering, predation, decay and death."

Keith Sagar - Hughes' view after Plath's death

"His vision for a while was of a world made of blood, of nature as monstrous."

Keith Sagar - Impact on readers

"Hughes' words burn our hearts with love of Creation, but also with purifying guilt at what we have done to it and to ourselves."