Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes himself

• English poet, translated Pilinszky

• Ted Hughes Award (founded by Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureante of the UK)

• childhood in Yorkshire country, nature and myth, memories of war and idea of masculinity

• 1957: first celebrated collection

  • poetry prizes for Hawk in the Rain

  • a poet of wild animals (US-UK)

• Poet Laureate in 1984

• married to Sylvia Plath - > blamed for her s*icide

• last poetic work is abt their relationship (Birthday Letters, 1998)

• Assia Wevill, mistress, suicide in 1969 and killed their daughter too → dark violence of Crow

Ted Hughes’ poetry themes

• reaction against the negative sublime, urban poetry like Philip Larkins’→ Hughes thought poetry became small, timid so he is more raw, based on nature (animals eat eachother, dominate, survive etc)

• modern humans are depending on science and rational thinking - alienation from organic world → losing touch with instincts and emotion

• brutality and fierce power of nature is what he is, the modern man is narrowing their vision

• image, symbol, myth and nature + violence - elemental forces, a reinvention between the essential ties between humanity and the world

• pre-Christian myths: violence, instinct, death, sex

• Crow symbol: part animal, part god, part monster

• poet as shaman

  • Hughes sees the poet as a mediator:

    • between humans and nature

    • between rational mind and instinct

  • Like a shaman, the poet:

    • enters the wild world

    • brings back visions in language

Ted Hughes’ poetry voice and technique

• formal simplicity

• Simple, heavy rhythms (trochees, spondees):

  • sound ancient, physical, northern

• Economy:

  • no decoration, no clever irony

• Repetition & chant-like rhythm:

  • poems feel like spells, magic or rituals

• Raw action (physical vividness of desctiptions):

  • animals do things

  • poems move, attack, strike

    • tell mini-stories

    • show moments of action

    • reflect on man vs nature

  • Animals become mirrors:

    • showing what humans have lost

    • exposing human weakness

The Thought Fox

• first poem in Hawk the Rain

• ars poetic poem - reflecting on what it takes to be a poet

• creativity, inspiration and the process of writing

• voice inside: the speaker, Hughes or a version of him sitting in the dark w no thoughts - fox appears - inspiration

• images outside: imagination or reality? title says its a thought fox, so could be vivid imagination - feels so real

  • trust in the unconscious mind

• connection between inside and outside: writer is lonely - but the fox could be too

• blank page/snow

• the fox enters the dark mind - there’s something - the poem is complete ‘page is printed’

• the fox becoming sharp - an idea becomes clear from blurry

• writing needs patience, concentration, instinct and luck

• hunter’s stillness and patience

• unconscious mind’s role in creativity

• speaker sensing something alive nearby - mysterious force

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The Relic

• modern poem: no specific structure in the poem

• free verse

• irregular lines

• internal rhythm

• both iambic meter and trochaic meter

• some spondee and pyrrhic feet in the text

• last two lines of each stanza rhyme together and form a couplet

• relic: a jawbone found “at the sea’s edge”

  • once living, now dead

  • themes of morality

  • metaphorical relics of the sea: reminders of how everything living is eventually erased or transformed

• grips the jawbone in his hand

  • he looks around and comes across “crabs” and “dogfish” lying dead on the shore: cruelty of the sea that topples lives

  • the images represented here depicts death and the futility of life

• sea: symbol of death, deep n cold, devours lives

• “continue the beggining” = life’s cycle

• jaw in his hands - vanity of human wishes - the sea is a beast and her coldness in her heart - never satisfied no mottar how much she eats

  • showcasing her achievements by the sea

• cruelty of nature, futility of the human body

• body once was adored, now its indigestible for the sea’s diet

• “none grow rich in the sea”

  • soldiers and fishermans dying poor and young

• useless bone - lifetime existence in this poem → memorial