Ted Hughes

[LitNetIsGreat]

Anybody like Ted Hughes? I'm just reading over my selected Ted Hughes at present and think I might be finally getting more into Hughes. I've always been somewhat neutral in regards to his work but I think he is beginning to grow on me.

Quite by coincidence I've suddenly got back into fishing after about a 18 years and just stumbled upon this quote by Hughes:

Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.

Wow, I was just saying the same thing about meditation and fishing to someone at work the other day. Anyway, Ted Hughes?

The Jaguar

The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion

Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.

But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him

More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.

Ted Hughes

[Paulclem]

Ted Hughes is great. I like The Jaguar, and though we're supposed to admire it in its obliviousness, and we do, I find it a very sad poem.

I like The Thought Fox

http://www.richardwebster.net/tedhughes.html

[LitNetIsGreat]

Ted Hughes is great. I like The Jaguar, and though we're supposed to admire it in its obliviousness, and we do, I find it a very sad poem.

I like The Thought Fox

http://www.richardwebster.net/tedhughes.html

Yes I suppose there is a sadness there even if the Jaguar cannot be entrapped by mankind.

The Thought Fox appears right at the start of my collection of Hughes.

Hawk Roosting is another one which is similar to that of The Jaguar:

http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems...hawk-roosting/

I am at war with myself whether there are grounds to see in the Hawk an extended metaphor of man and/or the conservative ideology. Maybe I'm just pushing the last line "I am going to keep things like this" a little too far, ha?

[tonywalt]

I think that Ted Hughes meant it to be about nature, or I should say that it is what he said he meant.

I would take it as a metaphor about the arrogance of Man's power and authoritarianism. You could replace the Hawk with the thoughts of a dictator and it would interchange perfectly.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I think that Ted Hughes meant it to be about nature, or I should say that it is what he said he meant.

I would take it as a metaphor about the arrogance of Man's power and authoritarianism. You could replace the Hawk with the thoughts of a dictator and it would interchange perfectly.

Yes Hughes greatly admired Hawks I think they were his favourite animal if I remember rightly.

I think it is largely a nature poem but there is something there of the dictator, I think that's a better way of putting it than I did. He sits on top of the food chain, cruelly controlling things, keeping things as they are with no sophistry in his thoughts.

[tonywalt]

His Birthday Letters were commercially driven and a bit sentimental, but some good things in there:

Every night
I slept on that mattress, under one
blanket,
With a lovely girl. . .
Yet never once made love. . .
It never seemed unnatural. I was
focused,

So locked onto you. . .

Everything that was not you was

blind-spot

I still puzzle over it - doubtful, now,

Whether to envy myself, or pity.



(from Fidelity)

[prendrelemick]

One of my most treasured possessions is a signed and dedicated copy of "Moortown Diary" Hughes gave me after a short film about one of his poems (Wind) was filmed at our farm.

As a boy he spent a lot of his time out in the countryside around here with his brother. On one occasion when he was camping in one of our fields, he looked up and saw some horses on the skyline at dawn and felt moved. He later described that place as sacred and said everything he later became stems from that moment. He was about 6 at the time.

Anyway you can count me as a fan. I was a fan long before I met him. Moortown Diary was like reading about my own experiences and feelings.

[Paulclem]

One of my most treasured possessions is a signed and dedicated copy of "Moortown Diary" Hughes gave me after a short film about one of his poems (Wind) was filmed at our farm.

As a boy he spent a lot of his time out in the countryside around here with his brother. On one occasion when he was camping in one of our fields, he looked up and saw two horses on the skyline at dusk and felt moved. He later described that place as sacred and said everything he later became stems from that moment. He was about 6 at the time.

Anyway you can count me as a fan. I was a fan long before I met him. Moortown Diary was like reading about my own experiences and feelings.

That's a fantastic link you've got there Mick.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes great stuff. I wonder if he had in mind that moment when he wrote The Horses?

The Horses:
http://www.ouce.ox.ac.uk/~rwashing/r...wos/poems.html

Another great piece. Admittedly though it also reminded me of the Guinness advert!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9znA_dwjHw

I've always thought that there was something very majestic about the horse.

[prendrelemick]

I have been told it was .

I don't know if you have read a biography of Ted Hughes, but the name Donald Crossley will be in the acknowledgements somewhere. He was a childhood friend of Hughes who I know quite well. He has been helping Gerald Hughes (Ted's brother) with a biography that will be out in September.

Ted was camping with Gerald when he saw the Horses, and Donald tracked down the place where it happened, using Gerald's memories. It was Gerald who told him it was a sacred place and moment in Ted's life, one that he never forgot.

This line seems to confirm it.

In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place.

The whole poem is a example of his "other kind" of poem, a narrative of an adventure, where you feel to be there with him as he discovers and is awed by nature.

[OrphanPip]

I seem to recall we had a somewhat extensive discussion of the Thought Fox somewhere on lit net before, was it in the poem of the week thread?

[LitNetIsGreat]

I have been told it was .

I don't know if you have read a biography of Ted Hughes, but the name Donald Crossley will be in the acknowledgements somewhere. He was a childhood friend of Hughes who I know quite well. He has been helping Gerald Hughes (Ted's brother) with a biography that will be out in September.

Ted was camping with Gerald when he saw the Horses, and Donald tracked down the place where it happened, using Gerald's memories. It was Gerald who told him it was a sacred place and moment in Ted's life, one that he never forgot.

This line seems to confirm it.

In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place.

The whole poem is a example of his "other kind" of poem, a narrative of an adventure, where you feel to be there with him as he discovers and is awed by nature.

I haven't but I'm going to shortly as I bet that it would be a really interesting read. I'm going to look for it later today and keep my eye open for the one out in September, thanks for the idea. Interesting last thought about nature and connecting with him.

I seem to recall we had a somewhat extensive discussion of the Thought Fox somewhere on lit net before, was it in the poem of the week thread?

Oh that is what it must have been. I thought there was a thread on Ted Hughes but I couldn't find one.

[prendrelemick]

Hawk Roosting is probably his best known poem and is stunning. The hawk is the pinnacle of creation - more than that - the purpose of all of creation is to be there for his use. It's all about him.
I disagree with Tony, I don't think it has any relation to the human world at all. The Hawk is neither moral or immoral it needs to offer no explanation, it just is.


My personal favourite Hughes poem is "Work and Play". Taken as a whole it is a bit trite and simple, comparing the swallow at work with people at play. But the imagery of the swallow is marvellous, he captures not only the bird, but the lift of the heart you get (I get) when you see one.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Hawk Roosting is probably his best known poem and is stunning. The hawk is the pinnacle of creation - more than that - the purpose of all of creation is to be there for his use. It's all about him.
I disagree with Tony, I don't think it has any relation to the human world at all. The Hawk is neither moral or immoral it needs to offer no explanation, it just is.

I don't think Tony's reading, or mine, is that it relates to the human world particularly, just that the hawk shares some common themes with the dictator figure. He did point out that Hughes meant it to be a poem about nature and I wouldn't disagree with that at all, especially in light of similar poems like The Jaguar, An Otter, The Horses and one that I think is wonderful - The Bull Moses!!! All of these clearly worship the individual animal and bring us closer to them, political comparisons are not part of it really, but I still think there are some parallels between the Hawk and the dictator figure to a degree, even if it is somewhat coincidental. It is also interesting that Hawk Roosting has been placed within the Conflict section of the AQA syllabus where all the other poems relate to war and terrorism or the victims of this. Clearly they are reading into the poem a political narrative as well, but yes overall I (and Tony I think) are not in disagreement with you by placing it primarily as nature poem full-stop.

I ordered the biography of Hughes which should come Monday.

I don't have 'work and play' but I have found it here:
http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems...work-and-play/

The Bull Moses is probabally my favourite piece so far I think. I can't find it online for anyone interested. It is from Lupercal if you have it.

[TheFifthElement]

I love Ted Hughes! His poetry has such a viceral, 'red in tooth and claw' feel to it. A poetry reading group I recently joined on Facebook is looking to read Crow as its first book.

Not from Crow, however, this is one of my favourites:

Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days

She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the
wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that,
using it and laughing, incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all
shiningly oiled
He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smooths over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible
And now he connects her throat,
her breasts and the pit of her stomach
With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying their roots
to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

She stitches his body here and there with steely purple silk

He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

She inlays with deep-cut scrolls the nape of his neck

He sinks into place inside of her thighs

So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care

They bring each other to perfection.