Ted Hughes Group

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eyman
eyman
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Graduate School

Briefly compare Ted Hughes' earlier poems to his later poems tracing his development of thought and style.

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Posted by eyman on Sunday June 8, 2008 at 12:13 AM and tagged with compare, early, late, poems, ted hughes, ted hugues.

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  1. lit24
    lit24 Teacher
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    Ted Hughes' first book of poems "Hawk in the Rain"(1957) stems from his keen interest in the ways of the animal kingdom. He records with fear and awe the beauty and the savagery of the animals he observes closely: "I (the hawk) kill where I please because it is all mine." ("Hawk Roosting"). Man's craze for power and success, he felt, was no different from  the governing principle of the animal world:survival of the fittest.

    In 1972 he published "Crow:From the Life and Songs of the Crow." The poems are existentialist and are an amalgamation of Biblical, Shakespearean and modernist elements and  were influenced by the mythological and bardic traditions which stemmed from his new found interest in 'Shamanism.' As a result he began to see life patterned as large archetypical narratives: "Crow turned the words into a reservoir, collecting the water/The water turned into an earthquake, swallowing the reservoir." ("Crow").

    In 1998,the year he died, he published "Birthday Letters" his personal response to his estranged wife Sylvia Plath's suicide(1963). The lyrics addressed as letters to Sylvia Plath were  arranged not chronologically according to the date on which they were written but by the date of the event they describe. The striking quality of these poems is the complete absence of remorse or guilt; "You are ten years dead. It is only a story./Your story my story." ("Visit").

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    Posted by lit24 on Sunday June 8, 2008 at 7:40 PM