Ted Hughes Flashcards
When was Ted Hughes Poet Laureate?
1984-1989
What is chracteristic of him because of his Yorkshire chilhood?
nature & myth, memories of war & masculinity
Where did he study?
Cambridge
What did he study?
literature –>anthropology, archeology
Why is the Fulbright Scolarship important?
That’s how he met his first wife, Sylvia Plath.
When was Hawk in the Rain published?
1957
How is he described?
As a poet of the wild/ animals
When was Lupercal published?
1960
What did he do with the 1966 Auriel?
He edited it. (Plath’s work)
When was Wodwo published?
1967
What influenced the dark violence of Crow?
Assia Wevill’s suicide in 1969
How is Hughes’s poetry described?
detachemetn and wry observations of Movement poets, against the negative sublime, brutish strength
What is his main inspiration?
nature
What is nature like in his poetry?
amoral, fierce power
How is the modern man represented?
Aa narrowing his vision, fall into scientific rationality/ into an alienation from the organic world
What do the image, symbol, myth and nature stand for in his poetry?
A reinvention of the essential ties between humanity and the world
How are the archaic energies of instinct and feeling embraced?
By pre-Christian mythologies, symbol - CROW
What does the OTHERness of animal life mean?
That there’s no sentimentalization, awe and fear in the observer
What are the characteristics of his poetic voice and etechnique?
formal simplicity, economy, jarred rhythm, repetitions, magical incantation, physical vividness of descriptions, narrative elements
Which poem is his ars poetica?
The Thought-Fox
What is the Thought-Fox about? What are its characteristics?
The creative process. Ambiguity. Experience and observation, self-reflexivity,imagination & reality
What is Relic about?
a philosophy of nature, religion
What is Pike about?
predatory instinct
What is the structure of Pike?
- description
- childhood memory/ home
- childhood memory/ nature/ cultural memory
What is Wodwo about? What are its characteristics?
a wild man between human and animal
, human intellect and consciousness. free-flowing verse with repetitions - uncertainty
What was the inspiration for the Crow, 1970?
Leonard Baskin’s drawings
What are the general features of Crow, 1970?
adressing ultimate religious questions, narrative (God vs. Crow), antagonist Bible, creation and destruction myth, influenced by oral poetry, trickster myths
How can Crow be described?
as a myth that parallels and denies the biblical
What are the answers in the Crow?
survival and egoism
What are the features of Crow poem?
primerlike vocab, impersonal POV; admiration of brutish strength, enyielding energy, survival of the fittest
What is February 17th?
A poem about negative sacrifice - birth and death
What is Moortown Diary (1979) based on?
A diary entry from there life on a farm in Devon
What is Moortown Diary (1979) about?
an account of an ill-delivering of a lamb –> death in birth
What characterizes the Moortown Diary (1979)?
unemotional, naturalistic description
What is the sturcture of Moortown Diary (1979)?
lamb- born - head - body
What was Birthday Letters for Hughes?
a direct, private, inner contact with his first wife
What is the feminist myth of Hughes?
That he killed both of his wives.
What are the characteristics of Love Song, 1970?
Confessional poetry, memory, evocation
Is Hughes a confessional poet?
No, he’s traditionally anti-confessional
Why was publushing Birthday Letters an inner liberation?
He could say things he desperately needed to share.
What does Birthday signify?
death/ birth - rebirth
What is characteristic of Birthday Letters?
memory (present and past fused), fatalism, evocation, basic oppositions
What is Fulbrigth Scolars about?
firt glimpse of Sylvia, uncertainty of memory, future hidden in past
What is Fulbrigth Scolars allude to?
Prufrock - eating peaches
What is Your Paris and You Hated Spain about?
difference of vision, conscious vs. unconscious
What is Wuthering HEigths about?
places, writers, fates haunting
What is 9 Willow Street about?
memory attached to places, bat-bite = sacrifice and danger
What is Orghast?
a play in an invented language, a myth of Prometheus
What are the titles of his books for children?
Iron Man, Moon-Whales
Which Hungarian poet did he translate?
Pilinszky
Who founded the Ted Hughes award?
Carol Ann Duffy
