The Hawk in the Rain

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Poetry in the Making: An Anthology of Poems and Programmes from “Listening and Writing,” Faber and Faber, 1967, abridged edition published as Poetry Is, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1970. This first volume of poems contained some very outstanding poetry of which the title poem itself is one instance. Two other eye-catching illustrations of Hughes’s poetic aptitude in this volume were the poems, ‘Wind’ and ‘The Thought-Fox’. I wonder if you'd like to look at this?" F&F publisher Charles Monteith wrote to his colleague T. S. Eliot in 1957, to which Eliot replied: 'I'm inclined to think we ought to take this man now. Let's discuss him. TSE'. I would describe his poems thusly: He combines the Victorian’s dense, semi-archaic diction with TS Eliot’s cynicism, and a splash of nature’s cruelty. His poems are too dense, almost over-written, for my taste. His diction is too archaic, and his constant use of alliteration and active voice seem uninspired. His rhymes startled me because I could not see them coming.

In Hughes' poetry between 1957 and 1989, I think there is a gradual change from an anthropocentric, or human-centred viewpoint, towards a more biocentric, or ecological perspective. This progression in his poetry is more like the slow process of evolution than a sudden change from one mode of thinking to another. He may draw metaphors from the spiritual world of cultures, and yet in his collections The Hawk in the Rain through to Crow his is more a voice speaking of nature than a guardian spirit speaking out for it. Until Gaudete, his is not an environmentalist agenda, but a subtle exploration of the connection between man and nature. He tends also to be concerned with man and nature; in his earlier poetry, women are often reduced to sexual objects and producers of children. Yet in Gaudete, Hughes creates a collection sometimes akin to the views of , documenting the relationship between the female earth-goddess and a male worshipper; the difficulties of this relationship are explored in his later works. endurance-The stormy wind tilts the balance of the speaker but the hawk is unaffected by the power of nature. The hawk seems to hang there steadily with a will power that is as hard as diamond, which is the hardest of all minerals. The strong will is like the Pole Star that guides the travelers in the right direction. The hawk’s endurance can guide the drenched, depressed speaker to look up optimistically. While one hears echoes of Gerard Manley Hopkins, D. H. Lawrence, and Robert Graves, the language is distinctly Hughes, and a direct challenge to what Sylvia Plath called the “mile-distant abstractions” [7] of his contemporaries. Library Journal, May 15, 1993; February 15, 1998, review of The Birthday Letters, p. 145; review of The Oresteia, p. 110; June 1, 1999.When pondering Hughes's work, we must mention his mentor, T. S. Eliot, and their similar yet different styles. Hughes was personally influenced by the Great War poets like Wilfred Owen, a collection of poets who sought to write about the present horrors of war rather than the soothing triumph of its wake. Hughes said his father, a WWI veteran, never once spoke of war but its memory was in their home nonetheless. War was a recurrent theme in Hughes' work. Eliot's earliest work predates Hughes' by half a century but similarly broke through the prevailing poetry with original verse. The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of the leaf In Gaudete, however, a significant change in the presentation of the nature-goddess takes place. She is presented as not only equal to, but a superior of, the poet; he, her priest, is also a part of her. Her potency is conveyed in the power of the surging rhythms used by Hughes:

Spectator, June 20, 1992; March 12, 1994; March 18, 1995; January 31, 1998, review of The Birthday Letters, p. 42. Sagar, Keith, Ted Hughes, Longman, 1972, enlarged as The Art of Ted Hughes, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1978. The Earth-Owl and Other Moon-People (verse), Faber and Faber, 1963, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1964, published as Moon-Whales and Other Moon Poems, illustrated by Leonard Baskin, Viking (New York, NY), 1976, revised edition published as Moon Whales, Faber and Faber, 1988. Times Literary Supplement, January 4, 1980; April 17, 1992; May 6, 1994; November 17, 1995; February 6, 1998, review of The Birthday Letters, p. 3; December 4, 1998, review of The Birthday Letters. Meet My Folks! (verse), illustrated by George Adamson, Faber and Faber (London, England), 1961, Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis, IN), 1973, revised edition, Faber and Faber, 1987.

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Adapter) Seneca’s Oedipus (produced in London at National Theatre, 1968, in Los Angeles, 1973, in New York, 1977), Faber and Faber (London, England), 1969, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1972. However, Hughes died in 1998, before the publication of such seminal ecocritical works as Jonathan Bate's Song of the Earth. Yet even before the inception of ecocriticism proper, Ted Hughes' work anticipates this critical movement. To what extent are Ted Hughes' early works useful to 'environmental crisis'? He was certainly aware of ecological destruction. Greg Garrard (in his book Ecocriticism) states that modern environmentalism begins with 'A Fable for Tomorrow', in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962). This book was very important in inspiring the ecological movement. Its title refers to the results of agricultural pesticides on the environment. Birds were dying at a frightening rate, and with them, their songs. Hughes' career as a published poet begins in 1957, and even before his encounter with Carson, his works show an inkling of literary green thinking. Hughes was an environmental writer ahead of his time, yet the brand of environmentalism in his poetry is subtly different from conventional ecological thinking, being at once more aesthetic and more mystical. Lucas Myers. Crow Steered Bergs Appeared: A Memoir of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Sewanee, Tennessee: Proctor’s Hall Press, 2001. 7.

Graves describes] the nature-goddess in her three aspects of maiden, mother and crone ( in the best-known version). This myth holds, in a single imaginative unit, the total, inescapable character of reality, both beneficent and destructive. It assists Hughes [...] to incorporate all that is terrifying and predatory, as well as comforting and nurturing, in nature. The goddess is implicit in his work from the beginning, but becomes increasingly prominent in the 'mother' of several of the Crow poems, and in the object of Lumb's devotion in Gaudete. (Quoted from Gifford and Roberts, p. 19) Hawk and Rain are the two operative words in the title. I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up The Iron Man (based on his juvenile book; televised, 1972; also see below), Faber and Faber (London, England), 1973. Sigmund Freud. ‘Animism.’ Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey. Vol. 14. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1953; 1973. 90.Nessie, The Mannerless Monster (verse), illustrated by Gerald Rose, Faber and Faber, 1964, revised edition published as Nessie the Monster, illustrated by Jan Pyk, Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis, IN), 1974. A Primer of Birds: Poems, illustrated by Leonard Baskin, Gehenna Press (Lurley, Devon, England), 1981. Sagar, Keith, The Achievement of Ted Hughes, Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 1983. Consulting editor) Frances McCullough, editor, The Journals of Sylvia Plath, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1998. The Iron Giant: A Story in Five Nights, Harper (New York, NY), 1968, revised edition published as The Iron Man: A Story in Five Nights, Faber and Faber, 1968, revised edition, 1984, reprinted under original title, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.