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Elective English–II

Notes leaving him in secure possession of that ancient and archaic imaginative energy which he
invokes in his poetry.
The alternative to this Romantic view of Hughes’s poetic personality is to see Hughes’s poetry
as essentially the poetry of an intellectual, an intellectual who is subject to the rigours of
‘puritanical rationalism’ just as much as any other intellectual but who, instead of submitting
to those rigours, fights against them with that stubborn and intransigent resolution which
belongs only to the puritan soul.
In reality perhaps neither of these views is wholly appropriate, and the truth comes somewhere
between the two. But what does seem clear is that when Hughes talks of modern civilisation
as consisting in ‘mental disintegration. ..under the super-ego of Moses … and the self-anaesthetising
schizophrenia of St Paul’ he is once again engaging in that characteristic strategy of externalising
a conflict of sensibility which is profoundly internal. For it must be suggested that Paul’s own
‘schizophrenia’ consisted in an acute conflict between the impulse towards tenderness, abundance
and generosity and the impulse towards puritanical violence – the violence of chastity. It is
precisely this conflict which seems to be buried in Hughes’s early poetry and which, as I have
suggested, eventually erupts in the poetry of Crow. If, in Crow, Hughes is able to explore and
express the internalised violence of the rationalist sensibility with more imaginative power
than any other modern poet, it is perhaps because he does so from within a poetic sensibility
which is itself profoundly intellectual, and deeply marked by that very puritanical rationalism
which he so frequently and justifiably – attacks.

5.4 Analysis

Ted Hughes was one of the most honoured and respected poets of the 20th century. This poem
speaks directly as it encapsulates the moments of creation, the stillness and emptiness when
nothing will come, and it gives great hope to anyone suffering writer’s block.
The poem exposes and explores the creative process, giving insight to the poet’s experience
with honesty and depth. He is the speaker, the omniscient narrator. He uses an intimate
conversational tone that brings out the sensory imagery and the changing rhythms, the time
and place, with perfection. The visual, auditory and olfactory move throughout the poem, like
that fox. We can smell the foxy creature, as Hughes uses alliteration and enjambment thus:
“Till, with a sudden, sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head” (l. 21-22)
That “dark hole” is such a great metaphor for the empty mind of a writer seeking inspiration.
But the lead up to this is full of rhythmic tension and images that take us right into the scene,
with the lone man in the night, we are with him every step of the way.

Hughes lets us know he is alone in the darkness, for his eye rhymes and half rhymes signify
this, as in “darkness” and loneliness”, and the rhythm combines to enhance the rhyme to
create the picture; the cold, the dark, the scents, the tension.

Did u know? ’The Thought Fox’ is a poem about composing poetry, or rather, about
being visited by the muse. Appropriately enough, in Hughes’ case, the
muse is an animal, a fox. Hughes has said that this was the first animal
poem he wrote.”

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