Page 383 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes Hughes’ first collection, Hawk in the Rain (1957) attracted considerable critical acclaim. In 1959 he
won the Galbraith prize which brought $5,000. His most significant work is perhaps Crow (1970),
which whilst it has been widely praised also divided critics, combining an apocalyptic, bitter, cynical
and surreal view of the universe with what sometimes appeared simple, childlike verse.

In a 1971 interview with London Magazine, Hughes cited his main influences as
including Blake, Donne, Hopkins and Eliot. And he mentioned also Schopenhauer,
Robert Graves’ book The White Goddess and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Hughes worked for 10 years on a prose poem, “Gaudete”, which he hoped to have made into a film.
It tells the story of the vicar of an English village who is carried off by elemental spirits, and replaced
in the village by his enantiodromic double, a changeling, fashioned from a log, who nevertheless
has the same memories as the original vicar. The double is a force of nature who organises the
women of the village into a “love coven” in order that he may father a new messiah. When the male
members of the community discover what is going on, they murder him. The epilogue consists of a
series of lyrics spoken by the restored priest in praise of a nature goddess, inspired by Robert Graves’s
White Goddess. It was printed in 1977. Hughes was very interested in the relationship between his
poetry and the book arts and many of his books were produced by notable presses and in collaborative
editions with artists, for instance with Leonard Baskin.
In addition to his own poetry, Hughes wrote a number of translations of European plays, mainly
classical ones his Tales from Ovid (1997) contains a selection of free verse translations from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. He also wrote both poetry and prose for children, one of his most successful books
being The Iron Man, written to comfort his children after Sylvia Plath’s suicide. It later became the
basis of Pete Townshend’s rock opera of the same name, and of the animated film The Iron Giant.
Hughes was appointed as Poet Laureate in 1984 following the death of John Betjeman. It was later
known that Hughes was second choice for the appointment. Philip Larkin, the preferred nominee,
had declined, because of ill health and writer’s block. Hughes served in this position until his death
in 1998.
In 1992, Hughes published Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, a monumental work
inspired by Graves’ The White Goddess. In Birthday Letters, his last collection, Hughes broke his
silence on Plath, detailing aspects of their life together and his own behaviour at the time. The cover
artwork was by their daughter Frieda. Hughes’ definitive 1,333-page Collected Poems (Faber &
Faber) appeared (posthumously) in 2003. A poem discovered in October 2010, “Last letter”, describes
what happened during the three days leading up to Plath’s suicide. It was published in New
Statesman on National Poetry Day, October 2010.
In 2011 several previously unpublished letters from Hughes to Craig Raine were published in the
literary review Arete. They relate mainly to the process of editing Shakespeare and the Goddess of
Complete Being, and also contain a sequence of drafts of letters in which Raine attempts to explain
to Hughes his disinclination to publish Hughes’ poem The Cast in an anthology he was editing, on
the grounds that it might open Hughes to further attack on the subject of Sylvia Plath. “Dear Ted,
Thanks for the poem. It is very interesting and would cause a minor sensation” (4 April 1997). The
poem was eventually published in Birthday Letters and Hughes makes a passing reference to this
then unpublished collection: “I have a whole pile of pieces that are all-one way or another-little
bombs for the studious and earnest to throw at me” (5 April 1997).

31.1.2 The Thought Fox – Text

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness

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