Ted Hughes

Who is Ted Hughes?

Ted Hughes is an english poet and writer. Mostly know for his poems, He was nominated Poet Laureate from 1984 to 1998.

The task of the poet

According to Hughes, the task of the poet is that of expressing this “war between vitality and death”. He also states that man has cut himself from the natural energies of the universe by neglecting his own instincts. Imagination, therefore, is the faculty without which humanity cannot really exist.

Themes

• Animals = they are the subjects of his poems and they are described as different from human beings but representing human qualities.
• Nature = seen as a violence background reflecting the violence of modern life
• Violence = a natural instinct
• The universe = represented with all its existential problems about death, war and love
• The struggle for survival
• The search for identity

Language and Style

The technique Hughes uses mainly consists in a variety of stress patterns, exaggeration of metaphors and half rhyme. from the style point of view He uses a great vitality of imagery, a personal use of symbols and ano originality of expressions, all combining in his aim to blend imaginative and concrete images. Examples may be found in his poem “The Jaguar”.

[…] But who runs like the rest past these arrives

At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,

As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged

through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

on a short fierce fuse.

“The Jaguar” by Ted Hughes

This was Ted Hughes! 😉

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