Extra
Quotes What Ted Said
Written Essays and Such
There are no words to capture
the infinite depth of crowiness in the crow's flight.
- Poetry in the Making
I can understand why mice frighten elephants, but they're dear little things,
I don't mind what they nibble.
- "Mice are funny little creatures"
And we only did/What poetry told us to do.
- "Flounders", Birthday Letters
The story that has to be
told is the writer's God.
- "The God", Birthday Letters
Only an owl
knows the worth of an owl
- ? (If anyone knows where this quote comes from, please contact
us!)
About Ted:
This is the voice of a man who speaks poetry as his first language.
- Keith Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes
About us
Agnes - the residing Ted Hughes scholar
Rebecka - designs and makes all the nifty webstuff work
My
meeting with Ted Hughes
- Agnes
If you want to contribute to this section, feel free to send your text to us and we will consider it.
My Meeting With Ted Hughes
- Agnes
As so many others, I initially
got to know Ted Hughes through his brilliant wife, Sylvia Plath. My passion
for Sylvia was one of the most powerful literary experiences I had had in my
life, and it still is. I remember seeing Ted's name, and associating it, immediately,
with her - not to a face, not to a literary genre, but to her. I ordered the
book, and I vividly remember curiously eying it, shifting its red weight between
my hands, wondering what it would be like, what it would say. The book was,
ironically one might say, or typically, Birthday Letters. The minute I started
reading it, I knew I had never loved anything, or at least not any book, as
much before. At this point of my life, I was blessed with a relative ignorance
of the turmoil that surrounded these two literary giants, something that gave
me the wonderful advantage of being able to form my own opinion, regardless
of others. I had, at this stage, little knowledge of how Ted Hughes would come
to affect my life. As I dove into Birthday Letters, I dove into one of the greatest
sources of happiness I have ever known.
Birthday Letters immediately
became my Bible, something I had to carry with me everywhere I went, especially
to places where I felt insecure. Its pages, now torn and tainted, little resemble
the ones of the shiny, red book I once lifted from a brown package. In retrospect,
it might seem odd how long it took for me to begin exploring the rest of Ted
Hughes's vast production. The truth, or part of it, is that I was scared. Birthday
Letters had become to me something sacred. Eyeing an old copy of Crow at the
library, I had realised that Birthday Letters was in no way representative for
Hughes's complete production. The language and the content of Crow, shocked
me severely. I have understood now, that being initially frightened by Crow,
is quite a normal reaction. I blame it mainly on my low age, and my unwillingness
to let anything interfere with the picture I had made of the man namned Ted
Hughes. Years later, I bought his Collected Poems - an investment that for me
at the time seemed as extravagant as necessary- and I began what I now consider
my real exploration of Ted Hughes's poetry. This was the true journey. This
was the day from which time shall be measured. I realised, that what had scared
me about Crow, that is was so essentially different from Birthday Letters, was
actually an example of Ted's poetic grandeur. Keith Sagar said this best, when
he declared that Ted "spoke poetry as his first language". When Ted
wrote about something, he used the words that came to him naturally - the words
that his mind thought most suitable for the subject. And since Ted's poetry
concerned such a vast area of subjects, it is only natural that his poetic voice
differs from collection to collection, from poem to poem. Still, there is always
the distinct Hughesian colour of the poems, unmistakable, unforgivingly accurate.
Poetry, for Ted Hughes, was an act of magic. Listening to his readings, is like
listening to the shaman's chanting, evoking the spirits unreachable to the everyday
man.
Later, I would spend the majority of my days and nights immersed in Ted Hughes-related studies. I discovered the enchanted worlds of Vasco Popa and of Robert Graves, I plunged deeper into my fascination of C.G. Jung and Freud, and, most importantly, I did what I had thought impossible: I fell ever deeper in love with Ted Hughes. Today, I have no idea how I ever lived without him, and I look forward with unappropriate excitement, to those nights when there is only Ted and I and a pot of tea, for long, unbroken hours, in infinite bliss.
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