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The Hawk in the Rain
This multi-award winning collection, the first from Ted Hughes, has at its heart the mixture of beauty and violence in the natural world. Dedicated to Sylvia Plath, Hawk in the Rain is a stunning collection of poems on the themes of competition and the struggle for survival. Hughes would go on to become Britain's Poet Laureate in 1984 until his death in 1998. Including many of Hughes' best-known poems, such as 'The Jaguar', 'The Thought-Fox' and 'Wind' - now stapes of British poetry anthologies - Hawk in the Rain is the foundation of Hughes' reputation as one of the twentieth-century's greatest poets. This beautifully designed edition forms part of a series of ten titles celebrating Faber's publishing over the decades.
64 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1957
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About the author
Ted Hughes
375 books726 followersEdward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
He married fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962 and Plath ended her own life in 1963.
He married fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962 and Plath ended her own life in 1963.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
January 20, 2021
The gentle reader in his silent room
Loss the words in mid-sentence--
The world has burned away beneath his book
A tossing upside-down team drags him on fire
Among the monsters of the zodiac.
I haven’t read much poetry since my college days, but recently I’ve been keeping a copy of Leaves of Grass close to hand to peruse whenever words stop flowing from my fingers. Whitman’s word choices have a way of opening the closed avenues in my mind and jump starting the thinking process. So I read poetry for carefully composed sentences and the expanded lexicon. I love seeing unusual words or even perfectly normal words used in unusual ways.
I was sent a copy of the Dutch writer Connie Palmen’s new book Your Story, My Story, which is about the relationship between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. I thought a good prep would be to read some Hughes and Plath poetry and also reread The Bell Jar in anticipation of reading the Palmen novel. This is the collection that fulfilled all the prophecies of Ted Hughe’s brilliance. The book is dedicated to Sylvia, who certainly was the muse as well as the collaborator to help this book win the Galbraith Prize. Connie Palmen, in her novel, shares that the poet Marianne Moore, who was on the juror panel, asked that three of the more salacious poems be replaced before she would give it the nod. Hughes regretted the decision to bow to censorship for the rest of his life, but a young poet, trying to make a living at something few have ever been able to do, made the only choice he could... in my opinion.
Instead of a review, which I’m really not qualified to review poetry, although I know not being qualified has never stopped reviewers on GR in the past :-), I want to list the lines that resonated with me for my future reference.
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Or like the smouldering head that hung
In Killdevil’s brass kitchen, in irons, who had been
Volcano swearing to vomit the world away in black ash.
Grey silent fragments
Of a grey silent world.
Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys, in the red levelling rays--
At dusk she scuttles down the gauntlet of lust.
Love’s a spoiled appetite for some delicacy--
Each in a thicket, rage hoarse in its labouring
Chest after a skirmish, licks in the rent in its hide,
Desire’s a vicious separator in spite
Of its twisting women round men:
Cold-chisels two selfs single as it welds hot
Iron of their separates to one.
Old Eden commonplace: something magnets
And furnaces and with fierce
Hammer-blows the one body on the other knits
Till the division disappears.
Whilst I am this muck of man in this
Muck of existence, I shall not seek more
Than a muck of a woman.
His eyes dwelt with the quick ankles of whores.
To mortify pride he hailed each one:
“This is the ditch to pitch abortions in.”
Dewdrop frailty
Having studied a journey in the high
Cathedralled brain, the mole’s ear, the fish’s ice,
The abattoir of the tiger’s artery,
The slum of the dog’s bowel, and there is no place
His bright look has not bettered, and problems none
But he has brought it to solution.
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
To the merest farthing his whole agony,
His body’s cold-kept miserdom of shrieks
He gave uncounted, while out of his eyes,
Out of his mouth, fire like a glory broke,
And smoke burned his sermons into the skies.
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January 2, 2018
They all have to start somewhere, and for Ted Hughes this was the breakout work that made him a famous figure. It is a collection of poems composed on a wide range of subjects, mixing nature poems and those that deal with raw emotion and love, all closely associated with Hughes's early life. Somewhat obscure at times, only a few didn't worked for me, but most of the time he wrote these poems with gusto. Powerful and resounding.
My Highlights,
"The Thought-Fox"
"The Decay of Vanity"
"Soliloquy of a Misanthrope"
"October Dawn"
"Griefs for Dead Soldiers"
My Highlights,
"The Thought-Fox"
"The Decay of Vanity"
"Soliloquy of a Misanthrope"
"October Dawn"
"Griefs for Dead Soldiers"
November 4, 2022
Centocinque
There was a young man called Ted Hughes
Who wore crows on the soles of his shoes
Some men like to run
From the featherless sun
And howl at the moon if they choose
A sinistra... / A destra...
.
There was a young man called Ted Hughes
Who wore crows on the soles of his shoes
Some men like to run
From the featherless sun
And howl at the moon if they choose
A sinistra... / A destra...
.
March 20, 2023
Ted Hughes dedicated this collection of poems to Sylvia Plath. I enjoyed some others not so much. I liked The Jaguar, The Hawk in the Rain, Wind, Two Wise Generals and Song.
A book that needs to be read again and again to enjoy and appreciate the beauty of words.
A book that needs to be read again and again to enjoy and appreciate the beauty of words.
July 8, 2011
I'm giving it 3 rather than 2 stars because I probably didn't pay as close attention to the book as I usually like to with poetry. Nevertheless, this certainly reads like a debut collection; though Hughes' central fascinations - cosmic, inexplicable violence; the lives of animals; women-as-Muse-figures; &co&co - are present here, he hasn't quite figured how to handle them in any coherent way yet.
There are a handful of poems here that register among his best (and most famous): "The Thought-Fox," "The Jaguar," "The Hawk in the Rain," "The Horses," and "The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar." Unfortunately, the collection is bookended with its strongest poems - the first four or five and the last four or five - and the long, long, long stretch through the middle feels full of chores. Funny that so many claim Hughes hit the ground running with his first publication (often the yardstick of comparison is Plath's first book The Colossus), when in fact I found nearly all the unmentioned poems in this book akin to doodling exercises, as if Hughes had said "I'll try out this rhythmic structure" or "Now I'll write a poem with this theme" at the beginning of each.
In short: read the animal poems; read the war poems. For easy reference, these are, as I said, the first and last handfuls of the book. There are a few nice lines scattered throughout the rest, but even those don't hit the flesh as indelibly as one expects from Hughes.
There are a handful of poems here that register among his best (and most famous): "The Thought-Fox," "The Jaguar," "The Hawk in the Rain," "The Horses," and "The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar." Unfortunately, the collection is bookended with its strongest poems - the first four or five and the last four or five - and the long, long, long stretch through the middle feels full of chores. Funny that so many claim Hughes hit the ground running with his first publication (often the yardstick of comparison is Plath's first book The Colossus), when in fact I found nearly all the unmentioned poems in this book akin to doodling exercises, as if Hughes had said "I'll try out this rhythmic structure" or "Now I'll write a poem with this theme" at the beginning of each.
In short: read the animal poems; read the war poems. For easy reference, these are, as I said, the first and last handfuls of the book. There are a few nice lines scattered throughout the rest, but even those don't hit the flesh as indelibly as one expects from Hughes.
September 6, 2020
While not quite up to the standard of some of his later work, Ted Hughes’ first collection of poetry is still a great read, full of powerful imagery and complex emotion.
Wind
The house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through the darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-lights luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. I dared once to look up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of their hills drummed and strained its guyrope,
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly, The house
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
Wind
The house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through the darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-lights luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. I dared once to look up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of their hills drummed and strained its guyrope,
The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly, The house
Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
July 17, 2017
En las ediciones de poesía bilingües debería ser obligatoria la colaboración de varios traductores, para que su fatuidad se anule y el resultado sea menos ridículo: traducir "dragonfly" por «caballito del diablo» tiene delito por varias razones: primero, porque significa «libélula», lo cual encaja mejor en el verso y respeta más el original como única palabra y que, según el Oxford Dictionary, es a lo que equivale, pues «caballito del diablo», en inglés, es "damselfly"; segundo, porque de tener (que ni eso) ambas opciones a las que recurrir como traductor, optar por la más rara y la que consta de tres palabras es un acto de pedantería de entomólogo, no de traductor de libro de poesía —yo no sabía ni qué demonios era un caballito del diablo hasta este hallazgo—. Traducir "Heaven" (en mitad de verso) por «cielo» y no «Cielo» tampoco tiene perdón de Dios ni de los dioses, salvo que me esté perdiendo algo (siempre una posibilidad).
Las ediciones de la editorial Bartleby, y especialmente las que corren a cargo de mi paisano Xoán Abeleira, son maravillosas (muy documentadas, trabajadas, completas, etcétera) salvo por el tamaño de la tipografía (se cortan más versos que pescados en una pescadería, y uno no puede entender por qué razones gustan de este vicio tan irrespetuoso con el original como poco estético), que conste en acta.
Las ediciones de la editorial Bartleby, y especialmente las que corren a cargo de mi paisano Xoán Abeleira, son maravillosas (muy documentadas, trabajadas, completas, etcétera) salvo por el tamaño de la tipografía (se cortan más versos que pescados en una pescadería, y uno no puede entender por qué razones gustan de este vicio tan irrespetuoso con el original como poco estético), que conste en acta.
April 1, 2016
The title piece is exactly what I have been looking for in British poets. Ankle-deep in the muck and mire of the land and tradition the poet looks above and admires the freedom of flight in a hawk. Thoreau spoke of the same. "His wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet, steady as a hallucination in the streaming air." The poet is trapped by horizons and maybe the hawk is too - but not at this moment they are.
Another surprise was the war poems at the end. I was under the impression Hughes was England's Frost, oh how genial meditating upon the animals and the land. Wrong, at least in these poems, as he reflects on relatives who fought at Gallipoli. In "Bayonet Charge" the poem is not so much about a man's final moments being mowed down to no purpose. It is really about the fear that strikes our hearts uninvited. Holding all creation "in a weightless quiet" is the soldier hearing his own footfalls in his final moments.
Who is this beautiful wife? How did I get here? To what purpose is any of this? You don't necessarily need a battlefield to be struck dumb by these questions and think something like this:
King, honour, human dignity, etcetera
Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm
To get out of that blue crackling air
His terror's touchy dynamite.
"Touchy dynamite". Who does not have a bit of that? One cannot help but think of his wife (who this collection is dedicated to) and where it led her.
Overall I am still not very excited by Hughes. Even in this collection where there is some remarkable poetry, I did not crack open the pages with anticipations of joy and color, or new intellectual horizons to explore (though Hughes is a huge improvement compared to the Geoffrey Hill I read recently). Not like with Dickinson, for instance, who is not just into making a perfectly boiled five-minute egg. With her, no matter what object she turns her attention to, there is always the sense of wonder at the fire that makes the egg even possible. Like in his Ovid translations, Hughes gives us the feel, through his original rhythms, of swooping from heaven to earth while scanning all creation. But not the exhilaration of flight. I demand fire in the belly! Otherwise there is really no reason for poetry.
I feel I am constantly on the verge of giving up reading English-language poetry once and for all, but not yet, I guess.
Another surprise was the war poems at the end. I was under the impression Hughes was England's Frost, oh how genial meditating upon the animals and the land. Wrong, at least in these poems, as he reflects on relatives who fought at Gallipoli. In "Bayonet Charge" the poem is not so much about a man's final moments being mowed down to no purpose. It is really about the fear that strikes our hearts uninvited. Holding all creation "in a weightless quiet" is the soldier hearing his own footfalls in his final moments.
Who is this beautiful wife? How did I get here? To what purpose is any of this? You don't necessarily need a battlefield to be struck dumb by these questions and think something like this:
King, honour, human dignity, etcetera
Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm
To get out of that blue crackling air
His terror's touchy dynamite.
"Touchy dynamite". Who does not have a bit of that? One cannot help but think of his wife (who this collection is dedicated to) and where it led her.
Overall I am still not very excited by Hughes. Even in this collection where there is some remarkable poetry, I did not crack open the pages with anticipations of joy and color, or new intellectual horizons to explore (though Hughes is a huge improvement compared to the Geoffrey Hill I read recently). Not like with Dickinson, for instance, who is not just into making a perfectly boiled five-minute egg. With her, no matter what object she turns her attention to, there is always the sense of wonder at the fire that makes the egg even possible. Like in his Ovid translations, Hughes gives us the feel, through his original rhythms, of swooping from heaven to earth while scanning all creation. But not the exhilaration of flight. I demand fire in the belly! Otherwise there is really no reason for poetry.
I feel I am constantly on the verge of giving up reading English-language poetry once and for all, but not yet, I guess.
May 25, 2024
There's already a grand mix of everything that interested Hughes in this award-winning debut collection of poems.
On publication it was said, ‘Hughes’s talent is unmistakeable, the work has focus, is aglow with feeling, with conscience; sensibility is awake, embodied in appropriate diction���, while Keith Sagar commented, rather technically, ‘Hughes rejected the Latinate iamb in favour of bludgeoning trochees and spondees. The strong alliteration onomatopoeia, and hyperbole gave his poems an impact not heard in English verse since the demise of Middle English.’
The Jaguar, The Thought-Fox, The Hawk in the Rain (all these well known) and The Horses foretell the glorious menagerie of Lupercal and Crow, while the black barred pupils of a goat in Meeting had a resonance with me (goats have very strange eyes—you must check them out):
'A square-pupilled yellow-eyed look, / The black devil head against the blue air'.
Mythology (Phaetons), war and pacifism (a handful of poems at the end of the collection) and questioning religion (The Conversion of Reverend Skinner and The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar (A poem about an ancestor of Hughes that I’m sure I’d already read, though this may be another one about the same man)) became more important in Lupercal and Crow, but in The Hawk in the Rain the seeds are here accompanied by emotion, love and a brooding melancholy.
I especially liked the cold-blooded, dark rational of Fair Choice with the roots of Crow’s brutality (though his crudity and blasphemy are yet to surface (it tells of the imminent arrival of twins)):
'You must cold murder the one and force feed / With your remorse the other and protect him from / The vengeful voluble ghost of the twin dead.'
And the savagery of the Invitation to the Dance:
'The sun stank. Rats worked at him secretly. / Rot and maggot striped him stitch to stitch.'
Also a familiar theme about the inequality of war in The Casualty, the first of the aforementioned handful of interesting war poems:
'Here now his groans and senses groping. They rip / The slum of weeds, leaves, barbed coils; they raise / A body that as the breeze touches it flows, / Branding their hands on his bones. Now that he has / No spine, against heaped sheaves they prop him up.'
Some say this is an uneven offering and cite Faber & Faber's initial hesitancy regarding publishing (though T S Elliott championed the work.) It’s true I found more of the poems straightforward and easier to understand than in Lupercal and Crow; whether this endorses that uneveness, or even if my reading can be used as a yardstick or not, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just getting used to reading Ted Hughes. That said Egg-Head is one of, if not the most, impenetrable of his poems I've read. ‘Read’ is not an entirely appropriate word to a poem that scans like a three dimensional cryptic crossword or simply a random collection of words.
What I can say is, compared to Lupercal and Crow, there are less obscure mythological and religious references, though you'll still find enough enjambment and unusual syntax in his trochees and spondees to at times disarm you.
I've read arguably the three important early Ted Hughes collections chronologically backwards, which is probably not the best way to approach his work. I'd recommend starting here, with The Hawk in the Rain and check out this highly promising debut of one of the twentieth centuries great poets.
On publication it was said, ‘Hughes’s talent is unmistakeable, the work has focus, is aglow with feeling, with conscience; sensibility is awake, embodied in appropriate diction���, while Keith Sagar commented, rather technically, ‘Hughes rejected the Latinate iamb in favour of bludgeoning trochees and spondees. The strong alliteration onomatopoeia, and hyperbole gave his poems an impact not heard in English verse since the demise of Middle English.’
The Jaguar, The Thought-Fox, The Hawk in the Rain (all these well known) and The Horses foretell the glorious menagerie of Lupercal and Crow, while the black barred pupils of a goat in Meeting had a resonance with me (goats have very strange eyes—you must check them out):
'A square-pupilled yellow-eyed look, / The black devil head against the blue air'.
Mythology (Phaetons), war and pacifism (a handful of poems at the end of the collection) and questioning religion (The Conversion of Reverend Skinner and The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar (A poem about an ancestor of Hughes that I’m sure I’d already read, though this may be another one about the same man)) became more important in Lupercal and Crow, but in The Hawk in the Rain the seeds are here accompanied by emotion, love and a brooding melancholy.
I especially liked the cold-blooded, dark rational of Fair Choice with the roots of Crow’s brutality (though his crudity and blasphemy are yet to surface (it tells of the imminent arrival of twins)):
'You must cold murder the one and force feed / With your remorse the other and protect him from / The vengeful voluble ghost of the twin dead.'
And the savagery of the Invitation to the Dance:
'The sun stank. Rats worked at him secretly. / Rot and maggot striped him stitch to stitch.'
Also a familiar theme about the inequality of war in The Casualty, the first of the aforementioned handful of interesting war poems:
'Here now his groans and senses groping. They rip / The slum of weeds, leaves, barbed coils; they raise / A body that as the breeze touches it flows, / Branding their hands on his bones. Now that he has / No spine, against heaped sheaves they prop him up.'
Some say this is an uneven offering and cite Faber & Faber's initial hesitancy regarding publishing (though T S Elliott championed the work.) It’s true I found more of the poems straightforward and easier to understand than in Lupercal and Crow; whether this endorses that uneveness, or even if my reading can be used as a yardstick or not, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just getting used to reading Ted Hughes. That said Egg-Head is one of, if not the most, impenetrable of his poems I've read. ‘Read’ is not an entirely appropriate word to a poem that scans like a three dimensional cryptic crossword or simply a random collection of words.
What I can say is, compared to Lupercal and Crow, there are less obscure mythological and religious references, though you'll still find enough enjambment and unusual syntax in his trochees and spondees to at times disarm you.
I've read arguably the three important early Ted Hughes collections chronologically backwards, which is probably not the best way to approach his work. I'd recommend starting here, with The Hawk in the Rain and check out this highly promising debut of one of the twentieth centuries great poets.
December 31, 2019
I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,
Not a leaf, not a bird -
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood
Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness
Till the moorline - blackening dregs of the brightening grey -
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:
Huge in the dense grey - ten together -
Megalith still. They breathed, making no move,
With draper manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.
I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments
Of a grey silent world.
From the poem The Horses
I have a complex relationship with Ted Hughes, which is mainly due to the fact that my first glimpse of him was through the lens of Sylvia Plath’s poetry.
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
from Plath’s poem Daddy
Through reading many biographies on Plath and most of her writing in print, the image I had of Hughes was, needless to say, negative and this view went unchallenged until I read Crow, which is one of the best poetry collections I’ve ever read.
Hughes is, undoubtedly, a master of his craft, and it was really interesting to back to his first published collection, Hawk in the Rain. His voice is already so strong, so steady in these poems; it rarely stumbles and I think his most striking work comes out in his nature poems. They’re barbaric, hostile, yet dreamlike - I found myself transported by them, soaking in their atmosphere and imagery.
Some of his poems about war were fascinating and gutting, especially Griefs for Dead Soldiers, which blew me away, but I really struggled with his more erotic poems or those in which he focused on love and women. It’s very odd knowing he was with Plath when he wrote these and that she typed lines that minimise women to cooking and makeup but there were some beautiful lines here and there.
There were many poems that I adored in here, and they are (in order in which they appear)
The Hawk in the Rain
The Thought-Fox
The Horses
Famous Poet
Incompatibilities
The Conversion of the Revered Skinner
Egg-Head
The Man Seeking Experience Enquires His Way of a Drop of Water
Meeting
Wind
October Dawn
Rosters in a Ring
Vampire
Childbirth
The Hag
The Casualty
Griefs for Dead Soldiers
The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,
Not a leaf, not a bird -
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood
Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness
Till the moorline - blackening dregs of the brightening grey -
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:
Huge in the dense grey - ten together -
Megalith still. They breathed, making no move,
With draper manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.
I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments
Of a grey silent world.
From the poem The Horses
I have a complex relationship with Ted Hughes, which is mainly due to the fact that my first glimpse of him was through the lens of Sylvia Plath’s poetry.
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
from Plath’s poem Daddy
Through reading many biographies on Plath and most of her writing in print, the image I had of Hughes was, needless to say, negative and this view went unchallenged until I read Crow, which is one of the best poetry collections I’ve ever read.
Hughes is, undoubtedly, a master of his craft, and it was really interesting to back to his first published collection, Hawk in the Rain. His voice is already so strong, so steady in these poems; it rarely stumbles and I think his most striking work comes out in his nature poems. They’re barbaric, hostile, yet dreamlike - I found myself transported by them, soaking in their atmosphere and imagery.
Some of his poems about war were fascinating and gutting, especially Griefs for Dead Soldiers, which blew me away, but I really struggled with his more erotic poems or those in which he focused on love and women. It’s very odd knowing he was with Plath when he wrote these and that she typed lines that minimise women to cooking and makeup but there were some beautiful lines here and there.
There were many poems that I adored in here, and they are (in order in which they appear)
The Hawk in the Rain
The Thought-Fox
The Horses
Famous Poet
Incompatibilities
The Conversion of the Revered Skinner
Egg-Head
The Man Seeking Experience Enquires His Way of a Drop of Water
Meeting
Wind
October Dawn
Rosters in a Ring
Vampire
Childbirth
The Hag
The Casualty
Griefs for Dead Soldiers
The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar
April 30, 2020
Ted Hughes’ poetry is carnal and earthy, placing a raw beauty on nature.
The assonance and consonance of 'The Hawk in the Rain' poem is quite something.
I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up
Heel after heel from the swallowing of the earth’s mouth,
From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle
With the habit of the dogged grave, but the hawk
Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye.
His wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet,
Steady as a hallucination in the streaming air.
While banging wind kills these stubborn hedges,
Thumbs my eyes, throws my breath, tackles my heart,
And rain hacks my head to the bone, the hawk hangs
The diamond point of will that polestars
The sea drowner’s endurance: and I,
Bloodily grabbed dazed last-moment-counting
Morsel in the earth’s mouth, strain towards the master-
Fulcrum of violence where the hawk hangs still,
That maybe in his own time meets the weather
Coming from the wrong way, suffers the air, hurled upside down,
Fall from his eye, the ponderous shires crash on him,
The horizon traps him; the round angelic eye
Smashed, mix his heart’s blood with the mire of the land.
The assonance and consonance of 'The Hawk in the Rain' poem is quite something.
I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up
Heel after heel from the swallowing of the earth’s mouth,
From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle
With the habit of the dogged grave, but the hawk
Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye.
His wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet,
Steady as a hallucination in the streaming air.
While banging wind kills these stubborn hedges,
Thumbs my eyes, throws my breath, tackles my heart,
And rain hacks my head to the bone, the hawk hangs
The diamond point of will that polestars
The sea drowner’s endurance: and I,
Bloodily grabbed dazed last-moment-counting
Morsel in the earth’s mouth, strain towards the master-
Fulcrum of violence where the hawk hangs still,
That maybe in his own time meets the weather
Coming from the wrong way, suffers the air, hurled upside down,
Fall from his eye, the ponderous shires crash on him,
The horizon traps him; the round angelic eye
Smashed, mix his heart’s blood with the mire of the land.
February 23, 2023
I didn't enjoy this collection as much as I hoped I would. tho I'm aware it could have been the emphasis/style of the reader.
the only poem that really stood out for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed, was 'The Thought Fox' 🐾🦊🧡
tho there were turns of phrase in others that caught and pleased my ear 🙂
accessed as an audiobook from the RNIB library, read by Michael Tudor Barnes.
the only poem that really stood out for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed, was 'The Thought Fox' 🐾🦊🧡
tho there were turns of phrase in others that caught and pleased my ear 🙂
accessed as an audiobook from the RNIB library, read by Michael Tudor Barnes.
July 18, 2015
As a debut collection, and the first poems I've read written by Ted Hughes, my enjoyment of the poems was erratic. Some poems were brilliant as they stood ("Song"; "Incompatibilities"; "Law in the Country of Cats" and "The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar"); others appeared to have less emotion and more intellect, which made them somewhat obscure to me. I felt a flavour of TS Eliot in these poems when first dipping into the volume, and wasn't surprised by the interesting tidbit in the front of the book, which included a copy of TS Eliot's response to Faber & Faber's Charles Montieth's enquiry about Hughes. (The edition I read is not the one listed here, but ISBN 978-0-571-32281-7)
Overall, the poems were too bleak, violent and obviously carefully composed for me to be swept away by them. However, as a debut collection the poems did enough to make me want to read more of Ted Hughes work as he became a mature, more experienced poet.
Overall, the poems were too bleak, violent and obviously carefully composed for me to be swept away by them. However, as a debut collection the poems did enough to make me want to read more of Ted Hughes work as he became a mature, more experienced poet.
November 3, 2017
I need to read some of the poems again. I got the feeling that I did not get to the core of a lot of the poems. Still some of his words provocte feelings in me. It would be interesting to see how I feel about his poetry after I got into the whole poetry stuff a little pit more. The rating might change as well.
May 6, 2025
The book as a whole isn't perfect, I felt the first half wasn't anywhere near as strong as the first, but the better poems here are frankly brilliant. Hughes seems to have this way of creating entire poetic worlds that breathe. The landscapes and lives in these poems are authentic I a way that really is breathtaking.
May 21, 2025
Too many favourites. So good.
July 12, 2022
Hughes’s poetic vocation began with the publication in 1957 of “The Hawk in the Rain”, a volume of poems which also contained a poem, ‘The Hawk in the Rain’, the title of which was then used by Hughes as the heading of the whole volume.
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’.
In the title poem the speaker is a man walking arduously when it is raining like mad. This man looks at a hawk in the outlying sky; and he watches the bird which represents violence; and then we are made to feel that the hawk may one day view the earth from a victim’s viewpoint and feel “the ponderous shires crash on him.”
These poems show, more successfully than any other in this volume, Hughes’s fascination with one exacting aspect of Nature, namely the power of animals to kill. This characteristic of Nature positively has an emblematic application to man too.
The poem ‘Wind’ presents a literal reality through the deformation of a metaphor. This poem acquires a figurative connotation through the very exactitude and concentration of its literal appearance.
The opening stanza gives us the clue to the representational meaning by its use of the metaphor:
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
The house is here described in terms of a ship on the sea when sturdy winds are blowing.
‘The Thought-Fox’ is a poem in which a nonrepresentational idea receives a physical shape.
Here a thought has been personified as a fox: and that is why the poem has been given the title of ‘The Thought-Fox’.
A certain thought enters the speaker’s mind with the same abruptness with which a fox may swoop upon a victim. The thought then comes to life on the blank page on which the speaker’s fingers were moving.
In other words, the thought finds idiom in the form of a poem, and the “blank” page becomes a “printed” page.
Thus in point of fact the poem describes the progression by which it has itself come into existence. In both The Thought-Fox and Wind, Hughes has employed stunning metaphors to put across the idea which is the theme of the particular poem; and the metaphors are decidedly innovative.
We have never before visualized a thought entering a poet’s mind like a fox attacking its victim; and we have never before visualized a house as a ship sailing on a wildly treacherous sea.
Actually, each of the three poems considered above is extremely novel, though not easy to comprehend from the average reader’s standpoint
Each poem shows also the energy which Hughes thought was an essential sign of life in the animals as well as in the poetic imagination.
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’.
In the title poem the speaker is a man walking arduously when it is raining like mad. This man looks at a hawk in the outlying sky; and he watches the bird which represents violence; and then we are made to feel that the hawk may one day view the earth from a victim’s viewpoint and feel “the ponderous shires crash on him.”
These poems show, more successfully than any other in this volume, Hughes’s fascination with one exacting aspect of Nature, namely the power of animals to kill. This characteristic of Nature positively has an emblematic application to man too.
The poem ‘Wind’ presents a literal reality through the deformation of a metaphor. This poem acquires a figurative connotation through the very exactitude and concentration of its literal appearance.
The opening stanza gives us the clue to the representational meaning by its use of the metaphor:
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
The house is here described in terms of a ship on the sea when sturdy winds are blowing.
‘The Thought-Fox’ is a poem in which a nonrepresentational idea receives a physical shape.
Here a thought has been personified as a fox: and that is why the poem has been given the title of ‘The Thought-Fox’.
A certain thought enters the speaker’s mind with the same abruptness with which a fox may swoop upon a victim. The thought then comes to life on the blank page on which the speaker’s fingers were moving.
In other words, the thought finds idiom in the form of a poem, and the “blank” page becomes a “printed” page.
Thus in point of fact the poem describes the progression by which it has itself come into existence. In both The Thought-Fox and Wind, Hughes has employed stunning metaphors to put across the idea which is the theme of the particular poem; and the metaphors are decidedly innovative.
We have never before visualized a thought entering a poet’s mind like a fox attacking its victim; and we have never before visualized a house as a ship sailing on a wildly treacherous sea.
Actually, each of the three poems considered above is extremely novel, though not easy to comprehend from the average reader’s standpoint
Each poem shows also the energy which Hughes thought was an essential sign of life in the animals as well as in the poetic imagination.
May 9, 2020
Phaetons
Angrier, angrier, suddenly the near-madman
In mid-vehemence rolls back his eye
And lurches to his feet-
Under each sense the other four hurtle and thunder
Under the skull's front the horses of the sun
The gentle reader in his silent room
Loses the words in mid-sentence-
The world has burned away beneath his book
A tossing upside-down team drags him on fire
Among the monsters of the zodiac.
Angrier, angrier, suddenly the near-madman
In mid-vehemence rolls back his eye
And lurches to his feet-
Under each sense the other four hurtle and thunder
Under the skull's front the horses of the sun
The gentle reader in his silent room
Loses the words in mid-sentence-
The world has burned away beneath his book
A tossing upside-down team drags him on fire
Among the monsters of the zodiac.
January 29, 2021
I returned to this today because I'm currently trying to familiarize myself with the uses and abuses of alliterative meter, and since I haven't managed to get my hands on The Age of Anxiety yet, here we are. The unevenness here is quite striking for it is not enevenness just between poems or between different lines of a certain poem, but enevenness between form and content. Hughes's language is beautiful for the most part; the rhythms are there, and so is the alliterative musicality. They're great to read aloud, but what are they actually saying? Not much in my opinion.
Don't get me wrong, there are great lines throughout this collection, but I only liked one poem (1/40, aka 2.5%, aka not good) which I admittedly thought was excellent even though that, too, is uneven (stanzas 1 and 4 are superior to the other two, and stanza 2 is clearly the worst one; it feels like he wrote stanzas 1 and 4 first and then filled out the middle, and while stanza 3 works, stanza 2 does not, not to the same extent I mean):
O lady, when the tipped cup of the moon blessed you
You became soft fire with a cloud’s grace;
The difficult stars swam for eyes in your face;
You stood, and your shadow was my place:
You turned, your shadow turned to ice
O my lady.
O lady, when the sea caressed you
You were a marble of foam, but dumb.
When will the stone open its tomb?
When will the waves give over their foam?
You will not die, nor come home,
O my lady.
O lady, when the wind kissed you
You made him music for you were a shaped shell.
I follow the waters and the wind still
Since my heart heard it and all to pieces fell
Which your lovers stole, meaning ill,
O my lady.
O lady, consider when I shall have lost you
The moon’s full hands, scattering waste,
The sea’s hands, dark from the world’s breast,
The world’s decay where the wind’s hands have passed,
And my head, worn out with love, at rest
In my hands, and my hands full of dust,
O my lady.
This edition begins with a memo by the Faber & Faber director to Eliot, telling him something similar: "The quality seems to me very uneven; but I think there's some interesting poetry in the book. [...] I don't feel we'd want to take him on yet" To which Eliot responed: "I'm inclined to think we ought to take this man now." It's pretty obvious on which side of this I'm standing. I mean, Hughes wrote this when he was 27. It is decent and it evidently shows he has poetic capabilities, but it's nothing to write home about.
Don't get me wrong, there are great lines throughout this collection, but I only liked one poem (1/40, aka 2.5%, aka not good) which I admittedly thought was excellent even though that, too, is uneven (stanzas 1 and 4 are superior to the other two, and stanza 2 is clearly the worst one; it feels like he wrote stanzas 1 and 4 first and then filled out the middle, and while stanza 3 works, stanza 2 does not, not to the same extent I mean):
Song
O lady, when the tipped cup of the moon blessed you
You became soft fire with a cloud’s grace;
The difficult stars swam for eyes in your face;
You stood, and your shadow was my place:
You turned, your shadow turned to ice
O my lady.
O lady, when the sea caressed you
You were a marble of foam, but dumb.
When will the stone open its tomb?
When will the waves give over their foam?
You will not die, nor come home,
O my lady.
O lady, when the wind kissed you
You made him music for you were a shaped shell.
I follow the waters and the wind still
Since my heart heard it and all to pieces fell
Which your lovers stole, meaning ill,
O my lady.
O lady, consider when I shall have lost you
The moon’s full hands, scattering waste,
The sea’s hands, dark from the world’s breast,
The world’s decay where the wind’s hands have passed,
And my head, worn out with love, at rest
In my hands, and my hands full of dust,
O my lady.
This edition begins with a memo by the Faber & Faber director to Eliot, telling him something similar: "The quality seems to me very uneven; but I think there's some interesting poetry in the book. [...] I don't feel we'd want to take him on yet" To which Eliot responed: "I'm inclined to think we ought to take this man now." It's pretty obvious on which side of this I'm standing. I mean, Hughes wrote this when he was 27. It is decent and it evidently shows he has poetic capabilities, but it's nothing to write home about.
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August 2, 2025For the second day of the Sealey Challenge I turned to one of my favorite authors - hard to choose between R.S. Thomas and Ted Hughes. But for Hughes, having just read his last work (Birthday Letters) I thought I'd read his first. Hawk in the rain is my favorite - 'his wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet'. The great themes of his poetry, nature, death, ghosts and hags, violence and beauty are all there.
September 'leaves have not timed the summer. No clock now needs / Tell we have only what we remember: /Minutes uproaring with our heads / Like an unfortunate King's and his Queen's / When the senseless mob rules; / And quietly the trees casting their crowns / Into the pools.'
Wind : 'Now deep in chairs in front of thr great fire, we grip /Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought / Or each other. We watch the fire blazing, /And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on'
Roarers in a ring 'Snow fell as for Wenceslas / The Moor foamed like a white / Running sea'
I loved Griefs for dead soldiers - about 6 men on a picture dead in the war. 'The telegram opening of its own accord /Inescapable and more terribly than any bomb'.
September 'leaves have not timed the summer. No clock now needs / Tell we have only what we remember: /Minutes uproaring with our heads / Like an unfortunate King's and his Queen's / When the senseless mob rules; / And quietly the trees casting their crowns / Into the pools.'
Wind : 'Now deep in chairs in front of thr great fire, we grip /Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought / Or each other. We watch the fire blazing, /And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on'
Roarers in a ring 'Snow fell as for Wenceslas / The Moor foamed like a white / Running sea'
I loved Griefs for dead soldiers - about 6 men on a picture dead in the war. 'The telegram opening of its own accord /Inescapable and more terribly than any bomb'.
August 10, 2019
Ted Hughes may have been an abusive turdbag who influenced the suicides of two different women, but hoo doggy, can he write some evocative poetry. I thoroughly enjoyed the first few poems in this collection. The title poem, "The Jaguar," and "Macaw and Little Miss" are true gems. I have yet to read anything with such stark imagery and varied metaphors. These poems were definitely transporting and inspiring. Unfortunately, I believe Hughes' writing becomes more arcane and ambiguous throughout the book. By the end, I thought too many poems had been written about war and dead soldiers. The memorializing became trite after a while, even though "Two Wise Generals" and the final poem in the collection unarguably include some profound ideas. I plan on rereading some of these poems in the future. Overall, The Hawk in the Rain is worth a read since it solidified Hughes' place in the literary world, but as with any poet's first major collection, some poems missed the mark (in my opinion). Perhaps his later work is more polished and considerable.
May 11, 2024
This was another random library find. I wanted a poetry book and remembered enjoying Hughes' Birthday Letters so thought I'd try another book of his. This was apparently his first collection and it was pretty tough. It kind of reminded me of the Stephen Crane poems I read earlier this year, but with more structure and skillful language use. But they felt similar in tone: mostly dark and angry. Not all the poems were that way, but that was the overall feel I came away with.
February 28, 2019
Recommended without hesitation. There is power and the pain of living mixed with hope and courage and rage.
I read this twice. First time I absorbed the language. On the repeat I could understand the messages and completely absorbed myself in his world.
It makes you think and feel, like all good poetry (or any writing) should.
I can use the work as an inspiration to myself.
I read this twice. First time I absorbed the language. On the repeat I could understand the messages and completely absorbed myself in his world.
It makes you think and feel, like all good poetry (or any writing) should.
I can use the work as an inspiration to myself.
October 28, 2022
Some really powerful and intense poems within the collection , although i have to admit that some poems were lost on me too. The image of the photograph of the six men has stuck with me though. Pow wow
September 21, 2019
Als een bundel je kan laten huilen om zijn ontroerendheid, dan is het gewoon goed.
July 15, 2024
Very occasionally great but mostly find his idiom here a little grating, a sense of (or reliance on) violence that becomes monotonous
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January 19, 2025ensimmäinen kirja jonka luin vaihdossa koulua varten! let's goooo
October 30, 2020
It was alright. My partner and I took turns reading a poem aloud to each other and they didn't massively resonate with us.
February 14, 2021
Raw, gruesome and animalistic. Best accompanied with the sounds of a cawing crow outside your window, or if you get lucky, a gliding red kite or common buzzard.
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