Ted Hughes

Question 1

When was Ted Hughes Poet Laureate?

Answer 1

1984-1989

Question 2

What is chracteristic of him because of his Yorkshire chilhood?

Answer 2

nature & myth, memories of war & masculinity

Question 3

Where did he study?

Answer 3

Cambridge

Question 4

What did he study?

Answer 4

literature –>anthropology, archeology

Question 5

Why is the Fulbright Scolarship important?

Answer 5

That’s how he met his first wife, Sylvia Plath.

Question 6

When was Hawk in the Rain published?

Answer 6

1957

Question 7

How is he described?

Answer 7

As a poet of the wild/ animals

Question 8

When was Lupercal published?

Answer 8

1960

Question 9

What did he do with the 1966 Auriel?

Answer 9

He edited it. (Plath’s work)

Question 10

When was Wodwo published?

Answer 10

1967

Question 11

What influenced the dark violence of Crow?

Answer 11

Assia Wevill’s suicide in 1969

Question 12

How is Hughes’s poetry described?

Answer 12

detachemetn and wry observations of Movement poets, against the negative sublime, brutish strength

Question 13

What is his main inspiration?

Answer 13

nature

Question 14

What is nature like in his poetry?

Answer 14

amoral, fierce power

Question 15

How is the modern man represented?

Answer 15

Aa narrowing his vision, fall into scientific rationality/ into an alienation from the organic world

Question 16

What do the image, symbol, myth and nature stand for in his poetry?

Answer 16

A reinvention of the essential ties between humanity and the world

Question 17

How are the archaic energies of instinct and feeling embraced?

Answer 17

By pre-Christian mythologies, symbol - CROW

Question 18

What does the OTHERness of animal life mean?

Answer 18

That there’s no sentimentalization, awe and fear in the observer

Question 19

What are the characteristics of his poetic voice and etechnique?

Answer 19

formal simplicity, 
economy, 
jarred rhythm, 
repetitions, 
magical incantation, 
physical vividness of descriptions, 
narrative elements

Question 20

Which poem is his ars poetica?

Answer 20

The Thought-Fox

Question 21

What is the Thought-Fox about? What are its characteristics?

Answer 21

The creative process. Ambiguity. Experience and observation, self-reflexivity,imagination & reality

Question 22

What is Relic about?

Answer 22

a philosophy of nature, religion

Question 23

What is Pike about?

Answer 23

predatory instinct

Question 24

What is the structure of Pike?

Answer 24

1. description
2. childhood memory/ home
3. childhood memory/ nature/ cultural memory

Question 25

What is Wodwo about? What are its characteristics?

Answer 25

a wild man between human and animal | , human intellect and consciousness. free-flowing verse with repetitions - uncertainty

Question 26

What was the inspiration for the Crow, 1970?

Answer 26

Leonard Baskin's drawings

Question 27

What are the general features of Crow, 1970?

Answer 27

adressing ultimate religious questions, narrative (God vs. Crow), antagonist Bible, creation and destruction myth, influenced by oral poetry, trickster myths

Question 28

How can Crow be described?

Answer 28

as a myth that parallels and denies the biblical

Question 29

What are the answers in the Crow?

Answer 29

survival and egoism

Question 30

What are the features of Crow poem?

Answer 30

primerlike vocab, impersonal POV; admiration of brutish strength, enyielding energy, survival of the fittest

Question 31

What is February 17th?

Answer 31

A poem about negative sacrifice - birth and death

Question 32

What is Moortown Diary (1979) based on?

Answer 32

A diary entry from there life on a farm in Devon

Question 33

What is Moortown Diary (1979) about?

Answer 33

an account of an ill-delivering of a lamb --> death in birth

Question 34

What characterizes the Moortown Diary (1979)?

Answer 34

unemotional, naturalistic description

Question 35

What is the sturcture of Moortown Diary (1979)?

Answer 35

lamb- born - head - body

Question 36

What was Birthday Letters for Hughes?

Answer 36

a direct, private, inner contact with his first wife

Question 37

What is the feminist myth of Hughes?

Answer 37

That he killed both of his wives.

Question 38

What are the characteristics of Love Song, 1970?

Answer 38

Confessional poetry, memory, evocation

Question 39

Is Hughes a confessional poet?

Answer 39

No, he's traditionally anti-confessional

Question 40

Why was publushing Birthday Letters an inner liberation?

Answer 40

He could say things he desperately needed to share.

Question 41

What does Birthday signify?

Answer 41

death/ birth - rebirth

Question 42

What is characteristic of Birthday Letters?

Answer 42

memory (present and past fused), fatalism, evocation, basic oppositions

Question 43

What is Fulbrigth Scolars about?

Answer 43

firt glimpse of Sylvia, uncertainty of memory, future hidden in past

Question 44

What is Fulbrigth Scolars allude to?

Answer 44

Prufrock - eating peaches

Question 45

What is Your Paris and You Hated Spain about?

Answer 45

difference of vision, conscious vs. unconscious

Question 46

What is Wuthering HEigths about?

Answer 46

places, writers, fates haunting

Question 47

What is 9 Willow Street about?

Answer 47

memory attached to places, bat-bite = sacrifice and danger

Question 48

What is Orghast?

Answer 48

a play in an invented language, a myth of Prometheus

Question 49

What are the titles of his books for children?

Answer 49

Iron Man, Moon-Whales

Question 50

Which Hungarian poet did he translate?

Answer 50

Pilinszky

Question 51

Who founded the Ted Hughes award?

Answer 51

Carol Ann Duffy