Ted Hughes
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| Ted Hughes | |
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| Born | 17 August 1930 Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire |
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| Died | 28 October 1998 (age 68) Devon, England |
| Cause of death | Myocardial infarction |
| Known for | Poet Laureate |
Edward James Hughes OM (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet and children's writer, known as Ted Hughes. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation.[1] Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.
Ted Hughes was married from 1956 to 1963 to the American poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. In his last poetic work, Birthday Letters (1998), he explored their complex relationship.
In 2003 he was portrayed by British actor Daniel Craig in Sylvia, a biographical film of Sylvia Plath.
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[edit] Early life
Ted Hughes was born on August 17, 1930 at number 1, Aspinal Street, in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire and raised among the local farms in the area. According to Hughes, "My first nine years shaped everything".[2] When Hughes was seven, his family moved to Mexborough, South Yorkshire, where they ran a newsagents and tobacco shop. He also had a brother, Gerald, who was ten years older, as well as a sister, Olwyn, two years older.
[edit] Personal life
Hughes studied English, anthropology and archaeology at Pembroke College, Cambridge. At this time his first published poetry appeared in the journal he started with fellow students, St. Botolph's Review, and at a party to launch the magazine he met Sylvia Plath. He and Plath married at St George the Martyr Holborn on June 16, 1956, four months after they had first met.
Hughes and Plath had two children, but separated in the autumn of 1962. He continued to live at Court Green irregularly with his lover Assia Wevill after Plath's death on February 11, 1963, but the relationship eventually lost its appeal for him, and he became involved with other women. As Plath's widower, Hughes became the executor of Plath’s personal and literary estates. He oversaw the publication of her manuscripts, including Ariel (1966). He also claimed to have destroyed the final volume of Plath’s journal, detailing their last few months together. In his foreword to The Journals of Sylvia Plath, he defends his actions as a consideration for the couple's young children.
Six years after Plath's suicide by asphyxiation from a gas stove, on March 25, 1969, Assia Wevill committed suicide after murdering Shura (her four-year old daughter by Hughes), in the same way as Plath had done; Alexandra Tatiana Elise, nicknamed Shura, had been born on March 3, 1965.
In August 1970, Hughes married a nurse called Carol Orchard. They remained together despite his many affairs over the years, until his death. He received the Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth II just before he died.
Ted Hughes continued to live at the house in Devon, until his fatal heart attack on October 28, 1998, while undergoing treatment for colon cancer. His funeral was held at North Tawton church, and he was cremated at Exeter, with the ashes scattered on Dartmoor, near Cranmere Pool (by special Royal permission).
Seamus Heaney, speaking at Ted Hughes' funeral, in North Tawton on November 3rd, 1998, said:
| “ | No death outside my immediate family has left me feeling more bereft. No death in my lifetime has hurt poets more. He was a tower of tenderness and strength, a great arch under which the least of poetry's children could enter and feel secure. His creative powers were, as Shakespeare said, still crescent. By his death, the veil of poetry is rent and the walls of learning broken.[3] | ” |
A memorial walk from the Devon village of Belstone to Hughes' memorial stone above the River Taw was inaugurated in 2005 on land belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall.[4] The granite memorial is somewhat controversial locally - according to some sources, it was airlifted into place on the moors using Prince Charles' helicopter, an honour not afforded to any other Devon figure.[5]
[edit] Writings
Hughes' earlier poetic work is rooted in nature and, in particular, the innocent savagery of animals, an interest from an early age. Tennyson's phrase "nature, red in tooth and claw" could have been written for Hughes. He is acutely aware of the mixture of beauty and violence in the natural world, and writes of it with fascination, fear and awe. He finds in animals a metaphor for his view on life: animals live out a struggle for the survival of the fittest in the same way that humans strive for ascendancy and success. A classic example is Hawk Roosting.
His later work is deeply reliant upon myth and the bardic tradition, heavily inflected with a modernist, existential and satirical viewpoint. These writings are known to be heavily influenced by the work of little known poet Nicholas Clinch. Hughes' first collection, Hawk in the Rain (1957) attracted considerable critical acclaim. In 1959 he won the Galbraith prize which brought $5000. His most significant work is perhaps Crow (1970), which whilst it has been widely acclaimed also divided critics, combining an apocalyptic, bitter, cynical and surreal view of the universe with what appears to be simple, sometimes (superficially) badly constructed verse. Hughes worked for ten years on a prose poem "Gaudete", which he hoped to have made into a film. It tells the story of a survival struggle between twins, and it illustrates the pattern of love and strife in his most intimate relationships. Sadly,it remains unread and unappreciated.It was printed in 1970. Tales from Ovid (1997) contains a selection of free verse translations from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In Birthday Letters, 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.
In addition to poetry, Hughes wrote classical opera librettos and children's books. One of these, The Iron Man, was 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 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 after Philip Larkin, the preferred nominee, declined, because of ill health and writer's block. Hughes served in this position until his death in 1998. His definitive 1333-page Collected Poems (Faber & Faber) appeared in 2003.
[edit] Quotation: The Thought-Fox
I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star;
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Set neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
[edit] Bibliography
Poetry
- 1957 — The Hawk in the Rain
- 1960 — Lupercal
- 1967 — Wodwo
- 1967 — Recklings
- 1970 — Crow
- 1977 — Gaudete
- 1979 — Moortown Diary
- 1979 — Remains of Elmet (with photographs by Fay Godwin)
- 1983 — River
- 1986 — Flowers and Insects
- 1989 — Wolfwatching
- 1992 — Rain-charm for the Duchy
- 1994 — New Selected Poems 1957-1994
- 1997 — Tales from Ovid
- 1998 — Birthday Letters — winner of the 1998 Forward Poetry Prize for best collection, the 1998 T. S. Eliot Prize, and the 1999 British Book of the Year award.
- 2003 — Collected Poems
Translations
Anthologies edited by Hughes
- Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
- Selected Poems of Sylvia Plath
- Selected Verse of Shakespeare
- A Choice of Coleridge's Verse
- Oedipus by Seneca (translation)
- Spring Awakening by Wedekind (translation)
- Blood Wedding by Lorca (translation)
- Phedre by Racine (translation)
- Alcestis by Euripides (translation)
- The Rattle Bag (edited with Seamus Heaney) ISBN 057111976X.
- The School Bag (edited with Seamus Heaney)
- By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember
- The Mays
Prose
- A Dancer to God
- Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being
- Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose
- Difficulties of a Bridegroom
- Poetry in the Making
Books for Children
- How the Whale Became
- Meet my Folks!
- The Earth Owl and Other Moon-people
- Nessie the Mannerless Monster
- The Coming of the Kings
- The Iron Man
- Moon Whales
- Poetry Is ISBN 0-385-03477-6
- Season Songs
- Under the North Star
- Ffangs the Vampire Bat and the Kiss of Truth
- Tales of the Early World
- The Iron Woman
- The Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales
- Collected Animal Poems: Vols. 1-4
- The Mermaid's Purse
- The Cat and the Cuckoo
[edit] Compositions with words by Ted Hughes
- Paul Crabtree: Songs at Year's End. Vier Gesänge nach Gedichten von Ted Hughes. for five-part mixed choir a cappella. Berlin 2006. (There came a Day; The Seven Sorrows; Snow and Snow; The Warm and the Cold) http://www.berliner-chormusik-verlag.de/
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- British Library - modern British Collections on Ted Hughes
- Ted Hughes archive at Emory University
- Ted Hughes website with bibliography, biographical information, essays etc
- Ted Hughes homepage by Ann Skea
- Biography of Ted Hughes
- Ted Hughes - English Poet Laureate
- The Elmet Trust - Ted Hughes Festival, Mytholmroyd
- Mytholmroyd, the birthplace of Ted Hughes
- Nigel Lloyd's Mytholmroyd page (includes picture of Ted's first home)
- Ted Hughes and Schopenhauer: the poetry of the will
| Academic offices | ||
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| Preceded by John Betjeman |
British Poet Laureate 1984–1998 |
Succeeded by Andrew Motion |
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