Ted+Hughes

Home CP Poetry CP Brit Home

=Ted Hughes=



Edward "Ted" Hughes was a British poet in the 20th Century, and is known as one of the greatest poets of his time. He was Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1999. Hughes worked for 10 years on a prose poem, "Gaudete", which he hoped to have made into a film. In 2009 the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry was established with the permission of Carol Hughes. The Poetry Society notes "the award is named in honour of Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, and one of the greatest twentieth century poets for both children and adults”.

**__The Horses__** media type="file" key="The Horses.mp3" width="240" height="20"
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 gray-- Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense gray--ten together-- Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,

With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves, Making no sound.

I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head. Gray silent fragments

Of a gray silent world.

I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge. The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence.

Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun Orange, red, red, erupted

Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud, Shook the gulf open, showed blue,

And the big planets hanging. I turned,

Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down toward The dark woods, from the kindling tops,

And came to the horses. There, still they stood, But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,

Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves Stirring under a that while all around them

The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound. Not one snorted or stamped,

Their hung heads patient as the horizons, High over valleys, in the red leveling rays--

In din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces, May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place

Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews, Hearing the horizons endure.

1. How does Ted Hughes view the nature surrounding him? 2. Is the poem really about horses? If not, what could he be talking about? 3. Does the odd scheme play into the overall effect of the poem?
 * __ Questions __**