Ted Hughes’ Ideas about Poetry
Ted Hughes, was born in 1939 and died in 1989, he wrote two poems, The
Jaguar and The Thought-Fox. These are the poems that I am discussing
in my essay and also what his ideas are on the poems. He also
specialises in nature poems and these are what we have also been
studying.
The Thought-Fox is quite a different poem. It wasn’t written about the
fox it was written about him writing about the fox (confusing I
Know!!!). The Jaguar on the other hand, was about the animal and it
was describing the animal, can you tell the difference and how he
likes to differ his poems “You don’t have to bother about commas or
full stops or that sort of thing” to Ted punctuation is not important,
but the senses are: “ Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to
it, turn yourself into it” as he believes senses are there to help
you. If you write a poem completely different to another poet and you
are worried about your work,/ Ted believes that you should not care
about what other people have written it is your own work that matters
and how you find it “ Do not care how other people have written about
this thing, this is the way you find it”.
With ‘The Thought-Fox’ he thinks that a fox comes and walks in front
of him and sits down, so he gets this image in his head and it creates
things he can write down in a poem. At the start, he cannot think of
anything to write but at the end he has created a poem. He also
believes that a poem and an animal are one and the same, “A fox that
is both a fox and not a fox”. Another quote “The words have a body for
it and the poem has give the fox somewhere to walk” in other words the
poem has brought the fox to life.
‘The Jaguar’ however, is very much different. He is actually writing
about the animal in the poem and not how he thought of what to write
about the subject. With the structure, ‘The Jaguar’ has five verses,
four lines in each verse and around nine words in each line. ‘The
Thought-Fox’ has around the same, six verses, four lines in each verse
and about four to eight words in each verse. Alliteration, similes and
metaphors are also common in most of his poems and as I have said he
uses a lot of the senses. For example “A fox’s nose touches” and “Two
...veryone else. He wakes up every day ready to crow his symbol to bring on that day. In the poem he is ready to protect all the female chickens, from another cock that could be in there house. He is ready to battle to the death for what he thinks is his. In this poem he uses ridicule, when he is talking about the old man in a terminal ward, and he also uses connotations. Some example of connotations are when he uses words like; enraged, sullenly, savagery, unappeased and terminal.
In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by the name of Langston Hughes. A well-known writer that still gets credit today for pomes like “ Theme for English B” and “Let American be American Again.”
...his life. The battle was very intense and the poem gives a great description of the
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Lanston Hughes focuses more on rhythm then on rhyme, for example, the poem "The Weary Blues" reads like a blues song, which is what the poem is about. "Mother to Son" is a conversation a mother has to a child about what era life has been, and that no matter how hard life may seem, one should never give up climbing the "stairs". The poem seems to shift from good English to Black English and then back again, which to me shows...
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She questions who created "the swan," "the black bear," and "the grasshopper," all extremely different animals. By doing so, the speaker is able to depict the fascinating diversity of nature and how it is the home of both big beasts and small insects. However, as the poem progresses, the speaker starts to interact with nature when the grasshopper hops onto her hand as she feeds it. The speaker carefully observes the grasshopper's behavior, describing in great detail how the grasshopper moves "her jaws back and forth" as she eats a sugar cube from the speaker's hand. The speaker utilizes imagery to convey a very specific image of the majestic grasshopper to the reader, describing "her pale forearms" and the grasshopper's "enormous and complicated
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...a silence deep and white” (Line,4) they are talking about how the white snow is beautiful and, how it looks like to me this is a love of nature to some maybe not.Last one is Intuition over fact in this quote “Father,who makes the snow?” (Line,22) says his daughter, “And told of the good All father” (Line,23) and lastly “Who cares for us here below” (Line,24) he is talking about and all father which i believe he is talking about god,and this is a great characteristic for this poem.
bird as the metaphor of the poem to get the message of the poem across
There are many examples of figurative language associated with this poem, metaphors being one of them. For, example Hughes says "life is a barren field frozen with snow tone (Hughes 7).” In this stanza the speaker is comparing life itself to a frozen barren field. Another element of this poem is the theme. This poem teaches us we should hold onto our dreams forever.