Ted Hughes

 Edward James Hughes, an English poet and

children's writer was born on 17 August 1930 in
Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire
 He was described as one of the twentieth century’s
greatest English poets
 Hughes' sister Olwyn was 2 years elder and his
brother Gerald was 10 years elder
 His family moved to Mexborough when he was
seven
 He attended Mexborough grammar school, and
wrote his first poems from the age of fifteen
 In 1956 he met and married the American poet Sylvia
Plath
 In May 1962 Assia and her third husband the
Canadian poet David Wevill, were invited to spend a
weekend with Plath and Hughes. But Plath was quick
to discover the budding affair.
 Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962 and
she set up life in a new flat with the children
 Sylvia Plath gassed herself in her kitchen following his
affairs with another woman Assia Wevill. By than
Frieda was three and Nicholas barely one year old.
 Six years later in March 1969 Assia Wevill
killed herself and Shura (their four year old
daughter in the same way as Plath's suicide
by asphyxiation from a gas stove
 In August 1970 Hughes married Carol
Orchard, a nurse, and they remained together
until his death
 Ted Hughes was died on 28 October 1998 in
London, United Kingdom
 After serving as in the Royal Air Force, Hughes
attended Cambridge university
 He studied archeology and anthropology, taking
a special interest in myths and legends
 From 1955 to 1956, he worked as a rose
gardener, night-watchman, zoo attendant,
schoolteacher, planned to teach in Spain then
emigrate to Australia
 Hughes's first book of poems, Hawk in the Rain,
was published in 1957.
 He Awarded first prize by judges Marianne
Moore, W.H. Auden, and Stephen Spender
 Over the next 41 years, he would write upwards
of 90 books, and win numerous prizes and
fellowships
 In 1984, he was appointed England’s poet
laureate
 In 1992 Hughes published Shakespeare and the
Goddess of Complete Being, a monumental work
inspired by Graves' The White Goddess.
 In 1998 his Tales for Ovid won the Whitbread
British Book of the Year prizes
 Ted Hughes' poetic style is original and he is
influenced by Hopkins, Dylan Thomas and Sylvia
Plath.
 His usual tendency is to use tough vocabulary
and put words together in an unusual combination
 The use of repetitiveness, paradox, obscurity and
ambiguity makes his poems rich in their stylistic
outlook.
 Ted Hughes, a British poet of the post war era is
very much fond of using animal imagery.
 He is a poet of natural vitality
 Simplicity of Words and Syntax in Certain Poems
 Graphic and realistic imagery is another striking
feature of Hughes’s poetic style
 The Structural Unity of Hughes’s Poems: Every
Poem has proper Organism
 Hughes’s poetry relies on not only diction and
rhythm but also on the sound of words.
 To Hughes, the appeal of the sound of words was
even more important than their visual impact
Presented by:
Saima Perveen
 Poem was written after world War II
 Autobiographical Poem
 Poem consists of 7 stanzas
 Each stanza is consist of sestet (6 lines)
 3rd line of each stanza is consist of long sentence
 Poem consists of 2 parts (Nature & Death)
 Free verse
 No use of personal pronoun
 Langue is not complex
 Imagery, Metaphor and personification
 The word “autumn”, this
word symbolizes sadness,
probably sadness that is
felt by the writer.
 “a brown poppy head”
symbolizes something that
long drawn out that has
not disappointed from its
feeling.
 Poet uses personification
by saying "poppy head"
 “Empty feet” the feet there
symbolized, step that
means useless step
 It can also describe as a
metaphor
 “the woodland gold”, the
word gold symbolizes
wealth, prosperity, swanky.
 “is folded in feathers” and
“with its head in a bag”.
These two phrases describe
the uncivilized done by
man to animals.
 “Of the sun who has gathered
the birds and who gathers”
symbolizes the afternoon
atmosphere where birds are on
the way home to their nest and
the sunsets go home, at the
same time.
 “Evening” means the end, or
we can also say the end of the
life.
 “Golden” here is the
description of sunset in the
evening.
 “Holy” describe the tranquil
nuance, comfortable or cozy
when the sunsets.
 “Ponds gone black”
extended imagery of
autumn which suggests a
sadness or 'sorrow‘
 “The beetle’s palace”
symbolise Belgium's 19th
century royal palace
 “Camp” symbolizes
shelter that is broken
slowly.
 “One day is gone”,
symbolizes a poet
expectation that someday
sadness will be gone.
 “It has left only litter
firewood” symbolizes
sadness, destruction,
anger.
 “Huntsman” describe as an
evil person
 “Fox’s sorrow” describes the
fox has been caught by the
huntsman and he is satisfied.
 This describes the egoism of
man who is heads I win, tails
you lose.
 “Till earth closes her ear to
the fox’s prayer” shows that
how a lot the fox’s prayer
(the suffering of fox) until
the earth cannot stand
hearing it anymore.
 “Of the face with wrinkles that looks
through the window” describes
sadness in the old age.
 “Tatty fairground” describes how old
the writer is.
 “Children” describe freedom,
cheerfulness.
 Being a children we feel happy,
freedom, joyful but, the old will come
to all children and they will feel the
sadness as the same as the old man.
And after being old it is difficult to us
to get the happiness, freedom,
cheerfulness and so on