Ted Hughes

British Poet Laureate

Ted Hughes was an English poet known for his powerful, often violent imagery drawn from nature and mythology.

He served as British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998.

His marriage to American poet Sylvia Plath, and her subsequent suicide, shadowed his reputation and shaped how readers approach both poets' work.

Major works include *The Hawk in the Rain*, *Crow*, and *Birthday Letters*.

nature

pike

Long battlefield spear

  • crowLarge black corvid
  • foxCunning wild canine
  • jaguarLarge American spotted cat

hawk · otter · moorland · landscape · river · ecology · fauna · wilderness · pastoral · earth

poetry

verse

Metered poetic passage

alliteration · rhythm · lyricism · diction · narrative · elegy · ode · pentameter · couplet · assonance

violence

predator

Organism that consumes others

brutality · instinct · death · savagery · talons · teeth · kill · prey · struggle · visceral

SylviaPlath

Ariel

Airy supernatural being

confessional · grief · feminism · biography · widower · estrangement · Aurelia · Devon · letters · controversy

mythology

trickster

Cunning deceiver in myth

Oedipus · Ovid · metamorphosis · archetype · primal · ritual · mythic · folklore · legend · totem

Categories
Opposites
poetic style and sensibility

Ted HughesMary Oliver

light verse · Robert Frost · A.A. Milne · whimsy · delicacy

relationship to Sylvia Plath

Ted HughesSylvia Plath

confessional poetry

poetic subject matter and worldview

Ted HughesWilliam Wordsworth

John Keats · humanism

Family

hugest, Ted, Hughes, huger, Hugh

Familiarity
Top 500,000
Profile
Used worldwide · Timeless · Concrete · Rated G