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*.
Long battlefield spear
- crowLarge black corvid
- foxCunning wild canine
- jaguarLarge American spotted cat
- hawkTaloned predatory bird
otter · moorland · landscape · river · ecology · fauna · wilderness · pastoral
Metered poetic passage
- stanzaPoem's line grouping
- metaphorImplied identity comparison
- imageryVivid descriptive language
- alliterationMatching initial consonants
rhythm · lyricism · diction · narrative · elegy · ode · pentameter · couplet
Organism that consumes others
- bloodBody's oxygen carrier
- survivalRemaining alive against odds
- rawnessUnrefined or exposed state
- brutalitySavage, merciless behavior
instinct · death · savagery · talons · teeth · kill · prey · struggle
pike
Long battlefield spear
hawk · otter · moorland · landscape · river · ecology · fauna · wilderness · pastoral · earth
verse
Metered poetic passage
alliteration · rhythm · lyricism · diction · narrative · elegy · ode · pentameter · couplet · assonance
predator
Organism that consumes others
brutality · instinct · death · savagery · talons · teeth · kill · prey · struggle · visceral
Ariel
Airy supernatural being
- marriageFormal union between partners
- suicideVoluntary death by oneself
- tragedyDisastrous or sorrowful event
confessional · grief · feminism · biography · widower · estrangement · Aurelia · Devon · letters · controversy
trickster
Cunning deceiver in myth
- shamanismMediation between worlds
- creationMaking something exist
- PrometheusFire-stealing benefactor of mortals
Oedipus · Ovid · metamorphosis · archetype · primal · ritual · mythic · folklore · legend · totem
- British LiteratureShakespeare, Dickens, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Austen
- British AuthorsCharles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, Roald Dahl
- poetspoet, Homer, Dante, Milton, Emily Dickinson
- British PoetryT.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, Wilfred Owen, Dylan Thomas
- Nature PoetsWordsworth, Frost, Mary Oliver, Hopkins, Seamus Heaney
- Poets LaureateAlfred Tennyson, Tennyson, William Wordsworth, Wordsworth, Robert Frost
Ted HughesMary Oliver
light verse · Robert Frost · A.A. Milne · whimsy · delicacy