[lit-ideas] Re: Hughesiana
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2016 19:30:01 +0000 (UTC)
Having had the experience of trudging through a soggy field like the one
Hughes describes, my first thought was "what was he doing out there to begin
with"? If I am hiking and see that sort of muck in my way, I do my best to go
around it. >
I think the clear implicature is that Ted's tractor had broken down.
DL
On Tuesday, 9 February 2016, 16:14, Lawrence Helm
<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Speranza,
I didn't reply to your note at the time because I had previously shipped my
volumes of Ted Hughes poetry off to the Salvation Army. I suspected I once had
something to do with David Myers abandonment of his plan to specialize in Ted
Hughes by providing close readings of several poems Myers admired, but probably
not. I'm sure he would have said that something else deterred him. But time
passes and I tend to doubt my earlier convictions -- at least until I've
reexamined them; so I ordered Ted Hughes collected Poetry -- the copy I
received was "withdrawn" from the Oak Bluffs Public Library, Island of Martha's
Vinyard.
Perhaps my problem (if it is my problem) is that I don't relate well enough to
Hughes. Take the the first stanza of the title poem of his 1957 volume The
Hawk in the Rain. Hughes dramatizes a walk in the rain by beginning "I drown
in the drumming ploughland, I drag up / Heel after heel from the swallowing
earth's mouth, / From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle / With the
habit of the dogged grave, but the hawk /"
Having had the experience of trudging through a soggy field like the one
Hughes describes, my first thought was "what was he doing out there to begin
with"? If I am hiking and see that sort of muck in my way, I do my best to go
around it. Also, I wear boots appropriate to my hikes -- high-top boots and
have never had mud get over the top of them and down to my ankles. But I could
imagine that by accident and not paying attention to where I was going getting
into some mud like that, but if I did, I would be quite sure I would never see
a hawk flying about in rain Hughes subsequently describes. Hawks around here
(and maybe British hawks are different) don't fly about in the rain at least
not very far, and they never "hang" in it. And then too (giving Hughes a bit
more benefit of doubt) a Southern California hawk will typically have but a
short time to wait before the rain stops whereas a British hawk may have to get
out there in it or go hungry.
Though it is raining, Hughes hawk is unaffected: "Effortlessly at height
hangs his still eye." [not to mention the rest of him]/ His wings hold all
creation in a weightless quiet," [I'm sorry but this Atlas of a British hawk is
way beyond my hawk experience.]/ Steady as a hallucination in the streaming
air. / [Are Hughes hallucinations steady? In thinking back I may have had one
or two fleeting hallucinations caused if I remember correctly by the shimmering
(and not steady) heat of a summer day]. [Also note that the "streaming air"
implies as the title tells us that it is raining. Hawks do indeed seem to hang
in dry ordinary air, but I've never seen one do it in a downpour, but perhaps I
was too busy rushing back to my Jeep to notice. Still, I wouldn't think one
could manage.] "While banging wind kiss these stubborn hedges" [Not only is
the hawk "hanging" in a heavy rain but he his "hanging" in wind so heavy that
it is killing hedges that Hughes describes as "stubborn" but not so stubborn
apparently as to avoid death.]
In the third stanza the banging wind branches out: "Thumbs my eyes, throws my
breath, tackles my heart,/ and rain hacks my head to the bone," [This very
superior wind doesn't daunt the hawk:] "the hawk [still] hangs / The diamond
point of will [my hawks are rather easily daunted by weather and their "will"
doesn't challenge us as we hike along. They don't let us get too close before
flying off to a tree further away. They don't take chances if they can help
it.] "that polestars / The sea drowner's endurance: and I," ["sea drowner"?
What does that mean? Rain doesn't drown the sea. Maybe by stretching our
imaginations we can say it was raining so heavily that it was almost drowning
us like the sea could, but wouldn't such a dense rain prevent us from seeing a
hawk? Not to mention seeing a hawk hang?]
The fourth stanza continues from "and I," / "Bloodily grabbed" [Hold it! Was
it raining so hard that it broke his skin and made him bloody? I thought I had
been out in heavy rain before, but never anything like this.] dazed
last-moment-counting / Morsel in the earth's mouth, [I guess the muck that he
is walking in, that is sucking his feet, and dampening his ankles like a
"dogged grave" might seem in this rain and wind storm strong enough to make him
think his "last-moment" had arrived and that the sucking muck he was walking or
standing in was like the "earth's mouth," but does he really count his last
moment? No, he "strain towards the master- / fulcrum of violence where the
hawk hangs still / [the only thing that makes sense at his point is that the
hawk is imagined, for no real hawk, at least no hawk I've ever seen, would be
able, not to mention, willing to "hang still" in such a wind and rain storm.]
This fourth stanza ends with the line "That maybe in his own time meets the
weather" [and resumes in the last stanza, stanza five] "Coming the wrong way"
[Gosh, if the weather Hughes has been describing isn't "wrong way" weather then
British weather must be truly unimaginable -- at least to me], "suffers the
air, hurled upside down, / Fall from his eye, the ponderous shires crash on
him, / The horizon trap him; the found angelic eye / Smashed, mix his heart's
blood with the mire of the land." [Why after building up this hanging
super-hawk to such an extent does he find it necessary to dash him to the
ground? And notice that he isn't just dying of old age hanging about, he is
"hurled upside down" and then "Smashed" and mixed with the mire Hughes is
trudging through.}
And so the poem ends. The hawk, though hanging unperturbed in the midst of a
furious rain and wind storm gets caught later on by a rain and wind storm
"coming the wrong way" [do they really have wrong-way rain and wind storms in
Britain?] and smashed to death. What are we to make of it? All things, even
super-hawks die? Or the nuance, all things even super-hawks hang in the midst
of the world's fury, whatever that fury consists of until the world sends a
"wrong-way" storm to confound and kill us?]
But then the "the hawk in the rain" isn't the poem you admire below. Perhaps
I'll take that one up in m next note.
Lawrence
On 2/1/2016 4:52 PM, (Redacted sender Jlsperanza for DMARC) wrote:
In "Sylvia," with G. Paltrow, Hughes is played by "James Bond".
In a message dated 2/1/2016 6:11:47 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"The current issue (2-11-16) of the NYROB contains a review (by Janet
Malcolm author of The Silent Woman, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes) of Jonathan
Bate's book Ted Hughes: The Unauthorized Life."
I wonder if someone in Britain (I doubt it) ever cared to write the
AUTHORISED life -- after all he was the authorised poet laureate -- or
"laureate
poet," as Geary prefers ("I can't see why an adjective has to follow such an
important noun as 'poet' is -- but Brits will be Brits.").
Helm goes on:
"Bate who did respectable work on Shakespeare and John Clare thoroughly
blew it (according to Malcolm) when it came to Ted Hughes."
The implicature seems to be that Hughes gave him all the reasons for that!
(I mean: how can Malcolm think that John Clare and Shakespeare compares to
a writer played on the big screen by "James Bond"?).
Helm:
"[Janet] Malcolm, it seems, [is] extremely critical of Hughes personally;
which coincides with my view of Hughes after reading peripheral things
about him while reading about Sylvia Plath, whom I did appreciate. But
Malcolm
is relentless. Why is she so hostile to Bate? According to this review
(by Caryn James) of the The Silent Woman, [Janet] Malcolm attempt[s] to
restore Ted Hughes's honor:
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/27/books/the-importance-of-being-biased.html?pagewanted=all
After reading both reviews I am
inclined to credit [Caryn] James over the more (IMHO) historical [Janet]
Malcolm.
Here is another review of Bate's book (one that finds it more favorably
disposed toward Hughes than one could get from Malcolm). This one (by James
Kidd and IMO is better than the Malcolm review):
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/sir-jonathan-bate-on-his-controversial-new-
biography-about-poet-ted-hughes-a6678591.html . I've never liked Hughes'
poetry but inasmuch as so many others do, I keep trying to find something in
them, unsuccessfully up to now, to appreciate."
Good. Recall that this is an 'unautorised LIFE', not a critical approach
(lit.crit-like) to his output.
"[James] Kidd quotes Bate's as writing, “What is really scary is that your
average, very well-educated young person has not only not read Ted Hughes,
but has never heard of Ted Hughes.” I on the other hand don't find that
fact all that scary."
Recall that Kidd is writing for the "Independent". "The Independent" is
someone who doesn't NEED to *know*: he feels independent!
But it is true that there is a long list of poets laureates post-Hughes --
I agree with Geary that "two" makes for a long list:
Thus, Hughes was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 December 1984. He
held the post till 28 October 1998.
(Geary adds: "He ceased to be the poet laureate when he died; not out of a
personal decision --" the implicature: he did not commit suicide).
Then came Andrew Motion. He was appointed Poet Laureate by Queen Elizabeth
on 19 May 1999 (Geary adds: "Note that for a year there was no poet
Laureate in England -- and the world kept turning round.")
Motion ceased to be a poet laureate in May 1st 2009.
Geary notes: "In this case, death was not the cause."
Motion was motioned out, and followed by Carol Ann Duffy who was appointed
Poet Laureate on 1 May 2009 by Queen Elizabeth II.
The functions of the poet laureate are various, but they are all
implicatural, i.e. cancellable.
There is, for example, an implicature to the effect that the poet laureate
(who is really chosen by the Prime Minister) has to write verse for
significant national occasions. But Hughes famously said,
"I can't think of one."
His poem about the hawk roosting is brilliant, though. And isn't a hawk
roosting a significant national occasion for those nations that do have hawks?
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot.
Cheers,
Speranza
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -
The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.
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