How Ted Hughes' the Poet Makes Use of the Natural Landscape in his Poems - Essay Example

? Ted Hughes A philosophical metaphysical and psychological poet, who belongs to the modern era of literature, interpreted the present life and man in terms of myth and symbol, Ted Hughes had a remarkable position among the writers of the time. Hughes has what a few English poets of the time posses, a sense of nature an original writing style and a most modern outlook on nature, men and god. Hughes attitude to and treatment of nature distinguishes him from almost all other poets. Hughes nature imagery is most graphic. We find his nature imagery not only to be most vivid but also couched in striking words and original phrases. His close observation and delineation of the landscape is conveyed to the readers by using all his linguistic powers. Ted Hughes nature poems include Wind, Rain, October Dawn and November. Wind is a wholly descriptive poem. It describes a storm .The description and the fierce mood nature is beautifully recorded in it. The portrayal of a tremendous dramatic picture of a landscape severely affected by weather is fully packed with imagery. The poem begins with a kind of metaphor It Seems to the poet that The house in which he is sitting at this time had been out at sea all night. He has this feeling because all night a storm had been raging. It seemed to the inmates that the house was being buffeted on the sea by the raging wind and waves. According to Alan Bold this poem takes as its physical starting point the house of Hughes parent’s. Hughes descries that house as some fine green goblet” The poem is full of magnificently arranged physical images which transform the so-called ordinary objects into objects of wonder. The comparison of te house to a ship is beautiful. “The house has been far out at sea all night. The woods crashing through darkness, the blooming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet.” The fury of the storm is further conveyed to us by the phrases like the woods crashing , the hills booming, the winds stampeding the fields , through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes etc which creates an original photo graph of the landscape affected by the wind. In the second stanza it is said that ‘the hiils have new places’. Through the imaginative power of the poet he effectively creates the changed landscape that it become unfamiliar. The difficulty in moving against the wind is also created by saying “ I scaled along the house –side…..The landscape containing hills suddenly changing to a tend during the dreadful storm ,the magpie which was flung away etc gives the moving landscape instead of the stillness in some other poems. Wind is a not a tough poem to a reader who had some personal experience with of a furious storm Hughes was writing what he experienced during his stay there. On the subject of the poem Hughes himself said” On and off I live in the house on top of a hill in the penniness where the wind blows without obstruction across the top of the moors . I have experienced some gale in that house and wind is a poem I once wrote about them. In writing that poem I was mainly concerned with the strength of the blast, the way it seems to shake the world up like a box of toys”. ‘The rain’ is another notable poem of Ted Hughes in which we get a powerful display of a landscape affected by rain. This poem beautifully sketches the graphic visionary images of the rain. It has been raining. The rain brought floods and then came frost. After the frost there was more rain. Thus we get different pictures in quick succession. The opening line contains picture if rain floods frost, roof drumming, the purple bare woods heaved water and sleet. Then follow pictures of the fields, the hedge, the hill a, farm toads cows, a pheasant soaked thickets and so on. Through this long series of pictures the landscape affected by the rain closely viewed by the readers. The keen observer or perceiver in the poet Ted Hughes is most active in this poem Crab Robinson says that Hughes takes microscopic visual close ups of a thing after another , till the scene and the atmosphere of the scene begin to soak into us. The poem begins like this ‘Rain, Floods, Frost, And after frost, rain Dull roof –drumming.’ The poet again portrays the picture by explaining more about the continuous rain. As the rain goes on the weather gets colder and colder. The mid afternoon dusk soaks into the soaked thickets. The cattle find no other place except the brimming world and the poring sky. The choice of words in this poem is strikingly appropriate and the whole landscape is brought before our eyes in a most effective manner. Employing small and subtle alteration in the language the poet achieves here a freshness of vision. The poem continues by renewing itself with more and more observations of rain affected things. The freshness of vision is conveyed to the readers through the use of small and subtle shifts of languages. Ted Hughes uses words so as to explain what he see not what he thought to be present. The language is also carefully chosen to make it more accurate and vivid in embodying the observed reality. Craig Robinson says that believing freshness of vision to be an important matter Hughes tries to use words to recreate the reality he observes. The poems in the volume Moortown says the critic show all Hughes customary mimetic skills the following line show this. ‘The fox copses lie beaten to their bare bones. Skin beneath off, brains and bowels beaten out; Magpie Shake themselves helplessly hop in spatter’ In the poem ‘November ‘again we have graphics nature imagery. After the long rain the land is as sodden as the bed of an ancient lake. And then we have this original and striking statement The land is ‘treed with iron and bridle’ and mist silvers the droplets on the bare thorns and then the poet goes on to describe the plight of a tramp who lies huddled in a ditch to protect himself against the cold. Here we find the wind hardening the rain becoming heavier the field jumping and smoking and the thorns quivering. The land covered with rain water is portrayed successfully, ‘plastering the land which shines like hammered lead. In this drilling rain the tramp sleeps indifferently. The poet thinks that the tramp is dead. But h then perceived that the stillness of the tramp different from the stillness of the grass and earth. A chilly wind had been blowing and the tramp seemed to have tightened his body and pulled him together in order to feel some warmth. The heavy rain ad intense cold of the month of November along with the clear vision of the site is highly appealing and is another example of Hughs powerful display of landscapes with its minute description. The landscape is very vivid, realistic and couched in choice of words together in striking combinations. Here at the very outset we have the picture of the land drenched in the long rain with its trees looking stiff and hard like iron and with no birds to be seen anywhere “ Then there is the picture of the hills hanging silence and of the mist which seemed to whiten the bare thorns A few lines later we are told that the wind hardened that a puff of wind ‘shook the glittering from the thorns’ and that again the rain fall smudged the farms. The next moment the fields seemed to be jumping and smoking and the thorns “quivered. The next line provides another vivid image ‘The hill where the hare crouched with clenched teeth’. “And the buried stones taking the weight of winter; The hill where the here crouched with clenched teeth Rain plastered the land till it was shining Like hammered lead and I ran, and the rushing wood”. October Dawn is a nature poem containing vivid pictures of a scene which indicates that winter is about to begin. The month of October is “marigold “ and the cold is so intense that it seems to the poet as if the ice age had begun its heave “. The lawn and the whistling green shrubbery are doomed. Ice has got its spearhead into place “. This kind of language to describe natural scenery is startling. The powerful use of graphic imagery is most striking in this poem also. The lawn ,where a party was held on the previous night had bee trodden by the feet of many people; and, its green grass, the people , the people enjoying a feast had walked and danced to make merry. But now the lawn and everything growing in it would soon meet their death because the beginning of the ice –age has already sent a danger signal to them. The perfect description of the lawn was incomparable. But a glass half full of wine had been left on the lawn after the revelers had disappeared. During night, a very thin layer of ice appeared on the surface of the wine, and the poet says that this layer of ice is a kind of indication that winter if approaching. The phrase ‘lawn over trodden and strewn’ shows the anticipation of the winter. ‘The lawn over trodden and strewn From the night before, and the whistling green Shrubberies are doomed. Ice Has got its spearhead into place’ Keith Sagar says that the nature is depicted as ‘flexing its muscles’ in the poem “October Dawn”. According to Alan Bold” ‘Rmains of Elmet’ and River together constitute interesting examples of the renewed vogue for topographical poetry that arose in the environment conscious during second half of the twentieth century. This kind of poetry flourished mainly in the eighteenth century when the emphasis was more on the vanishing rural scene than on country parks, estates and gardens. Distinguished example of treatment of landscape and nature are the volume of ‘Remains of Elmet’ and River.’ This volume contains poems which celebrate the particular region to which Ted Hughes belonged and in which he was born. That region is known as Yorkshire. The poem in this volume celebrates the landscape of that region, the flora and fauna of that region and the rural life there. Many of the finest poems in this volume express the poets feeling of exhilaration on recalling those familiar scenes in the midst of which he had been reared. According to Thomas West ‘Remains of Elmet ‘suggested a quest through memory for symbols and values as mysterious and as pregnant as the characters and specs of some ancient text, the many lush color photographs by peter Keen compliment a new endeavor to tell about a real world that exists, fully adequate right before the eyes. Ted Hughes’s note to ‘Remains of Elmet’ shows that the place is ‘Cader Valley,’ once the Cradle of Industrial Revolution. The poems belong to volume portray a weather beaten landscape and people and the trace of industrial enterprises religious custom and ancient tradition. The only thing remains here is the nature and it reclaims the land from those who inhabit it. The aspects of nature which certainly have a symbolic effect in man are delineated startlingly in most of Ted Hughes poems. He was succeeded in depicting the landscape so as to correlate with the symbols and images. The powers of his poems are, no doubt, the energy filled in them with the effective use of landscapes. References Bold, Alan (1976), Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes, West, Thomas (1985), Ted Hughes Sagar, Keith,(1983 ), The Achievements of Ted Hughes, Manchester university press, Manchester. http://www.earth-moon.org Read More