Ted Hughes (1930-1998) - byname of Edward J. Hughes

Ted Hughes (1930-1998) - byname of Edward J. Hughes
English poet, dramatist, critic, and short story writer, married to the American poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963. Hughes stated that poems, like animals, are each one 'an assembly of living parts, moved by a single spirit.' In his early works he presented a sardonic view of man's function in the universal scheme, and continued the theme of survival, the power and the mystery of the cosmos, and the war between vitality and death, in several of his later collections. SNOWDROP
Now is the globe shrunk tight
Round the mouse's dulled wintering heart
Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass,
More through an outer darkness
Not in their right minds,
With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends,
Brutal as the stars of this month,
Her pale head heavy as metal. Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, a small town in the north of England. The harsh landscape of the Yorkshire moors had a strong influence in Hughes's poetry. His father was a carpenter and shopkeeper. He had participated during the World War I in the battle of Gallipoli, and was one of the 17 who survived from his regiment. After studies at the Mexborough Grammar School, Hughes served two years in the Royal Air Force. At Pembroke College, Cambridge, Hughes studied first English and then switched to archaeology and anthropology. He graduated in 1954 and moved to London, where he worked as a zoo attendant, gardener, and script reader for J. Arthur Rank. In Cambridge Hughes founded with his friends a literary magazine St Botolph's Review. There he also met an unknown poet, Sylvia Plath. They married within a few months. In 1957 they moved to the US where Hughes taught English and creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 1957 Hughes published his first volume of verse, THE HAWK IN THE RAIN, which included some of his best poems, such as 'The Thought-Fox' and the title poems, 'The Hawk in the Rain'. It was followed by PIKE (1959) and LUPERCAL (1960), which won a Somerset Maugham Award (1960) and the 1961 Hawthornden Prize. Hughes's collection SELECTED POEMS (1962), with Thom Gunn, is considered a new turn in English verse. Hughes and Plath returned to England in 1959 and in 1961 they moved to Devon. After Sylvia Plath's suicide in London in 1963, Hughes stopped writing poetry for nearly three years while editing and publishing Plath's poems.

During the end of his marriage Hughes had an affair with Assia Wevill, who killed herself and their child in 1969. For they will have their rights. Their jurors are to be assembled
From the little crumbs of soot. Their brief
Goes straight up heaven and nothing more is heard of it. (from 'Her Husband')
In 1969 Hughes's adaptation of Seneca's Oedipus was produced at the National Theatre. In 1970 he was one of the founders of the Arvon Foundation. When he was 40, Hughes produced perhaps his most famous work, CROW (1970), a series of story-poems. The protagonist - Crow - is an embodiment of vitality that challenges the supremacy of Death. In 1971 Hughes travelled to Iran where he wrote the verse drama ORGHAST for the director Peter Brook. In 1977 he was awarded an OBE and in 1984 he was appointed poet Laureate at the age of 54. In POETRY IN THE MAKING (1970) Hughes stated that there is no ideal form of poetry or writing. His poetry ranged from free verse to highly structured forms and rhyme schemes. Although he wrote for young adults a wide variety of finely illustrated poems, plays and prose, he did not soften his themes of life and death with sentimentality. The element of death is a part of the cycles of nature as in 'There Came a Day' but not without a sudden humor. There came a day that caught the summer
Wrung its neck
Plucked it
And ate it. Hughes's study of Sylvia Plath's life, BIRTHDAY LETTERS, appeared in 1998 and became an immediate bestseller. He received all the major literary awards in Europe, but not the Nobel Prize. He also received the Order of Merit. Hughes died of cancer on October 28, 1998
For further reading: Eight Contemporary Poets by C. Bedient (1974); The Art of Ted Hughes by K. Sagar (1978); Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe by E. Faas (1980); Ted Hughes: A Critical Study by T. Gifford and N. Roberts (1981); Sylvia Plath: Journals 1950-62, foreword by Ted Hughes (1982); The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm (1994) - Suomeksi Hughesin runoja on julkaistu antologiassa Maailman runosydän, toim. Hannu Tarmio ja Janne Tarmio (1998) - Note: Andrew Motion followed Ted Hughes as Britain's poet laureate.
SELECTED WORKS:
· THE HAWK IN THE RAIN, 1957
· PIKE, 1959
· THE HOUSE OF ARIES, 1960
· LUPERCAL, 1960
· MEET MY FOLKS! 1961 (rev.

1987 )
· THE CALM, 1961
· A HOUSEFUL OF WOMEN, 1961
· THE WOUND, 1962
· ed.: NEW POEMS 1962 (with Patricia Beer and Vernon Scannell)
· SELECTED POEMS, 1962
· HOW THE WHALE BECAME, 1963
· THE EARTH OWL AND OTHER MOON PEOPLE, 1963
· DIFFICULTIES OF BRIDGEGROOM, 1963
· EPITHALAMIUM, 1963
· ed.: HERE TODAY, 1963
· ed.: FIVE AMERICAN POETS, 1963 (with Thom Gunn)
· DOGS, 1964
· ed.: SELECTED POEMS by Keith Douglas, 1964
· NESSIE THE MANNERLES MONSTER, 1964
· THE COMING OF THE KINGS, 1964 (pub. 1970)
· BNEAUTY AND THE BEAST, 1965
· THE TIGER'S BONES, 1965 (pub. 1970)
· THE HOUSE OF DONKEYS, 1965
· ed.: SYLVIA PLATH'S ARIEL, 1965 (with O. Hughes)
· THE BURNING OF THE BROTHEL, 1966
· THE PRICE OF A BRIDE, 1966 (pub. 1968
· ANIMAL POEMS, 1967
· GRAVESTONES, 1967
· RECKLINGS, 1967
· WODWO, 1967
· SCAPEGOEATS AND RABIES, 1967
· THE IRON MAN, 1968
· ed.: A CHOISE OF EMILY DICKINSON'S VERSE, 1968
· ORGHAST, 1968
· THE DEMON OF ADACHIGARA, 1968 (pub. 1969)
· translation: Yehuda Amichai's Selected Poems, 1968 (with A. Gutman)
· SENECA'S OEDIPUS, 1968
· THE IRON MAN, 1968 - film 1999
· SEA, THE FOOL, THE DEVIL AND THE CATS, 1968 (pub. 1970)
· I SAID GOODBYE TO EARTH, 1969
· FIVE AUTUMN SONGS FOR CHILDREN VOICES, 1969
· POETRY IN THE MAKING, 1970
· THE COMING OF THE KINGS, 1970
· THE CROW, 1970
· AMULET, 1970
· A CROW HYMN, 1970
· A FEW CROWS, 1970
· FIGHTING FOR JERUSALEM, 1970
· FOUR CROW POEMS, 1970
· THE MARTYRDOM OF BISHOP FARRAR, 1970
· ed.: A CHOISE OF SHAKESPEARE'S VERSE, 1971
· CROW WAKES, 1971
· EAT CROW, 1971
· SHAKESPEARE'S POEM, 1971
· POEMS, 1971 (with R. Fainlight, A.Sillitoe)
· ORGHAST, 1971
· AUTUMN SONG, 1971
· ORPHEUS, 1971 (pub. 1973)
· IN THE LITTLE GIRL'S ANGEL GAZE, 1972
· SELECTED POEMS 1957-1967, 1972
· PROMETHEUS ON HIS CRAG, 1973
· THE STORY OF VASCO, 1974
· contributor: CRICKET'S CHOICE, 1974
· CAVE BIRDS, 1975 (rev. 1978)
· THE INTERROGATOR, 1975
· THE NEW WORLD, 1975
· ECLIPSE, 1976
· EARTH MOON, 1976
· MOON-WHALES AND OTHER POEMS, 1976 (rev. Moon-Whales, 1988)
· SEASON SONG, 1976
· ed. and transl. with János Csokits: SELECTED POEMS by János Pilinszky, 1976
· GAUDETTE, 1977
· CHIASMADON, 1977
· GAUDETE, 1977
· trans. ANOTHER REPUBLIC, 1977 (d. by Charles Simic and Mark Strand)
· ed. and transl. with Yehuda Amichai: AMEN by Yehuda Amichai, 1977
· ed. and introduction: JOHNNY PANIC AND THE BIBLE OF DREAMS, AND OTHER PROSE WRIRINGS by Sylvia Plath, 1977
· MOON BELLS, 1978
· CAVE BIRDS, 1978
· ORTS, 1978
· MOORTOWN ELEGIES, 1978
· A SOLSTICE, 1978
· MOON-BELLS AND OTHER POEMS, 1978
· ALL AROUND THE YEAR, 1979
· REMAINS OF ELMET, 1979
· MOORTOWN, 1979
· HENRY WILLIAMSON, 1979
· THE THRESHOLD, 1979
· ADAM AND THE SACRED NINE, 1979
· BROADSIDES 1979-83; FOUR TALES TOLD BY AN IDIOT, 1979
· IN THE BLACK CHAPEL, 1979
· REMAINS OF ELMET, 1979 (rev. 1994)
· trans.

with Yehuda Aamichai: TIME by Yehuda Amichai, 1979
· THE PIG ORGAN, 1980
· ed.: NEW POETRY 6, 1980
· UNDER THE NORTH STAR, 1981
· A PRIMER OF BIRDS, 1981
· SKY-FURNACE, 1981
· ed.: THE COLLECTED POEMS OF SYLVIA PLATH, 1981
· ed.: ANTHOLOGY: ARVON FOUNDATION POETRY COMPETITION, 1982 (with S. Heaney)
· ed.: THE RATTLEBAG, 1982 (with S. Heaney)
· SELECTED POEMS 1957-1981, 1982 (rev. New Selected Poems 1957, 1994, 1995)
· RIVER, 1983
· WHAT IS TRUTH? A FARMYARD FABLE FOR THE YOUNG, 1984
· RIVER, 1984
· ed.: THE JOURNALS OF SYLVIA PLATH, 1985 (with F. McCullough)
· ed.: SYLVIA PLATH'S SELECTED POEMS, 1985
· FLOWERS AND INSECTS, 1986
· FFANGS THE VAMPIRE BAT AND THE KISS OF TRUTH, 1986
· T.S. ELIOT: A TRIBUTE, 1987
· CAT AND THE CUCKOO, 1988
· TALES OF THE EARLY WORLD, 1988
· WOLFWATCHING, 1989
· translation: János Pilinszky's The Desert of Love, 1989 (with J. Csokits)
· CAPPRICCIO, 1990
· RAIN CHARM FOR THE DUCHY AND OTHER LAUREATE POEMS, 1992
· SHAKESPEARE AND THE GODDESS OF COMPLETE BEING, 1992
· ed.: A DANCER TO GODS: TRIBUTES TO T.S. ELIOT, 1992
· THE IRON WOMAN, 1993
· WINTER POLLEN: OCCASIONAL PROSE, 1994
· NEW SELECTED POEMS, 1995
· DIFFICULTIES OF A BRIDGEGROOM, 1995
· ed.: A CHOICE OF COLERIDGE'S VERSE, 1996
· trans.: Ovid: Tales from Ovid, 1997 - (Whitbread Award 1998)
· BIRTHDAY LETTERS, 1998
· transl.: Euripides' Alcestis, 2000.