Crow & Hawk: the Bird Spirit Poetry of Ted Hughes

Poets and prophets from Aesop to Isaiah to Blake have traditionally used animal figures to convey a criticism of existing culture, endowing the natural with metaphoric import. In most preliterate cultures, animals were equally endowed with metaphoric importance more immediately interpreted into mythologies and shamanistic rituals that enabled people to address and interact with their world. In the modern British and Irish context, it is common to use such animal characters to analyze or criticize society and moreover to redirect human attention to natural qualities within the human soul that in our civilization we have overlooked or purposefully disrespected. So when Ted Hughes focuses significant poetic attention on birds, one is not surprised by the parallels he draws between these winged creatures and the evolution of the soul. What may seem surprising is the degree to which he subverts modern...
[ View Full Essay]