8 WINDS OF MAGIC TV

He was at war with conventional ways of seeing, with the entire baggage and build-up of civilization that blocked the eye and thwarted the nerve - that denied the Goddess-world вЂњits one true health: acceptance into life.вЂќ He was not alone in this, of course: good poets are always trying to cut through the crap, and HughesвЂ™s arsenal of Tarots and spells and Ouija boards and energy-channelers was, at the time, a very fashionable way of engaging with the so-called cosmic forces. He wrote a guide for children called Poetry In The Making: вЂњYou keep your eyes, your ears, your nose, your taste, your touch, your whole being on the thing you are turning into words.вЂќ This was the poetic action, the moment of capture rehearsed and repeated a thousand times in his poetry: the thrushвЂ™s вЂњbounce and stabвЂќ at the worm-rich ground. Children were among his most loyal readers, drawn to his poems as to some fierce and unequivocal spectacle, and Hughes returned the compliment with magical books of childrenвЂ™s stories and poems.Д®ducation was of concern to him: he saw the culture at large as one deadening act of miseducation, and wrote of вЂњthe pressure of preconceptionвЂќ that вЂњdescends, like a space helmet, to cover the entire head and face.вЂќ The way out was to concentrate, to clear your head and look. Its intensity was literally childlike - steady-gazing and unsentimental, with touches of grave comedy, of playground solemnity: вЂњA flustery hen-bird with her knickers torn/Tries to escape through the rhubarbвЂќ (вЂњSparrowвЂќ).

For all its novelty, it felt like something old, something recognized. вЂњThe apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun./The parrots shriek as if they were on fireвЂ¦вЂќ (вЂњJaguarвЂќ). The humped strength of his lines, the brain-jamming immediacy of his images, the darkness of his concerns: there was nothing else like it. To read Ted Hughes as a young person was pure heavy metal. A glance at the Collected Poems brings it all back. Collected Poems arrives in the same season as the biopic Sylvia, starring the rugged Daniel Craig as Hughes and Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath, and Diana MiddlebrookвЂ™s Her Husband (Viking), an excavation of Ted and SylviaвЂ™s doomed marriage and poetic partnership.Д¬an Hughes the poet escape these encrustations? The answer is yes. And now, five years after his death, fossilhood beckons for Hughes himself with the publication of his Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) - thirteen hundred pages thick, heavy as dinosaur bones. вЂњStare at the monsterвЂ¦вЂќ began HughesвЂ™ 1957 poem вЂњFamous Poet,вЂќ a nightmare of literary obsolescence whose protagonist becomes a вЂњstegosaurus,вЂќ sealed beneath the вЂњgigantic horn and plateвЂќ of his achievement and repute.

She was the Goddess, Nature, Imagination, Being, source of life and Queen of the Earth, and the penalty for disobeying her was always, in one form or another, death. She spoke the words, and she made the rules. Yes, he had a muse, and yes, she was a dictator. There was a glint of wryness in the remark, but for Hughes it was also the gravest of puns, a flash from his poetic core. Could we expect to see from him a вЂњCharge Of The Light BrigadeвЂќ or an вЂњAnnus MirabilisвЂќ? Low-voiced, Hughes replied that he would produce вЂњas the muse dictates.вЂќ Now, he was suddenly placed in direct succession to the melodious Tennyson and, further back, the exquisite Dryden.

Hughes was, notoriously, the poet of overkill, of skulls and jaguars and slaughtered bulls. In his new capacity as the queenвЂ™s official poet (one journalist wanted to know), was he up to the production of occasional verse? (Would they steal his soul? His views on вЂњthe imprisonment of the lensвЂќ were well known.) Overlit and discomfited, trapped in a chair, he seemed to be guarding his mood against the heightened vacancy of the moment.

8 WINDS OF MAGIC TV

What a figure he cut, the honored poet! Sage, tangle-browed, regarding the TV cameras with a sort of cultivated primitivist gloom. It had just been announced that Ted Hughes was to be the new Poet Laureate, and a media reception had been arranged in HughesвЂ™ local hostelry. In December 1984 a small but memorable press conference was held in an English pub.

8 winds of magic