Encountered - Ted Hughes and especially Crow - while a student - decades ago. Studied mythology (social and cultural aspects) and shamanism/meditation - in me late studies. This force - of effort - thought - and essentially - Nature - appeared as - if sent. Real light - in tortured - apartheid SA. At every reading - one still reels - outwardly and inwardly. Inspiration and gratitude . It seems to be a collection - of so many areas of research. And now - one learns - of its incompleteness ? Never allowed anyone to tell me anything - about their reading - all this time. This is the first time - to share - expert opinion. Indeed - very fruitful. Thank you. Fare thee well - on life's journey.
Glad you like it Malcolm. It will also be made available through the Ted Hughes Society to members with a bibliography of selected works by all contributors. I'll send you a copy of the bibliography later this evening.
I like it that the seminar ended on a somewhat optimistic note. If you can persist in gazing into the abyss and endure its gazing back into you and still remain cheerful, that's an achievement of sorts.
A laudably illuminating webinar with notes and comments by echt lovers of poetry as alien and strange as that of Ted Hughes. He was endowed with a gift that did not resist the conflation of individualism, originality, and a tincture of the outré. If you manage to survive four suicides---Sylvia, Nick, Assia, and Shura,----you have individuated way beyond the hand-me-down binary of optimism and pessimism. The following lines instantiate Ted's prodigious cosmophagy: More than to the visionary his cell: His stride is wildernesses of freedom: The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel. Over the cage floor the horizons come. from 'Jaguar' by Ted Hughes
@@billdenbrough501 Thank you, Bill, for the technical correction. I got the chronology of shock and grief mixed up. I salute your flair for preciseness.
In watching the webinar I understood in ways I'd only glimpsed the degree of concentration/compression Ted Hughes achieved in what still reads as verse that is at once simple and sacred, musical and discordant. Each speaker lit the trace of particular threads--mythic, musical, ecological, religious, visual, literary, traditional--all held perfectly in the crush of the sequence. With thanks.
Thank you for this, I hope you are able to put more on line, though I realise that Zoom meetings leave so much of the interaction between people out of the equation. I am so please to have confirmed my impressions of Crow being one of facing challenges, accepting errors, bolstering confidence and ultimately the growth of being.
Thanks for uploading, quite a stimulating look at Crow. I'm trying to get to grips with reading Hughes and quite a few of the speakers have loosened it up for me and I'm now starting with Crow. Ta.
Larkin was a little disparaging about Ted Hughes nature poems, but he (Larkin) did himself produce one of the most moving of animal poems in 'Mower'. about the death of an hedgehog he unintentionally killed. Larkin of course was nowhere as prolific as Hughes in his only producing a volume every ten years - but leaving aside any of their personal animosity and jealousy, I did love most of their major works which are now all included in the canon. The world of literature is richer for their inclusion. The end of an era now, so sad.
Encountered - Ted Hughes and especially Crow - while a student - decades ago.
Studied mythology (social and cultural aspects) and shamanism/meditation - in me late studies.
This force - of effort - thought - and essentially - Nature - appeared as - if sent.
Real light - in tortured - apartheid SA.
At every reading - one still reels - outwardly and inwardly. Inspiration and gratitude .
It seems to be a collection - of so many areas of research. And now - one learns - of its incompleteness ?
Never allowed anyone to tell me anything - about their reading - all this time.
This is the first time - to share - expert opinion. Indeed - very fruitful. Thank you.
Fare thee well - on life's journey.
great to see the in full and catch up with all I missed - a really moving sequence
Glad you like it Malcolm. It will also be made available through the Ted Hughes Society to members with a bibliography of selected works by all contributors. I'll send you a copy of the bibliography later this evening.
I like it that the seminar ended on a somewhat optimistic note. If you can persist in gazing into the abyss and endure its gazing back into you and still remain cheerful, that's an achievement of sorts.
A laudably illuminating webinar with notes and comments by echt lovers of poetry as alien and strange as that of Ted Hughes. He was endowed with a gift that did not resist the conflation of individualism, originality, and a tincture of the outré.
If you manage to survive four suicides---Sylvia, Nick, Assia, and Shura,----you have individuated way beyond the hand-me-down binary of optimism and pessimism. The following lines instantiate Ted's prodigious cosmophagy:
More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come. from 'Jaguar' by Ted Hughes
Nick died after Ted and Shura was murdered by her mother she didn't commit suicide. Although to your point that is maybe equally awful.
@@billdenbrough501 Thank you, Bill, for the technical correction. I got the chronology of shock and grief mixed up.
I salute your flair for preciseness.
In watching the webinar I understood in ways I'd only glimpsed the degree of concentration/compression Ted Hughes achieved in what still reads as verse that is at once simple and sacred, musical and discordant. Each speaker lit the trace of particular threads--mythic, musical, ecological, religious, visual, literary, traditional--all held perfectly in the crush of the sequence. With thanks.
Thank you for this, I hope you are able to put more on line, though I realise that Zoom meetings leave so much of the interaction between people out of the equation. I am so please to have confirmed my impressions of Crow being one of facing challenges, accepting errors, bolstering confidence and ultimately the growth of being.
Thanks for uploading, quite a stimulating look at Crow. I'm trying to get to grips with reading Hughes and quite a few of the speakers have loosened it up for me and I'm now starting with Crow. Ta.
Larkin was a little disparaging about Ted Hughes nature poems, but he (Larkin) did himself produce one of the most moving of animal poems in 'Mower'. about the death of an hedgehog he unintentionally killed. Larkin of course was nowhere as prolific as Hughes in his only producing a volume every ten years - but leaving aside any of their personal animosity and jealousy, I did love most of their major works which are now all included in the canon. The world of literature is richer for their inclusion. The end of an era now, so sad.