The Crow By Ted Hughes The farms are

The Crow By Ted Hughes

The farms are oozing craters in Sheer sides under the sodden moors: When it is not wind it is rain, Neither of which will stop at doors: One will damp beds and the other shake Dreams beneath sleep it cannot break. Between the weather and the rock Farmers make a little heat; Cows that sway a bony back, Pigs upon delicate feet Hold off the sky, trample the strength That shall level these hills at length. Buttoned from the blowing mist Walk the ridges of ruined stone. What humbles these hills has raised The arrogance of blood and bone, And thrown the hawk upon the wind, And lit the fox in the dripping ground.

“Writing for the Ted Hughes Society journal in 2012, Neil Roberts, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield, said: Crow holds a uniquely important place in Hughes oeuvre. It heralds the ambitious second phase of his work, lasting roughly from the late sixties to the late seventies, when he turned from direct engagement with the natural world to unified mythical narratives and sequences. It was his most controversial work: a stylistic experiment which abandoned many of the attractive features of his earlier work, and an ideological challenge to both Christianity and humanism. Hughes wrote Crow, mostly between 1966 and 1969, after a barren period following the death of Sylvia Plath. He looked back on the years of work on Crow as a time of imaginative freedom and creative energy, which he felt that he never subsequently recovered. He described Crow as his masterpiece. . . [1] The book is a collection of poems about the character Crow, which borrows extensively from many world mythologies, notably trickster mythology and Christian mythology. [1] A central core group of poems in the work can be seen as an attack on Christianity. [1] The first Crow poems were written in response to a request by the American artist, Leonard Baskin, who had at the time produced several pen and ink drawings of crows. [1] It is quoted briefly in the liner notes of Paul Simon's song My Little Town, [2] and in the epigraph of Catspaw by Joan D. Vinge. [3] The collection was also the key inspiration for the 2009 album The Unkindness of Crows by the American heavy metal band Eagle Twin. [4]” Wikipedia contributors. "Crow (poetry). " Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 9 Feb. 2016. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. Background

The Symbol of the Crow The crow serves as a symbol of Hughes’ personal feelings and ideas. In folk mythology the crow is associated with both death and guilt. A crow is black, ugly, solitary, and the least musical of all birds. For Hughes, the crow is a symbol of destruction and death. The natural imagery suggests both the malevolent and nurturing aspects of nature. Hughes believes that nature and its elements can become hostile when man is not in touch with them.

The farms are oozing craters in Sheer sides under the sodden moors: When it is not wind it is rain, Neither of which will stop at doors: One will damp beds and the other shake Dreams beneath sleep it cannot break. This is an anti-pastoral poem due to the portrayal of nature as violent and destructive. The poem presents human beings in relation to elemental energies. In stanza one, farmers live in the midst of violent surroundings that “will [not] stop at doors” but “will damp beds” and “shake / Dreams. ” “Beds” and “Dreams” suggest domestic comforts of human life that are shaken by the violent forces of Nature. Human dreams will suffer their setbacks as naturally as the impulse to make a life here.

Between the weather and the rock Farmers make a little heat; Cows that sway a bony back, Pigs upon delicate feet Hold off the sky, trample the strength That shall level these hills at length. The farmers draw vitality from the wild energies. Cows with the “bony back” and the pigs with “delicate feet” are capable of enacting the Will to Live. They, hyperbolically, “Hold off the sky. ” The first two lines show that climate, geology, bird, and animal survival are such strong forces that human achievement is diminished to “a little heat. ”

Buttoned from the blowing mist Walk the ridges of ruined stone. What humbles these hills has raised The arrogance of blood and bone, And thrown the hawk upon the wind, And lit the fox in the dripping ground. Living with “blowing mist” and walking along “the ridges of ruined stone, ” the farmers resist death in a strong manner. The used of words like “blood” and “bone” (highlighted by alliteration) suggest physical existence, which can be destroyed by the violent forces of Nature. The “hawk, ” too, is “thrown” by the wind. The animals attempt to resist death; thus, Hughes relates animal vitality (exhibited by their predatory rage and frenzy) with the universal processes of creation and destruction, life and death. Between the “humbled hills” and the “fox, ” the wind disturbs the dreams of farmers in their sleep, caught in the cycles of destruction and creation.

Works Cited Gifford, Terry. "Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, and Post-Pastoral. " 2014. Terry. Gifford. co. uk. 8 March 2016. Madhukuma, V. "Imagery in the Poetry of Ted Hughes – A study . " January 2011. <http: //worldlitonline. net/imagery-in. pdf>. Shodhganga. "Metaphysical and Literary Introspections in Other Natural and Geological Phenomena. " 2009. inflibnet. as. in. Document. 8 March 2016. Wikipedia contributors. "Crow (poetry). " Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 9 Feb. 2016. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.