Ted Hughes Poetry

The moment has come. Since the beginning of this year I've been excited to teach Ted Hughes poetry to the eleventh grade in preparation for their oral commentaries. In the commentary, they have ten minutes to talk about a poem and how its different features, from metaphors to word choice to structure and imagery, help in the construction of meaning in the poem.

Shortly before I began teaching this unit, I had a crisis of confidence, fearing that it would be too difficult for them. Monica and I discussed the poems and she encouraged me to give them a try. This week has revealed that they are indeed difficult, but, God bless these students, they are bringing a lot of energy to their exploration. 

The first one we looked at is called "Wind" 

Wind by Ted Hughes

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

Monica and I wondered whether these students, who have never experienced the kind of Scottish moor wind that Hughes refers to here, would be able to feel its power. I'm not sure I can fully answer that question. They got a sense for the storm, but I don't know how much they felt it in their bones and blood. I for one, am bowled over by the description of the "tent of the hills" which "strained their guy rope" and the path of the gull, bent across the sky "like an iron bar, slowly." We spent three days on this poem, and by the end I think they had a good understanding of its feeling. 

Yesterday and today we've looked at a harder poem, The Owl. 

The Owl by Ted Hughes

I saw my world again through your eyes
As I would see it again through your children's eyes.
Through your eyes it was foreign.
Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens,
A mystery of peculiar lore and doings.
Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes
Emerged at a point of exclamation
As if it had appeared to dinner guests
In the middle of the table. Common mallards
Were artefacts of some unearthliness,
Their wooings were a hypnagogic film
Unreeled by the river. Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water. You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy.
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester road.
I sucked the throaty thin woe of a rabbit
Out of my wetted knuckle, by a copse
Where a tawny owl was enquiring.
Suddenly it swooped up, splaying its pinions
Into my face, taking me for a post.

Apparently he was writing about Sylvia Plath, but I didn't know that, and so I didn't tell them that. Studying this poem made for a very educational day for me, since I had interpreted the poem in a certain way and felt quite confident that I had seen it in its entirety, but in class yesterday a group argued that the speaker could be seeing the world through the eyes of the owl. I told them, no that wasn't really possible. 

After school, Monica and I looked at the poem and she explained how they could be right. Frankly, I was not convinced by the evidence. There is too much that seems to be said to a human for me to believe the owl interpretation, but it showed me that I cannot be definitive in my denial of anyone's reading. Teaching poetry is hard, because it's hard to know when/whether I can assert any authority in terms of meaning. In Shakespeare there was a certain degree of interpretation they could wield, but we always came back to, the overall message that the character was trying to convey. In poetry, the overall message is far more nebulous. During the first class I tried to put their ideas on the board, but looking later at their own interpretations from group work on the A3 paper I'd given them, it was clear that trying to establish one meaning for the poem was a foolish and futile and unnecessary goal. Look at these annotations from group work posters (I posted the poem on A3 paper and asked them to mark them up):

O's typically serious and impressive take on the poem. After the group work he said, "OK, Miss, but what's the real theme?" The class's comments revealed to me how little I could have answered that question had I tried.

Hurray for free verse poetry!

This group asked me if this could be the description of a sexual encounter. If you read it with this in mind, it's quite convincing.

Another take on the ending. I love that they're bold.

A comment on the closing anecdote with the owl and his pinions (wing tips)

I loved that this group saw that the speaker acts as the discovery channel for the person being addressed - introducing them to nature in a way that overwhelms and impresses.