Poetry in the Making - Ted Hughes

QUOTES FROM BOOK BY TED HUGHES

"There are all sorts of ways of capturing animals and birds and fish. I spent most of my time, up to the age of fifteen or so, trying out many of these ways and when my enthusiasm began to wane, as it did gradually, I started to write poems. You might not think that these two interests, capturing animals and writing poems, have much in common. The more I think back the more sure I am that with me the two interests have been one interest." 15

"Maybe my concern has been to capture not animals particularly and not poems, but simply things which have a vivid life of their own, outside mine. However all that may be, my interest in animals began when I began." 15

"Finally, as I have said, at about fifteen my life grew more complicated and my attitude to animals change. I accused myself of distrubing their lives. I began to look at them, you see, from their point of view." 16

"An animal I never succeeded in keeping alive is the fox. I was always frustrated: twice by the farmer, who killed cubs I had caught before I could get to them, and once by a poultry keeper who freed my cub while his dog waited." 19

"It is about a fox, obviously enough, but a fox that is both a fox and not a fox. What sort of fox is it that can step right into my head where presumably it still sits... smiling to itself when the dogs bark. It is both a fox and a spirit.  It is a real fox; as I ream the poem I see it move, I see it setting its prints, I see its shadow going over the irregular surface of the snow. The words all show me this, bringing it nearer and nearer. It is very real to me. The words have made a body for it and given it somewhere to walk." 20

"So, you see, in some ways my fox is better than an ordinary fox. I will live for ever, it will never suffer from hunger or hounds. I have it with me wherever I go. And I made it. And all through imagining it clearly enough and finding the living words." 21