Quotes from Ted Hughes

He gripped her hard so that life Should not drag her from that moment

And he is an owl He is an owl, Man tattooed in his armpit Under the broken wing (Stunned by the wall of glare, he fell here) Under the broken wing of huge shadow that twitches across the floor. He is a man in hopeless feathers.

Disfrutando del día, pasándolo bien.

They only want to weep As after the huge wars Senseless huge wars Huge senseless weeping.

So this conscious search for a 'solid' irrefutably defined basic (and therefore 'limited') kit of words drew me inevitably towards the solid irrefutably defined basic kit of my experiences – drew me towards animals, basically: my childhood and adolescent pantheon of wild creatures, which were saturated by first hand intense feeling that went back to my infancy. Those particular subjects, in a sense, were the models on which I fashioned my workable language.

The Hawk in the Rain I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up Heel after heel from the swallowing of the earth's mouth, From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle With the habit of the dogged grave, but the hawk Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye.

Thumbs my eyes, throws my breath, tackles my heart, And rain hacks my head to the bone, the hawk hangs The diamond point of will that polestars The sea drowner's endurance:

The song died in his mouth.

Wadsworth Moor Where the millstone of sky Grinds light and shadow so purple-fine And has ground it so long Grinding the skin off the earth Earth bleeds her raw true darkness A land naked now as a wound That the sun swabs and dabs Where the miles of agony are numbness And harebell and heather a euphoria

Flowerlike, I loved nothing. from Mayday on Holderness

What matters, is to connect your own voice with an infinite range of verbal cadences & sequences – and only endless actual experience of your ear can store all that in your nervous system. The rest can be left to your life & your character.

There's a heat-wave in swallows — Dry static of the baked air crackling Off their wing-tips, and no let-up, round and Round and round the sun-struck dizzy buildings. There's thunder too in swallows. Glitter-dark, flickering over the white hay Where the flies hide from the lightning When the air tightens, and the whole sky sags low like a big, warm drop. What is loveliest about swallows Is the moment they come, The moment they dip in, and are suddenly there.

Startled people look up With sheeps' heads Then go on eating.

It forgot its wild roots Its earth-song In cement and the drum-song of looms.

If you were writing a book to be published, you might be restrained by the fear that your wild imaginings might drive some people crazy. As it is, you are free, you can go off in any direction whatsoever, so long as the flame in your mind burns that way.

Bridegroom: I'm built differently.

Better be a bloodless carcase than alive with the blood rotting in your body.

He picked up a greasy black stove and chewed it like a toffee. There were delicious crumbs of chrome on it. He followed that with a double-decker bedstead and the brass knobs made his eyes crackle with joy. Never before had the Iron Man eaten such delicacies. As he lay there, a big truck turned into the yard and unloaded a pile of rusty chain. The Iron Man lifted a handful and let it dangle into his mouth - better than any spaghetti. So there they left him. It was an Iron Man's heaven.

The little hearts you painted on everything Remained, like the track of your panic. The splashes of a wound

It was a visit from the goddess, the beauty Who was poetry's sister—she had come To tell poetry she was spoiling us. Poetry listened, maybe, but we heard nothing And poetry did not tell us. And we Only did what poetry told us to do.

Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.

In those days I coercedOracular assuranceIn my favour out of every sign.

Daylong this tomcat lies stretched flatAs an old rough mat, no mouth and no eyes,Continual wars and wives are whatHave tattered his ears and battered his head.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.It took the whole of CreationTo produce my foot, my each feather:Now I hold Creation in my footOr fly up, and revolve it all slowly—I kill where I please because it is all mine.