The Hawk in the Rain

Product Information

Sylvia Plath, Crossing the Waters: Transitional Poems, Harper, 1971, published as Crossing the Waters, Faber and Faber, 1971. With animals, Hughes tried to show the primitiveness of mankind and let them vent their violent nature – in fact, most of the animals he chose are predatory, hunting animals which may be allegorised to humans. Hughes fought in World War II, witnessed precisely what Britain was going through, and comparing humans to hawks made more sense than comparing them to swans; this also helped to show the destruction that occurred during WWII. In this collection (and subsequent ones like Crow: From Life and Songs of the Crow, written after Plath's suicide), he dove into the predatory animals of his childhood and dreams. I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 4, 1975, Volume 9, 1978, Volume 14, 1980, Volume 37, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1986. Poetry in the Making: An Anthology of Poems and Programmes from “Listening and Writing,” Faber and Faber, 1967, abridged edition published as Poetry Is, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1970. Here the “m”sound is rehashed, and furthermore the ” sound (in “blood” and “land”). The last verse creates an emotional impact on us due to the inversion of the possibility of the sonnet. This refrain comes as an amazement. All through the sonnet a differentiation is set up between the man and the bird of prey; and afterward like the man’s, if not more terrible than the man’s. With Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe) Poems, Rainbow Press (London, England), 1967, reprinted, 1971.The horizon trap him- The hawk is trapped at the horizon because he is unable to make out what it is. And translator, with János Csokits) János Pilinszky, Selected Poems, Carcanet (Manchester, England), 1976. Ecocriticism: Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism (Abingdon, 1994) is a good introduction to this emerging field. Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth (Harvard, 2002) is one of the key examples of the theory in practice. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (first published in 1962 but reprinted since then) was a founding text of the environmental movement. World Literature Today, spring, 1998, review of Tales from Ovid, p. 379; summer, 1998, review of The Birthday Letters, p. 621.

The Coming of the Kings and Other Plays (juvenile; contains Beauty and the Beast [broadcast, 1965; produced in London, 1971], Sean, the Fool [broadcast, 1968; produced in London, 1971], The Devil and the Cats [broadcast, 1968; produced in London, 1971], The Coming of the Kings [broadcast, 1964; televised, 1967; produced in London, 1972], and The Tiger’s Bones [broadcast, 1965]), Faber and Faber (London, England), 1970, revised edition (also contains Orpheus [broadcast, 1971; also see below]), published as The Tiger’s Bones and Other Plays for Children, illustrated by Alan E. Cober, Viking Press (New York, NY), 1975. New York Times, October 30, 1998, Sarah Lyall, "Ted Hughes, 68, a Symbolic Poet and Sylvia Plath's Husband, Dies," p. A1. endurance-The stormy wind tilts the balance of the speaker but the hawk is unaffected by the power of nature. The hawk seems to hang there steadily with a will power that is as hard as diamond, which is the hardest of all minerals. The strong will is like the Pole Star that guides the travelers in the right direction. The hawk’s endurance can guide the drenched, depressed speaker to look up optimistically. In time the hawk will be caught by nature and meet the same fate and the earth will conquer. The ponderous shires crash on him. This bottom-up expression gives strength to the power of the earth to greet the fate of the hawk. Note how this links to the wrong wayin the first line. As Hughes' work matures, the feminine figure becomes more and more clearly identified with nature. From the human dilemmas of 'Hag' in The Hawk in the Rain, the hag-figure evolves into a character empowered in Lupercal's 'Witches' because her affinity with nature subverts patriarchy. She is at once the maidenly yet sexualised 'rosebud' and the animal 'old bitch' (line 4) who could 'ride a weed the ragwort road' (line 2). In Wodwo, the human protagonist of 'Wino' describes himself as part-plant: 'Grape is my mulatto mother' (line 1). However, he desires the grape to fulfil his needs rather than to be his equal: 'Her veined interior / Hangs hot open for me to re-enter' (lines 2-3).Washington Post Book World, November 22, 1992, Gary Taylor; March 8, 1998, Linda Pastan, "Scenes from a Marriage," p. 5; March 15, 1998, review of Difficulties of a Bridegroom, p. 12. Consulting editor and author of foreword) Frances McCullough, editor, The Journals of Sylvia Plath, Dial, 1982. The Hawk in the Rain was Ted Hughes' first collection published in his homeland, dedicated to his wife Sylvia Plath, hurled onto the world like boulders launched by angry gods. There is a passage in Stephen Fry's divine retelling of ancient Greek myths where he discusses the creation of the world from darkness and the formation of the slightly temperamental essences into gods and it just always reminds me of Hughes walking across the moors with thunderbolts and lightening rods. It received immediate critical acclaim for its creative force and innovations in language and rhythm. The twenty-six-year-old Hughes was hailed as a new and original voice.