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There is no better way to know us Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood.
Ted Hughes
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Poems get to the point where they are stronger than you are. They come up from some other depth and they find a place on the page. You can never find that depth again, that same kind of authority and voice. I might feel I would like to change something about them, but they're still stronger than I am and I cannot.
Ted Hughes
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And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.
Ted Hughes
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The sea cries with its meaningless voice
Treating alike its dead and its living,
Probably bored with the appearance of heaven
After so many millions of nights without sleep,
Without purpose, without self-deception.
Ted Hughes
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The dreamer in her Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it. That moment the dreamer in me Fell in love with her and I knew it
Ted Hughes
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And as if reporting some felony to the police they let you know you were not John Donne.
Ted Hughes
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And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze
About a star of deathless and painless peace
But no astronomer can find where it is.
Ted Hughes
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From the age of about eight or nine I read just about every comic book available in England. At that time my parents owned a newsagent's shop. I took the comics from the shop, read them, and put them back. That went on until I was twelve or thirteen. Then my mother brought in a sort of children's encyclopedia that included sections of folklore. Little folktales. I remember the shock of reading those stories. I could not believe that such wonderful things existed. … throughout your life you have certain literary shocks, and the folktales were my first. From then on I began to collect folklore, folk stories, and mythology. That became my craze.
Ted Hughes
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The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
Ted Hughes
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There are certain things that are just impressive, aren't there? One stone can be impressive and the stones around it aren't. It's the same with animals. Some, for some reason, are strangely impressive. They just get into you in a strange way. Certain birds obviously have this extra quality that fascinates your attention. Obviously hawks have always done that for me, as a great many others have — not only impressive in themselves but also in that they've accumulated an enormous literature making them even more impressive. And crows too. Crows are the central bird in many mythologies. The crow is at every extreme, lives on every piece of land on earth, the most intelligent bird.
Ted Hughes
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The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument.
Ted Hughes
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In the pit of red You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness But the jewel you lost was blue.
Ted Hughes
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Even the most misfitting child
Who's chanced upon the library's worth,
Sits with the genius of the Earth
And turns the key to the whole world.
Ted Hughes
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Ten years after your death
I meet on a page of your journal, as never before,
The shock of your joy.
Ted Hughes
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Fourteen centuries have learned,
From charred remains, that what took place
When Alexandria's library burned
Brain-damaged the human race.
Ted Hughes
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I think it's the shock of every writer's life when their first book is published. The shock of their lives. One has somehow to adjust from being anonymous, a figure in ambush, working from concealment, to being and working in full public view. It had an enormous effect on me. My impression was that I had suddenly walked into a wall of heavy hostile fire.
Ted Hughes
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You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can somehow sacrifice certain things more easily, and you have a more tolerant view of things like possessiveness (your own) and a broader acceptance of the pains and the losses.
Ted Hughes
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He swayed in the strong wind that pressed against his back. He swayed forward, on the brink of the high cliff. And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted-up, out, into space, and the Iron Man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness.
Ted Hughes
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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.
Ted Hughes
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Daylong this tomcat lies stretched flat
As an old rough mat, no mouth and no eyes,
Continual wars and wives are what
Have tattered his ears and battered his head.
Ted Hughes
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Grape is my mulatto mother
In this frozen whited country.
Ted Hughes
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Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.
Ted Hughes
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That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.
Ted Hughes
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Imagination isn't merely a surplus mental department meant for entertainment, but the most essential piece of machinery we have if we are going to live the lives of human beings.
Ted Hughes
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Do as you like with me. I'm your parcel. I have only our address on me. Open me, or readdress me.
Ted Hughes
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Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
Ted Hughes
Wikipedia
Born:
August 17, 1930
Died:
October 28, 1998
(aged 68)
Bio:
Edward James "Ted" Hughes was an English poet and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers.
Known for:
Birthday Letters (1998)
The Iron Man (1968)
The Hawk in the Rain (1957)
Tales from Ovid (1997)
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Ted Hughes on Wikipedia
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