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Names of ted hughes poems which have animals in them 

Ted Hughes (1930-98) remains one of the most divisive English poets of the second half of the twentieth century, and not just because of the controversy surrounding his marriage to Sylvia Plath. But whereas a very different poet like, say, Philip Larkin has attracted criticism because of things he did or views he held, many still find themselves able to enjoy Larkin’s poetry without necessarily being a fan of the man. But Ted Hughes’s poems are almost as controversial as Ted Hughes the man. Where should the poetry fan begin when seeking to explore his work? Or what are the ‘highlights’ from his long and prolific poetic career? It’s impossible to narrow it down to a definitive list of ten poems, but in this post we’ve tried to pick ten of the finest Ted Hughes poems which give an indication of his range while also, we hope, emphasising what made Hughes such a distinctive voice in English poetry. 

Note: we’ve linked to those poems which others have reproduced online, but one of the poems is not available anywhere. However, we would recommend getting hold of the Collected Poems of Ted Hughes or, for a more affordable selection of his poetry, Ted Hughes – New Selected Poems 1957-1994. 

‘The Thought-Fox’. This poem, from Hughes’s first collection The Hawk in the Rain (1957), explores the writer’s struggle to find inspiration, which is depicted in the poem by the fox. Rejecting the typical poetic trope of the stars, the poet is gratified to sense the arrival of the ‘thought-fox’, a fox whose presence gradually becomes clearer and more vivid. ‘The Thought-Fox’ is one of the most celebrated poetic accounts of the act of writing poetry and the attendant search for poetic inspiration. We’ve offered some further thoughts on this poem here 

The Variety of Animals; and the Originality of Treatment 

According to an eminent critic, no poet has observed animals more accurately than Ted Hughes has done; and Hughes’s depiction of the animals observed is remarkable vivid, startling, and yet truthful. The animals actually observed and described by Ted Hughes in his poems cover a wide range. 

The hawk, the thrush, the pike, the jaguar, the skylark, the horse, the cat, the mouse, the bull, the pig, the otter, the bullfrog, and several others figure in his poems. Indeed, we can say that the world of animals is Hughes’s favourite territory. But it is not just the original kind of description of animals which makes Hughes’s poetry unique. What makes it really unique is the symbolic significance which he discovers in the animals whom he observes and describes. Of course the ancient Greek fables, known as Aesop’s Fables, have existed for centuries, and these fables depict animals in a way which throws a flood of light on human nature. And yet Hughes’s treatment of the animals is different: it is highly poetic, highly fanciful, highly symbolic, highly significant, highly expressive, highly illuminating, and highly “modern” both in content and in style. His descriptions of animals contain numerous metaphors; and these metaphors relate a particular animal to all the other creatures and also to human experiences and human concepts. His poems embody in a most intense form the typical stresses and contradiction of human nature and also of Nature with a capital N. Hughes’s animal poetry naturally reminds us of D.H. Lawrence who too was a great animal-lover. However, Hughes’s point of view or his way of looking at animals is clearly distinguishable from Lawrence’s Hawk Roosting 

The poem which really established Hughes’s reputation as a poet of the world of animals is Hawk Roosting. Subsequently this poem figured in most of the anthologies. The poem depicts a hawk’s eye-view of the world. The hawk believes that trees, air, sun, and earth are there only for his convenience; that the purpose of Creation was solely to produce him; that the world revolves at his bidding; and that all other creatures exist only as his prey. This egoistical hawk says: 

It took the whole of Creation 

To produce my foot, my each feather: 

Now I hold Creation in my foot …..