Ted Hughes Quotations

As Popa penetrates deeper into his life, with book after book, it begins to look like a Universe passing through a Universe. It is one of the most exciting things in modern poetry, to watch this journey being made.

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs Not to be changed at this date; A life subdued to its instrument.

In the pit of red You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness But the jewel you lost was blue.

Nobody wanted your dance, Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering Drowning life and your effort to save yourself, Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil, Looking for something to give.

The Shell The sea fills my ear with sand and with fear. You may wash out the sand, but never the sound of the ghost of the sea that is haunting me.

The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.

So we found the end of our journey. So we stood, alive in the river of light, Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.

There is no better way to know us Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood.

He could not stand. It was not That he could not thrive, he was born With everything but the will – That can be deformed, just like a limb. Death was more interesting to him. Life could not get his attention.

The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.