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He was a poet of the instinctual, natural life and an enemy of the puritanical repression that he thought had afflicted English life since the time of Shakespeare. But along with this Hughes also had an amazing gift for capturing the physical essence of birds and animals in his brilliant images and rhythms — as in his collections The Hawk in the Rain (1957) and Season Songs (1976).

However, his poetry went beyond this. In Crow he created a bird that was not only extraordinarily like a real crow, but also symbolised fierce defiance and endurance in a world that was crushing him. Furthermore, he was a believer in ancient myth and magic, and claimed that even his most direct evocations of natural life grew out of that mythic background and belonged to it. His controversial book Shakespeare and the Goddess of Being argues that Shakespeare’s plays reflect the world of Renaissance magic and myth, enabling him to reconcile the divided and conflicting elements of human nature.

Ironically, he became the victim of a myth himself. He married the American poet Sylvia Plath — herself an outstanding creator of arresting statement in verse — and she later committed suicide. A powerful feminist campaign accused him, effectively, of murdering her, especially after another lover, Assia Wevill, also killed herself and her child. The accusations were unjust, but clouded his later life, and perhaps played their part in Hughes’s invention of Crow.

Towards the end of his life he confronted the history of his life with Plath, and her death, in Birthday Letters (1998), a remarkable collection of poems, more personal than any he had written before. His posthumous Letters, edited by Christopher Reid, also tell a powerful story.

One to read: Crow (1972)

More about Ted Hughes

The Times review: Letters of Ted Hughes, edited by Christopher Reid

The Sunday Times review: Letters of Ted Hughes, edited by Christopher Reid

The TLS on Hughes

News: found after 50 years: first love poems of Ted Hughes

Listen to Hughes reading his poems at The Poetry Archive

Read Frieda Hughes's weekly poetry column from times2

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