Ted Hughes

Black was the without eyeBlack the within tongueBlack was the heartBlack the liver, black the lungsUnable to suck in lightBlack the blood in its loud tunnelBlack the bowels packed in furnaceBlack too the musclesStriving to pull out into the lightBlack the nerves, black the brainWith its tombed visionsBlack also the soul, the huge stammerOf the cry that, swelling, could notPronounce its sun.

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__e becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.

That__ the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they__e suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That__ 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__e becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you__e gone a few weeks and haven__ felt that awful struggle of your childish self _ struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence _ you__l know you__e gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you__e gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn__ live boldly enough, that they didn__ invest enough heart, didn__ love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it... Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It__ been protected by the efficient armour, it__ never participated in life, it__ never been exposed to living and to managing the person__ affairs, it__ never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it__ never properly lived. That__ how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced...And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It__ their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can__ understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That__ the carrier of all the living qualities. It__ the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn__ come out of that creature isn__ worth having, or it__ worth having only as a tool__or that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful...And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line__nprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears.And yet that__ the moment it wants. That__ where it comes alive__ven if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that__ where it calls up its own resources__ot artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy.That__ the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they__e suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That__ 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__e becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you__e gone a few weeks and haven__ felt that awful struggle of your childish self__truggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence__ou__l know you__e gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you__e gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself.

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

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.

What I am going to propose is that you write a novel.As you know, the practical advantages of being able to write out your thoughts fluently are very great. For one thing, when you are used to writing them out, they present themselves, one after another. When you are not used to writing them out, they mill around among themselves usually and you see nothing but heads and tails of them when you sit down to get them on paper. I know from my own experience that the first two or three hours of every exam I ever took were spent simply getting my pen warmed up, and by then it was too late.

In writing these poems about relatives, I found it almost impossible to write about the mother. I was stuck. My feelings about my mother, you see, must be too complicated to easily flow into words.

If you were writing a book to be published, you might be restrained by the fear that your wild imaginings might drive some people crazy. As it is, you are free, you can go off in any direction whatsoever, so long as the flame in your mind burns that way.

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people__y the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate__nd 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.

There is no correct way to write a novel, or rather, there is only one, and that one way is to make it interesting. That is very easily said, but how do you make your writing interesting?The answer to the question is, that you write interestingly only about the things that genuinely interest you. This is an infallible rule.

The difference between a fairly interesting writer and a fascinating writer is that the fascinating writer has a better nose for what genuinely excites him, he is hotter on the trail, he has a better instinct for what is truly alive in him. The worse writer may seem to be more sensible in many ways, but he is less sensible in this vital matter: he cannot distinguish what is full of life from what is only half full or empty of it. And so his writing is less alive, and as a writer he is less alive, and in writing, as in everything else, nothing matters but life.

Even the most misfitting childWho's chanced upon the library's worth,Sits with the genius of the EarthAnd turns the key to the whole world.--"Hear It Again

It is not enough to say the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or rowingly, or whatever. There are no words to capture the infinite depth of crowiness in the crow's flight. All we can do is use a word as an indicator, or a whole bunch of words as a general directive. But the ominous thing in the crow's flight, the bare-faced, bandit thing, the tattered beggarly gipsy thing, the caressing and shaping yet slightly clumsy gesture of the down-stroke, as if the wings were both too heavy and too powerful, and the headlong sort of merriment, the macabre pantomime ghoulishness and the undertaker sleekness - you could go on for a very long time with phrases of that sort and still have completely missed your instant, glimpse knowledge of the world of the crow's wingbeat. And a bookload of such descriptions is immediately rubbish when you look up and see the crow flying.

Well, the terrible fact is that though we are all more or less thinking of something or other all the time, some of us are thinking more and some less.Some brains are battling and working and remembering and puzzling things over all the time and other brains are just lying down, snoring and occasionally turning over. It is to the lazy minds that I am now speaking, and from my own experience I imagine this includes nineteen people out of every twenty. I am one of that clan myself and always have been.

If you're all so peaceful up there, how did you get such greedy and cruel ideas?"The dragon was silent for a long time after this question. And at last he said: "It just came over me. I don't know why. It just came over me, listening to the battling shouts and the war-cries of the earth - I got excited, I wanted to join in.

There is the inner life, which is the world of final reality, the world of memory, emotion, imagination, intelligence, and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time like the heartbeat. There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it. That process of raid, or persuasion, or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn and if we do not somehow learn it, then our minds lie in us like the fish in the pond of a man who cannot fish.

The difficult thing is not to pick up the information but to recognise it - to accept it into our consciousness. Most of us find it difficult to know what we are feeling about anything. In any situation it is almost impossible to know what is really happening to us. This is one of the penalties of being human and having a brain so swarming with interesting suggestions and ideas and self-distrust.