[671] Lineage

Guest poem sent in by Pavithra Krishnan <pavikaye@>

In the beginning was Scream
Who begat Blood
Who begat Eye
Who begat Fear
Who begat Wing
Who begat Bone
Who begat Granite
Who begat Violet
Who begat Guitar
Who begat Sweat
Who begat Adam
Who begat Mary
Who begat God
Who begat Nothing
Who begat Never
Never Never Never

Who begat Crow

Screaming for Blood
Grubs, crusts

Anything

Trembling featherless elbows in the nest's filth

 	-- Ted Hughes

Hughes' poetry is not kind.

It's mean.

There is something about his style that makes his words read like Truth.
A hard, uncompromising purity that commands admiration, awe.

Pang-less, Hughes rewrites the story of Creation here, he evolves a world of
horror and a fallible God and...Crow. There's a lot of energy in the universe
he sets up, and a lot of violence. Like much of Hughes' poetry this one too
startles. Startles with its strangeness of idea (someday I will understand the
bit about the Violet who begat Guitar), its cataract force, its clean
brilliance.

Crow is an irresistible character. And in introducing him I love how Hughes
shows him to be demanding, obnoxious and bloodthirsty - and yet, with the
'trembling featherless elbows' - breathtakingly vulnerable.

In 'From the Life and Songs of Crow'(from where this poem was taken)Hughes
adopts the voice of folk-myth to tell the adventures of a creature --
part-human,part-greek hero, part-wonderful beast --  called Crow.

'Lineage' is only the beginning.

Pavithra

Links:

poem #98 has biographical information and some further links.

And, of course, all the Hughes poems run on Minstrels can be found at
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet.html