Ted Hughes, a major poet of the second half of the twentieth century, was also a significant author of children's literature, short stories, plays, and a versatile translator of classic and modern poets and playwrights. Hughes's oeuvre suggests enormous energy, a prodigious, wide-ranging intelligence, a relatively consistent world view, and a highly complex nature, far from simple to define. His poetry, in the broadest sense, encompasses poems of nature, of precise observation, intensity, and, particularly in the early volumes, a fierce, seemingly undiluted power; and poems structured loosely on a framework of mythology, legends, and/or folk tales, shamanism, and imaginative blending of mythic and contemporary references. And Hughes's unique poetic voice, and extensive experiments with language, a significant key to understanding his poetry, varies considerably from the concentrated spareness of some of the Lupercal...
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Citation: Bere, Carol. "Ted Hughes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 October 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5137, accessed 08 December 2025.]
