Tag Archives: Beowulf

Ted Hughes, Alliteration, and Old English

The first poem we read in class is by Ted Hughes. I would simply like to add a few things about what I have learned from Ted Hughes.  When I was young he was one of the great rebel poets–kind of an outsider on the inside of the poetry establishment.  His book Crow was all the rage.  What I learned from Hughes back then was that there was a real place in poetry for the “ugly sounds” in English (my phrase).  Reading Shakespeare and Wordsworth and such, I thought poetry had to be beautiful–L’s and O’s  and U’s and V’s and soft S’s.  Hughes taught me that K’s and short A’s and P’s and G’s and J’s also had their places and effects. Continue reading