“Crow” by Ted Hughes, From the Life and Songs of the Crow

“Crow” by Ted Hughes (1970) – 89 pages

Crow Blacker Than Ever              

By Ted Hughes

When God, disgusted with man,
Turned towards heaven,
And man, disgusted with God,
Turned towards Eve,
Things looked like falling apart.

But Crow Crow
Crow nailed them together,
Nailing heaven and earth together-

So man cried, but with God’s voice.
And God bled, but with man’s blood.

Then heaven and earth creaked at the joint
Which became gangrenous and stank-
A horror beyond redemption.

The agony did not diminish.

Man could not be man nor God God.

The agony

Grew.

Crow

Grinned

Crying: “This is my Creation,” Flying the black flag of himself.

 The poems in “Crow” contain some of the harshest, blackest, bleakest images ever put into poems.  Ted Hughes wrote most of the poems between the time his first wife poet Sylvia Plath committed suicide by putting her head in the oven in 1963 and the time his lover Assia Wevill  committed suicide the same way in 1969 taking her and Ted’s four year old daughter Shura with her.  Life isn’t always beautiful.  “Crow” is dedicated to Assia and Shura.

The poem “Crow Blacker than Ever” is by far the most accessible poem in “Crow” and is justly famous.  However there are other great lines in these poems which the reader must look carefully for and study to appreciate.  I liked the following lines.

Crow realized God loved him-
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved.
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.

Even before I read “Crow”, Ted Hughes was one of my favorite poets due to his book of poems “Birthday Letters” (1998) which was his most accessible and explicit response to the suicide of Syliva Plath as well as his translations of “The Tales of Ovid”, “The Orestiea” by Aeschylus, “Phedra” by Jean Racine, and “Alcestis” by Euripedes.   I put Hughes’ translations in the same league as those by Anne Carson and Seamus Heaney which is high praise indeed.