anniversary

the text of the poem is on page 291 of your books

some introductory thoughts on what the poem is about

• This is a moving and complex poem written in memory of Ted Hughes's mother Edith and her sister Miriam.  Edith Hughes died on 13th May 1969.  Hughes was not with his mother when she passed on, but around the time she died, in the middle of the night, he sensed what he called an 'awful horror'.  During the next morning, his sister Olwen phoned with the news of his mother's death.  This special experience was typical of Hughes, and perhaps gives us a key to the kind of thoughts and feelings which are explored in this poem.

• At the start of the poem, Hughes states that he sees both his mother Edith and her sister Miriam each year on the May anniversary of his mother's death.  Edith appears in 'feathers of flame', the traditional guise of angels (supernatural 'messengers of God' which feature in Christianity, typically depicted as human-like spiritual beings with bird-like wings).

• There is a focus on highly intuitive topics in this poem, the kind of thing which fascinated Hughes throughout his life.  Edith Hughes was a woman of visions and premonitions.  It was said that she was 'visited' by her deceased sister Miriam (who had died of pneumonia as an 18-year-old, in 1915) two days before any family member died.  Ted Hughes wrote about his mother's intuitive powers in a short story called The Deadfall.  The poet Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes's first wife, also referenced Edith Hughes and her special powers in her short story All the Dead Dears.  Clearly the story of Edith and her special powers was an important part of the Hughes family mythology.

• Hughes writes that in his vision of them, the two sisters are now as tall as each other.  They are united in Hughes's imagination in an afterlife which is a kind of 'perpetual Sunday morning'.  Hughes focuses not on the Christian religious observation of the Sunday services which his mother and her sister attended as teenagers, but instead on the idea of the two women united in death and 'listening to the larks / Ringing in their orbits'.  Larks are small birds which live on the moorland, and they typically fly upwards, singing an intense and beautiful song as they ascend.

• Hughes doesn't stay long with the world of the birds, as he moves his focus to more immense, cosmic matters ('the work of the cosmos'), and talks about various massive and important processes ('creation and destruction of matter'), a 'work' which 'shudders and flairs' like the 'Northern Lights in their feathers'.  These are extraordinary images, based on a recollection of the angel-like feathers with which both the sisters are endowed in his vision, but referencing the awe-inspiring beauty of the Northern Lights flashing as it were around the hat feathers.

• Hughes sets out some complex thoughts about his life in relation to his mother's: 'My mother is telling Miriam / About her life, which was mine'.  Hughes's view of his own existence is intrinsic to his understanding of his mother's life, now over, and this may make readers think about the profound link between mothers and their children, as well as the closeness of siblings.

• Interestingly, with the section starting 'Her voice comes, piping, / Down a deep gorge of woodland echoes', Hughes references a poem by the visionary English poet William Blake.  Do check out the Blake poem here - you can explore the subtle ways which Hughes alludes to it, and perhaps in particular the idea of innocence which seems to characterise, in part, Hughes's vision of his mother.

• Hughes then has his mother speak, talking about some key moments from the childhood of her son: being rescued from falling into a reservoir, and being brought a new pen.  Things then become more opaque and dream-like: the mother references the 'mass weddings' of her two sons.  The phrase 'mass weddings' is a difficult one, but here it seems to refer to the weddings of Ted Hughes to his first and second wives, and the wedding of his brother Gerald.  Edith Hughes had not been able to attend any of these occasions ('where I was not once a guest').

• The narrative resumes with the figure of Edith 'scattering the red coals'.  The poem seems to reference some sort of rescue.  Miriam, meanwhile, is impressed by all she sees: 'Madonna-like with pure wonder', hearing about 'all she missed' (as she died young, and so was never able to meet her nephews (Ted Hughes and his older brother Gerald) or her niece (Ted Hughes's sister Olwen)).

• Edith shows her sister 'the rosary prayers of unending worry' - this is an image from traditional, Catholic, Christianity.  A rosary is a chain of beads, used by the faithful to count their prayers - thus it's a symbol of faith, but here the faith is not Catholic Christianity, but the devotion of a mother for her children.  Miriam looks on, like the Madonna, the ultimate symbol of Divine motherhood in the Catholic tradition.  

• Hughes imagines his mother showing his sister a wardrobe of clothes and shoes from her lifetime, but stresses that much of his mother's life was spent looking out of the window onto the high slopes around her house (perhaps Hughes is imagining the house to which the family moved on their return to the Calder Valley after their time in South Yorkshire).  Looking at the horizon enabled her to connect to her children, particularly, perhaps, to her sons, who during adulthood were seldom actually with her.  She seems to have drawn comfort from 'knowing they were somewhere', and this is a comfort which continues: 'It still is. Look'.

• The speaker then presents the two sisters side by side, pausing 'on the brink / Of the starry dew' - an image linked both to the earth and the cosmos.  Hughes describes his mother's 'exotic' hair and skin ('other worldly' links also to the idea of being an angel), beside Miriam who is 'now sheer flame'.  They seem powerfully alive to the speaker, with throbbing feathers, 'iridescent' (rainbow-coloured, or glittering with colours changing).  

• An extraordinary idea follows: as if the mother is holding her face 'into the skyline wind' - some kind of connection is suggested between the mother and the primeval force of the wind in its context of the sky.

• The next idea is more opaque: 'she is using me to tune finer / Her weeping love for my brother, through mine' - somehow the poet's connection to his brother is a channel for the love of the mother.  The poet states that this is similar to when he returned to his mother 'over fields and woods' (natural territory Hughes seems to associate with her), finding her weeping for the absent brother, 'able to think me him'.

• Hughes draws together images from the cosmos, traditional Christian religion, nature and West Yorkshire in a poem which combines some traditional ideas about the afterlife and motherhood, with some of Hughes's more distinctive ideas about ways in which the spirits of loved ones live on in the imagination of those still alive.  He was clearly fascinated by the idea of his mother's visions and supernatural gifts, alongside the theme of sibling relationships (Hughes's brother Gerald outlived him, and in 2012 published a memoir entitled Ted and I).

some questions to consider

• How does the free form of this poem contribute to its overall effect?  Clue - does the freedom suggest to you the spontanaity of the experiences and thoughts which Hughes presents?

• What does Hughes describe as the prompt to his yearly vision of his deceased mother and sister?

• How does Hughes's often simple tone (e.g. 'and there they are') contrast with the elaborate vision with its changes?  What's the effect of the simple language?

• Pick out the verbs towards the end of the first section: 'pulses' and 'flares', 'shudders' and 'fades' - what's the collective effect of this description on your imagination?  (If you haven't heard of the Northern Lights before, click on the link above to compare some photos with Hughes's evocation in the poem.)

• Hughes uses the present tense in this poem to give a sense of immediacy to his vision; what's the effect of his use of the present continuous (e.g. 'My mother is telling', 'she is scattering')?  Why does Hughes alternate between the present tense and the present continuous?

• In what way could the mother's life have been the same as the speaker's?  ('My mother is telling Miriam / About her life, which was mine')

• Why might the mother have laid the 'new pen' on 'the altar' - what sort of altar does this phrase suggest to you?  Why would the pen have to be 'offered up' or sacrificed?

• Hughes married twice, Gerald once, yet the speaker here refers to 'mass marriages' - why might this be?

• Why do you think the mother's life might have been marked by 'unending worry'?

• Hughes concentrates on describing his vision of mother and aunt, but there is less direct reference to how he as speaker is feeling in response to what he sees.  Why might this be?  And what's the effect of this on your imagination?

• Explore the ways in which Hughes presents the two women's appearance: what's the cumulative effect of this on your imagination?  Does either woman remind you of other figures in your imagination or experience?

• How do you react to the complex idea of the mother's face 'glistening / As if she held it into the skyline wind / Looking towards me'?  What do you imagine at this point?

• And what do you understand the following phrase ('I do this for her') to mean?  

• What do you feel about Hughes's references to his brother in this final part of the poem?  What sort of feelings might the references suggest?

• Why might the mother have drawn comfort from one of her children whilst weeping for the absent one?

some creative writing to help you understand the poem more deeply

• Why not try writing about a person who means a lot to you?  You could think about doing so in a free poetic form, as in this poem, or you could try a stricter structure.  If the person you are writing about is no longer alive, you could think about which memories of that person are the most vivid and precious and work on presenting those in your poem.

Poems on related subjects by Ted Hughes

Memory on p. 48 of your books.

some other lovely poems in English about memories of people much missed, the power of birdsong, and related topics

Sonnet 23 * by John Milton

Ode to a Nightingale * by John Keats

The Voice * by Thomas Hardy

photo

Woodland near Hardcastle Crags, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, England - photo by James Harding.

Ted Hughes loved this location ('the gorge of woodland echoes') and often associated it with his mother and his memory of her.