WIND

the text of the poem is on page 14 of your books

recording of Ted Hughes reading the poem *

some introductory thoughts on what the poem is about

• This is a wonderfully vivid poem in which the speaker recalls the power of the wind raging outside the house where he lives.

• The poem starts with the present perfect tense, establishing clearly that the speaker is talking about something which is still going on - and notice how the tense changes to the present tense at the word 'now' in the penultimate (next-to-last) stanza.  This use of the present tense establishes a sense of someone reporting something going on at the present moment - a bit like writing a message or talking on the phone.  This all adds to the sense of something immediate - the power of the wind and the speaker's reaction to it.

• Notice the vivid vocabulary and the verbs which establish the sense of the storm's massive, noisy power: 'crashing', 'booming', 'stampeding', 'floundering', 'blinding'.  Notice that some of these verbs belong to things which would normally be still: 'woods', 'hills' - the wind's movement brings other things into a kind of cacophonous, manic life.

• The second stanza is difficult, as it presents the changes which the orange sky of a stormy morning brings to familiar items from the landscape.  It's as if the light of the morning is some sort of cutting blade, 'flexing like the lens of a mad eye' - notice this very unsettling image, very characteristic of Hughes's early poetry.

• The speaker talks about himself in the third stanza, recalling a frightening walk along the side of the house and up to the 'coal-house' (what is that in 1950s West Yorkshire?) to look at what the wind was doing.

• The wind is so strong that it assaults the speaker's eyeballs (note connection with the 'mad eye' of stanza 2) - 'denting the balls of my eyes' - can you imagine a more vivid description of how the wind assaults the humans in its path?  

• Hughes continues to reach for extraordinary and memorable ways of describing the storm.  At one level this is a wonderful example of the young Hughes showing off what he can do with the English language; at another level, he's emphasising just what a distorting force the wind can exert.  

• Notice the two birds Hughes brings into this poem, the magpie and the black-backed seagull (a familiar inland bird in England, where it has adapted to life far distant from the sea) - the magpie is 'flung' by the wind; the seagull is 'bent' by it.  The seagull links back to and emphasises the idea of the house in the storm as a boat at sea (first stanza).

• It's not clear who shares the house with the speaker, but there's a clear sense of 'we' in the penultimate stanza - at least two people, perhaps a whole family, are confined to home and sitting out the storm, unable to concentrate on anything, not even on each other, as the storm dominates their consciousness.

• Somehow, the wind shakes the very foundations of the house - interestingly, given his love of nature, Hughes refers to the house having 'roots', as though it's some sort of tree (trees, of course, bend and sway in the wind).  Hughes also references the windows (always loose and creaking in English houses of this time and location), and the 'stones' - these are the stones of the house (see picture above), common in this area (rather than brick in lowland England), and often found, bare, inside the houses too, in fireplaces and kitchens.

• One critic * (Heather Clark) feels that Hughes represents nature, as experienced through the wind, as 'a cold, powerful, amoral force' - what do you think?

• Notice the clear, linear sequence of the poem, moving from 'all night' (stanza 1), through to the point when 'day rose' (stanza 2), and then 'noon' (stanza 3), and so on, to 'now' (stanza 5) when the storm continues to rage.

some questions to consider

• What do you think about this poem?  What strikes you as the most interesting and unusual feature of it?  

• What do you discover about the speaker in this poem?  Does he(?) recall what you know of Hughes, or do you imagine someone else, and if so, why?

• How do you think you would respond from the safety of home to a storm raging outside?  How might it feel to be at sea, for example?

• What is the best bit of description from the poem, in your opinion?  Explore the reason for your choice?

• Why do you think Ted Hughes was attracted to the idea of writing about a storm?

• Which of the poems listed below do you like best?  Which of these poems is the most dissimilar to the Hughes poem, and why?

• If your mother-tongue is not English, look up some poems on this topic in your home language - how similar to Hughes's poem are they?  And how different?

some creative writing to help you understand the poem more deeply

• Why not try writing your own poem describing a storm or a strong wind - would you choose a similar structure to Hughes's poem (short stanzas; logical time-sequence), or would you go for something different, and a bit freer in its approach?  Why do you think Hughes opted for such a conventional structure?

some other lovely poems in English about winds and storms

• Ode to the West Wind * by Percy Bysshe Shelley

• There came a Wind like a Bugle * by Emily Dickinson

• Storm Fear * by Robert Frost

• The Hurricane * by William Cullen Bryant

• Storm Awst * by Gillian Clarke

An excellent podcast discussion * of the poem by staff at Bristol Grammar School.

photo

Houses in the hilltop village of Heptonstall, Yorkshire, England - photo by James Harding.

Hughes lived near Heptonstall as an adult, and his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath, is buried in the village churchyard.