Department of English
Akawe Torkula Polytechnic (ATP) Makurdi.
POST-MODERNISM AND TED HUGHES’ ‘CROW: FROM THE LIFE AND SONG OF THE CROW
’MODENISM AND POST MODERNISM
Modernism as a literary movement particularly as it relates to poetry is characterized by a radical break from traditional poetry. Traditional, in the sense of poetry movements of old; from classical, to neo-classical, romantic and others in the line. Championed by the famous Anglo-American poet, Thomas Sterns Eliot more popularly known as T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), the movement relies extensively on the use of symbolism, irony, and on the juxtaposition of images to create meaning.
Eliot’s first volume of poetry entitled Prefrock and other Observation (1912), had a profound revolutionary effect on the genre. It brought into poetry what has now become known as modernism in the like manner that Coleridge and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798) ushered romanticism into poetry during the 18th century.
Ten years later, T.S. Eliot published another volume of poetry The Wasteland (1922), which completely established modernism as a new movement in poetry. In this extremely complex work, the poet adopts a variety of rhymes, images, illusions, ideas and styles to evoke the ‘isolation, disillusionment and despair of humanity,’ including every other chaos that is associated with modern life.
If you compare poems written by Victorian poets and those by T.S. Eliot, and other early 20th century poets, you will notice the obvious differences. The later poems, tends to be written in informal language, with irregular patterns of rhyme and rhythm, and with idealistic or dignified subjects that are ordinary and sometimes unpleasant. You also find unusual and complex images and illusions; patterns of imagery that implies meaning rather than state it. These later poems are largely what have now become popular as modernism in poetry.
Post modernism on the other hand may be said to be the extension of modernism in itself. It is a further reaction to various aspects of humanity’s chaos which is now characteristic of our contemporary world. Apart from poetry, post modernism is also used as a form of expression in other art forms including music, cinema painting, sculptures etc.
In poetry, it features modernist themes and takes them to higher levels. Key indicators of post modernism in poetry includes: absence of a single dominant style, imagery is mixed with narrative, precise observation, multiple stories, alteration in point of view, digression, lack of coherence, unexpected jumps, disjunctive thinking, apprehension of the invisible world, fragmentation etc.
Post modernism as a departure from regular modernism began in the 1950s and gained popularity in the 1960s. After the horror of the 1st and 2nd world wars which brought about numerous social changes in our present world, writers have responded in varying ways to the said changes: During the 1950s, a group of young English poets called ‘’ the movement’’ including Ted Hughes, Thomas Gunn, Elizabeth Jennings and Philip Larkin achieved recognition by rejecting complex styles and producing clear rational understated poetry on subjects drawn from everyday experience. Post modernism had begun in earnest and was to be popularized in the 1960s throughout the modern world
CHARACTERISTICS OF POST MODERN POETRY
1 Irony, playfulness, black humour- such serious subjects as war, conspiracy, death, etc. are treated like jokes using humour and irony.
2 Pasticle: This is a combination of a ‘posted’ element of previous genres and other styles of literature
in order to create a new narrative voice or to make a comment on their contemporaries.
3 Inter-textuality: This is the acknowledgement of previous literary works that is of literature that was created in early times.
4 Meta-fiction: It means writing about writings; the reader is made aware of its fictionality.
5 Historiographicmetafiction: these are works that fictionalize actual historical events and characters.
6 Temporal distortion: The use of non-linear time line such as, jumping back or forward in historical reference. Imagine, Abraham Lincoln for e.g., making a phone call in a work whereas telephones did not exist in his days.
7 Paranoia: The belief and assumption that modern society cannot be explained; thus connections and controlling influences and chaos on society would be frightening and this lends a sense of paranoia to many post-modern works.
8 Maximalism: These are over lengthy and emotionally disconnected works.
9 Faction: Is similar to historiographicmetafiction as subjects are based on actual events but authors blur the line between fact and fiction such that it is impossible to distinguish.
10 Magical realism: The introduction of fantastic or impossible elements into a narrative i.e. dreams taking place during normal life; return of a previously deceased character; extremely complicated plot; myths and fairy tales becoming part of narrative etc.
11 Participation: Attempt to make a reader part of the narrative i.e. asking the reader questions including, unwritten parts of a work expected to be completed by the reader or allowing the reader to make decisions in the course of the narrative.
TED HUGHES (1930-1998)
Edward James Hughes more popularity known as Ted Hughes was a great English writer of our present contemporary world. He grew up in Yorkshire, England and began writing poetry at an early age of 15. After national service in the Royal Air force, Hughes went to Cambridge University where he studied English and then Anthropology and Archaeology.
In 1956, he met and married the American poet, Sylvia Plath, and for two years, the couple lived in the United States where Hughes taught at the University of Massachusetts. Although Hughes is more renounced as a poet, his vast literary endeavour covers all other genres of literature including children’s poetry, children’s stories, short stories, prose (fiction and non-fiction), plays, essays translations etc. Critics’ frequently rank him as one of the 20th century’s greatest writer. In poetry, Hughes is acknowledged as being among the two greatest poets of his generation along with Philip Larkin. For Hughes, this includes poetry for both children and adults.
In 1984, Hughes was appointed poet laureate of the United Kingdom, a position he held until his death in 1998.
POETRY THEMES
Hughes earlier poetry themes were based on an interest in nature i.e. the innocent savagery of animal life. The beauty and violence of the natural world frequently served as a metaphor for his views of life. Animal struggle for survival in the wild represents the same manner that humans strive for ascendancy and succession in society. This simple approach to nature would by the 1970s take Hughes a drastically new perspective, where the poet would now see it as a major force shaping mankind and creation in general.
HUGHES AS A POST-MODERNIST POET
Ted Hughes features prominently among the four young English poets of the 1950s who rejected complex styles to produce clear rational poetry drawn on every day human experience. Although his early poetry featured certain elements of the romantics that is, interest in nature, the style in itself is modernist without any doubt.
Most compelling however is Hughes later life poetry especially after he had been consumed by very terrible experiences. As a youth, he witnessed the horrors of the 2nd world war, followed by the good, the bad and the ugly often brought about by emerging technology, and also other numerous encumbrance of contemporary life. But personal pains, tragedies and the unfortunate controversies that surrounded his entire life may also have been the factor that inspired Hughes later poetry especially of the 1970s.
In 1963, Sylvia Plath, Hughes American born wife (also a poet) committed suicide barely 7 years after their marriage. She had earlier accused him (Hughes) of having extra-marital affairs with another woman as a result of which she became heavily depressed and later took her life. Although they had separated 2 years earlier for this same reason, the horrific incidence haunted Hughes for most of his life. Their bounds as husband and wife, fellow poet and an intellectual partner could hardly be separated. Worst still was a similar incidence six years later (1969). Asia Wevil, the woman for whom Hughes had left Sylvia Plath also committed suicide. As if her dastard act was not tragic enough, Wevil first murdered Shura, Hughes daughter by her before killing herself.
Over time, public opinion remained against Hughes especially for allegedly causing the death of his American born wife, Sylvia Plath. On several occasions, he was rejected publicly concerning the matter. Twice, Plath’s tombstone bearing Hughes name as husband was vandalized by activists who blamed Hughes for her death. So, the personal pains disillusionment and many other factors might be possible reasons for Hughes dramatic change in his poetic themes, from the simple subject of nature and animal life to the complex phenomenon of mythology, violence, creation, life, man and God as evocated in the 1970 volume ‘’Crow’’ . The poems i.e. ‘’Crow’’ series are considered as the most jarringly innovative poems ever written in Britain since World War II
‘’CROW, FROM THE LIFE AND SONG OF THE CROW’’
A jarringly thought provoking anthology of poetry published by Ted Hughes In 1970 typically representing the poets poetry of later life; it represents a complete turnaround from his early poetry both in subject matter and in themes. Here the poet relies on the bard or bardic tradition in Britain (English bards), and is also influenced by modernist and the ecological viewpoint. In this collection, he reworks classical and archetypal myths with the concept of the dark human subconscious, and a tendency towards misogyny and the Green Religion. Acclaimed as Hughes most significant work ’’Crow’’ has been widely praised even as critics are divided. The tone is a combination of apocalyptic, bitter, cynical and surreal view of the universe with the verse appearing simple and childlike, sometimes worrisome on the readers psyche, especially in a contemporary world dominated by religion and the belief in an all-powerful God.
HUGHES NEW MYTHOLOGY: ‘CROW’ POEMS
Ted Hughes regarded Christianity as a myth which at that time, he completely rejected. In the time he wrote the ‘Crow’ poems, he was widely acclaimed as an atheist, that is, a person who believes that God does not exist. Then, he had no use for the usual Christian concept, neither of the Almighty God nor in the existence of other gods. Those who believe in an almighty, benevolent and ever present God will find Hughes theology in the period when he was writing the ’Crow’ poems confusing.
The poet’s religious realism during that period was based on the concept of a world as a power field (nature) of clustered and incarnate energies, impelled by the human will scarcely influenced by the intellect, hampered by disturbing moral and ethical ideas. This energy or vis-vitalis he felt had over time, poisoned and destroyed man, making the power field of the world both chaotic and unstructured. To Hughes, people who close themselves to those powers that create life are the living dead.
In the past, religion played the role of taming this energy and making it serviceable to man but it has presently failed. This huge task has now become poetry’s role. Poetry must hence create rituals that are analogous to religion in order to restore contact with archetypal powers of being. Poetry (Crow Poetry) is therefore man’s new religion. It teaches us to see the world as it truly is; ruled by opposing forces of light and darkness, power and helplessness, growth and decay, pain and suffering. All are sources of life whose goal from the very beginning being death. But continuously, it is born anew or begins again. Chaos is as much a part of life just as good and evil, light and darkness are. To Hughes, God is a mare absence and of only imaginative significance.
To this poet, if God is the alpha and omega as he claims to be (Gog), then he must be identical with horror, suffering and death. This is absurd as far as Hughes is concerned. If truly there is a God, the poet feels he must be explained in terms of `withdrawal` from the universe; a kind of absence. The poet then concludes – this world is evil and thus God does not exist. Rather it is a world of clustered and incarnate energies impelled by the human will, scarcely influenced by the human intelligence, hampered by disturbing moral and ethical ideas. It is a chaotic world without any meaning. To him, nature is what Christianity deems as the devil. Thus he conceives a mythology of his own in which crow becomes the antagonist of the imaginary God.
CROW: WHAT IS IT?
The crow from which Hughes’ 1970 volume of poetry derives its title is an imaginative creature which takes on mythical proportions. Crow or the raven according to this poet was the original heraldic emblem of England; the English only recently borrowed the lion from France. Thus for him, crow is Everyman as well as a clown; the inarticulate manner of mankind.
In the ‘Crow’ collection, we notice that each poem in the series forms and episode in crow’s life. The background story about crow as provided by Hughes at various readings is that God exhausted after having created the world, falls asleep and then has a nightmare. The nightmare looks at man, God’s finest creation and asks: ‘Is this the best you can do’? God challenges the nightmare to do better and the nightmare creates crow. In the ensuing story God attempts to civilize crow and teach him Christian morals and values. This results in a number of failures and misunderstandings which reveal Christianity as weak and powerless, and the Christian separation of the physical and the spiritual as absurd and harmful to both human and non-human nature. Instead of accepting a Christian world view, Crow gradually comes to realize that much more powerful than God is the natural world.
The Red Indians of North America also regarded the crow as an adversary of God much as in Ted Hughes poetry. At the beginning of the world, Hughes says crow was the only creature and the world was as black as himself. Crow is the invisible enemy of God, the archenemy who can only be put out of action for a time but will never be totally destroyed. Crow comes from nothingness, was not created and existed before creation took place. Thus he is at least in every bit as powerful and as influential as his play-fellow God. He plays a series of tricks on God as in the poem, ‘A Childish Prank’ where he is credited for inventing sexuality. In this poem (not selected for our study), Crow bites the worm which is God’s only son right through the middle. He stuffs the two ends into Adam and Eve respectively. Since that time, the head end has yearned for its tail half and longs to be re-united to it. In Hughes poetry, God recognizes in Crow, an antagonist who is his equal.
CENTRAL THEME OF CROW POEMS
The central theme of the Crow poems is the myth of creation. Hughes offers several versions, all of them being variations on the biblical account of the creation of the world and the fall of man. Some of the versions parody or burlesque the bible while others turn the story upsidedown. Basically Hughes conviction is that the world as it is now can by no means be the best of all possible worlds. To him, something must have gone wrong in the course of human evolution. This he says can be seen in the negation of the life-principle by Judea-Christian theology as strongly realized in puritanism.
As far as he is concerned, theology has grossly been corrupted or misrepresented. Corruption or sin did not come into the world through the fall of man as fabricated by Christian theology. Rather, the flow occurred in the course of human evolution. Thus, Hughes turns things upside-down as he re-writes the Genesis account of creation in his Crow poetry. In ‘’ Theology’’, it is not the serpent who tempted Eve to eat the tree of knowledge, Adam ate the fruit but this was no sin. Adam in turn was eaten by Eve; the serpent then ate Eve and in his ‘’great intestine’’, we are all still living today. Here we notice an undertone of Hughes dislike of women in the time he wrote the crow poems.
ANALYSIS: SOME OF THE SELECTED POEMS
APPLE TRAGEDY
The poem is an expression of Hughes attitude towards the Christian religion and its world view. The poem opens with a paradoxical reversal of the passage in Genesis:
So on the seventh day
The serpent rested.
In this context, it was not God who created the world but the serpent. Again, it is God himself who gives the forbidden fruit to Adam and Eve, though not as in the bible, in form of an apple. Instead he gives them a brew of hard cinder – the fluid product of the fruit.
Note also that that it is the serpent that first takes the drink of cinder, then Eve. The poet is saying that the mother of mankind was not seduced by the snake; it happened the other way round. Intoxicated by the cinder, she seduces the snake by opening her thighs…
And called to the cockeyed serpent
And gave him a wild time
Furthermore, it is not God but rather it is the serpent that prevents Adam from hanging himself. Nevertheless, the situation at the end of Apple Tragedy is a hopeless one – Adam is worse off than Eve. The relationship between man and woman has become a battle of the sexes. Adam will from now on, have a powerful antagonist who will always cross his endeavours. In future, he will always get the short end of the stick.
The poet implies in this poem that the world at the beginning was by no means as good as the Christian religion would have us to believe. The poet in re-writing the biblical story of Genesis makes rubbish of Christian theology. A series of questions are raised concerning the creation story in Genesis: Why is the story of man the central event of the story of paradise? Why is it so closely connected with the discovery of human sexuality? Why is human sexuality a negative factor in human existence? Why is the serpent an incarnation of the devil?
In the poem, God makes himself a nuisance. His contribution to the process of creation is confusion. The serpent is justified in regarding God as an interloper i.e. meddling with affairs which are not his concern when he is supposed to be resting on the seventh day. Ted Hughes has more sympathy for the serpent rather than a God who is always sleepy lying agape i.e. in stupid astonishment after the act of creation. He is likely to cause chaos rather than order.
The poem explores the popular themes of creation, disobedience, evil and sin, the fall of man, man’s guilt and man’s relationship with God and with nature. As in all Hughes poetry, the language is simple, tone is satiric and God is mocked for being weak, helpless and incapable of protecting his creation. The poet employs the massive use of irony, symbols such as the apple, serpent as phallic symbol associated with sexual temptation. He also uses several other devices to explore his themes.
CROW’S THEOLOGY
Theology is the study of God or a god or gods, and the truthfulness of religion in general. Christian theology is one major concern of Hughes in his Crow poetry. To him, Christian theology is a fabrication of the real facts concerning humanity, his evolution and development as well as the good, the bad and the ugly that befalls our physical world. Hughes poetry challenges the basic values and world views of Western (Christian) religious and scientific traditions, primarily exposing God as weak and illogical.
In this poem, ‘Crow’s Theology,’ Hughes renegotiates man’s relationship with nature; he recognizes the spiritual presence of nature and accepts the violence intrinsic or inseparable to the principles of evolution. That nature is sacred, inherently worthy and at the same time violent and ruthless.
Acting as a man, Crow creates a theology separate from Christian theology by pondering over the relationship between the Christian God and man, its principal tenet being love. God loves man and man exists as result of God’s love. So, the poem opens:
Crow realized God loved him –
Otherwise he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved
The facts of God’s love are proved because man actually exists and lives. Heartbeats prove live, but this realization leads Crow to more radical questions.
But what
Loved the stones and spoke stone?
They seemed to exist too –
Furthermore, Crow questions the ‘strange silence’ i.e. inaction of God after his ‘clamour of caw faded’, referring to human enhanced/natural disasters, afflictions etc. that befall people. But beside these, shot pellets that kill are also permitted by God. All these makes Crow to arrive at an unorthodox conclusion:
Crow realized there were two Gods –
One of the much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.
The ‘much bigger’ and more powerful God is nature. Unlike the disabled but caring Christian God, the bio centric deity or nature is mighty i.e. has ‘all the weapons’ and threatening ‘loving his enemies’. Nature does not care for humanity as different from stones lead or silence.
The poet explores a number of themes including weakness/silence of the Christian God, might of nature which Christians regard as the devil, love of God, theology as man’s invention etc. The technique is free verse, simplicity of language, rendered in 3rd person narrative form, and the use of rhetorical questions. Tone is a combination of mockery and show of confidence in the other god. There is a biblical allusion as of the love from God, symbols such as clamour of caws, silence of lead etc. are also employed as the poem abhors Christian teachings about love.
CROW BLACKER THAN EVER
The Crow mythology draws its inspiration partly from an Eskimo legend according to which: ‘…in the beginning, the raven was the only creature and the world was like him, black’. In creating his new mythology in ‘Crow’, Hughes has said that Crow was not created. That he existed long before creation took place, and was black like the world before God separated darkness from light. Hughes title to this poem has hence become quite obvious by the nature of the crow.
In the poem, Crow the trickster again continues to intervene and to ridicule the traditional theology that Christianity has over ages provided for its adherents. Here, the poem attempts to dismantle the idea that the patriarchal God – the Logos is in harmonious relationship with the world. The poem opens:
When God disgusted with man,
Turned towards heaven.
And man disgusted with God,
Turned towards Eve,
Things looked like falling apart
Then Crow as a trickster is described here in the 3rd person intervening in the feud between God and man right at the point of creation. Things i.e. the relationship between God and man falls apart but Crow intervenes by nailing the two together - heaven and earth. This did not join properly as nails can only provide an artificial joint. For this reason, the joint is continuously infectious; rotten and smelling.
Adam’s turning away from God to Eve is total chaos and disintegration in the phallic order of the world of Logos. The gap between the world of God and that of man cannot be reduced. But the Crow who is perhaps misguided tries to nail God and man together –
So man cried, but with God’s voice
And god bled but with man’s blood.
The result is but only chaos and disorder as ‘The agony did not diminish’. This is because man cannot be man and live in this world when his spirit strains to God where there is no death darkness suffering etc.; also because the spiritual standards set by God are too high for him. At the same time, God cannot be God as he must share the suffering of the world but rather continues to appear helpless to man’s world of disaster and chaos. Only Crow is whole but yet he cannot escape his own blackness which is a symbol of eternal chaos and darkness that hovers around the world and claims – ‘This is my creation’.
The important thematic issues raised in the poem are: Is our union with God artificial? Are our differences with God irreconcilable? For Hughes, Christianity is just another myth and this poem explores its inadequacy as well as the impossibility of man’s reconciliation with God.
The poem massively makes use of symbols – black, nailing, blood, bled, stank, gangrenous, black flag etc. the tone is satiric, sarcastic and bleak. There is use of personification - ‘…creaked at a joint’, metaphor – ‘black flag’ and other literary devices. The language is simple as in all Hughes poetry and there is notably the crucifixion undertone with regards to the role that Crow plays in the poem.
Through this and many other techniques, Hughes explores the above themes and concludes that Christianity is just another myth.
CROW’S FIRST LESSON
Throughout Hughes ‘Crow’, Christian religious concepts are similarly questioned and ridiculed. In ‘Crow’s First Lesson’, the poet repeats this - God tries to teach the bird the significant principle of love; the language of mercy, pity, peace and love.
‘Love’ said God ‘say love’
Crow fails dramatically and excessively; he retches, gags and produces first a shark and then, in quick succession, a ‘bluefly’, a ‘tsetse’, ‘a mosquito’ all disease transmitting insects. God makes a second attempt:
‘No, no,’ said God. ‘Now LOVE’
This too fails; Crow now, ‘convulsed . . .’ and the result that follows is ‘man’s bodiless prodigious head’ and finally ‘woman’s vulva.’
The poem is catastrophic failure for God; instead of redeeming Crow, he is reduced to tears and cursing as he tries to separate the various body parts that have immediately began fighting on the ground. Crow unreformed, flies ‘guiltily off’.
The poem negates the Christian principle of love and equality. Crow eats these creatures for its sustenance and would not mercilessly and brutally kill these creatures if it wasn’t for his food. But no reader either has pity on the creatures because of their disaster of transmitting diseases to humans. So, rather than love as preached by Christianity, food and pleasure remain the basic concerns of man – in other words, lust and sustenance. This has bled selfishness, arrogance, violence, unfairness as well as numerous unacceptable exploitation of sexual satisfaction.
In the poem, God is represented as a clown, helpless, confused and incapable of forcing his will on things. It is clear that he abhors what he sees but is incapable of stopping it. All he does is weep and curse.
The Christian concept of love is the principal theme of the poem and Hughes questions its validity. But the poet also explores other themes including violence, survival, lust and also, helplessness on the part of God. The language is simple and rendered in 3rd person narrative. The poet also uses symbols such as the ‘shark’, a violent and brutal sea creature, disease transmitting insects, woman’s ‘vulva’ the protesting eyes of the ‘prodigious’ human head. Other devices employed in the poem include metaphors and ironies. The tone is sarcastic and the poem ridicules and disputes the Christian concept of love, mercy, pity and peace.
CROWS ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE
In this poem, Crow gives a lesson of another reality of his life encounters. It is the story of a battle he has witnessed. In graphic details, Crow describes the terrible story of the battle; the horrific noise as recounted in the 1st stanza and the effect of war on man in the 2nd stanza. People ‘wept’ or ‘sat’ or ‘lay’ but it becomes clear in the 4th stanza that this battle will soon happen again.
It has become obvious that the most important subject of critique in Hughes’ Crow poems after Christianity is science and technology. Where Christianity allows people to hide behind a benevolent God, science and technology makes people slaves under their own inventions. It also leads to high atrocious acts of violence and devastates the environment. Hughes’ believes that the Christianity and the West is the direct product of science and technology.
In the poem, we witness the devastation that technology inflicts upon society. Soldiers assisted by new technological inventions kill each other with increasing effectiveness:
The cartridges were banging off, as planned.
The fingers were keeping things going
According to excitement and orders.
Here, Hughes questions the disintegration of Western metaphorical truth, not only through the images of war but also through his questioning of the concept of the omnipotent… Christian God. To the poet, life is a battlefield where only pain and sufferings i.e. ‘screams’ and ‘groans’ can be held.
The poem presents violence and bloodshed as ordinary happenings, with the aid of poetic images drawn from everyday life in a series of similes:
Bones were too like lath and twigs
Blood was like water
Cries were too like silence
The most terrible grimaces too like footprint in mud
etc., etc.
All these, the poet said, is the very reality of society in our Western world together with its civilization, and all its foundation is rooted in the Christian religion.
Reality was giving its lesson.
Its mishmash of scripture and physics.
We find in the poem, a depiction of the world as an extremely violent and apocalyptic place; a world of death and destruction that appears both shocking and surreal. The poem also abounds with images of bloodshed and savagery which in turn metaphorically highlights Hughes’ nihilistic vision or the belief that traditional morals, ideas, beliefs, etc. have no worth or value.
The tone of the poem is surreal, nihilistic and apocalyptic. Life itself becomes a source of fear and loss, leading only to death and destruction. Familiar images associated to day to day life such as water, matches, etc. are juxtaposed with suffering and violence to show how common chaos exists with man, and how God has remained silent. The language is simple and prosaic. Through the above and numerous other devices, Hughes challenges Christianity, along with science and technology for preluding the chaos and devastation of human society.
CONCLUSION
The visions of Ted Hughes may be gloomy, but he is far from being a nihilist. During the next few years, his darkness became lighter. In 1970, the blackness on Crow clung like a veil over his poetry. But Selected Poems (1982) concludes in a very optimistic way. He for instance conjures light and life in the poem ‘Fishing Salmon’:
So we stood, alive in the river of light
Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.
In Season Songs (1976) he calls the barley corn a sleeping beauty: ‘Her kingdom is still to come’. Together with the sun, the barley corn prays the Our Father and recites a psalm. Sometimes it even prays together with the moon. The barley corn is baked into bread and baked in the autumn and then eaten by men. In another poem The Seven Sorrows Autumn is described parallel to the sorrows of Mary. By his death in 1998 it is evident by the above that Ted Hughes may have shifted his world view to a near Christian perspective.
Notes compiled by: Hundu J.G Department of English, ATP, Makurdi
Tiv people are an ethno-linguistic group or ethnic nation in West Africa. They constitute approximately 2.5% of Nigeria's total population, and number over 6 million individuals throughout Nigeria and Cameroon.The Tiv are one of the largest ethnic group in Nigeria. Tiv language is spoken by about 6 million people in Nigeria, with a few speakers in Cameroon. 
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