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The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.
Ted Hughes
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Poetry emerges from deep emotional pain, and poets seek to reconcile this pain with their experiences in the world.

This quote by Ted Hughes reflects the essence of poetry as a medium that expresses the profound emotional struggles encountered in life. It suggests that the core of poetry is often rooted in personal suffering, and the role of the poet is to convey and transform that anguish into a form that can resonate with others, ultimately seeking harmony between the internal experience of pain and the external world.

Themes

PoetryPainExpressionEmotionArt

In practice

Example use cases

In a literary discussion about the emotional depths of poetry.

More from Ted Hughes

...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.
Ted HughesRead
Nobody wanted your dance, Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering Drowning life and your effort to save yourself, Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil, Looking for something to give.
Ted HughesRead
Haven’t you heard of the music of the spheres?” asked the dragon. “It’s the music that space makes to itself. All the spirits inside all the stars are singing. I’m a star spirit. I sing too. The music of the spheres is what makes space so peaceful.
Ted HughesRead
You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can somehow sacrifice certain things more easily, and you have a more tolerant view of things like possessiveness (your own) and a broader acceptance of the pains and the losses.
Ted HughesRead
And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze_x000D_ _x000D_ About a star of deathless and painless peace_x000D_ _x000D_ But no astronomer can find where it is.
Ted HughesRead
The real mystery is this strange need. Why can't we just hide it and shut up? Why do we have to blab? Why do human beings need to confess?
Ted HughesRead

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