From Hawk To Wolf

I recently came across an old article on Ted Hughes in which the poet's work is described in terms of primitive energies, shamanism, spirit-journeys, and other related anthropological terms. I think that's what I would describe as 'literary primitivism' – the idea that we should look at poetry as something that can be trapped and described in terms of anthropological history. Robert Graves overdid it, and so do many others.

But that kind of jargon obscures the simple fact that poetry is just human language describing human feelings for other humans. Even if it is urban poetry or steampunk, it will come back to the naked eye, the naked heart, the sense of loss or of beauty or of exposure to the elements. The primitive can't be isolated by time ('it was long ago when we were living in caves') or space ('on a savage island far away') or both ('a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away'). It is in us, always, in the sense of it being the original material of the soul, the prima materia, the tissue of our basic needs and hopes and dreams.

When one reads a poem like Penelope Shuttle's "Three Lunulae, Truro Museum", one tends to think of something ancient, a hidden animistic or shamanistic past locked up and archived and put behind glass. But the female nature, the mysteries of beauty and of human touch across the years, these are always with us.

And here I sit, sometimes a hawk roosting, sometimes a wolf watching, sometimes even two ravens or a herd of goats – and yet, always human.