Wind Analysis

Technically, this poem is written in free verse, but before you kick up your heels and throw caution to the wind (see what we did there?), you should know that this is free verse that feels a lot l...

Our speaker is… well, some dude. Actually, it's probably Ted Hughes himself. Technically, he doesn't say, "Hi—I'm Ted Hughes" (or even that he's male), and it's never a good idea to mix-up your...

From the poem, we're able to gather that the landscape includes the windswept woods and hills around an isolated country house. Most likely, Hughes was inspired by his surroundings in Yorkshire far...

Sure, Hughes totally avoids rhyme in "Wind"—but he does let a few other sonic effects creep in. For instance, he uses assonance—matching up the long I sounds in "astride" and "blinding." Paired...

Appropriately, this poem about wind is entitled… let's see… "Wind"—no real mystery there. The title also helps define the poem as a nature poem, focused on examining one specific object—if...

Throughout his career, Ted Hughes was known for writing poems that emphasized the violence of the natural world. "Wind" definitely doesn't have the graphic violence of some of them, but it does tak...

Once you get what "Wind" is about—namely, the wind—it's not too hard to figure out what's going on. The wind is smashing stuff, knocking birds around, threatening to break a window, etc. You kn...

Ted Hughes was married to Sylvia Plath, the famous American poet and author of The Bell Jar. She committed suicide in 1963. (Source.)Ted Hughes dealt with extreme tragedy: both Sylvia Plath and Hug...

There's no sex in this poem. It's got destruction in it—but who cares? Since when has that ever made anyone rate anything PG or up? No one's stabbing anyone with switchblades or eating people's b...

Rilke, "Sonnet to Orpheus XIII" (17): In one of his most famous poems from The Sonnet to Orpheus, Rainer Maria Rilke writes, "be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang." Could this have inf...