" Unlike ethereal muses, Hughes' inspirational animals are earthy smelling like "The Thought Fox," or old and maggot-ridden scavengers like that of the Crow, providing jewels of inspiration and images of hideousness and rot. (208-220)
This muse-like relationship between poet and animals is not only true of poets who write, but even persons who are poetic in spirit like the young woman of "Macaw and Little Miss," enclosed in a cage "of wire ribs." (23) of "The Dove Breeder." "Love struck into his life Like a hawk into a dovecote," writes Hughes of a dove-breeder eaten alive by love, like a bird of prey eats a bird of peace. (26)
Thus, animals inspire humans to better conceptualize and philosophically understand their experience, like poets inspire humans, but a fixed interpretation of the animals in the real world eludes a final explanation, ultimately the reader only has his or her own thoughts, rather than the fox, crow, or the 'thing' itself. The animal helps the girl or the dove-breeder to understand his or her own heart, but the animal cannot be equated with the person. The poet and his various human creations may read themselves into nature, and see metaphorical parallels between themselves, birds, and forest-creatures, but this merely confirms the human's equally animal identity, not that the humans have the power to 'write' nature from the vantage point of an observer. Humans and animals are thus equal subject amongst the forest and trees of the natural world of foxes and birds.
Works Cited
Hughes, Ted. Collected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2003.
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