Ted Hughes: Urn Burial

Length / Form 12 lines, 3 quatrains with occasional half rhymes.

Allusion to Classical figure Caesar: ‘Caesar no ghost but his passion.’

Comment This poem is from Hughes’s second collection of poems, Lupercal.  Taking its name from the Lupercalia fertility festival of ancient Rome, Hughes laces his poems with images and symbols associated with the festival to the effect that the poems read like a series of incantations in an attempt to reinvigorate his writing.

Further Reading Stuart Hirschberg. Myth in the Poetry of Ted Hughes,. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981.