Ted Hughes's "The Evolution of 'Sheep in Fog'" -- the onlie begetter

'I'll try to send you something you may be able to use.' This throw-away remark by Ted concluded a discussion I had opened about poetical drafts during one of our summer afternoon drives drifting around Devon lanes. I had hoped at most for a few scraps that I might use in a lecture I was preparing for the forthcoming book collectors' weekend at Dove Cottage. Instead Ted highjacked the whole idea, made it entirely his own, and in less than a week produced this major, sparklingly written, critical essay, leaving me in (I must admit) the not unenviable role of attendant lord at the conception of so remarkable a tour de force.Ted generously allowed me later to become the privileged custodian of all the manuscripts of the poem which he has shown in this essay to be the key witness of the transition in mood and spirit from the Ariel poems to the extraordinary poetic outburst of the last thirteen days of Sylvia Plath's life, and also of the drafts of his own essay about it.

His essay on 'Sheep in Fog' is one of the best analyses of the genesis and evolution of a poem. His own life as a poet, coupled with his intimate appreciation of Sylvia's work, as her mentor and monitor, and the survival of all the manuscripts, each dated, has enabled him to retrace the poem both in terms of its sources and its flowering in a way that, to my knowledge, is unequalled.

It is one of the best pieces he has ever written on Sylvia's work and genius, partly because of the nature of the material and the manuscripts, but also because it is so concentratedly about one poem and his treatment therefore moves from the particular to the general, a route often more telling than that from the general to the particular.

It is undoubtedly the best commentary on the nature and significance of poetical drafts. Here, as someone who has worked on and studied manuscripts for their own sake over a period of 35 years, I can perhaps speak with more authority than on the other aspects that I indicate in this note. No one else has written so eloquently or so perceptively on the importance of drafts and why rather than being discarded they command respect as more than the 'incidental adjunct to the poem' -- indeed 'they are a complementary revelation, and a log-book of its real meanings.' In the case of 'Sheep in Fog' the drafts 'have revealed the nature and scope of the psychological crisis that gives the poem its weird life, sonority, its power to affect us. In other words, they are, as the final poem is not, an open window into the poet's motivation and struggle at a moment of decisive psychological change.'

Ted's essay is, moreover, one of the most penetrating exposures of the poetic impulse and the processes by which poems come or are dragged into being, common to the experience, he generously suggests, of all poets, at various times. Lastly, the essay is a wonderful demonstration of Ted's own genius and vision, the subtlety of his responses, the depth of his understanding, the generosity of his sympathies and of the thrill and powerful richness of his prose.

The best thing that has ever happened to me is Ted and Carol's love -- they have enhanced my life immeasurably and have redefined for me the concept of friendship in terms of themselves.

Roy Davids (published in The Epic Poise, 1999)