Wind

"Why can't they just call a spade a spade?" - "they" being poets. A school friend said this to me after an English lesson one day and I've heard variations on the same theme many times since, mostly when teaching poetry to teenagers.

It's hard to understand why someone doesn't like the same things you do, especially when you really like them. A music lover must find it equally mystifying when someone writes off a complete genre, such as classical or jazz, as doing nothing for them.

When it comes to poetry, I've usually resorted to responding to comments like my school chum's by saying that poetic 'devices' such as imagery tend to convey a lot more than plain language. They also do this very beautifully and succinctly. Thereafter, more arguments often begin: "You've just told us what the poem means in a straightforward way. Why couldn't the poet do that?"

All in all, it sometimes seems a lot of people would say poetry is ... yes, wind.

When teaching, Ted Hughes' Wind is one of the poems I often use to try and explain different types of imagery and show what it can achieve. It and all the vagaries of teaching poetry came to mind today because, well, it's very windy.

The blossom of a week or so past has all but disappeared,  not through cold temperatures, as I feared it might, but because it has been blown away.

Hughes' poem is packed with imagery but it all works to create a very real sense of how powerful nature and the elements are, and how defenceless we are against them. I think it's better Hughes wrote the poem than said, 'When it's very windy it makes me feel really small'. But then again, I like poetry.

I was going to reproduce the poem in full here but it seems you can't because of copyright laws. Up to 25% is legal, so here's the first stanza.

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night,

The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,

Winds stampeding the fields under the window

Floundering black astride and blinding wet

- Ted Hughes

The complete poem is available in Collected Poems of Ted Hughes, edited by Paul Keegan, and in the 9th edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature.