Ted Hughes: Dick Straightup

Length / Form 59 lines, 8 stanzas

Allusion to Classical figure Achilles; Cuchulain

Comment This poem is from Hughes’s second collection of poem 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.

Hughes presents an affectionate portrait of a figure from his native Calder Valley in West Yorkshire. The playful likening to mythological figures enhances his subject’s standing, but also makes comic bathos out of him. One of a number of poetic portraits in Lupercal.

Further Reading

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