Cavebirds: The Scream and Hemingway

"... In 1966, [Hughes] wrote poems to accompany Leonard Baskin's illustrations of crows, which became the epic narrative The Life and Songs of the Crow, one of the works for which Hughes is best known.^[7]On 25 March 1969, six years after Plath's suicide by asphyxiation from a gas stove, Assia Wevill committed suicide in the same way. Wevill also killed her child, Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed Shura), the four-year-old daughter of Hughes, born on 3 March 1965. Their deaths led to claims that Hughes had been abusive to both Plath and Wevill.^[31][32] In shock, Hughes could not finish the Crow sequence, which remained unfinished until the work Cave Birds was published in 1975.^{[7]" 9}  (Wikipedia) 

 Dissecting Crow was always an uncomfortable experience, even without much of a background on the poems. While impersonal in subject, they have such a strong emotional reflex that it's difficult to really get through them without feeling extremely intrusive. I tried to write a generic blog post on one of the Crow poems- how my previous thoughts on "Examination at the Womb-Door" had completely ignored its title- but I just kept on being blocked by this fascination with the somethings bigger that had preoccupied me from doing much deep analysis. At the same time, I didn't want to get wrapped up in the personal, biographical side of the work. It didn't feel like it wanted me to. So instead, I distracted myself with a bit of research.

It had completely left my mind that Hughes's second partner had, also, killed herself. I didn't want to get involved in biography, especially involving a poet so impersonal in his work. But there it was, this inking fascination with what was going on with Crow. So instead, I started reading Cave Birds.

The first poem "The Scream" is a dream that turns into terror quickly. "Calves' heads dew-bristled with blood on counters/ Grinned like masks, and sun and moon danced" is more violent, even, than Hughes's usual verses and images. Is Cave Birds the result of the deaths that Hughes had to endure, hidden in metaphors of war? It's much too personal a question for me to feel comfortable addressing, but it lingers in my mind.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

The Scream

There was the sun on the wall - my childhood's
Nursery picture. And there was my gravestone
Which shared my dreams, and ate and drank with me happily.

All the day the hawk perfected its craftsmanship
And even through the night the miracle persisted.

Mountains lazed in their smoky camp.
Worms in the ground were doing a good job.

Flesh of bronze, stirred with a bronze thirst,
like a newborn baby at the breast,
Slept in the sun's mercy.

And the inane weights of iron
That come suddenly crashing into people, out of nowhere,
Only made me feel brave and creaturely.

When I saw the little rabbits with their heads crushed on roads
I knew I rode the wheel of the galaxy.

Calves' heads dew-bristled with blood on counters
Grinned like masks, and sun and moon danced.

And my mate with his face sewn up
Where they'd opened it to take something out
Raised a hand -

He smiled, in half-coma,
A stone temple smile.

Then I, too, opened my mouth to praise -

But a silence wedged in my gullet.

Like an obsidian dagger, dry, jag-edged,
A silent lump of volcanic glass,

The scream
Vomited itself.

Stanzas mix together these moments of calm and horror-- a mural on a children's wall and a gravestone. Mountains and decay. "And the inane weights of iron that come suddenly crashing into people, out of nowhere, only made me feel brave and creaturely." is some astounding war imagery. What with bullets zooming past and into nearby mates and calves, it reminds me a lot in temperament to Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, But its still very Crow in its delivery.

You know, it actually just reminds me a lot of Hemingway's novel: "The Mountains Lazed in their Smoky Camp",  draws to the setting for the book, deep in the mountains, where "When I saw the little rabbits with their heads crushed on roads" brings thought both to Sylvia Plath but also the love interest Marìa in Hemingway's novel, who the main character Robert Jordan often calls "Little Rabbit". the last section of the poem (Starting with "And my mate with his face sewn up..." onward) has the same sort of feel as the gory battle scenes that Hemingway was known for: detail is pumped out of each sentence as time slows down. It's been almost exactly four years since I read For Whom the Bell Tolls, but those battle passages from the novel still stick with me maybe not in plot but in the feeling it evoked.

I have the same feeling when I read "The Scream"; I don't particularly think that Hughes himself had Hemingway in mind, but when I read this poem it's not difficult for me to imagine Robert Jordan at the end of the book, maimed and waiting to die with slim hope for his objective.