In the beginning was Scream
 Who begat Blood
 Who begat Eye
 Who begat Fear
 Who begat Wing
 Who begat Bone
 Who begat Granite
 Who begat Violet
 Who begat Guitar
 Who begat Sweat
 Who begat Adam
 Who begat Mary
 Who begat God
 Who begat Nothing
 Who begat Never
 Never Never Never

 Who begat Crow

 Screaming for Blood
 Grubs, crusts

 Anything

 Trembling featherless elbows in the nest's filth

Hughes’ poetry is not kind.

It’s mean.

There is something about his style that makes his words read like Truth. A hard, uncompromising purity that commands admiration, awe.

Pang-less, Hughes rewrites the story of Creation here, he evolves a world of horror and a fallible God and…Crow. There’s a lot of energy in the universe he sets up, and a lot of violence. Like much of Hughes’ poetry this one too startles. Startles with its strangeness of idea (someday I will understand the bit about the Violet who begat Guitar), its cataract force, its clean brilliance.

Crow is an irresistible character. And in introducing him I love how Hughes shows him to be demanding, obnoxious and bloodthirsty - and yet, with the ‘trembling featherless elbows’ - breathtakingly vulnerable.

In ‘From the Life and Songs of Crow’(from where this poem was taken)Hughes adopts the voice of folk-myth to tell the adventures of a creature – part-human,part-greek hero, part-wonderful beast – called Crow.

‘Lineage’ is only the beginning.

— Pavithra

Links

poem #98 has biographical information and some further links.

And, of course, all the Hughes poems run on Minstrels can be found at The Wondering Minstrels