RIVER

“Who are the "we" in the poem 'That Morning' (THCP 209)? Do the salmon represent knowledge and the river imagination?."

Hughes was a fisherman and he was passionate about fishing. The 'we' probably refers to himself and his son, Nicholas, who was working in Alaska and with whom he went on a number of fishing trips. One of these is described in a letter to Barrie Cooke (LTH 15 Sept. 1980): "Bears everywhere", he says, and he talks about the salmon they caught. The "we" can also refer to us - as if he is bringing us into this glorious turmoil of energies that he is describing, and making us creatures of light, too. This would have been one reason for choosing the poem as the last poem in Selected Poems (1982): he wanted to leave us all embroiled in Nature's bountiful energies. Hughes believed very strongly in the power of poetry to effect changes on the reader (in just the same way as ritual chants are used in magic). And he wanted to leave us, and himself, in what he called an 'up-beat' mood. As he once said: "I have a superstition that the writer, even more than the reader, is affected by the mood and the final resolution of his poem in a final way. In each poem, the writer to some extent finds and fixes an image of his own imagination at that moment. But if a poem concludes in a 'downbeat' mood, his imagination is to some degree fixed and confirmed in that mood. In the ordinary way, his imagination would heal itself - move on to new moods. But the poem stands there, permanent, vivid and powerful, and tries to make him continue to live in its image." (Critical Forum Transcript).

The salmon, in many mythologies, is a symbol of wisdom rather than knowledge. There is a difference: you can know a great many things but still be unwise. In Celtic mythology, the salmon is 'King of the River'. It is said to eat the nuts which fall into the pool from the Nine Hazel Trees of Poetic Art, thereby imbibing all the wisdom of poetry and science, as well as oracular powers. In the poem, salmon are also beautiful living creatures, full of energy and spirit, and the persona (perhaps not the poet himself) telling us about them is awed by their massed beauty: salmon are heavy, massive fish, and there is a great mass of them in the river.

The river certainly may represent imagination, and a river is often used as a symbol of the interface between the known and the unknown, the conscious and the unconscious. The river is also the watery part of the four elements - air, fire, earth and water -of which all nature is composed: it is part of "the tingling atoms" of the world. A river may also represent the river of life, the steam of energy and time in which we live, and the life-giving waters which are essential to us.

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Bears are certainly part of many mythologies around the world. Although bears no longer exist in the wild in England, they were an ancient totem beast. The name of King Arthur, of the Knights of the Round Table myths and legends, derives from 'arth', which means bear. And the most important constellation of stars in the sky anywhere in the Northern hemisphere is that of Ursa Major (The Great Bear), which is used by navigators to locate the Pole Star - the fixed point around which the night sky appears to revolve. Ursa Major, because of its shape, is known as 'The Plough', 'The Dipper' and also 'Arthur's Wain'. And the Pole Star itself, which is the axle of the Great Wheel of the Sky, is part of the constellation of Ursa Minor, The Little Bear. Bears, in this sense, are heavenly bodies and creatures of star-light.

Because of the importance of the star constellations of The Great Bear and The Little Bear as markers in the night sky, many myths are associated with them. In Classical Greek mythology, the Goddess Callisto was seduced by Zeus, and when his wife, Athena, found out and turned her into a bear in anger, Zeus placed her in the night sky as the constellation of The Great Bear. Later, the Great Bear became associated with the Mother Goddess. It was also sacred to Artemis and it was one of her disguises.

However, you do not need to know any of this mythology to see that in the poem the bears are beautiful, awe-inspiring creatures, lit by the sun, alight with energy, immersed in Nature and enjoying her bounty. The whole scene is one of abundance, light and beauty, and it is clear that the poet/fisherman feels blessed to be fishing there, beside the bears, sharing the bounty of Nature. Like the bears, the humans are also lit (or animated) by Nature's energies, so they, too, are creatures of light.