From the "Letters of Ted Hughes"

"[N]ot a few poets have toyed with the conviction that if they were given the chance, they could create a superior sort of liturgy -- more incantatory, more verbally evocative. ...

But this attitude ignores that chief characteristic of poetry -- that the spirit of it refuses to be directed." (p. 458.)

"But for most readers of poetry, I fancy, that spiritual life of sorts, that substitute, it may be, is quite enough. So what most poets offer -- an eccentric, home-made, semi-mystical system of images, cadences and luminous experiences, leads, in a spiritual sense, nowhere, but does serve a need. ...

[J]ust a reminder that there is more to the world than the street, the office and the garden." (p. 461.)

--from "Letters of Ted Hughes", (2007), selected and edited by Christopher Reid.