Roe-Deer Notes

This poem is from the collection "Moortown Diary", also in Hughes "New Selected Poems",
written in 1973. It is about a brief encounter that takes place between a Roe-Deer and Hughes.
He uses this incident to relay a deeper message of the crossing of two worlds- Man and the
Natural world. It is a poem about momentary beauty that can take a mind away from the real
to the surreal. The beginning of the poem is as soft as the end of the poem. It’s a soul-stirring
poem where Ted Hughes sublimed with the two “blue-dark deer” that tranced the poet while
he was on the way, also making the readers dive deep into the beautiful nature. Hughes in
‘Roe-deer’ presents how a simple scene of nature can give one a lasting sensation of a lifetime.

The poem is written in first person singular and follows the pattern of free verse with no regular
rhyme scheme. The poem appears to be quite disjointed and does not flow easily which could
be an emphasis on the uncertainty and mysterious situation the speaker is facing in the poem.
The pace of the poem is quite slow which helps Ted Hughes to prolong this encounter with the
deer and make it seem like a mystical experience.

It is a short poem mostly written using the couplet form but there are also three single lines
out of the couplets. There is a repetition of the “d” sound in the second, third, and
fourth stanza as the first line in the mentioned stanzas ends with “dimension”, “deerhood”, and
“disintegration” respectively.

The sound of the poem is rather calm and continuous, however the frequent use of full stops
creates tension and fear, for example 'And stared at me.' The line which breaks the poem into
two also makes the second half of the poem sound different.

Roe-deer, as the title reveals uses nature imagery as the basis of the poem, like most of Hughes'
poems. The poem has a dark, cold setting which connects to the theme of nature.
The poem begins with dawn when the poet is driving along a road through moorland. It is dark
and grey which makes the atmosphere of the poem very sombre. Hughes has used dark
ominous colours to built tension and give an emphasis on what is to come.

In the beginning of the poem Hughes talks about the lack of sunshine and the abundance of
snow. The line, 'the biggest snow of the year,' conjures images of a landscape which is covered
with snow, completely white. This immediately adds a sense of mystery and magic from the
snowy weather.
 This mood contrasts with the "deer stood in the road, alerted". Hughes describes the deer as
being "blue-dark" due to the first glimpse of the deer as they appear as silhouettes against the
white background of snow. The word "alerted" is separated from the rest of the sentence to
add to the reader's ability to imagine the scene. The use of the word 'alerted' portays the deer
as sentries, and the speaker as an intruder and creates a tension between the two worlds.
Hughes continues to describe the odd coincidence of the deer appearing in his path but his
clever use of the word' dimension' adds to the mysterious and magic tone. The idea that they
‘happened into my dimension’ gives a sense of supernatural, of forces beyond human from a
different spiritual world,

This poem seems to introduce the idea of two converging worlds: that of nature and humans.
The fact that the narrator is normally in a separate ‘dimension’ from the pair of deer suggests
how alien they are to him, despite his being brought up around nature. The majesty of the deer
is further conveyed for even during this collision between man and nature, they are far from his
grasp in that fleeting moment. They are merely ‘blue-dark’ shapes, seen only in the ‘dawn’s
early light’; this is a rare occurrence for the narrator, and such a brief sighting becomes almost
momentous. The speaker goes on to say that the deer had just happened into my dimension
"the moment I was arriving just there." The meaning behind this line could possibly be seen as
that the speaker feels that the deer have just arrived in this human world for the first time
although living their all their life in this territory and this could mean that the speaker feels like
an alien and an outsider to this human world, similar to the experience of the two deer.

This quick glimpse into another world leaves the narrator feeling privileged, as if he can see into
their lives, their ‘secret deerhood’ with short but deep connection between them and him. He
feels bound up with the deer in this single moment, almost inseparable as if they have shared
consciousnesses. The speaker then goes onto say how the deer "planted their two or three
years of secret deerhood clear on my snow- screen vision of the abnormal." Hughes uses
assonance to emphasise the impact, just by looking at the deer, the speaker feels as if they've
gotten a look into the secret deer's world and feels special. In the last line by using the word
“abnormal” the poet again creates an air of mystery in this poem.
Each line in the next verse begins with a repetition of the word “And”, which contributes to the
feeling of the moment. That repetition gives a feeling of slowdown, a slowdown in the events
and even in time. At that particular moment, it seems that these two worlds are not that
separate anymore. Hughes inserts mobility into the poem’s primary image as the poet’s
existence had alerted them. Those two roe deer hesitated to wait any longer. They
disinterested the meeting at dawn and stared at the poet to make sure if he was approaching
or not. The caesura in line 8 is added to build the tension and to highlight the mystical and
intense qualities of the deer. After that, they started to run within a few lasting seconds
reflecting the theme of the transience of natural beauty. This encounter with these rare
creatures seem almost rare to the speaker, a moment when two separate worlds collide for a
few seconds. It is clear that the speaker felt some sort of connection with the deer for those
few seconds ' I could think the deer were waiting for me'.
The poet employs two metaphors. One is the “password” and another “sign”. Here, password
may refer to a specific way to enter the deer’s’ inner world and sign seems to be referring to
the poet’s identity. The poet thinks that they might be waiting for him to gain access to their
world.

In the next couplet, the writer describes this moment by using a metaphor - “the curtain had
blown aside for a moment”. The poet thinks that the road was like a stage, and nature had
blown the curtain aside for a few moments and after which the curtain was drawn again.
Hughes describes how the rest of the world was at a halt during these seconds, ' the trees were
no longer trees nor the road a road'. He certainly seems to lose an awareness of his
surroundings, becoming fixed on the deer only, and the deer become strangely significant. It
adds to the idea that this is a world that humans are not a part of, it is entirely divided.
“The deer had come for me.” Making that sentence a separate verse makes the reader pause
for a bit, fully feel the atmosphere of that place at that moment and be a part of it. This short
and easy sentence makes for the dramatic effect making it perhaps one of the strongest lines in
the whole poem. It seems like fate as if the deer wanted him to know their presence for a
certain reason that is unknown.

At this point, the structure changes, and the deer seem to take control and command of the
situation. Hughes describes how they fled away from the scene. The description is no doubt
exceptional as the deer at first ducked through the hedge, and then they moved upright The
fact that they ‘rode their legs’ seems to separate the deer from their physicality, so they
become like spirits; this phrase also seems to give them a strange kind of power. They are not
actually animals but mystical creatures who have crossed in the speakers dimension for a short
while which could make the speaker feel privileged.
They run away to the “snow-lonely” fields. Using assonance in this phrase contributes in
making even the reader feel lonely while making the whole atmosphere lonelier and emptier in
this blanket of snow as there is no other living being present. The deer run into the fields,
'Towards tree dark' which could mean that they disappear into the woods and also the dark. They
seem to disappear completely leaving no signs behind. There is something almost transcendent
and heavenly as they "fly away up" into the "boil of big" (white) "flakes", again conveying the
deer as mystical creatures coming from heaven and a magical force acting on Hughes’ life. The
poet has used ‘boil’ to describe the way the snow is falling, a word that is not generally
associated with snow giving a sense of enormity of snow and making the imagery of snow
repulsive and gruesome.

"The snow took them", which is a much more interesting way to describe how they vanished. It
also creates the idea of every last trace of their encounter vanishing, even "their nearby
hoofprints as well" The last couplet is short and the use of the dawn echoes the "inspiration"
that the poet feels in the beginning. In the end, the tone lowers and it mirrors the surreal
events of the meeting that are ended very suddenly and rather flatly. The scene of dawn
appeared to the poet as normal and “ordinary” as it was a few moments ago.

At the end of the poem, the speaker says "back to the ordinary" which gives a sense that the
deer and the speaker have to go back to the real world and almost forget that the magic event
took place between them as the deer have disappeared into a mystical world.
Hughes seems to be left wondering if it ever happened as he goes back to the "ordinary" world.
Through this, the power of the deer is shown and the narrator seems to feel that they had
chosen to privilege him, and connect with him, whilst they had all the ability to remain hidden
from him in their own dimension.

The barrier between man and nature is torn and a connection between the speaker and the
deer is felt as “the curtain had blown aside". It seems like nature has come to take man back to
its roots as seen in the line "The deer had come for me". But then nature took the deer back
with the line “the snow took them". After this the speaker is inspired and goes back to his
ordinary day, “Revising its dawn inspiration, back to the ordinary".
In this poem, the poet reflects on the theme of finding the divine and the sublime in nature.
Hughes captures how a simple scene of early morning can take one to a different dimension
where every movement appears as mysterious and beautiful.