Question

Why is the poem entitled 'Hawk Roosting'?

Answer 1

The poem is about the speaker, the Hawk, who is looking down from where it is roosting, the highest point in the woods. It is a dramatic monologue in a non-human voice. The Hawk boasts of its superiority and is self-assertive. It is symbolic of we humans who tend do not think beyond what has been defined to us by society beyond our perspective. Our ignorance is our bliss as in the case of the Hawk. The Hawk, who narrates its story of how it perceives the world, is personified incarnating it as the most superior of all the beings. The Hawk believes itself to be the center of the cosmos. The whole poem is from the perspective of the Hawk, the bird of prey. The poem is from Hughes' second book, Lupercal, published in 1960. Once in an interview, he explained, “Actually what I had in mind was that in this hawk Nature is thinking. Simply Nature. It's not so simple because maybe Nature is no longer so simple.” in many of Huges' poems animals serve as a metaphor. He takes their help to describe his perspective on life. Ted is known for evoking violent imagery and his description of the ultimate battle of survival. In Hawk Roosting, the Hawk goes on blathering about its inherited supremacy and its ignorance is its bliss, which it celebrates.