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‘The Poetry Does Not Matter’ The first lines of the first poem in Hughess first book The Hawk in the Rain plunge us into a world which is soon to become familiar: I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up Heel after heel from the swallowing of the earths mouth, From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle With the habit of the dogged grave. ‘The Hawk in the Rain’ ‘The Hawk in the Rain’ pitches us into the thick of the battle between vitality and death, which Hughes claimed was his only subject. It is, in this poem as in many, a one-sided battle. Three of the four elements seem to b