Robert Hainard, Young foxes

The word magic these days might conjure up images of a man pulling rabbits from a top hat or producing cards from under his cuffs. But Hughes's magic was his writing. He made little black marks against clean white pages, marks that somehow detailed the absolute matter and manner of a bird or an eel or a foal or a wolf or a bear. At later dates and in distant locations, when we looked at those marks, when we read the poems, those creatures came to life. Out of nothing. Has any other magician ever pulled off a greated trick?

Simon Armitage on Ted Hughes