Discuss the depiction of the natural world in one of the poems written by Ted Hughes.

Ted Hughes' Thrushes delineates the natural world as a a brutal realm of savagery and survival. An analysis of Hughes' careful use of phonological patterning, selection of lexical items and symbolism illuminates the extent to which Hughes portrays the natural world as innately violent and difficult.
The use of sound and phonological patterns is one of the primary vehicles through which Hughes implies the aggression of the natural world. Throughout Thrushes Hughes' reliance upon plosive and velar sounds creates a literal phonological harshness which is mimetic of the harsh and brutal natural world. Hughes writes: 'but bounce and stab' and 'a start, a bounce, a stab'; in these quotations the plosive 'b' is repeated (once even alliteratively) and combined with a staccato monosyllabic rhythm in order to imply the rapid, explosive nature of the natural world. The very sound of the poem is rough, quick and unrelenting and thus echoes the lives of the eponymous thrushes and the wider natural world for which they are metonyms.