Overview

This volume replaces Ted Hughes's Selected Poems 1957-1981. It contains a larger selection from the same period, to which are added poems from more recent books, uncollected poems from each decade of Ted Hughes's writing life, and some new work. Another notable feature is the inclusion of poems from his books for younger readers, What is the Truth? and Season Songs.

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9780571173785

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Reviews

This volume makes available a comprehensive selection from Ted Hughes' entire output. Readers comparing it to his first Selected Poems (published in 1970) are likely to find, however, that the new selection reflects a substantial talent gone badly awry. The best work here remains that drawn from Hughes' first three books. His early explorations of nature red in tooth and claw draw their potency from a clear, powerfully understated awareness of the struggle for survival: Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men/ Thistles spike the summer air/ Or crackle open under a blue-black pressure./ Every one a revengeful burst/ Of resurrection, a grasped fistful/ Of splintered weapons . . . . In the poems from later books, sadly, Hughes' voice becomes strident, histrionic, engrossed with violence and horror for their own sake. Though Hughes is apparently aiming for an immediacy and impact sufficient to shock the reader from habitual ways of perception, the result is strained and predictable: Blackening electrical connections/ To where death bleaches its crystals/ You swell and you writhe/ You open your Buddha gape/ You screech at the root of the house. In a few later lyrics Hughes quells this voice and again produces muted but powerful meditations on the natural world. But most of this sizable volume only makes one regret the road not taken. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Ted Hughes was born on 17 August 1930 in Mytholmroyd, a small mill town in West Yorkshire. His father made portable wooden buildings. The family moved to Mexborough, a coal-mining town in South Yorkshire, when Hughes was seven. His parents took over a newsagent and tobacconist shop, and eventually he went to the local grammar school.In 1948 Hughes won an Open Exhibition to Pembroke College, Cambridge. Before going there, he served two years National Service in the Royal Air Force. Between leaving Cambridge and becoming a teacher, he worked at various jobs, finally as a script-reader for Rank at their Pinewood Studios.In 1956 Hughes married the American poet Sylvia Plath, who died in 1963, and they had two children. He remarried in 1970. He was awarded the OBE in 1977, created Poet Laureate in December 1984 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1998. He died in October 1998.Ted Hughes's first book, The Hawk in the Rain, was published by Fabe

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