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Selected Poems 1957-1994
Poems from every phase of the career of a great poet
This selection of Ted Hughes's poetry, made by the author himself in 1995, includes poems from every phase of his four-decade career. Here are poems from Hughes's first book, The Hawk in the Rain, and its successor, Lupercal, which introduced him as a major poet; from Wodwo, Crow and Gaudete, book-length poetic sequences in which the natural world is made into a thrilling and terror-filled analogue to our human one; and from six volumes of his maturity, here arranged thematically, in which the poet is at once rural chronicler and form-breaking modern artist. This volume also includes previously uncollected poems and eight poems later incorporated into Birthday Letters, Hughes's meditation in verse on his marriage to Sylvia Plath, which became an international bestseller the year after his death.
This selection of Ted Hughes's poetry, made by the author himself in 1995, includes poems from every phase of his four-decade career. Here are poems from Hughes's first book, The Hawk in the Rain, and its successor, Lupercal, which introduced him as a major poet; from Wodwo, Crow and Gaudete, book-length poetic sequences in which the natural world is made into a thrilling and terror-filled analogue to our human one; and from six volumes of his maturity, here arranged thematically, in which the poet is at once rural chronicler and form-breaking modern artist. This volume also includes previously uncollected poems and eight poems later incorporated into Birthday Letters, Hughes's meditation in verse on his marriage to Sylvia Plath, which became an international bestseller the year after his death.
333 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Ted Hughes
375 books726 followersEdward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
He married fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962 and Plath ended her own life in 1963.
He married fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962 and Plath ended her own life in 1963.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 4, 2016
"I, too, opened my mouth to praise--
But a silence wedged my gullet.
"Like an obsidian dagger, dry, jag-edged,
A silent lump of volcanic glass,
"The scream
Vomited itself."
-Ted Hughes, from Cave Birds, published 1975
Hughes's poems remind me of his friend Seamus Heaney's. Both Hughes and Heaney favored a harsh-sounding, monosyllable-dense, Anglo-Saxon-derived vocabulary, shunning the urban sophistication of Latinate polysyllables. Both Hughes and Heaney traced their spiritual lineage back to the Vikings and other early northern Europeans. Both Hughes's and Heaney's poems are rooted in non-urban settings.
But whereas Heaney liked to evoke the comforting domesticity of hearth-lit farmhouses and manure-scented fields, the young Hughes's darker nature gravitated toward more forbidding non-arable terrain, reveling in northern lands that are craggy and ice-crusted, uncultivated and unpeopled. In his poetry, Heaney comes across as gregarious and sociable, whereas Hughes's poetic persona seems more at home among wild animals than among his fellow human beings. While Heaney was dogged by his Catholic roots, Hughes practiced a less internally conflicted and more primitive form of religion, as exemplified by his soaring lyric "The Risen."
Scarred by the suicides of his famous wife Sylvia Plath and his less famous but equally literary lover Assia Wevill, Hughes exhibited an ambiguous attitude toward eros. This ambiguity is displayed most strikingly in "Lovesong" and "The Lovepet" (two poems from Hughes's groundbreaking 1970 collection Crow) and "Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days" (a poem from Cave Birds). Each of these three poems revolves around a pair of archetypal characters, simply referred to as "he" and "she." In "Lovesong" and "The Lovepet," this couple discovers, to their horror, that Eros is ravenous, grasping, a taker rather than a giver. In "Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days," the truth they awaken to is the exact opposite.
When writing about les femmes, Hughes preferred to speak in pared-down parables, shying away from the "confessional" mode of verse that was in vogue across the Atlantic. Only in the last decade of his life did Hughes begin publishing poems that openly addressed the topic of his marriage to Plath. These late poems, eventually collected in book form under the title Birthday Letters, give us readers the rare privilege of seeing Plath through Hughes's eyes: as an ambitious but troubled woman, radiant with courage and charisma, enhaloed in Hughes's memory as she stands on a hay-bale reciting Chaucer to a spellbound audience of cows ("Chaucer").
I think that, aside from being Plath's husband, Hughes will primarily be remembered for his poems about nature and about war vets. There are quite a few gut-punch poems about war vets in this volume: "A Motorbike" is, perhaps, the best. It's Hughes's nature poems like "Sheep," though, that are the most visceral and most moving: "The sheep has stopped crying./All morning in her wire-mesh compound/On the lawn, she has been crying/For her vanished lamb..." Generally, when Hughes writes about animals, it is with deep compassion. Only rarely does he lapse in cruelty, as in this rude bit from a poem about a cow that has just been dehorned:
"...The bitchy high-headed
Straight-back brindle, with her Spanish bull trot,
And her head-shaking snorting advance and her crazy spirit,
Will have to get maternal. What she's lost
In weapons, she'll have to make up for in tits."
Whether he is shocking you, saddening you, or making you laugh (something he does do occasionally, as in his prescient poetic rant about over-reliance on technology, "Do Not Pick Up the Telephone"), Hughes is a talent it is impossible to be indifferent to.
But a silence wedged my gullet.
"Like an obsidian dagger, dry, jag-edged,
A silent lump of volcanic glass,
"The scream
Vomited itself."
-Ted Hughes, from Cave Birds, published 1975
Hughes's poems remind me of his friend Seamus Heaney's. Both Hughes and Heaney favored a harsh-sounding, monosyllable-dense, Anglo-Saxon-derived vocabulary, shunning the urban sophistication of Latinate polysyllables. Both Hughes and Heaney traced their spiritual lineage back to the Vikings and other early northern Europeans. Both Hughes's and Heaney's poems are rooted in non-urban settings.
But whereas Heaney liked to evoke the comforting domesticity of hearth-lit farmhouses and manure-scented fields, the young Hughes's darker nature gravitated toward more forbidding non-arable terrain, reveling in northern lands that are craggy and ice-crusted, uncultivated and unpeopled. In his poetry, Heaney comes across as gregarious and sociable, whereas Hughes's poetic persona seems more at home among wild animals than among his fellow human beings. While Heaney was dogged by his Catholic roots, Hughes practiced a less internally conflicted and more primitive form of religion, as exemplified by his soaring lyric "The Risen."
Scarred by the suicides of his famous wife Sylvia Plath and his less famous but equally literary lover Assia Wevill, Hughes exhibited an ambiguous attitude toward eros. This ambiguity is displayed most strikingly in "Lovesong" and "The Lovepet" (two poems from Hughes's groundbreaking 1970 collection Crow) and "Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days" (a poem from Cave Birds). Each of these three poems revolves around a pair of archetypal characters, simply referred to as "he" and "she." In "Lovesong" and "The Lovepet," this couple discovers, to their horror, that Eros is ravenous, grasping, a taker rather than a giver. In "Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days," the truth they awaken to is the exact opposite.
When writing about les femmes, Hughes preferred to speak in pared-down parables, shying away from the "confessional" mode of verse that was in vogue across the Atlantic. Only in the last decade of his life did Hughes begin publishing poems that openly addressed the topic of his marriage to Plath. These late poems, eventually collected in book form under the title Birthday Letters, give us readers the rare privilege of seeing Plath through Hughes's eyes: as an ambitious but troubled woman, radiant with courage and charisma, enhaloed in Hughes's memory as she stands on a hay-bale reciting Chaucer to a spellbound audience of cows ("Chaucer").
I think that, aside from being Plath's husband, Hughes will primarily be remembered for his poems about nature and about war vets. There are quite a few gut-punch poems about war vets in this volume: "A Motorbike" is, perhaps, the best. It's Hughes's nature poems like "Sheep," though, that are the most visceral and most moving: "The sheep has stopped crying./All morning in her wire-mesh compound/On the lawn, she has been crying/For her vanished lamb..." Generally, when Hughes writes about animals, it is with deep compassion. Only rarely does he lapse in cruelty, as in this rude bit from a poem about a cow that has just been dehorned:
"...The bitchy high-headed
Straight-back brindle, with her Spanish bull trot,
And her head-shaking snorting advance and her crazy spirit,
Will have to get maternal. What she's lost
In weapons, she'll have to make up for in tits."
Whether he is shocking you, saddening you, or making you laugh (something he does do occasionally, as in his prescient poetic rant about over-reliance on technology, "Do Not Pick Up the Telephone"), Hughes is a talent it is impossible to be indifferent to.
June 6, 2008
So I started this collection of poetry by Hughes at least six months ago. I never dedicatedly read it but that was also kinda the point. Mainly just kept in my backpack or next to the bed as something to read when on the bus or if I couldn't sleep. That being said, I fell hard for Hughes. It has been less that 10 years since he passed and I am not entirely sure how much of his work will be canonized. In addition, he often gets overshadowed, at least in the States, by his marriage to Sylvia Plath. Which is unfortunate because his poetry makes Plath look like an eight-grader. In addition, I admittedly feel like there is some aspects of poetry that I don't understand. Despite all this, I think that this collection proves that no matter what kind of reader of poetry you are, the strength of Hughes is undeniable.
Hughes is errie, potently dark and depicts the world as the overwhelming mess that it is. However, the greatest aspect of this is that Hughes is not an urban poet-in that his poetry often takes place out in the country, in nature, in small towns and the creaking bedrooms of thatch houses and decaying wood. Many may immediately be turned off by this and admittedly I normally would be too. However, Hughes pulls it off which makes it all that more intriguing and enjoyable of collection. Certainly, some sections of this are better than others. However, in over 314 pages of poetry, the good undoubtedly outweighs the bad. In addition, I had a friend once tell me that Hughes was too "masculine" for her. This is an accurate description of his work but its also his greatest strength. Finally, after reading this and comparing him to his contemporaries (Larkin, Heaney, etc) Hughes excels.
1- 314 pages of poetry and I liked over 75 percent of it.
2- Only poet I have ever read who can write a poem about an animal and I actually throughly enjoy it
3- Reading his poems out loud is like have cotton in your mouth...
4- No excerpt from any of the collections was without at least one poem I marked
5- "Sketching a Thatcher"
Five stars.
P.S. I think Hughes' biography explains much about the style of his poetry. Working class, studied archaelogy, two wives who killed themselves including one who killed their daughter ...whoa.
Hughes is errie, potently dark and depicts the world as the overwhelming mess that it is. However, the greatest aspect of this is that Hughes is not an urban poet-in that his poetry often takes place out in the country, in nature, in small towns and the creaking bedrooms of thatch houses and decaying wood. Many may immediately be turned off by this and admittedly I normally would be too. However, Hughes pulls it off which makes it all that more intriguing and enjoyable of collection. Certainly, some sections of this are better than others. However, in over 314 pages of poetry, the good undoubtedly outweighs the bad. In addition, I had a friend once tell me that Hughes was too "masculine" for her. This is an accurate description of his work but its also his greatest strength. Finally, after reading this and comparing him to his contemporaries (Larkin, Heaney, etc) Hughes excels.
1- 314 pages of poetry and I liked over 75 percent of it.
2- Only poet I have ever read who can write a poem about an animal and I actually throughly enjoy it
3- Reading his poems out loud is like have cotton in your mouth...
4- No excerpt from any of the collections was without at least one poem I marked
5- "Sketching a Thatcher"
Five stars.
P.S. I think Hughes' biography explains much about the style of his poetry. Working class, studied archaelogy, two wives who killed themselves including one who killed their daughter ...whoa.
May 27, 2021
Visceral and darkly musical.
May 29, 2016
Highly recommended for nature lovers.
On the one hand, I loved that each poem has so much complexity; I read this for school and we could easily talk for an hour in English class about just one poem. Sometimes, though, I didn't like the fact that you had to really dig deep to find meaning in some of these poems. It was just too convoluted for my taste at times. But I will say that it was very satisfying to discover different hidden patterns and meanings in the poetry. It really helped to discuss with others; I think most of this would pass over my head if I tried to read it alone. Favorite poem: "Full Moon and Little Frieda."
On the one hand, I loved that each poem has so much complexity; I read this for school and we could easily talk for an hour in English class about just one poem. Sometimes, though, I didn't like the fact that you had to really dig deep to find meaning in some of these poems. It was just too convoluted for my taste at times. But I will say that it was very satisfying to discover different hidden patterns and meanings in the poetry. It really helped to discuss with others; I think most of this would pass over my head if I tried to read it alone. Favorite poem: "Full Moon and Little Frieda."
Read
June 11, 2008I originally heard Ted Hughes' poetry read by himself (from a recording) in a poetry class. As I caught snippets of strange luminosity, I hurriedly scribbled them down, and have only now gone back and tracked down the actual poems. This volume contains all three of them: "Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days," "Life is Trying to be Life," and "Ravens." All three are even better than I remembered, and I'm already happy I bought this collection. I look forward to learning more about Hughes and his work.
April 6, 2017
So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care
They bring each other to perfection. —Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days, Ted Hughes
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care
They bring each other to perfection. —Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days, Ted Hughes
January 25, 2024
Thought fox ✅
Snowdrop ✅
Jaguar✅
Hawk roosting✅
Cat and mouse✅
The harvest moon✅
Horse ✅
Snowdrop ✅
Jaguar✅
Hawk roosting✅
Cat and mouse✅
The harvest moon✅
Horse ✅
October 27, 2010
Ted Hughes and his generation of poets are the poets that inspire me to create. They are the makers of modern American poetry, in my mind, and I enjoy them as much as a good novel. I like this generation more than the current one, unfortunately, and they way Hughes himself creates and world, a time, an emotion, out of verse is unrivaled by even his more famous wife.
December 23, 2024
Hughes built his early literary reputation on the strength of his poems about the natural world, particularly animals and landscapes. And it isn't hard to see why: he's incredibly good at. With some exceptions, his perspective on the animal world is almost entirely free of human sentiment (even when tinged with a mythological gloss). His poem "Hawk Roosting" from his first book remains a favorite of mine and illustrates well the above mentioned lack of sentimentality, esp. when the hawk declares: "I kill where I please because it is all mine./There is no sophistry in my body:/My manners are tearing off heads."
And yet, Hughes can be playfully romantic as well in rhyming verse like this first stanza from "The Harvest Moon":
The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie in the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
This particular edition of his selected poems (1957-1994) is probably the best presentation of his strongest work without much filler. A very good introduction to those wanting to see what the fuss might be outside of his relationship to the great Sylvia Plath.
And yet, Hughes can be playfully romantic as well in rhyming verse like this first stanza from "The Harvest Moon":
The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie in the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
This particular edition of his selected poems (1957-1994) is probably the best presentation of his strongest work without much filler. A very good introduction to those wanting to see what the fuss might be outside of his relationship to the great Sylvia Plath.
January 17, 2021
In the M5 restaurant
Our sad coats at the counter
The tyre face pasty
The neon of plaster flesh
With little inexplicable eyes
Holding a dish with two buns
Symbolic food
Eaten by symbolic faces
Symbolic eating movements
The road drumming in the wall, drumming in the head
The road going nowhere and everywhere
My freedom evidently
Is to feed my life
Into a carburettor
Petroleum has burned away all
But a still-throbbing column
Of carbon-monoxide and lead.
I attempt a firmer embodiment
With illusory coffee
And a gluey quasi-pie.
October 14, 2025
I'm no expert on Hughes or on poetry, though I enjoy both, and venture to say he is currently my favorite poet. I enjoyed the earlier poems of this collection more than the later works (with some exceptions) but I suspect those things can change over time. Will be interesting to revisit these in later years.
April 29, 2019
"I accuse / Ted Hughes."
August 27, 2022
Masterful but dark. Not for me. Other descriptions and reviews are accurate, I won't add to them.
December 14, 2007
Lovesong by Ted Hughes
He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains
Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His word were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assasin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop
In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage
In the morning they wore each other's face
He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains
Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His word were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assasin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop
In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage
In the morning they wore each other's face
January 24, 2016
¡Aleluya! Me ha costado lo mío terminar este libro, varios meses de hecho (y es que leer poesía en cualquier idioma, sin ayuda de la traducción acompasada, es una tarea bastante hardcore). Como casi todo hijo de vecino, llegué a Ted Hughes de la mano de su primera esposa, Sylvia Plath. Y como a casi todo hijo de vecino, me sorprende que siendo poetas tan diferentes acabaran juntos. De Plath dicen sus detractores que bordea la histeria; Hughes no puede ser más circunspecto, equilibrado y algo indiferente. Sus temas se inspiran casi exclusivamente en la naturaleza y los animalitos (unos más domésticos que otros) y la verdad es que han llegado a cansarme, a mí, que a pesar de haber nacido en la huerta me van poco los bucolismos. Creo que no lo contaré nunca entre mis poetas favoritos, pero su libro "Birthday letters", ese agridulce homenaje a su relación con Sylvia a la que seguramente admiró más que amó y no logró comprender del todo ni apreciar como escritora, es uno de las mejores compilaciones de poesía (¿amorosa?) que he tenido el gusto de leer.
February 20, 2010
I came to Ted Hughes' selected poems after reading his collected letters and his "Birthday Letters", poems written "to" Sylvia Plath over the years following her death. I think I like the idea of Ted Hughes and his history (including the complicated relationship to Plath) than I do his poetry. There were several poems that spoke to me, though, including "Full Moon and Little Frieda": "A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket--/ And you listening./ A spider's web, tense for thedew's touch."
March 24, 2015
Not a big fan of Hughes. Revelling in grossness in a way that doesn't feel meaningful or sophisticated. Some lovely pieces, though, and good to have a slightly different voice from the others in the course.
December 8, 2009
Great intoduction to Ted Hughes, especially if you don't want to splash out o the 'Collected Poems'.
September 7, 2016
A masterful selection of Hughes' work. Hughes' poetry is descriptive and poignant. He is a must read poet for all ages. His work does contain adult themes and language.
maybe
April 6, 2016Read:
Lovesong
Lovesong
Read
October 27, 2017821.914 H8946s 2002
dnf
February 5, 2018Hughes is a master of language and imagery, however I just can't get along with his outlook.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews