Selected Poems 1957-1994

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. The volume also includes many previously uncollected poems and eight poems later incorporated into Birthday Letters Hughes''s meditation in verse on his marriage to Sylvia Plath which became a bestseller the year after his death.