Sparkle, Assassin

In this powerful and incisive book Jackson not only revises completely the reputations of Ted Hughes, but also Seamus Heaney, Carl Jung and Karl Marx amongst others and in this way characterises the clashing spiritual forces that work upon us in this time. One poet’s experience of spiritual heights and depths is pitted against, and used to illuminate and measure, the very different path taken by another. In unfolding the meaning of the clash between his work and Ted Hughes’ Jackson makes profound revelations concerning the forces and powers that play upon us as individuals and on humanity as a whole. Although what he has to say is profoundly serious, Jackson writes a prose that is vividly democratic and colloquial and often very funny. Jackson has won his way to a place where true things can be said without intellectual jargon or relying on old religiosity.