Reading Ted Hughes: New Selected Poems

A brilliant new study of one of the great English poets of the 20th Century, by a distinguished critic and scholar.This book opens with a section on Hughes’s life, including the relationship with Sylvia Plath and the effect of her suicide on his poetry and reputation, followed by a review of Hughes’s artistic strategies, his poetic language, and influences on his work. including the poets of Eastern Europe. The body of the book offers an approach to reading New Selected Poems (1995), taking in turn each of the remarkable and remarkably varied works from which the poems were selected - The Hawk in the Rain, Lupercal, Wodwo, Crow, Cave Birds, Season Songs, Gaudete, Remains of Elmet, Moortown Diary, River and Wolfwatching. It concludes with a review of Hughes’s reception, and a six-page bibliography. Professor Roberts’s books include Ted Hughes: A Critical Study (with Terry Gifford, Faber, 1981), D. H. Lawrence, Travel and Cultural Difference (Palgrave, 2004), and Ted Hughes: A Literary Life (Palgrave, 2006.