Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exceptional..., 21 Sep 2005
This is an incredible volume of powerful poetry. There's no one like Hughes. His poems feel like the Earth, they taste of the clay and flow like great rivers. I've carried his 'Selected Poems' for some years, and now have the unfortunate task of getting used to the weight of this enormous book!Thankfully, the editor has allowed the poems to speak for themselves. With poetry such as this, there's very little a drawn-out Introduction or Preface can do. And it's all here. Every Crow, every Pike and every Plath. The 'Uncollected' sections are fantastically engaging, as are the early, juvenile poems. And if you're new to Hughes, why not just buy this volume. It's all here, and you won't regret it.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The voice of Ted Hughes endures, 18 Jan 2009
There's something beautiful about a big book, about picking up its solid weight in your hands and just holding it, and this is a big book. You can't easily curl up with it in bed: it's a serious book, the kind made for a library, and the same kind of quiet contemplation that a library inspires.
If you're like me, it's the poems concerned with landscapes, the elements and the animal kingdom that really thrill you. From the exquisite sunrise in "The Horses":
Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted
Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,
And the big planets hanging -
to the power of the "Wind":
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly...
Reading Hughes work is literally hair-raising, and barely a poem goes by that you don't find a line that touches you on an inner level and brings goosebumps out in force.
But to suggest that there is nothing more to Hughes, would be to do the sweeping range of his poetry a disservice and this book, as no other volume can, comprises the genuine depth and scope of his work. From antiquity and history to shamanism and the supernatural, his poetry revels in the human and the animal, in the material and the spiritual.
For any serious reader of Hughes' work, this book represents the whole gamut and should be a must-own tome for your shelves. A book not so much to be dipped into, as to be immersed in for hours.
At Ted Hughes' funeral, the great Seamus Heaney mourned: "By his death, the veil of poetry is rent and the walls of learning broken." Yet through this book, through these words freshly read, the dynamic voice of Hughes endures.
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ted Hughes.....enough said, 29 Jan 2006
It is very difficult to sum up the poetry of Ted Hughes. I should imagine that anybody buying this vast volume of his poetry is already familiar with his most famous work, this delves much deeper into the progression of his poetry.As one famous intellect once said (i forget his name) a 'real' poem gets better and better with each read.........this is certainly a book that you can go back to, a true timeless classic. recommended.
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