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. The 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.