I checked online. Seems the poem itself comes from Crow, pub-ed in 1972.
(Crow was most depressing volume I ever read -- my advice, skip it. Or read things like "O leaves, Crow sang trembling, O leaves..." --- skip things like "Water wanted to live... it came weeping back..." - When I read this around 83 by chance I'd recently written similarly about a journey of water...mine perhaps more 'fanciful' was freeing... & he once found Plath's Yew tree depressing!)
@marmas58ink Donne isn't exactly easy reading either but I wouldn't call that depressing or advise people to skip it. I think of Donne because in my opinion both he and Hughes had this kind of rough masculinity bristling under the surface of their verse (Hughes perhaps a little the more obviously); both deserve to be numbered among the greatest of English poets; and both deserve to be read.
"...in the morning they wore each other's face." Great poets say a thing in such a way that their words become the definition for the thing. Hughes was a brilliant man. I can't imagine the the direction his work would have taken, had he never run into Sylvia.
After hearing him read Eliot's Burnt Norton... seems he reads his own things w/ a lot more assuredness, passion, authority
marmas58ink 1 month ago
beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2010MahaKhan9700 1 month ago
Crow certainly is a dark book, but it's also terribly funny. One of my favorite books, period.
Lyssios 4 months ago
Damn you Ted Hughes! No one deserves to write poetry this good!
greenberetgirl 1 year ago 2
I checked online. Seems the poem itself comes from Crow, pub-ed in 1972.
(Crow was most depressing volume I ever read -- my advice, skip it. Or read things like "O leaves, Crow sang trembling, O leaves..." --- skip things like "Water wanted to live... it came weeping back..." - When I read this around 83 by chance I'd recently written similarly about a journey of water...mine perhaps more 'fanciful' was freeing... & he once found Plath's Yew tree depressing!)
marmas58ink 1 year ago
@marmas58ink Donne isn't exactly easy reading either but I wouldn't call that depressing or advise people to skip it. I think of Donne because in my opinion both he and Hughes had this kind of rough masculinity bristling under the surface of their verse (Hughes perhaps a little the more obviously); both deserve to be numbered among the greatest of English poets; and both deserve to be read.
RussMoxham 1 year ago
"...in the morning they wore each other's face." Great poets say a thing in such a way that their words become the definition for the thing. Hughes was a brilliant man. I can't imagine the the direction his work would have taken, had he never run into Sylvia.
m8roth 1 year ago
He wrote so many things of this high high quality that it is certain that his work will (like Faulkner's Dilsey), endure.
troilus1966 1 year ago
I love hearing him read!!! So Great!! Thank you for putting this on youtube
rubyrose456 2 years ago
Cheers for putting this up. Far better to hear the author read it than someone else :)
McoldMan 2 years ago 4