Tao Te Ching #19: “Eliminate sagacity, abandon knowledge”

An episode from 6/22/26: Tonight, we hear about the British poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998), and the poem he said he spent the most time on, “The Gulkana.” The poem is named after a river in Alaska, and in this episode, I preface a reading of the poem with excerpts from his letters and biography about Hughes’ love for the outdoors and for fishing. In particular, in the last two decades of his life, Hughes found great solace and intensity visiting his son, Nicholas, a marine biologist, who was then living in Alaska. Only after this introduction do I read “The Gulkana” in full, as well as the poem “That Morning.”Both poems come from his 1983 collection, River; the letters come from those he wrote to the critic and friend Keith Sagar, as well as The Letters of Ted Hughes; the biography I read from is by Jonathan Bate. The other episodes I’ve done on Hughes’ life and poetry can be found here.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.