Ted Hughes: 12 Essential Poems – Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 10/3/22: Over the course of forty years, Ted Hughes (1930-1998) wrote some of the best poetry of the twentieth (or any) century. Tonight, I read twelve of Hughes’s essential poems, where we see his primal concerns—the violence but also beauty of nature and animal life; mythology and religion; and his own autobiography—expressed in language as powerful as any that has ever been written. The poems are:

• Wind (from the Hawk in the Rain, 1957)
• Six Young Men (from the Hawk in the Rain, 1957)
• Crow’s Song About God (from Crow, 1970-71)
• “I skin the skin” (from Gaudete, 1977)
• A Green Mother (from Cave Birds, 1978)
• Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days (from Cave Birds, 1978)
• Cock-Crows (from Remains of Elmet, 1979)
• Rain (from Moortown Diary, 1979)
• February 17th (from Moortown Diary, 1979)
• Four March Watercolours (from River, 1983)
• October Salmon (from River, 1983)
• Life After Death (from Birthday Letters, 1998)
• This is followed by a reading Hughes gave of his poem, “October Salmon.”

Hughes’s poetry can be found in his ⁠Collected Poems⁠. Smaller selections include ⁠Selected Poems 1957-1994⁠ and ⁠A Ted Hughes Bestiary⁠. In this episode I also read from ⁠The Letters of Ted Hughes⁠

Other episodes on Hughes include ⁠one where he discusses privacy⁠ for his family in the wake of Sylvia Plath’s posthumous fame; another where ⁠he discusses how he discovered poetry⁠; and another, ⁠much longer episode of readings⁠ from Hughes’s poetry.

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