( The birthplace of Ted Hughes)
Faber and Faber have produced an excellent series, "Poet-To-Poet"; cheap anthologies (£3.99) of major poets selected by other poets. The Hughes selection is sympathetically introduced by Simon Armitage. After reading the introduction, getting to grips with the actual poems was another matter. Perhaps I should have started with one of the poet's own books or selections. I have to confess the book lingered for two months on the shelf with the occasional half-hearted dabble. It wasn't so much that I struggled with meaning as much as Hughes' rhythm. Starting with some poets is rather like dancing with a new partner. I found my feet after reading Birthday Letters and then returned to the anthology. It seemed odd to read backwards, from a last work to an earlier, but it was like a veil being torn away.
The rawness, which isn't rawness, but fine hewn Yorkshire stone, was crushing in a pleasantly crushing way. This work is alive. I had felt adrift in the selection and could see why some people don't like him but I thought that the problem might be more mine than Armitage's selection or Hughes' poetry.
In a study group last Autumn we examined a dozen or so of Hughes' poems and I'm not sure that many of the female students liked him, however the men in the class were very taken with Hughes. I did enjoy his work especially, The Warm and the Cold (not in the Armitage selection), but chose to write an essay about Larkin instead, largely because I found that he was the poet I really didn't like; he seemed to lack the power of Hughes; a situation changed by the writing of the essay and the realisation that power comes in various forms.
As I have progressed with the Armitage selection for Faber, the movement or rhythm of Hughes' work coelesced. The power is tangible and a certain righteousness; a 'this is how it is' understanding, which still retains tenderness as in February 17 (in the Armitage selection). Selecting works for an anthology must be difficult; the task before Armitage must have been daunting but overall his selection illustrates as he sums up in his introduction,
'the work of a poet whose great exploit was to bring the inner workings of the human brain out into the wide world, and at the same time draw the outside world into the mind.'
