Newly Acquaintanced

I thought I was extremely well-acquainted with pretty much all of Ted Hughes's poetry written prior to 1970, having read, more than once, all the adult collections - The Hawk in the Rain, Lupercal, Wodwo and Crow - and those for children. (Loved Meet My Folks!) (Still do!) So it's been a bit of a surprise and a complete delight to discover, on making my way through the satisfyingly chunky Collected Poems, that there are lots of poems from the period that didn't make it into those books, and many of these strike me as top quality Hughes. (Mind you, I love even the stuff where TH is obviously having a bit of a bad day, so I suppose it's all good to me. Bit like Dylan.)

I've just read three in a row written in the Wodwo period and published in periodicals at the time and loved all of them. And it's a sort of bonus that they are so different from each other. The three in question are: The Last Migration (animal fable - bit Crow-like, bit like stuff from What is the Truth?, but mostly like itself) , The Burning of the Brothel (raucous ballad, treasury of half rhymes & galumphing rhythms) and To W H Auden (published on Wystan's sixtieth birthday - bit stately, bit Audenesque.) And to think that TH didn't even bother to get Faber and Faber to ensure they reached the widest possible audience!