I thought I'd find the poems in the Remains of Elmet section of the Collected Poems of Ted Hughes familiar, but this hasn't been the case so far - and I'm some seven or eight poems in. I'm wondering if this is because I'm so used to seeing them alongside Fay Godwin's photographs that reading them shorn of the pictures has transformed them for me. Or it could be just a case of a poor memory. Or it could be a case of lazy reading when I first encountered them, meaning I focused on my favourites and didn't pay too much attention to those that didn't immediately render their secrets. Indeed, it occurs to me that I never actually owned the collection but browsed through it whenever I was at Tony's and my exposure to its contents may have been a bit more limited than I assumed as a result.
One thing that has surprised as I've been reading through the Collected is how much I've enjoyed sequences I didn't think would appeal. For example, I must have previously read Adam and the Sacred Nine since it was published in Moortown, a volume I would have claimed to know well. And I assumed that since it didn't do much for me on its initial publication, that I wouldn't find much to enjoy this time around. Yet I found myself responding enthusiastically to every poem, especially those directly about birds, and thinking of them as quite magical evocations of the simple 'being' of the creatures, as in the best of Hughes's animal verse.
I think this points to why I've found myself sticking to the policy of reading books of poetry doggedly in sequence. The rewards of discovery are so powerful. This way the treasure can't remain hidden (unless I'm too dumb to see it. Always a sad possibility, I'm afraid.)
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