Over the weekend I also finished reading Ted Hughes: Collected Poems for Children. Definitely a book I'll go back to over and over. Such a pity that the wonderful, sympathetically imaginative, illustrations by Raymond Briggs only apply to a limited range of the text. If they'd been featured on every page I think the volume might have been acknowledged as one of the greatest ever 'books for kids'. As it is, it's breathtakingly rewarding. Part of me suspects that some of TH's poems for younger readers might out-live his work for adults.
Actually on putting the book back on my shelves I immediately felt like taking down my copy of What is the Truth?, but since I'd just read the poems involved in the Collected that seemed a bit like over-doing it. Though I would like to read it soon and remind myself of how the connecting prose narrative works.
It looks like the poetry book that will be coming off the shelves is my Henry Vaughan: The Complete Poems, in the Penguin edition I got hold of in the late 1970s. I was thinking of holding back on the read-throughs of my various collecteds / completes after struggling a wee bit earlier in the year on the epic Robert Lowell reading, but I feel I've got my breath back after reading the Hughes (as I suspected I might.) And I'm still holding off buying any new books until I finally retire. Though if I see any exciting single volumes when we visit the UK that resolution may just crumble - hence the fact that I'm officially putting the Vaughan on hold until the new year.
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