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Thursday, May 04, 2006

Three Ted Hughes Poems

Follow this link to the audio for Dehorning, Pike, and View of A Pig.

Ted Hughes moved close to blood and breath, his eye always on the fundamental things of this world, his chosen words often hard, harsh, and blunt, his poetry sometimes so much more like stones and water and flesh than the things themselves that a hyper-real sense of his surroundings seeps from his best work. I believe the man had a great, perhaps overwhelming, capacity for empathy and that the three poems I recorded (thanks to Zach for the suggestions)
and present now for your ears, stark and unflinching as they are — the poems, I mean; I can't speak for your ears — demonstrate that empathy as well as Hughes' mastery of the English language and of his craft.

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