In message <v01530500b0f11648196d@[194.112.56.66]>, Peter Riley
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>I think someone should reply to PoetMex about Hughes but most subscribers
>to BP are probably enraged dissidents who think Hughes is "Mainstream" and
>so never read him. Yet both Veronica Forrest-Thompson and Andrew Duncan
>thought [tense?] that Hughes was/is a good and important poet. I don't feel
>so confident, but I do get the impression that Birthday Letters might be
>the best he has ever written. So far as I know nothing has happened about
>the book over here of a serious nature, I mean its impact is in the hands
>of various journalists (literary hacks, professional feminists, etc) and
>I've seen nothing said which recognises it as poetry.
>
If you mean, yes, the claim is being made (e.g. by the Guardian
reviewer) but not on grounds which seriously relate to the poetry I'd
agree with that; there is, though, a claim to serious judgment which in
the wrong mood I get irritated by. But the point is that there is
invariably a confusion of grounds when poetry is promoted, and this
relates as much to the Book of Demons as to Birthday Letters.
I don't have a copy of Poetic Artifice to hand but I seem to remember
VF-T being quite dismissive of Hughes although she gives an interesting
& sympathetic reading of Plath. But perhaps you're referring to a
different text.
Am curious that two postings from the US imply a news vacuum on the
subject over there. Is it that the book hasn't been published in the US
(yet?)? Or that Ted Hughes isn't 'poetry news' in the States? Surely
Sylvia Plath still is?
Alan
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