New Releases by Ted Hughes

Un gigante di ferro apparve un giorno in cima a una scogliera. Nessuno sapeva da dove venisse né dove sarebbe andato. Il vento cantava tra le sue dita di ferro, mentre lui esplorava con i suoi grandi occhi luminosi il mare che non aveva mai visto. Erano molte le cose da scoprire, lì sulla Terra, e l''Uomo di Ferro fu felice di trovare una discarica di metalli in cui fare scorpacciate di rottami e un piccolo, intrepido amico da difendere. Perché dallo spazio stava per arrivare un pericoloso drago- angelo-pipistrello...

De klassieke, mythische dichtbundel van Ted Hughes Vijftig jaar na het eerste verschijnen van Kraai in Engeland in 1970 leidt de gitzwarte gedichtencyclus nog altijd tot verwoede discussies. Ted Hughes, voormalig Poet Laureate van Groot-Brittannië, begon de cyclus in de tweede helft van de jaren zestig, na de suïcide van zijn vrouw Sylvia Plath. Hij voltooide de gedichten in 1969, toen hij voor de tweede keer een partner aan zelfmoord verloor. De bundel Kraai was een stilistisch experiment waarin Hughes zijn rouw en verdriet probeerde vorm te geven. Het hoofdpersonage Kraai bevindt zich in een landschap dat de ene keer apocalyptisch is, en dan weer rechtstreeks uit Genesis lijkt te komen. God schept de wereld, Adam en Eva bevinden zich in het paradijs, waar achter elke boom een slang op hen wacht. De gedichten sidderen dan ook van angst, woede, geweld en verdriet. Kraai beziet dit alles vanuit het middelpunt met een mengeling van nieuwsgierigheid en een verlangen naar destructie. Tweetalige editie

All the richness of the wild is seen through the poet''s eye. Here are poems from Hawk in the Rain, Wodwo, Wolfwatching, Lupercal and River as well as from Adam and the Sacred Nine, their juxtaposition highlighting the variety of the natural world and of Hughes''s poetry about it.

Ted Hughes wrote a series of stories for children from the early 1960s through until 1995 about how the world, and the creatures in it, came into being. They are collected here in one volume for the first time. These are richly told tales of sparkling intensity about animals finding their form, and God''s struggle to understand what he has created. Meet the Polar Bear whose obsession with her snowy white fur is so great that she can only live in a landscape surrounded by her own reflection; the Whale, growing in God''s garden beside the carrots; King Leo, who began life because God was hungry for his sausages; poor Parrot''s painful defeat in the marriage song contest at the wedding of Man and Woman; and Sparrow''s heroic battle against the bird-swallowing Black Hole. There are stories here to suit children from four to fourteen, whether for reading aloud or alone.

A very ordinary boy. Nobody noticed him, he was just like everyone else. But Fred knew he was different. He just didn''t know quite how different. And when he did.... Well, what then?

El poemario que escribió Ted Hughes en silencio a su primera esposa, Sylvia Plath «Este libro irrumpe con la fuerza inesperada de un rayo y leerlo es como sufrir su descarga eléctrica. [...] Nunca se había visto nada parecido en literatura.» Andrew Motion, The London Times A lo largo de las páginas de este libro, Ted Hughes, desde el centro de la intimidad, recuerda su relación con Plath, empezando por el día en que se conocieron, durante una fiesta en Cambridge, en 1956, pasando por su boda, su luna de miel, el nacimiento de sus dos hijos y los constantes y fatales tormentos que desembocaron en el suicidio de la poeta. Más allá de la anécdota biográfica, Cartas de cumpleaños es ya uno de los poemarios fundamentales de finales del siglo XX, una valiente conversación con una amada sombra en el quieta contraluz del recuerdo, una celebración de la vida, de la pasión extrema, lo mismo que una poderosa meditación sobre la muerte. Y, por encima de todo, esta obra constituye la fulgurante despedida de uno de los mayores poetas de nuestro tiempo. La crítica ha dicho: «Este libro irrumpe con la fuerza inesperada de un rayo y leerlo es como sufrir su descarga eléctrica. Su potencia es a veces tierna, a veces humorística, a veces angustiada y brota siempre de un presente abrasador e inmóvil. Quienes pensaron que la reticencia de Hughes era una prueba de insensibilidad se darán cuenta inmediatamente de que los insensibles eran ellos. Estamos ante un libro escrito por alguien obsesionado, heridoy que estuvo profundamente enamorado. Nunca se había visto nada parecido en literatura.» Andrew Motion, The London Times «Un libro extraordinario. [...] El tema de Hughes es la propia Plath: cómo era, cómo se movía y hablaba, sus gustos, rabias, sueños insólitos y múltiples miedos, lo que funcionaba entre ellos y lo que no.» A. Álvarez, The New Yorker «Los críticos que nos instan a considerar estos poemas como obras maestras tienen razón. Su intensidad de sentimiento, la claridad de sus imágenes, la precisión, la energía, la simplicidad y la fluidez de su lenguaje siguen siendo sorprendentes.» Paul Levy, The Wall Street Journal «Un tono emocional, directo, arrepentido y extasiado impregna los poemas más poderosos del libro, que son plácidos, reflexivos y conversacionales.» Katha Pollitt, The New York Times Book Review «La mayoría de estos poemas contienen una maravillosa inmediatez y ternura que es nueva en la escritura de Hughes, una ternura que le permite transmitir los terrores de Plath de una manera tan palpable como su propia poesía, y contagiar su propia sensación de pérdida y dolor. [...] Leedlos, pues constituyen el trabajo más fuerte y emocionalmente palpable de la carrera de Hughes.» Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times «La publicación estos poemas es el evento más sensacional en la historia reciente de la poesía en inglés.» Christopher Benfey, Slate

-A selection of animal poems from the seminal British poet, Ted Hughes---

In fantastical verse the author introduces his sister, brother, mother, father, and other members of his family.

A collection of 144 letters between Hughes and the literary critic Sagar provides insight into the poet''s life and creative process, including his relationship with Sylvia Plath.

Mankind for has polluted the seas, lakes and rivers. The Iron Woman has come to take revenge. Lucy understands the Iron Woman''s rage and she too wants to save the water creatures from their painful deaths. But she also wants to save her town from total destruction. She needs help. Who better to call on but Hogarth and the Iron Man . . .? A sequel and companion volume to Ted Hughes'' The Iron Man, this new, child-friendly setting will be treasured by a new generation of readers.

This collection of eleven evocative, accessible and funny stories for children of 5+ tells how a particular animal came to be as it is now. The Whale grew up in God''s vegetable patch but was banished to sea when he became too large and crushed all His carrots; the Polar Bear was lured to the North Pole by the other animals who were jealous that she always won the annual beauty contest; the Hare has asked the moon to marry him but can never stretch his ears high enough to hear her reply; the Bee must sip honey all day long to sweeten the bitter demon that runs through his veins . . . each story is a delight for reading alone or aloud.

Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, is tired of being told that she doesn''t exist. In this crackling, lolloping story in verse, Ted Hughes describes how she sets out on the road to London for an audience with the Queen...

This volume replaced Ted Hughes''s Selected Poems 1957-1981. It contains a larger selection from the same period, to which are added poems from more recent books, uncollected poems from each decade of Ted Hughes''s writing life, and some new work. Another notable feature is the inclusion of poems from his books for younger readers, What is the Truth? and Season Songs.

Originally published in 1979, Moortown Diary is the updated version of Ted Hughes''s acclaimed Devon farming sequence, written over a period of several years during which he was spending almost every day outside, either gardening or farming. The introduction and notes (added in 1989) sketch in the background from which these remarkable poems emerged as an improvised verse journal, sparely edited, coalescing spontaneously on the page. '' Moortown Diary keeps its eye firmly on the creatures behind the language. It''s written in the style of Hughes''s play translations: very swift and bright and urgent and speakable...Hughes strips away the protective layers - the soundproofed ears, the double-glazed eyes - that prevent us making contact with anything outside ourselves. Right now, I can''t think of anything more important than that kind of poem. Because we''re not just here to think about literature. We''re here to try to wake up.'' Alice Oswald, The Guardian ''It grips your heart, and your intestines, like a vice from the first page. He makes language as physical as a bruise, and in these poems beauty and tenderness blend with violence.'' John Carey, Sunday Times ''The Moortown sequence includes some of Hughes''s finest poems...They are like no other poems I have read, with a degree of intensity, sanity and grace that he has never equalled.'' Anthony Thwaite, Times Literary Supplement

''The poem we are told was originally intended as a film scenario. Ted Hughes has that sure poetic instinct that heads implacably for the particular instances rather than ideas or abstraction; he has an especial talent for evoking the visual particular . . . Ted Hughes has produced a strange bastard form that [works] because he has such an acute sense of the suggestive power of specific visual images and the ability to evoke them in words.'' Oliver Lyne, Times Literary Supplement

Illustrations and rhyming text portray a hobby gone awry, as Bert''s collection of exotic pets seems on the verge of breaking into a quarrel, and perhaps a rumpus, as well.

Ted Hughes described letter-writing as "excellent training for conversation with the world." These nearly 300 letters—selected from several thousand—show him in all his aspects: poet, husband and father, lover of the natural world, proud Englishman, and a man for whom literature was a way of being fully alive to experience. There are letters dealing with Hughes''s work on classic books, from the early breakthrough Lupercal to the late, revelatory Birthday Letters. There are letters discussing, with notable frankness, his marriages to Sylvia Plath and then to Assia Wevill. After marrying Carol Orchard, in 1970, Hughes ran a farm in Dorset for several years, and there are letters touching on his interest in astrology, his strong and original views of Shakespeare, and his passion for farming, fishing, and the environment in general. Letters to Seamus Heaney and Philip Larkin situate Hughes among his peers as never before. Letters of Ted Hughes reveals the author as a prose writer of great vigor and subtlety. It deepens our understanding of—and our admiration for—this great twentieth-century poet.

The achievement of Ted Hughes as a poet is inseparable from his achievement as a translator of poetry and poetic drama. Throughout a long and intensely productive career, Hughes was continuously engaged in acts of translation, for the page and for the stage, starting with his role in the establishment of the annual Poetry International in London and the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation, which he co-founded with Daniel Weissbort in 1965, and which notably brought to attention poets such as the Israeli Yehuda Amichai, the Hungarian Janos Pilinszky and the Yugoslav Vasko Popa. The present volume, edited by Weissbort, surveys this aspect of Hughes''s canon for the first time, offering a broad selection from his numerous translations, together with hitherto unpublished material (versions of Paul Eluard, or of Yves Bonnefoy), and excerpts from essays and letters. Strongly rooted in a native tradition, Hughes was nevertheless indebted to literary cultures other than his own, and his work far transcends national boundaries. The present volume selects from his versions from a wide variety of ancient texts - the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Aeschylus, Euripides, Ovid, Seneca, Racine - and equally from a range of twentieth century European poets and dramatists.

All the poems of a great 20th-century poet.

In this series, a contemporary poet advocates a poet of the past or present whom they have particularly admired. By their selection of verses and by the personal and critical reactions they express, the selectors offer intriguing insight into their own work.

A collection of Ted Hughes'' poetry from previously published works, including "The Hawk in the Rain," "Lupercal," "Cave Birds," and "Season Songs."

This volume contains six plays suitable for performance by children. Four were published under the title The Coming of the Kings and Other Plays, and the other two are Orpheus, previously only published in America, and The Pig Organ published for the first time.

In "The Mermaid''s Purse, Ted Hughes explores the ocean. From starfish and seagulls to mermaids and monsters, 28 poems capture the beauty, drama, and mystery of the sea and the seashore. Here is the ghostly cormorant: "Drowned fishermen come back/As famished cormorants/With bare and freezing webby toes/Instead of boots and pants." The strange and comical flounder: "The flounder sees/Through crooked eyes./Through crooked lips/The flounder cries." And the mermaid herself: "Call her a fish, /Call her a girl./Call her the pearl/Of an oyster fresh/On its pearly dish." By turns lyrical, whimsical, and robust, "The Mermaid''s Purse showcases the distinctive voice and appreciation of the natural world that made Ted Hughes among the most respected of late-20th-century poets. Made doubly accessible by Flora McDonnell''s distinctive black-and-white art, this sea-themed collection will delight children and be welcomed by educators.

Alcestis is the tale of a queen sacrificing herself so her husband may live. Ted Hughes'' classical translation was his final work, completed just before he died. As with his other works, it goes beyond its remit and is an inspired retelling of the play from his own perspective on human suffering.

The past contemporary poet gives an account in 88 poems in letter form of hisromance and the life spent with Sylvia Plath.

This beautiful book celebrates through the w ords of British writers and through its dramatic photographs, what riches the landscape of Britain has to offer now - an d, one hopes, for ever. ''

Prospectus for "Howls & whispers," by Ted Hughes, with etchings by Leonard Baskin.