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....
'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...