Book Recommendation

johnny on the spot said:
On a poetic tip, anyone read any John Clare? The guy's a hero.

That's just reminded me!

Ted Hughes' final poem about Sylvia Plath was published for the first time today.


* scurries off to google*
 
mammutly said:
johnny on the spot said:
On a poetic tip, anyone read any John Clare? The guy's a hero.

That's just reminded me!

Ted Hughes' final poem about Sylvia Plath was published for the first time today.


* scurries off to google*

Bad season for hornets, this. But please stick to Ted. Incredible talent.


Ted Hughes, The Horses

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,


Not a leaf, not a bird -
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood


Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness


Till the moorline - blackening dregs of the brightening grey -
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:


Huge in the dense grey - ten together -
Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,


with draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.


I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments


Of a grey silent world.


I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.
The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence.


Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted


Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,


And the big planets hanging -
I turned


Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,


And came to the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,


Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them


The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,


Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys in the red levelling rays -


In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place


Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.

Fucking right.
 
johnny on the spot said:
mammutly said:
That's just reminded me!

Ted Hughes' final poem about Sylvia Plath was published for the first time today.


* scurries off to google*

Bad season for hornets, this. But please stick to Ted. Incredible talent.


Ted Hughes, The Horses

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,


Not a leaf, not a bird -
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood


Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness


Till the moorline - blackening dregs of the brightening grey -
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:


Huge in the dense grey - ten together -
Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,


with draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.


I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments


Of a grey silent world.


I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.
The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence.


Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted


Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,


And the big planets hanging -
I turned


Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,


And came to the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,


Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them


The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,


Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys in the red levelling rays -


In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place


Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.

Fucking right.


Excellent
 
mammutly said:
Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.

Just..................

sometimes words stand you still

I'll never forget nearly losing it in a literature seminar to this poem. Hughes was the first poet to ring a note in a different chamber of my brain.
 
His Last Letter is here, in the middle of the article

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318398/Ted-Hughess-letter-Unearthed-poets-lament-Sylvia-Plaths-suicide.html?ito=feeds-newsxml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ds-newsxml</a>
 

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