Poetry in the Making: An Anthology - Softcover

Hughes, Ted

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571090761 ISBN 13: 9780571090761

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1967

Synopsis

Drawn from Ted Hughes's celebrated programs for the BBC's "Listening and Writing" series, Poetry in the Making is a fresh, student-friendly discussion of what Hughes calls "imaginative writing." Offering generous citations from the work of several English-speaking, mostly modern or contemporary poets--including Hopkins, Dickinson, Eliot, Larkin, Plath, and himself--Hughes provides a useful and readable primer on "the kind of [poetry] writing children can do without becoming false to themselves." Like Kenneth Koch's classic Wishes, Lies, and Dreams, Poetry in the Making presents new ideas on how children and other beginners might best compose their own poems while also presenting candid, and more general, insights that all students and scholars of the art or craft of verse will find inspiring.

And although these pieces were primarily intended to help students improve their creative writingn abilities, they are also an effective introduction to Hughes's own work and the influences other writers have had on him. Hughes, who was Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II at the time of his death 1998, casually and colorfully discusses how he came to write, what inspires him (and why), and the difficulties that he (and other writers) confront when writing.

About this title

About the Author:

The British poet, translator, author, and critic Ted Hughes, born in 1930, wrote more than forty books, including, in the last decade of his life, Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being; Tales from Ovid; verse adaptations of Aeschylus's Oresteia, Racine's Phèdre, and Euripedes' Alcestis; and the bestselling Birthday Letters. Hughes served as Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II from 1984 until his death in 1998.

Review:

"In a series of chapters built around poems by a number of writers including himself . . . [Hughes] explores, colourfully and intensively, themes such as 'Capturing Animals,' 'Wind and Weather,' and 'Writing about People.' The purpose throughout is to lead on, via a discussion of the poems (which he does with riveting skill), to some direct encouragement to the [students] to think and write for themselves. He makes the whole venture seem enjoyable, and somehow urgent."--The Times Literary Supplement

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1967
• ISBN 10: 0571090761
• ISBN 13: 9780571090761
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128