<div><b>Poems from every phase of the career of a great poet</b><br><br>This selection of Ted Hughes's poetry, made by the author himself in 1995, includes poems from every phase of his four-decade career. Here are poems from Hughes's first book, <i>The Hawk in the Rain</i>, and its successor, <i>Lupercal</i>, which introduced him as a major poet; from <i>Wodwo</i>, <i>Crow</i> and <i>Gaudete</i>, book-length poetic sequences in which the natural world is made into a thrilling and terror-filled analogue to our human one; and from six volumes of his maturity, here arranged thematically, in which the poet is at once rural chronicler and form-breaking modern artist. The volume also includes previously uncollected poems and eight poems later incorporated into <i>Birthday Letters</i>, Hughes's meditation in verse on his marriage to Sylvia Plath, which became an international bestseller the year after his death. <br></div>