Jonathan Bate on The Unauthorised Life of Ted Hughes
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- Опубликовано: 6 окт 2015
- Jonathan Bate introduces his biography of poet Ted Hughes. Available to buy at your local Waterstones. Order online or Click and Collect here: bit.ly/TedHughes
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Well, if Professor Bate ever reads this, I want to let him know that his aim has been thoroughly achieved. I'm 18, and started reading his book which I am fascinated with and I am now a fan of Ted Hughes and incredibly glad to have become aware of his poetry and life.
Grace Sampson Good for you, Grace.
The Thought Fox is a fantastic poem, but Plath's poetry and writing is on another level of perception altogether to Hughes. There's no doubt that Hughes helped Plath mature as a poet, but what a tragedy that we never got Sylvia Plath the novelist apart from her first novel, because she could write killer prose.
Have you ever read Hughes's poetry past his early career?
@@alphavolta5038 Try A Rain Charm for the Duchy. Although I wouldn't call it poetry.
Suddenly I am losing interest in reading and discussing poetry, and try to find comforts in other forms of art. The one that can make me glad and quiet inside.
Even if he was that "monster" in the eyes of so many, I just discovered the book and found it very well written. Something is quite interesting: Nearly all books by Sylvia Plath and her biographies and diaries have been translated into German, but nearly nothing of Hughes' work, including this biography.
What is the background music?
This is a lot of hyperbole from an Englishman. What would Hughes be if Plath hadn't died? The footnote of her early life.
One of the two or three greatest poets of the 20th century? I know you have a book to sell and need to stoke some interest. but that statement is:- A/ Patently mad - if I am being generous and you mean it seriously, B/ A deliberate provocation, slandering other, more accomplished human poets in order to provoke response in the form of direct, vitriolic abuse of Hughes and frenzied promotion of their selected hero - the publicity by any means method, C/ The desire to denigrate and insult all English language Poetry of the preceding century. I hope its B, there is some justification to that, a man must eat, but also to pay the massive counselling bills you have incurred seeking solace and sanity - ploughing through his turgid lower common room trying to be clever rubbish will have left you with some deep, possibly insurmountable, psychological damage, I wish you well on the long road to recovery
Who, in your eyes, and are the two or three greatest poets of the 20th century? Why do you disagree so strongly Hughes that isn't up there?
@@alphavolta5038 It was a ludicrous comment. Eliot, Pound, Rilke, Benn, Brecht, Apollinaire, Bob Dylan, WCWilliams, Montale, Tagore, Neruda, Vallejo, Bishop, Lowell, García Lorca, Antonio Machado all beat Hughes hands down for lasting poetic achievement.
Yeah, ridiculous claim. Two or three excellent poems is all.
@@alphavolta5038 because it's mostly doggerel. Eliot, Auden, Larkin, Heaney, Yeats of course. Birthday Letters is a weird combination of twee and tacky.
All the opposite, I hope other generations don't reproduce him more, he beated Sylvia leading to an abortion, he didn't respect Sylvia's will of how to publish Ariel, he got rid of many poems against him and 2 journals of her, bastard evil monster.
perhaps teh Englixh need to adress sin with no shame....
Insanity and narcissism, celebrated...
Talent to write doesn't mean flawless character...same for painting, music....
@@monicaangelini3324 three good poems is not enough for talent.
This is all a bit mealy mouthed. Ted Hughes was one of thousands of bright working class boys who was able to go to Oxbridge in the post war years, a figure never since achieved. He plowed a narrow track of poetic soil, a primitivist outlook that linked his nature wonder as a child and old poetry. I don't get the reverential tone that Bate draws upon in this promo for his book. Hughes was a Lad On The Make, then Sex God Ted, the fascinating war of wills he had with his equally bright wife Ted and lastly bombastic Ted with his tours and money. Teddist? not me. I prefer the day to day wit of Larkin to all that overwrought predestination, animal spirit guff. Plath was the better poet.
Very well put. Larkin wrote poems that are ageless, and skewer England. He wasn't such a great guy either, but his work remains so evocative.
This is an incredibly bad book.
Why's that?
Incredibly bad, not just bad?
How?
It's better than anything Hughes wrote. irony.
Ted Hughes was a selfish, arrogant bastard. I love poetry, but have never been able to see any merit in his.
There have been no great poets in the English language sine the deaths of Robert Frost. T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. But even Eliot and Pound’s work is seriously flawed