Hughes' poetry once again tends towards brutality and violence, but this collection seems to be centred around the effects of war rather than the primeval/mythopoetic world. I would assume that Hughes himself or his father went to war because the recurring shell-shocked father character is extremely believable. Though that could have been just good research or empathy. It being centred on war, I didn't connect with this collection as much as Crow, but there were definitely some good poems. I really liked the titular "Wolfwatching," but t was so completely melancholy that it almost wasn't enjoyable in the usual sense. Hughes really captures the feeling of being caged wild animal and the effects of age, and that is what makes him one of the 20th-century's greatest poets. ( )

"Sorcerer! How you hate it all!

Trampling it under slowly--kneading it all

To an electric pulp."



"In the revolving ballroom of space

Bowed over the moor, a bright face

Draws out of telegraph wires the tones

That empty human bones."


"This is the black rhino, the elastic boulder, coming at a gallop

The boulder with a molten core, the animal missile

Enlarging towards you. This is him in his fame--

Whose past is Behemoth, sixty million years printing the strata

Whose present is the brain-blink behind a recoiling gunsight

Whose future is a cheap watch shaken in your ear

Listen--bedrock accompanies him, a drumbeat

But his shadow over the crisp tangle of grass-tips hesitates, passes, hesitates, passes lightly

As a moth at noon."


(Oh yeah.)


"'We are beautiful. We stir

Our self-colour in the pot of colours

Which is the world. At each

Tail-stroke we deepen

Our being into the world's lit substance,

And our joy into the world's

Spinning bliss, and our peace

Into the world's floating, plumed peace.'"

"With all my might--I hesitated." ( )