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A collection of 144 letters between Hughes and the literary critic Sagar provides insight into the poet's life and creative process, including his relationship with Sylvia Plath.
At the outset of the third millennium, one problem towers above all others: how are we (as a species living what we think of as a civilized life) to survive? How, that is, are we to continue to live in an overcrowded world whose finite resources are being rapidly exhausted and whose biological life support systems are close to breakdown? There is a widespread and fast-growing belief that tinkering with economics ('sustainable development') and local conservation measures (always too little and too late) are not enough; that what is needed is a revolution in our consciousness regarding our place in the natural world and our responsibilities towards it. This book attempts to reassert the essential relationship between imagination, nature and human survival. Keith Sagar demonstrates, by close readings of major works by seventeen of the greatest writers, from Homer to Hughes, that literature has a central contribution to make in our efforts to discover what are the laws of nature and human nature, and to live within them.
While his work as a writer has long overshadowed his painting DH Lawrence was accomplished at both, and for the first time, this book brings them together for the world to see.
"You Touched Me" is a comic/tragic story of a forced marriage brought about by an accidental touch in the night but the depth of the writing leaves the reader unsure if the couple are marrying for money or to release the passions realised by the touch in the night.
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Hughes' relationship with nature is so central to his work that every book on him has discussed it. However, because of the larger scope of all these books, this discussion has remained at a fairly superficial level. Here Keith Sagar tries to take it onto
Lawrence first put together the collection of his poems in 1928. They are arranged chronologically "to make up a biography of an emotional and inner life".
Dr Sagar believes that when we see Ted Hughes work as a whole, with each book a stage in a psychic adventure involving new stylistic challenge, we shall see it to be the achievement of a major poet. In this study of Ted Hughes, Dr Sagar gives most of his attention to individual poems, their meaning and coherence, their relation to each other and to the poetic tradition, their sources and background (often in mythology and folklore), and their relevance to living in our time. He began reading Hughes in 1957 when The Hawk in the Ruin appeared, and has followed his development closely ever since: here, with benefit of hindsight, he attempts to retrace that journey. A chapter is devoted to each major work.