Arbieroo reviewed Wodwo by Ted Hughes (Faber papercovered editions)
Review of 'Wodwo' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Wodwo was Hughes' second published poetry collection. I'd read all the poems before in [b:Collected Poems|149505|Collected Poems|Ted Hughes|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172203055s/149505.jpg|1809812] and many are very familiar from many years of reading Hughes' work. What came as a surprise and made me buy this seperately is that the book comes in three parts; some short stories (and one play) sandwiched by two sets of poems. These aren't collected in Collected Poems and I had never even heard of Hughes writing prose fiction aimed at adults. The stories (and play) are difficult in that they are overtly symbolic and more or less cryptic. The connecting theme is transformation. The first story, The Rain Horse (easily my favourite) has the protagonist menaced by a horse on open farm land; he desperately flees the strangely behaving creature. The play (last of the prose works) has a wounded soldier experiencing a surreal march toward the home lines to …
Wodwo was Hughes' second published poetry collection. I'd read all the poems before in [b:Collected Poems|149505|Collected Poems|Ted Hughes|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172203055s/149505.jpg|1809812] and many are very familiar from many years of reading Hughes' work. What came as a surprise and made me buy this seperately is that the book comes in three parts; some short stories (and one play) sandwiched by two sets of poems. These aren't collected in Collected Poems and I had never even heard of Hughes writing prose fiction aimed at adults. The stories (and play) are difficult in that they are overtly symbolic and more or less cryptic. The connecting theme is transformation. The first story, The Rain Horse (easily my favourite) has the protagonist menaced by a horse on open farm land; he desperately flees the strangely behaving creature. The play (last of the prose works) has a wounded soldier experiencing a surreal march toward the home lines to get treatment. He is unable to escape his nightmare.
From reading [b:Selected Letters Ted Hughes|2502449|Selected Letters Ted Hughes|Ted Hughes|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51nrBB%2BE3oL.SL75.jpg|2509814] it becomes clear that Hughes felt a psychological transformation occurring within him whilst writing the material for this book, so that the poems fell into two distinct tonal groups, representing before and after the change. The prose works subconciously ended up representing the change itself: The first shows Hughes struggling to reject the change, the last the inevitability, unavoidability of it.
Whatever this transformation was, it is visible in the poetry: Part 1 is tonally similar to Hawk in the Rain, Hughes first collection. Part 3 is the first step down the road that would lead to Crow.
I strongly recommend that Hughes fans who haven't already, get hold of this book and read it through linearly from beginning to end, bearing in mind the above comments.