This study helps satisfy the need for book-length treatments of the poetry of Ted Hughes. Scigaj focuses on the nine major volumes of adult poetry; children's verse and other writings are largely excluded. His point of view "proceeds from the axiom that Hughes is a modernist poet whose work supports the New Critical tenet that form and content are inseparable." He addresses each of the nine books in a separate chapter, within the framework of three major divisionsNew Critical formalism in the Fifties, mythic surrealism in the Sixties, and "mystic landscape poetry" from the mid-Seventies on. Because the reader is assumed to possess a knowledge of 20th-century poetry and criticism, this book is suited primarily to the specialized collection. Stephen H. Cape, Indiana Univ. Lib., Bloomington Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
