Moortown

by Ted Hughes

A central sequence of thirty-four poems on the ordinary life of serious farming, touching on both the brutal and the ecstatic, accompany three other sequences, different in subject, tone, and feeling

Genres: Poetry

182 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1980

About the author

Edward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
He married fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962 and Plath ended her own life in 1963.

Reviews

[Descending Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a poetry collection about a farm that Ted Hughes had until about a year before his death and of course, farming. Great writing but limited. Highlights ~ "Rain" "Dehorning" "Tractor" "Surprise" "February 17th" "Birth of Rainbow" and "Coming Down Through Somerset".

[Tim Jarrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read many of the poems in this collection in high school, and distinctly remember writing an essay centered around “Night Arrival of Sea Trout”:

“Summer dripping stars, biting at the nape.
Lob-worms coupling in saliva.
Earth singing under its breath.

And out in the hard corn, a horned god
Running and leaping
With a bat in his drum.”

(My poor English teacher.)

Re-reading it more than thirty years later, I’m struck again by how Hughes, in his Devon farm, found concrete forms for the violence always present in his poetry, moving away from the philosophical brutality of the “Crow” poems to observing the beauty in the everyday brutality of lambing, horning, and other feats of animal husbandry. The abstract doesn’t go away—“Prometheus On His Crag” is a good example of the depths of Hughes’ vision—but here it’s grounded in mud, blood and the cries of ewes. Still a mind blowing collection all these years later.

[Jim Minick · Rating 5 out of 5]

What great, gritty work—and so familiar (dehorning and stillbirths and all) from so far away.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would be 4 or 5 stars for the Moortown farm poems alone; blood and guts, unsentimental stuff, like "Dehorning." It's that sort of poem by Hughes that several decades ago made me realize that poetry really did have power, and wasn't just an exercise in form and meter. But this is a slightly odd collection of poems beyond those farm poems; the series on Prometheus on his crag is interesting, but seems a bit too academic by comparison. Those farm poems seem both to make use of and work against bucolic, pastoral ideals, with their bloody anatomical detail and cold tractor seats, corrugated iron sheds. I do like also the pithy, rather bleak narrative of "A Motorbike," for example, from the Earth Numb section, on how dull England was on the return from war.

[Harry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think maybe being into farming conceptually would make you more warm on these. For me personally, I liked 'poor bird' and 'happy calf' but found the gore of the rest of them too much

I also liked the first and last stanzas of 'adam and the sacred nine' but did not get much out of this at all

[Andrew Corsini · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dull as ditchwater first section, treading over similar natural themes, gives way in the second half of the collection to the mythic and godly imagery Hughes does so well.

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The farm poems of the first sequence are the greatest part of the collection.The following mythical sequences aren't as poignant or powerful. He gets lost in it this time. He never really recovered that aspect of his work from Crow.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anal-expulsive.