What do you think?
Rate this book
Moortown
We sell Rare, out-of-print, uncommon, & used BOOKS, PRINTS, MAPS, DOCUMENTS, AND EPHEMERA. We do not sell ebooks, print on demand, or other reproduced materials. Each item you see here is individually described and imaged. We welcome further inquiries.
- GenresPoetry
183 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1980
2 people are currently reading
25 people want to read
About the author
Ted Hughes
375 books727 followersEdward 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 15, 2022
“Moortown” contains a run of poems describing that author’s know-hows while farming in Devon. These poems belong to the chapter of the author’s life which had closed with the passing away of his partner and father-in-law, Jack Orchard.
These poems may be regarded as elegies not only because of that death but also because some of them are about the deaths of animals.
The first poem in this collection is ‘Rain’. It begins thus:
Rain. Floods. Frost. And after frost, rain.
Dull roof-drumming. Wraith-rain pulsing across purple-bare woods
Like light across heaved water. Sleet in it.
And the poor fields, miserable tents of their hedges.
Mist-rain off-world. Hills wallowing
In and out of a grey or silvery dissolution. A farm gleaming,
Then all dull in the near drumming. At field-corners
Brown water backing and briming in grass.
Toads hop across rain-hammered roads. Every mutilated leaf there
The rain “goes on and on, and gets colder”; and the poem duplicates this continuation by more and more observations of rain-affected things.
Employing small and delicate alterations in the language, the poet achieves here a freshness of vision. For instance, calves stand, not in shiny mud, but “in a shine of mud.”
Language has here, as elsewhere in Hughes’s poetry, been subjected to undersized amendments to make it more truthful and glowing in describing the observed reality.
The poems in this volume show all Hughes’s expected skills in the use of language.
These poems may be regarded as elegies not only because of that death but also because some of them are about the deaths of animals.
The first poem in this collection is ‘Rain’. It begins thus:
Rain. Floods. Frost. And after frost, rain.
Dull roof-drumming. Wraith-rain pulsing across purple-bare woods
Like light across heaved water. Sleet in it.
And the poor fields, miserable tents of their hedges.
Mist-rain off-world. Hills wallowing
In and out of a grey or silvery dissolution. A farm gleaming,
Then all dull in the near drumming. At field-corners
Brown water backing and briming in grass.
Toads hop across rain-hammered roads. Every mutilated leaf there
The rain “goes on and on, and gets colder”; and the poem duplicates this continuation by more and more observations of rain-affected things.
Employing small and delicate alterations in the language, the poet achieves here a freshness of vision. For instance, calves stand, not in shiny mud, but “in a shine of mud.”
Language has here, as elsewhere in Hughes’s poetry, been subjected to undersized amendments to make it more truthful and glowing in describing the observed reality.
The poems in this volume show all Hughes’s expected skills in the use of language.
January 6, 2022
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".
January 1, 2023
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.
“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.
January 16, 2017
What great, gritty work—and so familiar (dehorning and stillbirths and all) from so far away.
October 24, 2011
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.
July 1, 2023
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.
September 8, 2019
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.
December 19, 2015
Anal-expulsive.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews