Scenes from Crow

"Walking around with Ted Hughes’s Crow in your pocket is like walking around with a flick knife. That’s how powerful and dangerous this poetry is. I remember when I started reading the first few poems. I was immediately transfixed not only by the sheer ritualistic weight of the words, the repetition of phrases — ‘Black was the without eye / Black the within tongue / Black was the heart’ (‘Two Legends’) — but also by the shocking and visceral imagery: ‘Screaming for Blood / Grubs, crusts / Anything // Trembling featherless elbows in the nest’s filth’ (‘Lineage’). This was not refined verse, but poetry bent on revenge. I couldn’t put the book down.