SOURCE: A review of New Selected Poems, 1957–1994, in World Literature Today, Vol. 70, No. 2, Spring, 1996, pp. 407-8.

[In the following review, Firchow discusses Hughes's choice of selection in his New Selected Poems.]

It is beginning to look as if Ted Hughes wants to make a habit of selecting his poems. His first such selection, simply and appropriately called Selected Poetry, appeared as long ago as 1968 and gathered up poems from the first decade or so of his individually published volumes. The second, New Selected Poems claimed merely to move the process up by a few years to 1981 but proleptically contained several poems from River, a volume which did not appear until 1983. Now his third and latest selection reprints just about all the poems contained in the first two collections as well as continuing to add poems from subsequent individual volumes. Here for the first time, however. Hughes also includes...