Finished reading The Iron Woman by Ted Hughes tonight.
The men in the Waste Disposal Factory that is polluting the marsh are turned into giant water creatures and made to Seriously Reconsider. Things in England at least are never the same.
Hughes, one of my heroes, deserves many entries.
Suffice it to have him read some of his crow poems:
Leonard Baskin’s ink & crayon drawing for the cover of Ted Hughes’ Crow
Black was the without eye
Black the within tongue
Black was the heart
Black the liver, Black the lungs
Unable to suck in light.
Black the blood in its loud tunnel
Black the bowels packed in furnace
Black too the muscles
Striving to pull out into light
Black the nerves, Black the brain
With its tombed visions
Black also the soul, the huge stammer
Of the cry that, swelling, could not
Pronounce its sun.
He was well equipped to make his creation stories for kids, like How the Whale Became etc. Also his Ovid. And the Iron Man and Iron Woman.
stories 