This is one of the best books of poetry I've read in the last thirty years. I've never read any poems like these. There has been a great deal of comment about Frieda Hughes' parents and how much her work has been influenced by her parentage. I don't see the difficulty here. Her subjects, as well as her approaches, are uniquely her own. What she does share in common with both Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath is her remarkable intensity and the seemingly endless inventiveness of her images.

It may be my imagination, but this book does seem to have a central theme, what we could call a plot in a work of fiction. The woman who haunts these poems is a mother or step-mother who is eventually revealed as a monstrous human being. Much of Waxworks charts how this woman has tormented the various speakers, who are, of course, speaking through masks the author has put on.

I found this a fascinating work, one I keep coming back to again and again. Each time I read it I find more to admire in it: and more to discover. The poems deepen with each reading. Read Frieda Hughes to hear her own voice and become acquainted with her own unique and complex mind. She does not need the reflected glory some believe her parents have bestowed upon her. She is a glory of her own. It is worth the trouble to read her as she is and not as an addendum to anyone else's biography.

This is a wonderful and very powerful book of poetry. I suspect many of the poems are autobiographical, although since the poet speaks through many historical personages, the autobiographical element is well-disguised. I've read very few books of poems that have this intensity as well as the enormous skill displayed in poem after poem. I would recommend this book to anyone, but I would add that it should be indispensable to any serious writer of poetry. This author is the real thing.

maybe I expected more out of the daughter of sylvia plath and ted hughes, and maybe it isn't fair that I expected something better, but I was disappointed. Perhaps if I hadn't known who her parents were I might have read this differently. She's not a bad poet, just not that great of one. The poems give off a feeling of repetition, and I just don't know if a kookaburra is something I need to see in 20 or so poems. And by the end of the collection, i'm a little tired of hearing about foxes. i would have liked to have seen more poems about growing up the daughter of sylvia plath and ted hughes and what her life was like and her issues with her parents to have come out in the poems. She had some good lines and some really good ideas, but she just couldn't seem to pull it together. There were a couple of good poems in there though.

What a burden to have on top of you if you want to write poetry - your mother is Sylvia Plath; your father is poet laureate Ted Hughes. I was lucky and read a few of her poems before I knew her family background. Rereading them after that knowledge led me off in new directions... and I'm not sure how useful that was... The poems work well on their own. She has the painter's eye for color & detail (she & her husband are painters - she also writes & illustrates children's books) but there is more there. Yes, I see Hughes here - like those the foxes lurking about- and Plath's weight of family bearing down on her. But also I see someone off in Wooroloo, Australia very much on her own in that new land. I recommend it.