Having established himself as a poet with the acute and unique gift in description of animals of woodland England, Hughes went on to continue this in his second volume of poetry, 'Lupercal', a word resembling the ancient fertility festival. In this volume, Hughes not only shows us his anthropological academic background, as is evident in his poems preoccupied with the making of his personal mythology such as 'Lupercalia' and 'Crag Jack's Apostasy', but also his gentler lyricism e.g. 'To Paint A Water Lily', and his matter-of-fact, farmer-like bluntness, as in 'View of a Pig'. But it is in poems like 'Hawk Roosting' that could convince the reader that the poet may just have experienced what it is to be a hawk. Sometimes bleak, intense and always beautiful, this volume should be considered among his greatest work. But be warned: not for light-hearted reading!

This year I am using Jean Racine's "Phaedra" as the one non-classical text in my Classical Greek and Roman Mythology Class (yes, I know, "Classical" makes "Greek and Roman" redundant, but it was not my title). In Greek mythology, Phaedra was the half-sister of the Minotaur who was married to Theseus after the hero abandoned her sister Ariadne (albeit, according to some versions of what happened in Crete). Phaedra fell in love with her step-son Hippolytus, who refused her advances. Humiliated, she falsely accused him of having raped her.

My students read "Phaedra" after Euripides's "Hippolytus" as part of an analogy criticism assignment, in which they compare/contrast the two versions, which are decidedly different, to say the least. In the "original" Greek version Hippolytus is a follower of Artemis, and the jealous Aphrodite causes his stepmother to fall in love with him. Phaedra accuses Hippolytus of rape and then hangs herself; Theseus banished his son who is killed before Artemis arrives to tell the truth. In Racine's version Hippolytus is a famous hater of women who falls in love with Aricia, a princess of the blood line of Athens. When false word comes that Theseus is dead, Phaedra moves to put her own son on the throne. In the end the same characters end up dead, but the motivations and other key elements are different.

While I personally would not go so far as to try and argue how Racine's neo-classical version represents the France of 1677, I have found that comparing and contrasting the two versions compels students to think about the choices each dramatist has made. Both the similarities and the differences between "Hippolytus" and "Phaedra" are significant enough to facilitate this effort. Note: Other dramatic versions of this myth include Seneca's play "Phaedra," "Fedra" by Gabriele D'Annunzio, "Thesee" by Andrea Gide, and "The Cretan Woman" by Robinson Jeffers.

This book deals with the depth and power of Ted Hughes writing in a way which is readable, yet sufficiently technical to highlight the mechanisms being used. It draws on French theorists, notable Lacan and Kristeva, to expose the poems as being ultimately a search for meaning amongst an ostensibly wild and natural universe. The themes of myth and magic run deep through the book in a manner which matches Hughes' style very closely. I would recommend this book to all who are interested in looking more deeply at this poet's work.

The tragedy of "Oedipus" as told by the Roman playwright Seneca (translated by the English poet Ted Hughes) is a very bloodthirsty and savage retelling of the tale, much in keeping with the Roman view of popular entertainment. Seneca also wrote his version of the Oedipus myth after the downfall of Nero, as the Roman Empire was emerging from a particularly dark period in its history. Whereas the Greek tragedy by Sophocles is concerned with unraveling the puzzle (most readers never note that the prophecy as told to Oedipus is not the same as what was told to his parents), the Seneca version is more about psychology and emotion than logic. In this version there is an impending sense of doom that hangs over the characters. The contrasts and comparisons between the two versions are inevitable because no one is going to come to Seneca's "Oedipus" without knowledge of Sophocles's "Oedipus the King."

In the Roman play the chorus functions not as a narrative counterpoint to the dramatic action, but as a means of confronting Oedipus with his darkest thoughts and fears (i.e., an internal dialogue). Ironically, given that the plays of Sophocles provided the characters that Freud turned into key psychological complexes, it is the Seneca version that seems more like a fevered dream. Like most of Seneca's plays, "Oedipus" takes the familiar stories of Greek tragedies and provides some original details. For example, in this version Teiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes, uses a spell to call up the dead Laius so that he can offer his morbid insights on the events unfolding.

If Sophocles is interested in psychology, then Seneca is more the philosopher. Before Jocasta commits suicide in the play she has a final scene with Oedipus in which they discuss the accountability of humankind and fate. The play begins with a monologue by Oedipus where he talks about the calamitous state of Thebes and his fear that he may be the cause. At the end Oedipus is again alone on stage with all of his worst fears fully realized and self-blinded to ensure constant and continued punishment and suffering. Before the irresitable force of fate human beings can do nothing but suffer. This is not so much a tragedy, per se, but rather an unhappy story (i.e., a tale without the audience enjoying the Greek idea of catharsis). Comparing the versions by Sophocles and Seneca also provides a basic understanding of the difference between Greek and Roman tragedy.

To read any of the biographies but not read Malcolm's companion text would be almost reprehensible. Malcolm analyzes the context in which each biography was written, which is not only interesting, but also important. She also considers the effect that Plath's life and the Plath biographies have on our readings of Plath's poetry, and vice versa.

As Malcolm makes abundantly clear, every one of the many biographies of Plath is completely slanted. This includes the most (Bitter Fame) and the least (Rough Magic) professionally researched and written.

A caveat: Malcolm ultimately sympathizes with Ted Hughes, Plath's husband. Those who hate Hughes for the way he treated Plath toward the end of her life ought especially to read this book in order to get a more balanced picture of the relationship between Plath and Hughes.

There *is* a good deal of psychological theorizing in the book, but that is a strength, not a weakness. Given that Plath's life ended in suicide, it is completely appropriate for Malcolm to consider Plath's psychology and that of those around her.

Malcolm's characteristic interest, in all her books, is to examine the many sides in a typically academic battle regarding truth and viewpoint and show how the many people involved in the battle often shoot themselves in their feet by making self-servicing claims in their own defenses. Naturally, few things work better for this condition than the problematic of biography, and in the case of Sylvia Plath Malcolm found a humdinger of a topic.

Most literate readers know about the basic facts of Plath's life--the marriage to Ted Hughes, his philandering and subsequent abandonment of her, and her suicide in 1963. On these basic signposts various biographers (and, more crucially, Plath's friends, family, and enemies during her lifetime) have hung all sorts of interpretations, to the point where a college classmate of Malcolm's, Anne Stevenson, agreed to write an unsymathetic account of Plath's life on behalf of Hughes and his sister Olwyn--and wound up devastating her own literary career by pleasing neither the Hugheses nor Plath's advocates.

This is one of the most thoughtful studies of biography and its problems ever written, and shows the horrible things people can do to one another in the name of trying to "set the story straight."

Malcolm's book is a compelling look at the process of writing a biography, as well as an interesting biography of Plath's and Hughes's relationship in itself. By examining the motivations behind Plath biographers, friends, and enemies, Malcolm comments on the process and biases of the biography genre, most importantly, the controversial Bitter Fame. In this book, we see the Hughes's sister shut out all biographers with a negative view of Hughes. We see Plath enemy Dido Merwin write a skewed tale about a Plath/Hughes visit. We see admirers of Plath's write scathing biographies blaming Hughes for the downfall of the Plath/Hughes marriage. What Malcolm attempts to do is to look at the union in a balanced manner, while exposing the motivations of the players in the Plath drama. She succeeds whole-heartedly in this excellent book.

This textbook is so boring that although I made an A in the class, I couldn't wait to finish it. It uses too many technical words, it makes reference to subjects that students with a few courses in Human Resources know already. It would be better if it offered some real life examples. If you are a teacher looking for a textbook, please keep looking! If you are a student whose teacher assigned you this book..... I am sorry for you!

This is an outstanding book. It is very easy reading, organized and it communicates information to the student. It is loaded with easy following diagrams which reinforce the material, and it is loaded with real world Corporate America and Military Organizational Behavior examples to support the text work. It has an OUTSTANDING CASE Section which again reinforces the material and makes the student apply the concepts learned in the chapters. Also, this text is complete with alot of Personal Assessment Exercises which make you think about the type of person you are, how to improve yourself in working with others. I've used in now for 3 different schools and the students enjoy it...Mainly for the Easy Reading and the way it introduces the concepts. Price is IRRELEVANT. You can go spend $40 on an Organizational Behavior text and you won't get anything out of it because it is poorly written, no cases and no assessments. Highly recommend for any instructor who wants his students to learn. Great reference book also. Don't sell it!!!

I'm reading this book only because it is required for my class, but in reading it, had I known about its quality, I would have purchased it anyhow. It's a very expensive book (and I do doubt whether it's worth $100--but then, I think books are overpriced nowadays)--but the content is very good. Maybe the difference between the previous reviewer and me is that I don't know much about organizational behaviour and haven't compared it to other books in this field.

Although this version has some interesting imagery (mostly from the modern poet's mind,) the shallowness of the adaptation and orientation on poetry (as opposed to drama,) made it completely ineffective. (I have to say, I have a similarly low opinion of the Seamus Heaney's Philocetes (Cure at Troy,) which won the Nobel prize for a message put far more eloquently and to a
far broader audience in Star Trek II & III.)

Fagles on the other hand, aside from bringing a clear, no-nonsense poetic style that affords ultimate readability, has the crucial scholar's depth of understanding that makes these plays breath with life and meaning.

If you really want the effect of these important plays, don't waste your time on this and get the Fagles. ONLY get this version if your desire is to read Ted. (Sorry Ted!)

Recommended Further Reading: "Orestes" by Charles L. Mee (available in his "History Plays".)

Let's get one thing straight: Hughes' translation is not a literal one of the Oresteia. He takes many liberties - although not as many as he's been berated for - and, in some ways, remakes Aeschylus in the image of Ted Hughes. BUT - his poetry is beautiful without being cumbersome and he clarifies some of the issues that get lost in some other, more literal translations. For example, compare this passage in Hughes with the same passage in Fagles' translation: "This was life. The luckiest hours/ Like scribbles in chalk/ On a slate in a classroom. We stare/ And try to understand them. Then luck turns its back - And everything's wiped out. Joy was not less pathetic/ Than the worst grief." That's Hughes. Here's the same speech (the speech Cassandra makes just before she goes to her death in the Agamemnon): "Oh men, your destiny. When all is well a shadow can overturn it. When trouble comes a stroke of the wet sponge, and the picture's blotted out. And that, I think that breaks the heart." (line 1350)

So you can see the difference - the Hughes translation is very Hughes-esque and the Fagles attempts to stay closer with the original. There's something to be said for both views. I reccomend getting a literal translation (Lattimore is probably the best, Fagles is good too) and then reading Hughes and seing what he does with the plays. He puts a very interesting spin on some passages - and his poetry really can't be beat. If you're a Hughes fan, be sure to pick this up.

This collection includes the whole gamut of short stories from pretentious but weak parable ('O'Kelly's Angel') to real gem ('The Deadfall'). The author is a famous poet, and I believe his poems are excellent. His language is rich. But his prosaic works, cloyed with numerous images and metaphors sometimes rather complicated and unnecessary, force to recall the Ockham's Razor. Nevertheless his ardent aversion to abominable massacre of God's small critters hypocritically named 'hunt', expressed at least in three of his stories, takes all my sympathies.

Moortown is a large collection. It is actually four books in one: 'Moortown Diary' (also published separately), 'Earthnumb', 'Prometheus on His Crag', and 'Adam and the Sacred Nine'. The last two of these are unified poem sequences very similar in outline: they concern the journey of a symbolic man towards his place in nature and the world. 'Moortown Diary', by contrast, is a highly realistic group of poems recording the poet's experiences running a farm of cattle and sheep. 'Earthnumb' is a loose miscellany of other poems, many of them allegorical. In fact, the 'Moortown Diary' poems aside, very little of this collection is grounded in close observation of the natural world (a quality one elsewhere associates with Hughes' poetry). It is an overwhelmingly abstract, mystical book and as such is very difficult. I found myself asking a question about Hughes' work which, after the experience of his more accessible poems, I had not asked before: namely - how much of this poet's grand mythologizing actually rings true, and how much of it is just empty rhetorical gesturing?

Elaine Feinstein, a friend of Ted Hughes, has written what amounts to the first full length biography of the former poet laureate. Readers, especially those with a strong interest in his first wife, Sylvia Plath, will feel, I suspect, rather let down by this book, even though the bulk of the biography seems to be about Hughes' relationship with Plath. Feinstein's caution and wish not to offend - Ted's living family, friends, and maybe Ted himself - is evident throughout the book. But more than that, there seems to be little here that readers have not already read before in various sources. Anyone familiar with one or more of the several Plath biographies, or Lucas Myer's recent memoir, 'Crow Steered, Bergs Appeared,' will find the information on Hughes' years in Cambridge, his meeting of Plath and their life together until her death in 1963 completely unsurprising. There are a few 'new' bits of information with regard to Hughes' childhood in Yorkshire but nothing of major interest. There are also some interesting pieces of information regarding his relationship with Assia Wevill and about Assia herself, but again, not much we didn't already know. The relationships he had with Emma Tennant and Jill Barber are better and more thoroughly documented respectively in Tennant's book 'Burnt Diaries' and presumably in Barber's forthcoming memoir. Almost nothing is said about his 2nd wife Carol, or Hughes' children with Plath, seemingly because the biography is unauthorized and Feinstein wishes not to infringe on the personal life of the still living wife and children of her friend Hughes. This restraint for the sake of the living is admirable, but it hardly makes for a well-rounded bio (readers interested in the inherent implications and difficulties of writing biographies would do well to read Janet Malcolm's 'The Silent Woman'.) Indeed, Carol Hughes becomes hardly more than a footnote in her husband's life in this book. In any event, the personal details entailed are certainly not salacious; in fact, I've read quite a few things in Plath bios, on the internet and in the newspapers that are hinted at in this book but never fully explained, or left out altogether, probably because they would be considered too disparaging to the subject. I personally have no problem with this - biography is more than simply gossip and the airing of dirty laundry (at least it should be.) Feinstein is mildly defensive of Hughes when it comes to his personal behaviour in relationships with women, and strikes a balance between that defense and holding Hughes accountable for his actions or non-actions. Feinstein also seems to have a genuine respect and fondness for Hughes, although her use of the first person in some sections in the book throw the reader out of 'biography' and into 'memoir'. I came away with the feeling that biographers should never personally know their subjects, and if personal friends write books about the lives of those friends, the books are more properly called memoirs. The biggest surprise is the fact that Ted's work seems to be discussed hardly at all. Again, since this book is unauthorized I can only assume that Feinstein was unable to get the permission to quote freely from Ted's works. Perhaps I'm wrong, but in any case I was very disappointed at the lack of in-depth discussion of Hughes' work. There are repeated references to Hughes' interest in astrology, hermeticism and neoplatonism, but not much discussion of these influences overall. Basically, I came away from reading this bio no more informed about Ted Hughes than I had been before I read it. For me, Hughes remains a creative, talented, engimatic presence in 20th century literature. I look forward to subsequent biographies that may offer a more psychologically in-depth portrait of the man with a more detailed analysis of his work. Feinstein's book is a general primer for those that want an overview of Hughes' life but not much substance.

It's a pity my review comes late in the queue, because this book is not as bad as other reviewers make out.

Essentially, this book is a history of Ted Hughes' life. It makes no great claims to interpret his ideas inside the covers. What I liked about this book was its attempt to make a balanced description of what happened with Sylvia Plath and the other significant people in his life. The author avoids the rancor and emotionalism that must certainly have engulfed Ted in the years subsequent to Sylvia's suicide.

It's the first account of Ted I have read which suggests that although he had a weakness for beautiful women, he was very patient and kind with Sylvia and tried to help her even after their separation. He continued to support her growing fame after her death. In this book he comes over as a likeable, thoughtful man ' a gentle giant amidst circumstances fraught with extremity.

This biography is wonderfully written and compulsively readable. But most importantly, it finally sheds light on the full, real, complex people that Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were. It also dispells and negates much of the awful Anne Stevenson/Olywn Hughes biography, "Bitter Fame".

This book captures the man that captured Plath. It's a much for all fans of both.