River

Poems by Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571283866
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

First published in 1983, River celebrates fluvial landscapes, their creatures and their regenerative powers.
Inspired by Hughes's love of fishing and by his environmental activism, the poems are a deftly and passionately
attentive chronicle of change over the course of the seasons. West Country rivers predominate ('The West Dart'
and 'Torridge'), but other poems imagine or recall Japanese rivers or Celtic rivers, and 'The Gulkana' explores
an ancient Alaskan watercourse. At its core the sequence rehearses, in various settings, from winter to winter,
the life-cycle of the salmon.

All this, too, is stitched into the torn richness,
The epic poise
That holds him so steady in his wounds, so loyal to his doom,
so patient
In the machinery of heaven.

from 'October Salmon'

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Publisher’s Note
• Dedication
• Contents
• Salmon Eggs
• Japanese River Tales
• Flesh of Light
• The Merry Mink
• Stump Pool in April
• Whiteness
• An August Salmon
• Fairy Flood
• The West Dart
• 1984 on ‘The Tarka Trail’
• Ophelia
• Be a Dry-Fly Purist
• A Rival
• Dee
• Salmon-taking Times
• Earth-numb
• Caddis
• The Gulkana
• Madly Singing in the Mountains
• Go Fishing
• If
• The Bear
• The River
• Under the Hill of Centurions
• Stealing Trout on a May Morning
• The Moorhen
• September Salmon
• The Mayfly is Frail
• A Cormorant
• River Barrow
• Catadrome
• Milesian Encounter on the Sligachan
• High Water
• Low Water
• Night Arrival of Sea-Trout
• An Eel
• In the Dark Violin of the Valley
• Strangers
• The Kingfisher
• Visitation
• Performance
• Everything is on its Way to the River
• August Evening
• Last Night
• Eighty, and Still Fishing for Salmon
• October Salmon
• That Morning
• Notes
• Appendix
• The Morning Before Christmas
• New Year
• Four March Watercolours
• Creation of Fishes
• After Moonless Midnight
• The Vintage of River is Unending
• September
• Riverwatcher
• Torridge
• About the Author
• By the Same Author
• Copyright