Ted Hughes: A Modern Wordsworth? A Modern Byron?

I’ll admit, I approached this expecting another reverent tribute to Hughes’ ‘wild’ poetic voice. Instead, Lucie-Smith’s essay feels like eavesdropping on a late-night argument between old rivals—part defense, part indictment, all razor-edged insight. The real surprise? How much ground it covers in 17 minutes. We get Hughes the ecologist (‘a man who heard the earth breathe’), Hughes the accused (‘the poet who outlived his own infamy’), and Hughes the enigma (‘a man who wrote more about animals than people, yet whose life was all too human’). Tim Carper’s narration is a masterclass in restraint. His pacing is deliberate, almost clinical, which works brilliantly for Lucie-Smith’s unsentimental prose—but I’ll confess, I wished for a touch more fire in the delivery during the sections on Plath. The controversy there deserves a little more bite. Production-wise, it’s clean and uncluttered, though the abrupt ending (no outro, no fade) left me blinking, as if the essay had been ripped from a longer conversation. Still, that rawness fits the subject. This isn’t polished entertainment; it’s a provocation. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at the ‘tortured poet’ trope or wondered how much myth Hughes himself spun, this is your audiobook. Just don’t expect easy answers.