From first (the title poem) to last (“The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar”), these are solidly crafted poems dealing with man, nature, war, and death. In addition, particular care was taken with the sequencing, leading the reader on a journey through the collection. I thoroughly enjoyed it. ( )

I'm starting to lose interest in Hughes' poetry, as each successive collection that I read seems to get further and further away from his stylings in Crow. There were a few poems that were worthwhile in this collection (namely the titular poem and those about soldiers), but the majority just fell a bit flat for me. Hughes' strength is clearly in mythological themes, so I don't know why she is so determined to write about pedestrian humanity in such an obvious way. ( )

These forty or so poems from Ted Hughes are his first published collection. A proportion of them, like the opening poem, "The Hawk in the Rain", centre on animals, their distinctive traits, their otherness, and sometimes also what we have in common. The general atmosphere of some of this collection is therefore similar to that of Ted Hughes' short story "The Rain Horse", which was first published ten years before this collection, and conveys the unusual violence of nature which can sometimes be found in the English countryside.
A number of the poems also concern the violence of passions and of war (which are in a cluster toward the end of the collection), as well as some more subtle observations on human workings and interactions – with a particular favourites of mine being the "Thought fox", and "Parlour Piece". His style varies between free verse and something a bit more structured, and is often compared with Anglo Saxon literature in its rhythms, syllables, and imagery. In all this a fairly varied collection. ( )

As a debut collection, and the first poems I've read written by Ted Hughes, my enjoyment of the poems was erratic. Some poems were brilliant as they stood ("Song"; "Incompatibilities"; "Law in the Country of Cats" and "The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar"); others appeared to have less emotion and more intellect, which made them somewhat obscure to me. I felt a flavour of TS Eliot in these poems when first dipping into the volume, and wasn't surprised by the interesting tidbit in the front of the book, which included a copy of TS Eliot's response to Faber & Faber's Charles Montieth's enquiry about Hughes. (The edition I read is not the one listed here, but ISBN 978-0-571-32281-7)

Overall, the poems were too bleak, violent and obviously carefully composed for me to be swept away by them. However, as a debut collection the poems did enough to make me want to read more of Ted Hughes work as he became a mature, more experienced poet. ( )

I'm fairly certain I read this in college, though I have to admit I don't remember it well.