ABSTRACT
Given the daunting weight and scope of Hughes's poetic oeuvre, this chapter surveys the development of Hughes as an eco-poet and analyses the development of his children's poetry. Much of the argument behind the narrative draws on Hughes's critique of contemporary culture and society, ideas which he would later develop in his essay 'Myth and Education'. It is by connecting the divine with the ordinary and the human with the animal, that Hughes allows the reader to discover and realise the reality of our world, and to show that the real 'truth' resides in what lies before us: in nature itself, in every living thing. Hughes's most celebrated 'adult' poems 'A Solstice' recapture Hughes's childhood days through a hunting expedition with his brother Gerald, it appears here for the first time in a children's book, a fact that appears to have gone unnoticed by Sagar and other scholars. .
