HUGHES, Ted. Cave Birds: An Alchemical Cave Drama. New York: The Viking Press. 1998.
Oblong 8vo. Black cloth boards with gilt title lettering to spine; beige illustrated dust wrapper with title in bold red to both front and rear cover; pp. 8-64, [1]; minimal staining to front and back cover and tear to upper right edge of dust wrapper; near fine.
Pre-publication author's copy, presented by Ted Hughes to friend his Nick Grant with the inscription "For Nick/with love/ from Ted/Christmas 1997".
Featuring a mesmerising twenty-eight drawings from the revered Leonard Baskin, Cave Birds was first given in oratorio form in 1975 at the Ikley Festival. In 1974, Hughes began collaboration with Baskin on a series of poems concerning an abstract narrative in which an accosted man is killed for a crime and subsequently brought to life and redeemed. Each of Baskin's drawings is of a striking bird whom all become actors in Hughes's drama. The sequence was written when he processing the extremely sudden deaths of the German poet Assia Wevill and their daughter Shura, followed soon after by his mother. This is most evidenced in the poem "A Riddle" in which the victim presents herself to the main characters as an amalgamation of his wife, daughter and mother.
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