The difficulty of Hughes' later poetry often lies in its extreme simplicity, stripped of the surface 'poetry' the conventional critic is trained to respond to. Many of these poems are sources of great psychic or spiritual power if we can tap them, but on standard critical equipment seems obsolete. The contributors, some established critics, some bringing fresh and varied approaches, analyze many individual poems and sequences, but also offer, jointly, a new, comprehensive, and unusually integrated reading of our greatest living writer.