SOURCE: "Something of His Own to Say," in New York Times Book Review, October 6, 1957, p. 43.

[In the following review of The Hawk in the Rain, Merwin praises Hughes's young talent for its originality and intelligence.]

Ted Hughes is a young English poet; The Hawk in the Rain is his first book. Its publication gives reviewers an opportunity to do what they are always saying they want to do: acclaim an exciting new writer. There is no need, either, to shelter in the flubbed and wary remark that the poems are promising. They are that, of course; they are unmistakably a young man's poems, which accounts for some of their defects as well as some of their strength and brilliance. And Mr. Hughes has the kind of talent that makes you wonder more than commonly where he will go from here, not because you can't guess but because you...