Antología poética

Thomas Hardy is considered one of the great novelists of his time, but after critics and readers of his time turned their backs on his narrative fiction as too incisive, Hardy took refuge in his old passion: poetry. He published his first book of poems at the age of 58 and it spanned his career for more than two decades. The eight volumes that he sent to print constitute one of the most coherent and fascinating adventures in English poetry of the early twentieth century. The poet combines a taste for 19th century landscapes (with their mists and ghosts) and rural environments with a dry and temperate style that will decisively influence such modern poets as Larkin, Auden or Hughes. His poetry deals with some of the most beloved themes of his literature, such as ambition or catastrophe. But if he stands out for something, it is for exploring the full range of loving feelings (from ecstasy to abandonment) with unprecedented complexity and rawness. Philip Larkin said of him: "Hardy taught me to feel rather than just write, and to have confidence in what I felt".