Flowering Off the Chrome

Flowering Off the Chrome is a collection of symbolic poetic projections into the rural landscape. Removed from the urban sprawl, set during midsummer, and narrated through a series of dramatic monologues, Hughes has created a rich sequence of see-sawing yarns about the comings and goings on a farm he knew as a child. Looking back through the eyes of an old man who chose to remain and work the land, Hughes confronts the genius loci and the idea of home. It is unusual to find such a young poet plying such a rural path, but these playful and well-cured parables succeed because they germinate from a wistful charm. Galvanised by the work of poets dating back to Virgil and colloquially owing much to Robert Frost and Edward Thomas, Hughes asks what is our relationship to nature? What is it that we nurture there? As with all of Hughes' work, it broods with tenderness and chooses solitude as a tool of illumination. As always, a vigorous undercurrent of restlessness floods his language.