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Anonymous
Posted July 21, 2003
True and painfully beautifully poetry
Despite the sense I have that as a human being Ted Hughes truly was not alright in his relation to his then wife, I found these poems ( when I understood them,or felt I sensed their meaning ) powerful and beautiful. I feel in writing these poems he went to the heart of his relationship with her, and the heart of his own life experience. His gift as a poet is great, and it is in the music of his poetry also. There is a richness of experience and of its transmission in feeling in language. The pity and the pain are here so deeply intertwined that the reader cannot help but being moved by this work. It raises again as does so much great literary work( I think of Dostoevsky) the question of the contradiction between the personal morality and life of the creator and the greatness of the creation, the apparent injustice in this fact that it is such a troubling and tormenting soul which brings forth great work. In any case those who love poetry in the English language would do well to read this work.
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Anonymous
Posted November 11, 2002
A BEAUTIFUL BOOK
Since Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963, Ted Hughes had been unfairly demonized by Plath's largely feminist following as an unfaithful domineering bully who allegedly drove his wife over the edge. To his credit, Hughes had always kept a dignified distance from his detractors. He finally broke his silence shortly before his own death in 1998 with this beautiful collection of poems which appear in chronological order as letters of reminiscence about their life together, written in reply to Sylvia Plath's published diary account of their marriage. You only have to read Birthday Letters in conjunction with the Journals of Sylvia Plath to realise how deeply Ted Hughes loved and missed his first wife. Touching and heartbreakingly sad, and very moving.
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Anonymous
Posted May 6, 2000
for the lover of sylvia plath
a deep look into the life of sylvia plath and how she affected her husband, ted hughes.
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