Specify About Books Birthday Letters
| Title | : | Birthday Letters |
| Author | : | Ted Hughes |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 198 pages |
| Published | : | March 30th 1999 by Farrar Straus Giroux (first published January 10th 1998) |
| Categories | : | Poetry. Nonfiction. Classics. Biography |
Ted Hughes
Paperback | Pages: 198 pages Rating: 3.92 | 8498 Users | 372 Reviews
Description During Books Birthday Letters
Formerly Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II, the late Ted Hughes (1930-98) is recognized as one of the few contemporary poets whose work has mythic scope and power. And few episodes in postwar literature have the legendary stature of Hughes's romance with, and marriage to, the great American poet Sylvia Plath.The poems in Birthday Letters are addressed (with just two exceptions) to Plath, and were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963. Some are love letters, others haunted recollections and ruminations. In them, Hughes recalls his and Plath's time together, drawing on the powerful imagery of his work--animal, vegetable, mythological--as well as on Plath's famous verse.
Countless books have discussed the subject of this intense relationship from a necessary distance, but this volume--at last--offers us Hughes's own account. Moreover, it's a truly remarkable collection of poems in its own right.
Particularize Books To Birthday Letters
| Original Title: | Birthday Letters |
| ISBN: | 0374525811 (ISBN13: 9780374525811) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Whitbread Award for Poetry and Book of the Year (1998), T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry (1998), Forward Prize for Best Collection (1998) |
Rating About Books Birthday Letters
Ratings: 3.92 From 8498 Users | 372 ReviewsPiece About Books Birthday Letters
Ted Hughes has an uncomfortable place in the room where Sylvia Plath killed herself (and another in the room where his next wife, Assia Wevill, killed herself and their only daughter) -- he was the gas, he was the ovens, or he was the mark to which the the dial was turned. Maybe he was the sealed doors. In Birthday Letters he places himself in and around that first room, Plath's room. And those places are horrifying, those he occupies and also those spaces he seems to have to leave empty.I need to get something off my chest with this one. I'd read Birthday Letters a few years ago, I guess when I was first getting into Plath and was not particularly interested in the warzone of the Plath/Hughes legacy. I also didn't really give much thought to poetry at the time--if it was pretty or vaguely shocking, I'd nod and think, 'Well, look how smart I am, for reading this.' So I think I let Hughes off the hook last time--and I should clarify to say that I don't hate Hughes' poetry; I'm
If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Black Thread: Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes(Original Review, 2002)Hughes acknowledged he repressed his own feelings for many years after Plaths suicide. The poems he wrote before his death, Birthday Letters, were an outpouring of these feelings about his love for Plath. It was a top seller. If Hughes had published them as a younger man it would have helped his development as a great poet, but due to the repression, it did him untold
Picked this up at the library after viewing the 2003 biopic Sylvia starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig as Literature Kingdom's second-best star-crossed angel-handed demon-scratched lovers. Very intriguing how again and again Hughes fetishizes Plath's apple-pie-eating, horseback-riding blonde-tall-muttmix Americaness as some sort of alluring alien Otherness: we in the New World might as well be stepping down from a hovering silvership when we (she, really, she, pretty Plutonian Plath)
'Drawing calmed you. Your poker infernal pen / Was like a branding iron. Objects / Suffered into their new presence, tortured / Into final position.' I like two or three of the more than eighty poems here. But in general I find Ted Hughes an abominable figure and this aestheticized denigration of Sylvia Plath distasteful. For instance: 'What I remember / Is thinking: She'll do something crazy. And I ripped / the door open and jumped in beside you.' Most unfortunate is the fact that Plath can no
I noticed that my understanding of these poems is far better seven years after I first read them. I felt less like I needed to 'study' them than I once did. The rawness of the emotion and the sometimes startlingly clear biographical references make these very important poems. The best poems in this collection are, in my opinion: 'The Shot', 'Fullbright Scholars', 'Freedom of Speech', 'Isis', 'Being Christ-like', 'Epiphany', 'Setebos', 'The Tender Place', and 'Telos'. There is a beautiful line in
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