Birthday Letters
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes, published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux in 1998, is a poignant collection of poetry that explores the complex relationship between Hughes and the renowned American poet Sylvia Plath. This second printing edition contains 197 pages and is presented in English. The poems, written over more than twenty-five years, serve as a deeply personal reflection, with the majority addressed to Plath, capturing moments of love, memory, and introspection following her tragic death in 1963.
Readers will find that Birthday Letters delves into the intricacies of Hughes’s emotions and experiences, intertwining powerful imagery with themes of love and loss. The collection draws on both Hughes’s and Plath’s poetic legacies, offering a unique perspective on their shared history. Through this volume, Hughes provides an intimate account of their time together, making it a significant contribution to the understanding of their relationship and the broader landscape of contemporary poetry.
Official synopsis Publisher
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 is a truly remarkable collection of pems in its own right.
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