Birthday Letters -- Ted Hughes, Paperback

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.

Author: Ted Hughes
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 03/30/1999
Pages: 197
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780374525811

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 04/18/1999 pg. 32

About the Author

Ted Hughes died in October 1998, having received acclaim in the last year of his life: the Whitbread Book of the Year Prize for Tales from Ovid, the Forward Prize for Birthday Letters, and the British Order of Merit. He was Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II.