Farrar, Straus & Giroux
$20.00
ISBN: 0374112967

Fiction
Review Date: April 1998

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Review by Roger Bishop

One of the major literary events of the year is the publication of Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters, an extraordinary portrait of his marriage to poet Sylvia Plath through 88 chronologically arranged poems to her. Hughes, since 1987 Great Britain's Poet Laureate, was married to Plath from 1956 until she committed suicide in 1963. The Bell Jar, as well as the posthumous publication of Ariel, brought her work worldwide recognition and acclaim. Hughes's reluctance to publically address Plath's death and his realtionship with her has been viewed by some as reprehensible. Their marrige has for years been the subject of intense scrutiny and has contributed in part to the mythology surrounding Plath. Now, with Birthday Letters, the world is finally hearing Hughes's response. His tender, despairing poems make his grief evident and show a couple deeply committed to their work. "And we/Only did what poetry told us to do." But Plath was often troubled. "You were like a religious fanatic/Without a god unable to pray./You wanted to be a writer./Wanted to write?/What was it within you/Had to have its tale? . . . You bowed at your desk and you wept/Over the story that refused to exist." Hughes acknowledges that Plath's troubles began before their life together, but does partially accept responsibility. He shows his failure to understand. "At that time/I had not understood/How the death hurtling to and fro/Inside your head, had to alight somewhere/And again somewhere, and had to be kept moving,/And had to be rested/Temporarily somewhere."In images tender and frightening, sometimes searing and powerful, we gain a sense of two creative people caught up in something they could not control. "You were a jailer of your murderer /Which imprisoned you./And since I was your nurse and protector/Your sentence was mine too."This is only one side of the story. The reader may or may not accept it as the truth. As poetry, however, and as at least a partial truth, it succeeds magnificently.

Reviewed by Roger Bishop.

klong1220

Boalsburg, PA