My
introduction to Ted Hughes was, for better or worse, a rather bad one.
When
I was in college, the poems of Sylvia Plath were all the rage. She was known as
the poet who had killed herself (1962) by sticking her head in a gas oven, and
it was that ghastly tragedy that seemed to provide the initial attraction.
These years were also the first full rush of the feminist movement, and Plath
became a symbol – the poet who had killed herself because her husband had left
her for another woman.
The
husband was the poet Ted Hughes, who had had an almost meteoric rise in the
1950s. He had left his marriage with Plath for another woman, the poet Assia
Butmann Wevill. Four years later, in 1966, Wevill killed herself (and their
daughter) in the same manner as Plath had died.
I’m
not sure if this is the stuff of poetry or soap opera, but for years Hughes was
called “murderer” at public readings.
To continue reading, please see my post
today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Photograph by Junior Libby via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.
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