British Book Awards (The Nibbies)
Birthday Letters
A poetry collection in which Ted Hughes revisits his relationship with Sylvia Plath through memory, grief, and regret. The poems are intimate and confessional, but they remain tightly controlled and formally alert.
Work Information
A late collection of poems turns memory into an open letter.
Hughes looks back on marriage, love, and loss with a directness that gives the book its emotional force. It is often read as his most explicit poetic response to Plath and to the life they shared.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Faber & Faber
- Published
- 1998-01-29
- Pages
- 208 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.5 x 2 x 22.3 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780571194728
- ISBN-10
- 0571194729
- Price
- 3300 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/History & Criticism/Criticism & Theory
With just two exceptions, these 88 poems, in the form of a narrative, are addressed to Sylvia Plath, the American poet to whom Hughes was married. They were written over a period of more than 25 years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963. Intimate and candid, they cover the whole period of their relationship, from the first meeting to the aftermath of Plath's death, but are largely concerned with the psychological drama that led to the writing of her finest poems and to her death.
Ted Hughes was born on 17 August 1930 in Mytholmroyd, a small mill town in West Yorkshire. His father made portable wooden buildings. The family moved to Mexborough, a coal-mining town in South Yorkshire, when Hughes was seven. His parents took over a newsagent and tobacconist shop, and eventually he went to the local grammar school.In 1948 Hughes won an Open Exhibition to Pembroke College, Cambridge. Before going there, he served two years National Service in the Royal Air Force. Between leaving Cambridge and becoming a teacher, he worked at various jobs, finally as a script-reader for Rank at their Pinewood Studios.In 1956 Hughes married the American poet Sylvia Plath, who died in 1963, and they had two children. He remarried in 1970. He was awarded the OBE in 1977, created Poet Laureate in December 1984 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1998. He died in October 1998.Ted Hughes's first book, The Hawk in the Rain, was published by Fabe
Reviews
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I am going to be marking A Level scripts this year, so needed to get onside with all the set texts. In all honest, I wasn't looking forward to this one. Man alive, but was I wrong. This is the most extraordinary collection of poems I have ever read. You don't need to know anything about Hughes and Plath to start reading them, but I am sure that, like me, you will become so engrossed in their relationship that you will be reading these with the tinterweb open alongside you so you can read up on their life together and the subsequent tragedies that befell them. The writing is superb here (much better than anything Plath wrote, in my humble), touching, warm, angry, poignant and beautiful. I am glad I only had to read them and not live them.
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I had sporadically read some of Ted Hughes poetry. I bought this book on recommendation and have not been disappointed. The heart-wrenching poems in this collection are overflowing with soul. Each requires a rereading. They are candid splinters of his life with Sylvia Plath. Reading them made me reflect on my own subterranean feelings on the daily insignificances that make up the whole. Here are his memories and experiences with Plath laid bare. I felt almost embarrassed, like a voyeur, privy to the deepest feelings of another human being, who lived, loved and died. So yes, although the poems are full of life, they emphasise mortality. On the strength of this book alone I have purchase Hughes's 'Collected poems'.
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El libro llegó el día señalado, se correspondia con lo pedido y el trato de atención al cliente fue rápido y sencillo.
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Perfette condizioni, come da descrizione annuncio.
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I purchased this book because I'm a huge fan of Sylvia Plath. Hughes' poems are not as good imo, but unmissable if you want to learn more about their relationship. At least this bundle is.