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List Price: $14.00
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Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Written By: Ted Hughes
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Average Reader Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.914
EAN: 9780374525811
Feature: ISBN13: 9780374525811
ISBN: 0374525811
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: 1999-03-30
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Features
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ISBN13: 9780374525811
Condition: New
Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
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Editorial Review:
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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 poems in its own right.
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Reader Reviews for Birthday Letters: Poems:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Exploring the Dark and Light side Of Hughes
Comment: I was interested in reading this book , to get his side of great American tragic romance. I was surprised at the gentleness of images and metaphors used, by a man who was demonized by the literary world because of the death of Sylvia.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book does not need a review
Comment: This book does not need a review. Published 12 years ago it is already regarded as the best book by one of the most important English poets of the second half of the last century.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Skip This One
Comment: I like Ted Hughes' early poetry. Poems like "Pike" "Wind" and "Thought-Fox" were really terrific. In those poems, Hughes seemed genuinely inspired by nature and myth. These were his great subjects. His wife, Sylvia Plath, also used myth but in a completely different way. She turned her self in a kind of dramatic, mythological character, creating a persona that was loosely based on the real "Sylvia Plath." The critic M.L. Rosenthal called this kind of poetry "confessional." And though Plath belonged in this category of poets, her husband, Hughes, did not. In "Birthday Letters," Hughes plays with the mythology surrounding his relationship with Plath. But using his autobiography as the source for poetry has never been Hughes' strength, and what he serves up here as poetry often reads like a prose-memoir that Hughes chose to divide into lines of verse and call poetry.
The lines are slack, sentimental, and sloppy, and Hughes' great command of language seems to be missing here. So if you want to get a good taste of Hughes' best poetry, this book is not the place you'll find it. For a better sample of Hughes' work, I would recommend his Selected Poems or one of his early books.
"Birthday Letters" is a curiosity that might hold the attention of those interested in Hughes' take on his relationship with Sylvia Plath. Nevertheless, this story's been told many times before, and I think that it's been told better in books like Diane Middlebrook's "Her Marriage: Hughes and Plath."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Emotional and extraordinary!
Comment:
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes are personal, emotional and brilliant. The poet retells the story of his marriage with Sylvia Plath in a language that is loaded with strong emotions.
The poems fill two functions. On the one hand, they can be considered as a companion piece to Sylvia Plath's poetry, offering another understanding of it, and on the other, they depict the relation between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. It is possible that Ted Hughes loved Sylvia more after her death than when she was alive, and therefore succeeded very well in sublimating his love poetically in this masterpiece.
Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions and The Invitation
Customer Rating:
Summary: Personal, emotional and brilliant!
Comment: Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes are personal, emotional and brilliant. The poet retells the story of his marriage with Sylvia Plath in a language that is loaded with strong emotions.
The poems fill two functions. On the one hand, they can be considered as a companion piece to Sylvia Plath's poetry, offering another understanding of it, and on the other, they depict the relation between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. It is possible that Ted Hughes loved Sylvia more after her death than when she was alive, and therefore succeeded very well in sublimating his love poetically in this masterpiece.
Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions
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