This idiotic notion that Hughes somehow drove Plath to suicide should end. It's ridiculous on the face of it. She was mentally ill and on primitive anti-depressants; and she had a long history of depression and suicide attempts dating back long before she ever met Hughes. The person responsible for Plath's death, insofar as such a concept exists, is Sylvia Plath. Not Ted Hughes.

What Fnarf said. And, really, if every woman with an over-bearing, cheatin' husband killed herself, why, we'd have that overpopulation problem licked in no time.

Say what you will about his personal life, his translations of Ovid, Racine, Euripedes and the Oresteia are simply the best.

@ 1 & 2 Agreed.

Paul, have you not read Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes volume of poetry published a few years before his death? All but two poems in Birthday Letters deal directly with his relationship with Plath and more than a few discuss her suicide, but not in this detail. He started writing these poems right after her death through the point of publication.

Your opinion of Hughes is group think, nothing more.

@4 I loved Birthday Letters, really beautiful.

Just to join the chorus: try to read The Bell Jar without first knowing that Plath is (along with Ann Sexton) the Suicide Tragic Queen of Feminist Writers.

If you can pull that off: it's a really fucking hilarious book for the first two-thirds, a great satire on the demands placed on talented, middle-class girls with literary aspirations. Turns dark, of course, but like various suicides in Hemingway stories, you really should not read it with the author's bio in mind.

And I'd say Hughes is the better poet. But what do I know, I prefer Eliot to Pound and Yeats to Eliot. Actually, I'd trade Eliot and Henry James to the English for DH Lawrence and a poet to be named later.

Bill

@ 5 I know! I have been slowly rereading it for the last month or so and Hughe's use of language and imagery is top notch.

Knowing she was depressed and on anti depressants, perhaps leaving her and their two young children alone, largely friendless in a cold London winter to live with another woman wasn't Hughes' most compassionate move, you think?!

I agree with this: http://www.americanpoetry.biz/2010/10/an…

The failing of so many in the English speaking world is to place the value of a personality more squarely upon his/her moral value, rather than his/her value as an artist/artisan/thinker/warrior/whathaveyou. That said, Plath was always keeping herself for the man in the long black coat; another failing of the critical world in the West has been to have continued to publish her suicide notes (I don't dare call them poetry), rather than get her immediately to a therapist.

Her life strikes me as utterly shallow and selfish; the problem is that the critical world encouraged these sociopathic traits; in a way her suicide was the best thing she could do for her career and posterity; that is another critical failing.

It reminds me of twilight fans; Team Hughes vs Team Plath. If you judge work based upon the person behind it your limiting your scope from an idiot's soapbox. How righteous of you to piss on Ted Hughes (Ted Hughes the caricature).

You can enjoy both writers without picking sides in a divorce.

Very excited to see the love for 'Birthday Letters' it's fantastic and haunting book.

Well, I guess even his wife's death couldn't inspire better poetry.

@ 10 Agreed. I appreciate the work of both poet's but have always been of the opinion blaming Hughes for Plath's suicide is bunk. Like other commenters have mentioned, being a cold, distant POS doesn't equal responsibility for someone's suicide. We all have free will and make our own decision.