Letters of Ted Hughes Book

In February 1957, Ted Hughes wrote to his sister Olwyn. 'What a place America is', he noted, 'everything is 10,000 miles from where it was plucked or made.' From the home he was then sharing with Sylvia Plath in Northampton, Massachusetts, Hughes kept in touch with family and friends through long letters. 'Love', he wrote, 'look after yourself. Eat well and speculate hopefully'.

From their new home, he went to great lengths to maintain alliances and instruct loyalists, providing a first hand account of the first year of his marriage.

It is clear from these letters that Hughes is reading an enormous amount at this time and he quotes and references furiously in his correspondence. This contextualizes his discontent and the reader is granted a fascinating insight into Hughes' frustrations with writers block and the financial pressure to maintain productivity. He despairs, suggesting that every attempt to forge a 'normal profession' is made impossible by the scale of his talent.

Hughes wrote to Lucas Myers in July 1957 and expanded on this point- 'How very affable and very magically helpful and luck-bringing it is when I entertain it and its inventions, its fantasticalia, its pretticisms and infinite verballifictions'. Submitting to the unpredictability of the writer's course is the only way he can live with it. As he cannot live without it, he resolves to do just this:

'I think it would be the best and most sensible course to make a career out of humouring it. If you humiliate your devils, they avenge themselves, by paralysing your outer efforts.'

Simultaneously, we are alerted to the increasing strain that this unease is having on his marriage. Away from England, he has time to reflect while she continues to teach and write, thereby gaining increasing acclaim in the USA. Plath's success is matched by his despondency.

Hughes' ponderings provide us with an insight into the complexity of his feelings at this time, and the inspiration for work to come. From the Feast of Lupercal, Roman festival of etymological significance to the crucifixion, Goethe to astrology, illuminated is a vast and cavernous psyche.

In a letter to Olwyn in 1959, Hughes explains how his attitude to religion is borne of the notion of 'God as the devourer'. The idea, he writes, 'makes a metaphor of the Holy Family, and logically poses love- all derivatives of mother-love (of Mary, you see)- as the only protection against evil'. He goes on, explaining that the love between a mother and her child is the only love which does not need to devour to live. Therein, God exists as protective love, that which is most devoid of evil.

Intimate feelings on life with and after Sylvia Plath, fatherhood and literature are recorded in great detail throughout. As poignant a selection of Hughes' personal thoughts as it is an insight into his art, this is a necessary read for any admirer of the poet and man.