Recounting the Seasons Poems, 1958-2005 Book

I read this collection of poems by Frieda again recently. I heard her read it when I was at Smith College as a freshman. Frieda is the daughter of Sylvia Plath and Tom Hughes. My favorite poem in it is Readers. It is about her mother, her mother's death and how personal and, in some aspect violating the interpretation of her mother's work and death was deciphered by the public. She plays with words in a way that makes me want to be a writer-or, I suppose a writer like her. One of my favorite lines of all time is also from this poem, it is the kind of line you wish you had written once you read it. I liken it to when a musician hears a song, and is moved by a line and thinks, "Damn, that's good-I wish I had written that."

I have many favorite lines in this poem, but one in particular that struck me was: "They fingered through her mental underwear with every piece she wrote."

I know it's simple-and it may not impact you as it did me. But the concept of fingering through one's mental underwear made me realize when the literary world turned Sylvia's work upside down and inside out in an attempt to find meaning and answers, they also did this to her daughter. That isn't a criticism of critics, as their role is to interpret, understand and evaluate writing. But it is a nod to how a poet's work can often be blurred by the life and subjectivity of the reader.

Read this collection of poems if for nothing else but the poem below. It will make you think twice about how the world impacts the children of those who are famous-for whatever reason. It also made me grieve for the loss Frieda endured, and the agony that can come from the interpretation of readers who think they knew her mother.


Readers
by Frieda Hughes

Wanting to breathe life into their own dead babies
They took her dreams, collected words from one
Who did their suffering for them.

They fingered through her mental underwear
With every piece she wrote. Wanting her naked.
Wanting to know what made her.

Then tried to feather up the bird again.

The vulture with its bloody head
Inside its own belly,
Sucking up its own juice,

Working out its own shape,
Its own reason,
Its own death.

While their mothers lay in quiet graves
Squared out by those green cut pebbles
And flowers in a jam jar, they dug mine up.

Right down to the shells I scattered on her coffin.

They turned her over like meat on coals
To find the secrets of her withered thighs
And shrunken breasts.

They scooped out her eyes to see how she saw,
And bit away her tongue in tiny mouthfuls
To speak with her voice.

But each one tasted separate flesh,
Ate a different organ,
Touched other skin.

Insisted on being the one
Who knew best,
Who had the right recipe.

When she came out of the oven
They had gutted, peeled
And garnished her.

They called her theirs.
All this time I had thought
She belonged to me most.


published November 8th 1997 in The Guardian