As England’s Poet Laureate, and recipient of both the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and T.S. Eliot’s prize for poetry, Ted Hughes was an acclaimed poet. The shadow of Hughes late wife, Sylvia Plath, kept Hughes stagnant in his career, in which he was known as “Her Husband” (Middlebrook). Hughes most recent collection of poems, Birthday Letters, took him over twenty-five years to write, and contains poems which recount the marriage of the couple. Hughes wrote the poems as a loving gesture towards Sylvia, but the poems were misinterpreted as “an attempt to adjust the public record in the wake of her confession and the mass of commentary which has grown up around them” (Spurr 3). Hughes incorporated into his poetry the ideals of postmodernism, his somber life and relationships, simplistic formatting, imagery, and allusions. Hughes influenced the world through his animal images and multifarious tones.
Ted Hughes life started in Mytholmroyd Yorkshire, in 1930, where he learned to appreciate the outdoors. Mytholmroyd was a rural mountainous region; Hughes and his brothers occupied their time in the wilderness, which later influenced Hughes’ writings about animals. At age 15, Hughes started writing his first poems at Mexborough Grammar School. As a result of poetry, Hughes obtained a full scholarship to study English at Cambridge University, although he later changed his major to Anthropology.
On first glance, Cambridge University may not have seemed to influence Hughes poetry, however, in retrospect, it did influence his marital relationships. After graduation, Hughes met Sylvia Plath, whom he married after a four month period. Hughes and Plath had a troubled relationship and had difficulty in the parenting of their two children...
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...uages and Literature - Courses." Brock University, Niagara Region, 500 Glenridge Ave., St. Catharines, Ont. L2S 3A1 Canada. 30 Apr. 2008. Web. 3 Jan. 2010. .
Middlebrook, Diane. Her Husband: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath--A Marriage. Boston: Penguin (Non-Classics), 2003. Print.
Paul, Sharla. "A New View of Ted Hughes." Emory Magazine Spring 2000: 1. Print.
Spurr, Barry. "True confessions? Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters." The University of Sydney. Web. 3 Jan. 2010. .
"Ted Hughes ." Poetry Archive. Web. 3 Jan. 2010. .
Wagner, Erica. Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. Print.
Hughes mother went through protracted separations and reconciliations in her second marriage (she and her son from this marriage would live with him off and on in later years. He was raised by alternately by her, by his maternal grandmother, and, after his grandmother’s death, by family friends. By the time he was fourteen, he had lived in Joplin; Buffalo; Cleveland; Lawrence, Kansas; Mexico City; Topeka, Kansas; Colorado Springs; Kansas City; and Lincoln, Illinois. In 1915, he was class poet of his grammar-school graduating class in Lincoln. From 1916 to 1920, he attended Central High School in Cleveland, where he was a star athlete, wrote poetry and short stories (and published many of them in the Central High Monthly), and on his own read such modern poets as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg. His classmates were for the most part the children of European immigrants, who treated him largely without discrimination and introduced him to leftist political ideas.
In American society, the common stereotype is that the father has the role of the dominant figure in the household. Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds may come across as two seemingly different poets, however, they are really quite similar, especially in their driving forces behind their writing styles in poetry. The lives of Plath and Olds are both expressive of the realities of a father-dominated family, in which both of these poets lost their fathers at a young age. This is significant because both poets have faced a similar traumatic event that has had everlasting effects on their adult womanhood, which is reflected in their writings. For both these woman, their accesses to father-daughter relationships were denied based on life circumstances. Ironically, their fathers were their muses for writing and are what made them the women they are today.
Cam, Heather American Literature; Oct87, Vol. 59 Issue 3, p429, 4p Academic Search Complete Ebesco. Web. 25 July 2011
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Sylvia Plath (American author)." 23 September 2013. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 9 April 2014 .
Plath, Sylvia. The Journals of Sylvia Plath. Ed. Ted Hughes and Frances McCullough. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982.
Langston Hughes was born of February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. Growing up Hughes didn’t really have a stable and permanent family unit. After he was born his parents separated. His father moved to Mexico, while his mother moved around from place to place, Hughes was predominantly cared for by his grandmot...
The contradiction of being both black and American was a great one for Hughes. Although this disparity was troublesome, his situation as such granted him an almost begged status; due to his place as a “black American” poet, his work was all the more accessible. Hughes’ black experience was sensationalized. Using his “black experience” as a façade, however, Hughes was able to obscure his own torments and insecurities regarding his ambiguous sexuality, his parents and their relationship, and his status as a public figure.
Hughes started writing poetry when he was in Lincoln (“Langston Hughes”). After graduating from high school, Hughes spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University in New York City. During this time, he acquired menial jobs but, when he moved to Washington D.C. in November 1924, Alfred A. Knopf, published his first book The Weary Blues.... ... middle of paper ... ...
"About." Personal Blog, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2015. [When finding an explanation for the similarities between the writers, it is important to play close attention to biographies. In case the psychoeconomic factors that Ruonco describes are true, then biography constitutes most of the development of the Sylvia Plath affliction. Moreover, the biography provides an insight into the views of the author for a better and more accurate understanding of her poetry. Furthermore, it is imperative to use her auto-statement since she referres to her "muse" as something out of her control which can be traced to Kaufman's
He was born on February 01, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. It was in Lincoln when Hughes began writing poetry(James 7). After graduation from high school, he spent a year in Mexico, followed by a year at Columbia University in New York city. By the time he started attending this school, he had already released his first poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”(Langston 2). After attending this school for a couple of years, he was traveling on the other side of the world doing several different types of jobs. He traveled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman for quite some time. He returned to the United States in 1924, where he had already made a name for himself (Biography 2). Langston Hughes addressed his poetry specifically to African Americans, speaking about their real life situations and feelings towards everything. “Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the
Giles, Richard F. “Sylvia Plath.” Magill’s Critical Survey of Poetry. Ed. Frank N. Magill, b. 1875. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1992.
After reading the poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” and doing some research on Plath, I came to find out that the poem was very similar to Plath’s personal life. The poem is basically about a young girl who fell in love and gave her all to a boy who never came back to love her. The young girl fell in a depression and made herself believe that she was making it all up. She still had hope that she and the boy could be happy someday, but it never happened and it drove her insane. Perhaps the boy could have been Plath’s husband, Hughes. Everything about the poem is so similar to her marriage with Hughes; the story makes the reader believe the poem could possibly be about Plath herself.
Poems.org stated that Hughes’ parents were divorced when he was young. He was the offspring of two African American parents. His maternal grandmother raised him until he was 13. He then moved in with his mother and her husband in Cleveland. Hughes’ education consisted of studies at Columbia University.
Leenaars, A. A. & Wenckstern, S. (1998). Sylvia Plath: A protocol analysis of her last poems. Death Studies, October 1, 1998, Vol. 22, Issue 7, ISSN: 0748-1187. Retrieved May 6, 2005 from Academic Search Premier Database.
Plath’s father died early in her life leaving her with unresolved feelings, and this brought a lot of troubles later on in life. Sylvia was a great student but when she was overwhelmed with disappointments after a month in New York, she attempted suicide (“Sylvia Plath”). After receiving treatment and recovering, she returned to school and later moved to England where she met her future husband, Ted Hughes (“Sylvia Plath”). Their marriage with two children didn’t last when Ted had an affair. They separated and Ted moved in with the new woman, leaving Sylvia and their two children. Battling depression during this time, Sylvia soon ended her life. She left behind numerous writings that many might see as signs of her depression and suicide attempts.