As Ted’s Birthday letters is written over a period thirty five years looking back on several events, therefore writing with a considered painful point of view. In his poems we can see that he wrote from a retrospective perspective which it all the more painful for him, having to relive bitter memories of the past. In “Blue Flannel Suit” Hughes can be seen to force upon memories. He can be seen to be overwhelmed at the fact that she is dead “I am still permanently now” which shows that he still cares for her even though she has left him. Through the lines “Now, I see, I saw, sitting, the lonely/ Girl who was going to die” we can see he is made to realise that she always had an appetite for death, even at what should be every girls most happy moment, marriage. Ted had time to think about every word which means that every aspect of each poem is deliberate and precise, an example written in “Watching bewildered bulls awkwardly butchered”. The line being awkward and cumbersome seemingly going on and on through the harsh sounding “k” and “tch” words. Used deliberately in order to represent how confused Plath’s poetry became when they ventured in Spain. As Birthday Letters was written after Ariel Hughes had Plath’s poetry in mind throughout, and therefore there is a difference to be drawn in that one was mainly a reaction to another piece of work whereas the other is not. We can see in “The Bee God” when Hughes uses the word “Daddy” a poem written by Plath in the collection Ariel. Ted is enthralled in Plath’s poetry, and he cannot separate her from her poetry, but is able to separate himself from his own poetry. Consequently being a master of his own material and is able to write in a melancholy and calm way.
Writing about Otto
Another link between both collections is the reference to Otto, Sylvia’s father.
Plath was only eight years old when her father died, and she was left with a large emotional void, and it could be said she sought to fill it with Hughes. In “Daddy” we see her comparison between her father and to Hughes. In the final stanza we see Sylvia soothing her childhood pain by murdering her father who has taken shape of a vampire. “There’s a stake in your fat black heart,” Plath tells her father, confused by her pain about whom he was and who he is. She sees her father now as “not any less the black man who/Bit my pretty red heart in two”, seeing him as the person responsible for all the times she was hurt by his abandonment and her husband’s desertion, here seeing them as two equals of baring pain. It is important to mention the image of the vampire involves the conception of a monster which takes over the body of a now dead human, a creature that is both dead and alive. They share the vampire imagery because of the vampiric double nature as dead human (Otto) and living monster (Hughes). She feels affected by both burdens they have placed upon her to a point where she is unable to distinguish between the two. “ I made a model of you/ A man in b lack with a Meinkampf look” Plath tells her father in the thirteenth stanza. “…And I said I do I do. / So daddy, I’m finally through”, she continues informing her father that her marriage to Hughes was a compensation for his death.
She also pronounces “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two” followed by “The vampire who said he was you/And drank my blood for a year,/ seven years, if you want to know”, here also making sure that she is talking to both her father and her husband , pointing out that there is no longer just a man who has inspired her guilt, but there is now a second, a man similar to the first whose presence lasted the length of Plath’s marriage in other words Hughes. In the poem “Stings” Sylvia writes how Ted is being changed, by the bees, “complicating his features” as they do so making him look more like Otto. A clear link between the two as they are both of the same picture but from separate perspectives. Also both see that Sylvia loses herself in the midst of it all shown by Ted with “your dream time veil off” and Sylvia with “ I have a self to recover”. Both acknowledging that Sylvia was lost, but Ted sees it as a mask that covered her, whereas Sylvia feels she was aware but now is changing. This is why Sylvia does not see the father but only Ted changing into the father, but Ted who is sitting off and reminiscing can see the father as he distorts Sylvia’s view on her husband.
In the poem “the shot” by Ted Hughes, he is seen to appreciate Plath’s comparison of Otto to himself. In the poem Hughes introduces a metaphor that dominates the poem and is foreshowed by the title. It represents Plath as a form of a bullet, which is shot, aimed at her father but in fact hits Ted. Thus suggestive towards this theme, as Ted here is confused between her father as the bullet appears to hit him “I had been hit”. There is another example to be talked about within the poem “The Hands” where Ted writes telling the audience that “The fingerprints inside what I did… Are the same” as those left “Inside empty gloves… From which the hands have vanished” to whom we know are the gloves of Sylvia’s father. So ultimately suggesting how the two people’s main form of identity (fingerprints) have merged together to the point where they are the same. Earlier on in the poem he also talks about Sylvia getting “…help to recognize/ The fingerprints” that “fed you the pills”, in other words she recognized the hands she woke to in hospital, which would have been Ted to the hands of the person who “fed you the pills”, whom is the father. So again mixing up the father’s hand with the hands of Ted. “The Bee God” by Hughes we can see a different way Ted and Otto can be linked through. In the poem the bees are seen to attack Ted, as they see him as a rival of the father and Sylvia sees much of the same in Ted as her Father.
Mother
Another comparison to be drawn between the two pieces is the reference to Plath’s mother, to which they both share the same views on. Which includes the point that she was never there when Plath needed her most and their thoughts of her can be found in both books. In Birthday Letters Hughes writes “Your silent howl through the night… Burned you like a lump of phosphorus” in a verse devoted completely for the mother shows the significance of his feelings, as well as the powerful emotive language reveal the strong feelings Hughes hold on the matter. The moon is the image Plath uses to depict her mother , and this verse explains that the mother has no warmth like a “dead child”, in having children she turns into the moon . Sylvia depicts her mother as the moon in “The Moon and the Yew Tree” when she writes “The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary”. This similarly to Hughes designates her to be cold and heartless, the short sentences helping to make this line effective in it’s simplicity, but powerful with its reference to Mary.
Love
For Hughes Ariel was a tragedy, about an angry and perhaps unbalanced woman fighting her internal demons. Whilst this is true, Ariel is not exactly “feel good” poetry, it still holds elements of love and is certainly cathartic. The first word in the series of poems is “love” and the final word is “spring”. It is easy to overlook the collection as a piece made up of a deranged woman who killed herself shortly after writing the collection.
It is important to mention that there are elements shown in the collection of a woman trying to piece her life together, one senses a woman removing her personal demons with words, stamping out her enemies including her father, husband and mother. Although this doesn’t seem like direct love for one another it is one finding love and peace in one’s self. Ariel was written by Plath as an attempt to firstly come to terms with her troubles and then look for some consolidation, an attempt to relive life again. In “Wintering” the final line comes across as a breath of fresh air; “The bees are flying. They taste the spring.”
In Morning Song the first stanza begins with the word love, which is a main theme for the poem. The poem recalls the emotions of the birth of her son; it is described in a intense way with references to natural elements, surrounding the wonderful emotions that a mother can have. It reflects her feminism, through the importance of maternity and the joy that a son can give to her. It is love that allows the birth, a love that "…set you going like a fat gold watch”. In the second stanza, it is shown in detail the moment of the arrival of this new life, the moment of the birth she talks with love saying "Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival" thus suggestive of the love and unity of the family, who are all clearly moved by the birth caught to be spurring on the arrival.
Ted also refers to motherhood and new coming in RED, where he talks about blue being a colour of pregnancy. “the light burns blue…the earthen womb”. He expresses that “blue was better for you. Blue was wings”, inferring that she did have a good side which was brought about by her pregnancy. The early years of your motherhood were a time of serendipity, where “blue was your kindly spirit… a guardian, thoughtful” again revealing her respectable side.
He also writes about their romance in the poem "Fulbright Scholars", the first in his collection, in which Hughes describes first sighting of Plath. This frankness is quite surprising coming from a poet who spent most of his career writing about mythic crows and haunted countryside’s. You could also argue that if this is the intensity with which Hughes remembered Plath thirty years after her death, you can imagine what it must have been like at the time.
In the poem “The Tender Place” Hughes seems to be very affected by shock wave therapy Plath is undertaking, implying his care for her wellbeing. The poem also recalls vivid details “In their bleached coats, with blenched faces” showing how the memory has placed a firm place in his mind and representing how tough watching her suffer actually was. In the first lines he refers to Plath’s temples describing them as “the tender place”, the word “tender” also used in the title reveals the fragility and delicacy of this place or even a comment on her body as a whole.
by
heslop (student)
