An episode from 12/21/21: Tonight, I read five poems from Ted Hughes’s last book, Birthday Letters (1998). This is the book where Hughes finally addressed his relationship to Sylvia Plath in verse, nearly forty years after her suicide. In my introduction to the poems, I also talk about the strangeness, both of audiences demanding such a confession over a private matter, and the weight that Hughes said was lifted from him when he finally published the book. All of the poems can be found in his ⁠Collected Poems⁠. The poems are: A Pink Wool Knitted Dress You Hated Spain Drawing The Rabbit Catcher Life after Death Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related