Wounded by the Magic Arrow

Yesterday, something made me pick up Birthday Letters as my reading for the Tuesday bus home. I have started this book several times, each time recognising that these poems are in some way special because of their length and their subject. And each time I have found the first few poems disconnected in some way. Well yesterday I got beyond the first few poems to where Ted Hughes actually met Sylvia Plath and the verses took off in a passionate way which I was not expecting. The rhythm, which at first seems to remove the meaning by virtue of being ‘ordinary’, becomes a proof of the honesty of the words. The metaphors are rich and numerous without being overwhelming. Usually a poem has one or two central images to convey the meaning but these assault you like a literary scan through the radio frequencies of Hughes' mind. They could be diary poems like Clive James' dirges but the passion and love and guilt and everything else pour out of the Hughes poems like an emotional cornucopia - a death note maybe but a special one. Read it and be amazed. Of course then you must read Plath's collected poems, the Letters Home and the Journals to get the whole picture.