. . . of Ted Hughes laid bare in unfinished verses.
Is it just me or, as this piece by Jack Malvern in The Times suggests, the British POV on Ted differs remarkably from the American one? Personally, at the risk of inciting bloody riots, I truly believe Sylvia was the superior poet and he really got lucky (and luckier and luckiest).
He never wrote anything, IMO, that came anywhere near the gorgeosity of, say, "Electra on Azalea Path," f'rinstance.
I think Sylvia was a good poet and would have developed quite nicely, but ... I do think that her reading of "Daddy" is revelatory. I had been indifferent to the poem until I heard her read it in that seductive voice of hers. Then I realized how great it was. And she was.
ReplyDeleteAs for Ted, there is Crow, which I think is a really important work. But then I'm a sucker for crows. He also needs to be heard, not simply read.
Bingo! Yes, Crow definitely is his finest work; but, you know, I think of Larkin, and Auden, and even, among his rough contemporaries, Robin Robertson and then, I think; they so outshine Hughes so brilliantly, incandescently, almost. Plus, I've never heard (nor read) an argument that proves he wrote better poetry than she did (and, he had many many more years to do so, too). What she wrote when she was writing? Ninety percent of it simply dazzles to the Nth degree, at least for me.
ReplyDeletep.s. Are there online audio recordings of her or him reading that you can easily access? I'd like to hear 'em, pls/tnx . . .
I don't want to get into the argument of "who's best" between them - an argument that could never be proven either way.
ReplyDeleteHowever, for what it's worth, I return to Ted Hughes much more often than I do Sylvia Plath.
And, for me, Hughes' truly great poems are: "Wodwo", "Full Moon and Little Frieda" and a handful of his earlier animal poems.
Plath's great ones to me: "Edge", "Crossing the Water" and "Mushrooms".
The Poetry Archive has a couple of poems recited by each of them: http://www.poetryarchive.org