- Unknown Binding
- Publisher: Faber & Faber (1998)
- ASIN: B0043KF1SE
- Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,850,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Birthday Letters
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Originally a fan of Sylvia Plath I decided to purhase this to get Hughes' own perspective of their marriage. I was not disappointed. A beautiful and touching read each poem maps out a different scene from their lives together and really brings it to life. It clearly shows the beautiful and deep love Hughes truly held for his wife and how much he still felt about her right up until his own death many years later. It is clear from his poignant poetry why he was given the title of Poet Laureate and this work is a credit to his name. I would recommend this to anyone.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
ANSWER: Everything. This book is tremendous. Not just because it is an excellent piece of literature, but because Hughes manages to do something of the impossible. He takes in it two iconic figures and reduces them to what they really were: ordinary people having ordinary problems. Before you read this book you can only see these two people as oversized monumental, almost untouchable, figures. When you have finished reading the collection you see them as a young couple who are afraid of bears attacking them in their tent. It is such an evocative personal account of two young ambitious souls as they bootleg around Europe and America searching for writers that exists in, and embrace, their poetic minds. You see the relationship as it blooms and dwindles so fast. The ecstatic beginnings, the honey-moon period, and then melancholic home coming and the realties of having to find places to live and work to do. Eventually the demise, lazy, sad, excepting the end rather than fighting it. Acutely poignant. A must read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes are personal, emotional and brilliant. The poet retells the story of his marriage with Sylvia Plath in a language that is loaded with strong emotions.
The poems fill two functions. On the one hand, they can be considered as a companion piece to Sylvia Plath's poetry, offering another understanding of it, and on the other, they depict the relation between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. It is possible that Ted Hughes loved Sylvia more after her death than when she was alive, and therefore succeeded very well in sublimating his love poetically in this masterpiece.
Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions
The poems fill two functions. On the one hand, they can be considered as a companion piece to Sylvia Plath's poetry, offering another understanding of it, and on the other, they depict the relation between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. It is possible that Ted Hughes loved Sylvia more after her death than when she was alive, and therefore succeeded very well in sublimating his love poetically in this masterpiece.
Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
awesome
stimulation and pleasure. i wish i had a way with words like hughes. his mastery of literary and poetic enre is second to none
Published 4 months ago by clinician
HUghes's Birthday Letters
For many people, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are famous only because she gave up her life and he was blamed. Read more
Published 8 months ago by RR Waller
Modern Narrative
" There you met it-the mystery of hatred.
After billions of years of anonymous matter
That was where you were found-promptly hated". Read more
After billions of years of anonymous matter
That was where you were found-promptly hated". Read more
Published 9 months ago by Dean Cowan
Interesting
These set of poems are very interesting and are written to tell a story of his and Sylvia's life. Hughes work is very clever with his play on words. Read more
Published 14 months ago by April-rose King
Fascinating insight intoTed Hughes's relationship with Sylvia Plath
These - unusually confessional poems for Ted Hughes, are concerned mostly with his perceptions of Plath's psychological state, and also provide a record of their life together,... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Ray Smith
Beautiful.
This is a book about love and loss, it's searing and wonderful. The burly Yorkshireman left us in his prime. Recommended.
Published on 2 Mar 2010 by Dave Stewart
A BEAUTIFUL BOOK
Since Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963, Ted Hughes has been unfairly demonized by Plath's largely feminist following as a domineering unfaithful bully who allegedly drove his wife... Read more
Published on 8 Nov 2002 by Kelvin MacGregor
Sad, disturbing but brilliant
Birthday letters is a book which is haunting. Ted Hughes's mind is exposed in way which makes every human being, who reads these poems, relate to the mental torment and anguish he... Read more
Published on 27 Aug 2000
History grinds itself into oblivion!
This is, by everyone else's account, a tremendously moving tribute to the memory of Plath. However, it seems to me rather more like an attempt to prove the critics wrong, and take... Read more
Published on 15 Dec 1999 by marky79@yahoo.com
Achingly beautiful
The poems in this book are truly special - they reveal a lot about what it is to love and to be loved by another. Read more
Published on 10 July 1999
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