Taking Sides: Ted 'n' Sylvia

more precisely, Hughes vs Plath.

Prize fight or title fight?

Ted, every time.

By far - by leagues - the superior poet.

And he remained silent for so long, finally answering the critics in the most dignified way, with one off the best themed poetry collections ever written.

Damn electric stove

One thing in response, though, Chris -- what was up with trashing so many letters and journal bits and all that of hers? Ostensibly done for 'the kids' sake, but what about when they grew up? [If you like, consider Maus as a similar scenario.]

have you ever read the iron man by ted hughes. that is wicked. what tha fuck is wwith that disney shit????

My one attachment to Hughes is that when I was a child he was a 'children's writer' of some kind. The Iron Man may not really be a great book, but I feel a sentimental twinge for it. For that stuff, I can't totally knock him.

But Plath wrote The Bell Jar, which is maybe my second favourite novel. I don't care for her poetry, but that one book is enough. (The Journals are ab-fab too - *until* she meets Hughes.)

The Bell Jar was a defining book for me in junior high. This is a bad thing. But it's a wonderful book.

Ted Hughes, to my embarrassment, I get confused with Howard Hughes or, less frequently, Hugh Grant. I've never actually read anything of his. I was very irate about the Plath-destruction bit when I heard about it in my Plath-adore era, thus I labelled him jerk & read nil. Yet the Iron Giant is one of my favorite movies, and isn't that based on his book? Maybe I should read that.

Sylvia, I could understand her much too well.

Sylvia too. Not because of some "he killed her" idea apparently popular with Plath-heads. Don't really know too much of all that stuff (might check out those journals one of these days). Just like her poetry, which I got into recently, some of that stuff is so tough.

Unbelievably, I've never read much of either (have long had anti-poetry vibes). Perhaps I imagined that Plath was too solipsistic or that reading her would be some kind of pernicious influence. Hughes was of course for ages The Man Who but now, as with all great writers who die, is getting a bit of reputation rehab with me, even though on principle I'm not keen on anyone who destroys another writer's work.

Weirdly, my ex-boyfriend James' mum used to share a flat with Syl. She explained that at a particular point in late-50s/early-60s London, everyone knew everyone else. Small world or what?

As a poet: I have virtually every poem Sylvia wrote, she was one of the most potent poets that ever lived, yet even I have to concede that her poetry got even better once she met Ted, but that could have had more to do with the profound emotions she was going through at the time, rather than actually being artistically influenced by him.

As a person: As much I have the greatest respect for her work, were she still alive I don't think I could have gone within a million miles of her. Has anyone read "Letters Home"? She was a human rollercoaster, going from the most euphoric highs to the most crushing lows at the drop of a hat. A wonderfully complex individual with a fine mind, but inside, filled with darkness. Remember that of Ted she wrote the savagely cutting line "Bastard masturbating a glitter".

Sylvia Plath. Absolute bloody genius. Impossible to live with. Hard on herself yet equally hard on others.

This thread is good. It reminds me that I MUST read more Ted Hughes.

Sylvia - She wrote a nice poem about mushrooms. Goes something like: we are shelves, we are tables, we are meek, we are edible. I like that.

Actually, I'd side with neither, they're both rubbish when compared to the UBER-POET that is Spike Milligan. He great.

Ned, with the trashing - I don't know enough background to be useful but I think my response is: it was ultimately his stuff to trash if he wanted. Something about the privacy of the relationship being everything and the public *value* of the work being nothing. The Birthday Letters revealed such enormous potency of hidden feeling that simply to hide it away for so long, must have meant an enormous belief in the *rightness* of keeping it private. Sorry if that's not good enough.

I guess if there was ever an eleventh commandment it should be Never interfere with other people's relationships. Unless you're in that relationship you will *never* know what really went on.

Trevor, if only the rest of the world was so damned wise. I could think of some people that should have that tattooed on their foreheads right now...

I'm in the Plath corner, clearly, but that's coz I was a depressed teenage goff.

sylvia all the way - thru death, she gained power, hugehs just wrote poems abiout her.

Classic: Ted: Iron Man (though The Iron Giant is even better).

Dud: Sylvia: She wrote a Blue Aeroplanes song.

All hopelessly simplistic of course, though I did like her suicide note.

I'm in the Hughes camp, being a Terry Nutkins with fire in the belly type.

Plath is just a baby boomer Tori Amos, with attendant dated nuclear unease.

Actually I like both, but the gates of adolescence have closed on any chance of me reading much of their stuff again.

At college myself and another gurl were vehemently pro-Plath and anti- Hughes. We read a lot of Plath and wouldn't go anywhere near THAT BASTARRRRRD Hughes with his blooming animals all over the place. The Slyvia love has faded, but not read much Hughes apart from the Iron Man as a bairn - which like crikey, like JOE (me and Pinefox agree?!) was it? - up above, I still have a fondness for. I wouldn't make the trip to her grave now, but that's because I've lost all passion and motivation for anything and am reduced to life as a lazy lump YEAH! And I like going to pubs.

I guess I'd say Slyvia.

My dad knew them too - at Cambridge, where they were considerably less famous than big man on campus Michael Winner. Ted awesomely grumpy, apparently but unsurprisingly.

Minor point: all this business about TH destroying SP's stuff after she died. I recall an incident in Anne Stevenson's biog in which SP, in a fury (over TH's [supposed] infidelity), destroyed heaps of TH's material - "reducing them to fluff". Or am I getting hopelessly mixed up (it's 11 years since I read that)?

I wasn't joking earlier, by the way.

well, nicky nacky noo

The great triumvirate of twentieth-century verse: Edward Lear, Spike Milligan and Ivor Cutler.

Chrsit they both are bad. Ones mewling , the other makes pretty animal fables.

Didn't Sylvia Plath use to douche with windex to free the evil memories?

I hate her poetry.

I'm going to bed. too bad my bed is busted. sad.