Suspect the answer could be a bit of each. And from all i've read of Hughes, by Hughes, can practically guarantee he would've liked your dream.
Because of my love for Sylvia, i hated Ted for a very long time, and it prevented me from being able to read his work. Then, some years ago, a good friend-- a pretty brilliant female poet, who loves Sylvia too-- told me I was only punishing myself, and gave me the Complete Poems volume you mentioned, for Christmas. I opened it-- tentatively, staying near shore, in the shallows, Didn't take long for me to acclimate though, and ultimately see Ted as my poet-friend-- and i suppose Sylvia-- saw him, too.
Have you had a look at Winter Pollen? Book of some of his best prose. It might help, in your effort to reach some--accommodation-- with him. Helped me.
Sylvia is Crow, btw. Ted may have told himself that it was him, but i think at some level he knew.
I love the idea that she is Crow... I will revisit Crow tonight with that thought in mind.
I have Winter Pollen and have read a good deal of it. I find many of the essays unfinished-- they just trail off with no discernible end. I do like his bit on Emily Dickinson and think it's heavily influenced by Sylvia's death. I have tried!! I swear! I will keep trying...
I love the Dickinson essay, and enjoyed most of them a great deal (did you read The Environmental Revolution? Particularly love that one) . Hughes was an eccentric thinker, and i know his criticism-- particularly his ideas about Shakespeare-- plus related ideas re: shamanistic properties in poetry-- are derided, even ridiculed, by some. But i enjoy them. Don't always agree, but he inevitably helps focus my thinking, in sort of the same ways that Wallace Stevens-- who i find at least as morally challenged as Ted-- does.
The essays on Sylvia's work are quite good, too. Revealing. He was plain in his estimation of her brilliance, and i think oftentimes he comes across as being in awe of her. He tries variously to keep her cut down to human proportions-- to maintain some kind of--collegial-- equality between them. But he knew better.
That's sort of my theory of their dynamic. Before Sylvia bit him on the cheek, his biggest plan was to go fishing in Australia. The life they lived was the life Sylvia set in motion. As was--essentially-- the life he lived after her death. As Assia could attest, Sylvia was never absent. He achieved the stature that she envisioned for him. But he was not, could not be, as large as she.
Suspect the answer could be a bit of each. And from all i've read of Hughes, by Hughes, can practically guarantee he would've liked your dream.
Because of my love for Sylvia, i hated Ted for a very long time, and it prevented me from being able to read his work. Then, some years ago, a good friend-- a pretty brilliant female poet, who loves Sylvia too-- told me I was only punishing myself, and gave me the Complete Poems volume you mentioned, for Christmas. I opened it-- tentatively, staying near shore, in the shallows, Didn't take long for me to acclimate though, and ultimately see Ted as my poet-friend-- and i suppose Sylvia-- saw him, too.
Have you had a look at Winter Pollen? Book of some of his best prose. It might help, in your effort to reach some--accommodation-- with him. Helped me.
Sylvia is Crow, btw. Ted may have told himself that it was him, but i think at some level he knew.
I love the idea that she is Crow... I will revisit Crow tonight with that thought in mind.
I have Winter Pollen and have read a good deal of it. I find many of the essays unfinished-- they just trail off with no discernible end. I do like his bit on Emily Dickinson and think it's heavily influenced by Sylvia's death. I have tried!! I swear! I will keep trying...
I love the Dickinson essay, and enjoyed most of them a great deal (did you read The Environmental Revolution? Particularly love that one) . Hughes was an eccentric thinker, and i know his criticism-- particularly his ideas about Shakespeare-- plus related ideas re: shamanistic properties in poetry-- are derided, even ridiculed, by some. But i enjoy them. Don't always agree, but he inevitably helps focus my thinking, in sort of the same ways that Wallace Stevens-- who i find at least as morally challenged as Ted-- does.
The essays on Sylvia's work are quite good, too. Revealing. He was plain in his estimation of her brilliance, and i think oftentimes he comes across as being in awe of her. He tries variously to keep her cut down to human proportions-- to maintain some kind of--collegial-- equality between them. But he knew better.
That's sort of my theory of their dynamic. Before Sylvia bit him on the cheek, his biggest plan was to go fishing in Australia. The life they lived was the life Sylvia set in motion. As was--essentially-- the life he lived after her death. As Assia could attest, Sylvia was never absent. He achieved the stature that she envisioned for him. But he was not, could not be, as large as she.
Diane M was your mentor? Oh my goodness!! Might we chat about this, sometime? I adore her work.