I don’t quite know what to say. I don’t think this entire anthology has quite sunk in yet. Of course, I came to this, an avid reader of Plath having only read Hughes’ Crow prior, and expected criticism to overcome me, naïvely; at points, yes, he seems blithe, his fixation on his wife’s relationship with her father is overblown to the point where he seems to miss the complexity of her emotional state in trying to remove blame from himself— but the entire work stands contrary to that, and I believe Hughes knew any bias he held would be seen, and what would out would be the truth of himself and his relationship to Plath, whether he wanted to face up to that within his lifetime, he wanted it as a legacy; there is so much to critique, but that is because he is being so confessional. The only valid criticism I see of the anthology is just that, his poems are not as sophisticate as Plath’s in their use of the confessional mode, and seem to suggest Hughes was adding insult to injury, laying more bare than he had to, which reaffirms his urgent honesty— I do believe he wants us to consider his need to write this. Aside & onwards, I am so glad I read this poetry collection after having been in love with someone, oh the descriptions of the first stages of their romance, his remembrances of the clothing items she wore, down to the prints on each individual bandanna, he shooing cows away as she read Chaucer, reading Conrad to her as she wove a rug, using language as a talisman to keep curses away that she did not even hear or care for, you can see he did love Plath; I don’t say Hughes was not an adulterer, that the abuse allegations are not incredibly pertinent in how we consider their marriage— but you can see the passion and latent love that tied them into a relationship that by both of them was described as destructive, and yet superficially can seem so pure and typical of two poets. There are depths to everything. His lack of addressing Plath’s miscarriages which cause significant struggle for her & he, I did see as a flaw in his confessional attempt, especially in how tied in they are to her record of his abuse of her in her letters. The symbolism Hughes finds in everyday events is revisionist, of course, but something I as a poet resonate deeply with and wondered, maybe stupidly, if others thought in that way— fatalism is dark, heavy thing, and I think Hughes’ grapples with it without enough scepticism to apply appropriate sentiment. I will probably reread this again, but on glancing at the contents list, my favourite poems were:

The Tender Place
The Owl
Fate Playing
Chaucer
Wuthering Heights
The Blue Flannel Suit
Epiphany
The Gypsy
The Minotaur
Apprehensions
The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother
Red

Ultimately, Hughes is a very complicated man whose actions I rarely support, but his poetry and sense of emotion and symbolism is superlative and his technique when he chooses to exert it through enjambent and fluid punctuation is perfect. I like him as a poet, I can have no opinion on him as a man. A difficult legacy to dissect.