There’s a move underway to honor the great Ted Hughes in Poet’s Corner, and I for one can only applaud the idea. He was certainly, as Simon Armitage writes, “a genius with an unparalleled gift, a once-in-a-generation poet whose work was a major contribution to English literature.” Leading the effort, apparently, is the Nobel Prize winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney, and his effort strikes me as an act of great friendship and humility. Heaney is a fine poet, but his work doesn’t match Hughes’s in power, range, and sheer adventurousness. (One recent essayist even hails Hughes as “a prophet of climate change” through his “unsentimental and earthy connection” with animals.) Here’s hoping Hughes gets the lasting recognition he deserves.
Aaron, your quiet protest is duly noted. Plath was a wonderful poet, and had she not taken her own life it's likely she would be the subject of similar efforts to honor her. Unfortunately, she denied herself not just to her family and friends but to the multitude of readers who would have loved to see her reach her full potential as an artist.
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