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On the Letters of Ted Hughes V
Finishing The Letters of Ted Hughes—which I managed to do while recovering from a nasty bout with the flu—left me with a strange mixture of exaltation and biting sadness: something, I mean, beyond the sadness that books like this (biographies, letters, etc.) inevitably inspire because they end in the grave.Read More
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On the Letters of Ted Hughes IV
The following passage is from a letter written by Ted Hughes to Bishop Ross Hook, 10 November 1982: “Poets would like to feel their talent is some sort of bonus—like physical strength, or swiftness, or even an aptitude for mathematics. I submit that it is very likely something quite different. I think we get a closer description of the way it has always operated if we regard it as nothing more than a facility for expressing that complicated process in which we locate, and attempt to heal, affliction—whether our own or that of others whose feeling we can share.Read More
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On the Letters of Ted Hughes III
Herewith a few more illuminating insights from The Letters of Ted Hughes…. Hughes to Anne Sexton, 9 August 1967: “Don’t you worry about reviews. I’ve just been getting a load of them too. Both kinds are bad, but the favourable are worst I think. They tend to confirm one in one’s own conceit—unless they praise what you yourself don’t like. Also, they make you self-conscious about your virtues—just as when you praise a child for some natural charm. Also, they create an underground opposition: applause is the beginning of abuse.Read More
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On the Letters of Ted Hughes II
These piquant passages are from a letter written by Ted Hughes to his sister Olwyn, dated August 22, 1957. Hughes and Plath had moved to Eastham, Massachusetts, where the couple lived before she took up a teaching job at Smith College, her alma mater, in nearby Northampton. His outsider’s insight into the condition of ’50s America reminds me of Tocqueville, though Tocqueville’s fascination yields, in Hughes, to a visceral alarm: What a place America is. Everything is in cellophane. Everything is 10,000 miles from where it was plucked or made.Read More
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On The Letters of Ted Hughes
I’ve been reading The Letters of Ted Hughes, which I’m finding impossible to put down. Like all letters written by people of genius, Hughes’s letters are a magical mix of erudition, crank notions, unguarded humor, soap opera, and authentic emotion. Hughes—who for my money stands as the greatest British poet of the last century—has more valuable things to say about the practice of poetry than anyone I’ve read. Herewith an example: “Up to the invention of Caxton’s press, and for most people long after, all reading was done aloud. Most people were incapable of reading silently.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
