Frieda Hughes Speaking Out: “The Blood Jet Is Poetry and There Is No Stopping It”

Sylvia Plath killed herself in February, 1963. In the months previous, her writer’s block had vanished with a ferocity that frightened her friends – Was this manic episode the precursor to some huge crash? In those last months before she died, she wrote sometimes 3 poems a day. And these weren’t crappy poems, these were arresting terrifying works – works that made her name, works that are now taught in English classes across the land. Some are sheer genius. If you read them in order (the way Ted Hughes placed them in the original version of the book Ariel – published after her death) – you feel her marching towards that oven. You feel her, in poem after poem, dig deeper and deeper into her psychic despair. Plath, recently separated from Hughes, her husband, had their two children in her flat with her, and because of her maternal duties, the only time she had to write was at night, or in the hours before dawn. She would sit up, at 3 am, 4 am, and churn out such poems as “Daddy”, “Lady Lazarus”, “Ariel”, “Contusion”, “The Munich Mannequins” … and many many more. These are great poems. Each poem went through multiple drafts, too – so the pace at which she worked must have been extraordinary.

Before she died, she collected all of these frightening poems into a binder, and left express instructions of the ORDER in which they were to appear when published. (This was explained in the Introduction to her Collected Poems, compiled by Ted Hughes). Ted Hughes, however, felt that it would be better to put them in chronological order. And so they were.

And that is the version of Ariel that was published, that was read feverishly and picked apart, that was held up as a pure work of suicidal art, etc.

Hughes has suffered enough. His decision to re-order the poems has been criticized by shrill ninnies who can’t stand the man, and who hold him responsible for everything that went wrong in Sylvia’s life. They would hold him responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. Ted Hughes is evil incarnate to these cultish Plath wackos.

Anyway, all of this is just a preface.

Thank you, peteb, for sending me the following news – Ariel is now being re-issued, in the order Sylvia Plath suggested. Plath liked HER order because the first word of the volume would be “love” and the last volume would be “spring”. To HER, the volume of poems was a redemptive story, a story of hope (which is hard to believe, when you read these poems all in one sitting – it’s one of the bleakest most upsetting books I have ever read) – But that’s neither here nor there. To Plath, she was hopeful that she was starting up a new and good life without Hughes, that she would be entering “spring” again.

Frieda Hughes, Sylvia and Ted’s daughter, now a grown woman, has written an incredible article about this re-issuing of her mother’s book – and she beautifully defends her father from the Sylvia Suicide-Cult crowd who thought he was Satan Incarnate. Beautiful. I felt like cheering.

Criticism of my father was even levelled at his ownership of my mother’s copyright, which fell to him on her death and which he used to directly benefit my brother and me. Through the legacy of her poetry my mother still cared for us, and it was strange to me that anyone would wish it otherwise.

After my mother’s suicide and the publication of Ariel, many cruel things were written about my father that bore no resemblance to the man who quietly and lovingly (if a little strictly and being sometimes fallible) brought me up – later with the help of my stepmother. All the time, he kept alive the memory of the mother who had left me, so I felt as if she were watching over me, a constant presence in my life.

It appeared to me that my father’s editing of Ariel was seen to “interfere” with the sanctity of my mother’s suicide, as if, like some deity, everything associated with her must be enshrined and preserved as miraculous. For me, as her daughter, everything associated with her was miraculous, but that was because my father made it appear so, even playing me a record of my mother reading her poetry so I could hear her voice again. It was many years before I discovered my mother had a ferocious temper and a jealous streak, in contrast to my father’s more temperate and optimistic nature, and that she had on two occasions destroyed my father’s work, once by ripping it up and once by burning it. I’d been aghast that my perfect image of her, attached to my last memories, was so unbalanced. But my mother, inasmuch as she was an exceptional poet, was also a human being and I found comfort in restoring the balance; it made sense of her for me. The outbursts were the exception, not the rule. Life at home was generally quiet, and my parents’ relationship was hardworking and companionable. However, as her daughter, I needed to know the truth of my mother ‘s nature – as I did my father’s – since it was to help me understand my own.

Wow. I read Ted Hughes’ book of poems The Birthday Letters – published just before his death. In that book he broke his long long silence about Sylvia – and addresses her in all but two of those poems. It is an extraordinary book. To anyone who thought he was the bogey-man of poetry, and the eeeeeeevil misogynist who ruined Sylvia Plath’s life, that book should have been a harsh reminder that we can never know the truth about what goes on between two people behind closed doors.

I love Sylvia Plath’s poetry. I find it disappointing that her suicide has overshadowed her art. Her work is so deep, so exciting, that I keep going back to it – at different points through my life, and I always see new things. Sometimes I read her stuff and feel filled with rage, other times I go back and I see her humor, or I am just awed at her sheer verbal skill. Her early poems are stiff, self-conscious, and pretentious. I can feel her checking her Thesaurus every other word. She’s showing off, she’s stiff, she’s coy, she’s a prodigy. They’re boring. If you only read them, you would have no idea the POWER that this woman had. And when she let her hair down, woah did she let her hair down.

Nobody expected it of her. The “Ariel” poems were a terrifying revelation to all.

I love Ted Hughes’ poetry too. I have always thought he got a raw deal.

I have my Hughes-version of Ariel. Of course I do. I’ve had it since high school. I can recite most of the poems therein by heart.

“The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it …”

“Stasis in darkness”

and my personal favorite line:

“the blue pour of tor and distances”.

I mean, you just MUST say that out loud. It’s stunning language! “The blue pour of tor and distances …”

But I will definitely be getting this new edition of Ariel. It seems only right.

And so the books can sit side by side on my shelf – his version, and hers.

Because what really matters is the words. Her language. The poems themselves. THEY are what compel me.

It’s nice to hear from Frieda Hughes. I often think about those two children, and what became of them.