Honestly, I could write thousands of words of why this is a horrible horrible collection, but I haven't the time to waste on a review that no-one is going to read, so here's the short version. This work presents itself as a commentary on Plath and Hughes' relationship with the implication that the poems were written in real time. I don't believe this. I think this is a reputation washing exercise and therefore a different type of dishonesty than is usual in poetry. We learn nothing significant about either person, Plath or Hughes, that we couldn't have already guessed, but the arrogance and cruelty shown by Hughes in this collection regularly took my breath away. He never shows any sign of attempting to understand her mental health issues, or reflect on his own feelings about those issues. She is reduced a madwoman, a raving creature obsessed for reasons unclear with her own father, a compulsive unreflective beast dedicated to being difficult and getting in the way of him writing Important Poetry. Her behaviours are not rational or based on any set of values, they're just childish tantrums that hurt random people around here, like the imagined English countryman setting traps to catch rabbits for his pot that she starves by tearing up the snares - he gaslights her from beyond the grave, her moral values are fake whilst his are unimpeachable. Their chidren are often mentioned, but only once are either of them refered to as 'his' or 'my', otherwise only 'her', but the children's feelings or lives are not touched on, only their existence refered to obliquely to draw attention to her failings are a parent. He shows no interest in the lives of their chilren or their inner worlds, just uses them as a stick to beat her with. There are so many mocking references to Daddy and Ariel, but no engagement with the works. This is a world in which a woman's trauma is treated as a personality flaw, her bpd is treated as difficulties and troublemaking. I have seen so many people like him in my professional life, they are everything we seek to change about the world and their refusal to understand trauma and psychiatry or do any self-reflection is a major problem in the interpersonal lives of so many people. There is oh so much more, my copy has dozens of corners turned over, stickies put in to show things to raise, notes made in anger. I am a fan of Ted Hughes' work, but this is cruelty pretending to be neutrality, insults pretending to be artistic neutrality, and worst of all, there are very few poems in here that are Hughes at his best. Perhaps the best poem in the book is Wuthering Heights, or maybe The Minotaur, but mostly they are cold, like adverts, like PR bumpf, showing only excerpted versions of the human experience. Poems should make you see things in a new way, good poems should reveal the truths of the world in ways you never imagined. Not a single poem in this collection made my blood pump harder, made me exited, made me read the work out loud to my partner excitedly. There were some good poems, certainly. Hughes skill is undeniable, but there were so few moments in this where his descriptions, his rhythm, his vision grabbed me and surprised me, only depressed me with his art, a great painter leaving a portrait to posterity that is a grotesquery, handing on hatred as truth to posterity. I feel so sorry for Sylvia Plath, being handpicked as a trophy wife by a selfish man who didn't understand her and didn't want to, who felt attacked by the existence of an emotional life that was inconvenient to him, and then having her pain and art turned into mocking and dismissive poems. There is nothing in this book that tells you anything about why he loved her, what he liked about her, the good times they had together, the work they created during their relationship, how he felt and why, what she said about her subjects, their courtship, why they got married, why they had children, a whole relationship reduced to 60 or so bitter vignettes of him having the arse with her. It's the poetry equivalent of a man explaining that his ex is a nutter and you shouldn't believe anything she says. Horrible stuff, sometimes very good in a technical kind of way but mostly the only thing I felt was annoyance. ( )

With this collection of poems Hughes takes his readers on an exploration of his relationship with the poet Sylvia Plath. The highs and lows are easily apparent, and the tumultuous tone of the collection is exactly what one would expect from the union of two highly creative minds. What is most surprising is the honesty of voice that Hughes speaks/writes with; not a jot of his disappointment and anger - and in some cases accusation - are left out, so the briefly sweet moments are made even more poignant. As much as it is impossible to truely know the relationship of two people we get at least a brief understanding from this collection. ( )

Sylvia Plath had daddy issues. So severe were her daddy issues that her husband wrote a collection of poems centred entirely around said daddy issues.

Some of the poems about Sylvia Plath's daddy issues were actually quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, the number of poems about Sylvia Plath's daddy issues I could read and enjoy is much less than 88. ( )

Not as riveting as Crow, but powerful poetry nonetheless. A true master of the form and one of my all-time favorite poets. ( )

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