SYLVIA PLATH

LOVE LETTER

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no-
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter-
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chisled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I was was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once. 

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.
TED HUGHES

LOVESONG

He loved her and she loved him. 
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to 
He had no other appetite 
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked 
She wanted him complete inside her 
Safe and sure forever and ever 
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains 
Her eyes wanted nothing to get away 
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows 
He gripped her hard so that life 
Should not drag her from that moment 
He wanted all future to cease 
He wanted to topple with his arms round her 
Off that moment's brink and into nothing 
Or everlasting or whatever there was 
Her embrace was an immense press 
To print him into her bones 
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace 
Where the real world would never come 
Her smiles were spider bites 
So he would lie still till she felt hungry 
His words were occupying armies 
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts 
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets 
His whispers were whips and jackboots 
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing 
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway 
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks 
And their deep cries crawled over the floors 
Like an animal dragging a great trap 
His promises were the surgeon's gag 
Her promises took the top off his skull 
She would get a brooch made of it 
His vows pulled out all her sinews 
He showed her how to make a love-knot 
Her vows put his eyes in formalin 
At the back of her secret drawer 
Their screams stuck in the wall 
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves 
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop 
In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs 
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage 

In the morning they wore each other's face

 
 
 

Ted Hugues poem:<(http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6616&poem=30213)>
Sylvia Plath poem:<(http://www.poemhunter.com/sylvia-plath/poems/poet-6642/page-3/)>

With this paper I am going to try to analyse two poems which topic is the same, love. These poems are written by two different poets, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, wife and husband respectively. In this paper I am going to differentiate if the poem is written by men or by woman. This difference is very important nowadays because the genre literature has influenced to write in a determined form. Apart from the way they write because of their gender also I will try to analyse their style and form at the time to write poetry. I will try to find out the differences and resemblances that are in these two poems in order to appreciate if their perspectives over the same topics are different because of their genre.

Related to the history of the poets, Hughes and Plath had a very interesting poetry, the majority of it due to their marriage. Their seven years marriage was unusual and tragic. Hughes was very prolific and famous, however Plath, despite she was also very famous, her circumstances were not so handy. During 1962-1963, she had to live alone in a flat with her two children. She was ill and these difficulties in her life seemed to reinforce her need to write, despite she had no time (she often worked between four and eight a.m., before the children awoke and she often wrote poems in a few hours). On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath succeeded in killing herself with cooking gas at the age of thirty. However, her husband had a public life, many times travelling around the world and having differ-rent affairs with other women. Many rumours said that this was the reason why his wife committed suicide. So, Hughes wrote himself a sort of conversations along poetical forms one year after their marriage and published on 1998, and somehow he tries to explain the reasons why his wife committed suicide and trying to explain that his adulterous relationship with AssiaWevill had nothing to do with Plath´s suicide. <(http://www.poemhunter.com/ted-hughes/biography/poet-6616)> 

This terrible fact could be the principal origin that they had such a vision of love, because both poets focus their love poetry on the impact that loneliness causes when love is death. Then, these two love poems are also related with death, fact that I think reflects how thin the line is that separates both concepts.

Firstly in the poem “Love Letter” by Plath represents another way of understanding love. The poem is written in first person because is Sylvia Plath who lives this “horror” and also she is the only person who better knows the story. Plath presents herself trying to overcome the pain that this relationship has produced to her. She introduces herself as a lady that was “dead”, but now she is “alive” and then she explains the reason. However, she uses her dreams as a metaphor of the death to explain how she has overcome that death. The author remarks the symbol of her rebirth comparing herself to flowers and plants that bud again in March. Above all she uses sad words and expressions to represent the pain and sorrow that she lived. 

Secondly in “Lovesong”, Hughes describes a scene in where two lovers are isolated from the rest of the world, enjoying and consuming their own love. The verbs and expressions that the author uses are shocking and direct for example; the lovers “suck” and “devour” each other (lines 2, 4 etc). They embrace each other, even “breaking their bones”, in order to make the union indestructible (lines 15-16). That is their paradise, where the real world never disturbs them (lines 18-19).

In this poem we can find some rhetoric figures as metaphors or personifications to emphasize his opinion of their unbreakable love; for example “surgeon”, “assassin looks” etc.

My personal opinion is that is very difficult to distinguish if the poem has been written by men or by woman because in the topic of love feelings are the most important thing. To distinguish the author of the poem we need more information about it. Each poet has their way and style of writing, which we can guess what poem is by Plath or by Hughes but I think that a poem reading is not enough to guess who is its poet. 
 
 
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biographies, Biography of Ted Hughes, www.poemhunter.com,
Ed. PoemHunter Corp, last visited 22nd August 2006.
<(http://www.poemhunter.com/ted-hughes/biography/poet-6616)>
 
 


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