Birthday Letters – Ted Hughes

1)      The poems in the collection are in chronological order (the order that events happened) as opposed to the order in which Hughes might have written them. What effect does this ordering have on the collection? Does it enrich the experience in any way? Does it make sense?

2)      Who is the subject of these poems? Did it feel like they were all about the same person?

3)      What sense did you get about the “I”, the narrator of the poems? How did you feel about him? Did you like him/dislike him? Did he feel real/human? Did you feel sympathy for him? What were his failings?

4)      What was the overall tone of the book? How did it make you feel? Was the tone too light, too heavy or about right?

5)      How did the writing make you feel about the person they were about? Did you think she was treated fairly/unfairly? Did you feel differently about her by the end?

6)      Were you able to separate the collection from what you already knew about Plath and Hughes and their relationship? Does the collection work without prior knowledge of what happened?

7)      Hughes uses language and references to Plath’s language and poetry throughout the collection (moon, Yew tree etc.) Did you need to know this? Does prior knowledge of Plath’s work add extra depth to the work or did you find the reference annoying?

8)      It feels like almost every poem in the collection is coloured by the death to come – how did you feel about this? Were the many references to death to heavy, jarring? Did you want less of them or more? Do you think that in light of what happened that Hughes was reading too much into everyday occurrence and behaviour – imbuing them with some deeper significance that might not have been there?

9)      Hughes makes many references to Plath’s Americanness (“Fulbright Scholars,” “Your Paris,” “Stubbing  Wharfe”), what significance do you think he attaches to it? How does it contrast with his Englishness?  Do the poems set in America differ from the ones set in Europe?

10)  How does Hughes use animals within the collection? (“Sam,” “The Owl,” “The Chipmunk,” “9 Willow Street,” “The 59th Bear,” “Epiphany,” “The Rabbit Catcher,” “The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother”).  What do the different animals symbolise?

11)  Did you notice the allusions to any other writers in the poems?  Donne  (“18 Rugby Street), ”Shakespeare (“A Pink Wool Knitted Dress,”  “Setebos”)  Chaucer  (“St. Botolph’s,” “Chaucer”)  and Emily Brontë  (“Wuthering Heights”) as well as to Plath’s own poems. What function do these references serve?  Does knowing the work s alluded to deepen your understanding of these poems in any way? Does it make Hughes’s poems any more or less accessible?

12)  Hughes makes reference to oracles and portents in several of the poems (e.g. Ouija board, horoscopes etc). What purpose (if any) are these serving in the narrative?

13)  Does Hughes intimate that what happened to Plath was unavoidable? Did you feel like he took any responsibility?

14)  What was your overall feeling about the collection? Did you like or dislike it? Why?

15)  What was your favourite/ least favourite poem? Why?