Appropriating Plath: Reclaiming the role of author in Ted Hughes's 'Birthday Letters'

The 1998 publication of Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes marked the first time the poet had publicly addressed his marriage to American poet Sylvia Plath. In writing Birthday Letters, Hughes drew on the breadth of his poetic career, from the nature imagery of his early work to the shamanistic methods of poetic creation of his middle career to the translation of existing works that dominated the last decade of his life. Elements of each of these areas of interest can be found in the collection which functions as a creative translation of Plath's work. In particular, by openly borrowing material from Plath's Ariel, Hughes is able to enter into a dialogue with the source text and regain some measure of authorship over the story of his own life.