Rating: 
Summary: Not very good, not verse either
Review: ...This is how Ted saw Sylvia's fingers. It's a pity that the same cannot be said about Ted's fingers. The poems in "Birthday Letters" have a refreshing smell of honesty about them. However, it's difficult to believe that these pieces were written without the bother of an audience in mind. Almost all the poems have a storyteller's voice behind it. Consider these opening lines from "The Lodger": "Potatoes were growing in the yard corner/ That September. They were the welcome wagon!" What distinguishes poetry from prose is the poet's expression of spontaneous feelings. Ted's expressions are honest, no doubt, but there's a certain "designed to communicate" pattern about them, which strips them of their natural aroma. This collection may provide the much awaited peep into Ted & Sylvia's married life, but please, don't call this poetry.
Rating: 
Summary: for the lover of sylvia plath
Review: a deep look into the life of sylvia plath and how she affected her husband, ted hughes.
Rating: 
Summary: Timeless and Telling
Review: As a fan of Sylvia Plath, when I learned of this book's publication in 1998, I immediately purchased it and read it. I had hoped to get my hands around just one more collection to add to the mystique that Plath created for me after I read Ariel and The Bell Jar as a teenager. Hughes's poetry, "Birthday Letters," which he dedicates to his children rather than his long dead wife, sheds a lot of light on their relationship, and helped to paint a fairer portrait of a man and poet I had previously considered to be unfaithful to someone whose work I admired. How unfair of me! Hughes is/was clearly the MASTER. These poems are riveting. Last week I pulled this book off my shelf and read it again. This time the poems had even greater meaning since I had just seen the film, "Sylvia." I felt the movie was as much about Ted Hughes as it was about her and because of it, appreciated these beautiful, telling poems all the more. Birthday Letters is a must for poetry lovers-even if you have no interest in the drama of the relationship between Hughes and Plath. It tells the story of many lovers. Beautifully. From the author of "I'm Living Your Dream Life," McKenna Publishing Group
Rating:
Summary: Suicide sentimentality.
Review: As a picture of the human condition, this book is just slightly more palatable than the idea that secret military tribunals might be considered legal proceedings. The content of the poems in this book bear a striking resemblance to interrogation techniques which have been deadly in numerous cases, although the psychology department at Harvard University would be reluctant to blame the damage caused by the Unabomber on his participation in psychological experiments while he was an undergraduate at Harvard. As with Ted Hughes, when the situation gets this complicated, great minds start looking for a way out. In its way, this book is less idealistic than the Unabomber Manifesto, but it shows a state of personal relationships which is ultimately as unliveable for Plath as modern technological society became for the Unabomber, who had attempted to teach American young people to do the math in his courses on a radical campus in Berkeley, California. The Unabomber was obviously a social failure precisely in the ways in which Ted Hughes, in this book, illustrates the stunning nature of social success. Here's Hughes: So it sprang over you. Its jungle prints Hit your page. Plainly the blood Was your own. With a laugh I Took its full weight. Little did I know The shock attack of a big predator According to survivors numbs the target Into drunken euphoria. Still smiling . . . (Pages 18-19). This is a poem called "Trophies".
Rating:
Summary: Suicide sentimentality.
Review: As a picture of the human condition, this book is just slightly more palatable than the idea that secret military tribunals might be considered legal proceedings. The content of the poems in this book bear a striking resemblance to interrogation techniques which have been deadly in numerous cases, although the psychology department at Harvard University would be reluctant to blame the damage caused by the Unabomber on his participation in psychological experiments while he was an undergraduate at Harvard. As with Ted Hughes, when the situation gets this complicated, great minds start looking for a way out. In its way, this book is less idealistic than the Unabomber Manifesto, but it shows a state of personal relationships which is ultimately as unliveable for Plath as modern technological society became for the Unabomber, who had attempted to teach American young people to do the math in his courses on a radical campus in Berkeley, California. The Unabomber was obviously a social failure precisely in the ways in which Ted Hughes, in this book, illustrates the stunning nature of social success. Here's Hughes: So it sprang over you. Its jungle prints Hit your page. Plainly the blood Was your own. With a laugh I Took its full weight. Little did I know The shock attack of a big predator According to survivors numbs the target Into drunken euphoria. Still smiling . . . (Pages 18-19). This is a poem called "Trophies".
Rating:
Summary: A heart laid bare
Review: Don't listen to the Amazonian critics, or the writers of chopped up prose who are called poets, this is riveting, sad stuff. As best he can, Hughes lays his heart bare. Does he hold back regarding himself and his own darkness? Some I think. But just how detached can one be in such a drama? Are there some self-serving poems? A few. Not nearly as many as I expected after reading Henry Taylor's review in the Washington Times. But that just makes this all the more sad. He is a human being living through a bewildering situation. Besides, this book is not a slam on Sylvia. You come out of it feeling sad at the tragedy of someone losing there mind, and the need to continue loving them, even in death. A good book to read along with this is the "Unquiet Mind" by Jamieson. Whatever his personal shortcomings, Hughes clearly loved his wife. It took a generous heart for him to release this; and sadly, some will revile him for it. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Two Sides to Every Story
Review: For anyone who has spent much time with Sylvia Plath's work, the power of her own voice overwhelms any sense of objectivity about her subject matter. It's not accidental that she began to insist that the poems were best heard out loud, in her voice, because it is precisely the strength of her highly personal use of language that comes through so forcefully. This has seemingly left little room for debate, and many of those who have written about Plath's work have simply added a kind of cheer of support ("You go, girl!") to that voice. But there are two sides to every story, and Ted Hughes "Birthday Letters" is extremely moving in what it reveals about what it was like to live with a "genius" who also happened to have a history of mental breakdowns. At times, Hughes poems closely reference Plath's, often to very telling effect. For example, Plath's poem "The Rabbit Catcher," which describes her sense of identification with the hunted, and has her pulling up rabbit traps that she finds, protecting the poor bunnies from the evil hunters. Hughes remembers that day differently, watching his wife screaming, as she ripped up the wire traps that provided a little free nourishment to local poor farmers, undoing what to him was generations of history. Until the publication of this book, we've only had Plath's take on the events of her marriage, and these poems provide a much needed sense of how very difficult it must have been living with someone as internally tortured and emotionally volatile as Plath. A few of Hughes' poems are a little bit over the top (especially "The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother"), but the defensiveness is very much in the background. One senses instead how emotionally charred Hughes has been since Plath's suicide, how he has continued to reflect on the details of their relationship, searching for answers to the inevitable question of why that accompanies any self-inflicted death. A good counter-balance to Hughes' poems is the book "The Silent Woman," which outlines the history of how Hughes and his sister Olwyn have handled the Plath estate; you'll better understand why some feminist critics think these poems are too little too late. For the average lover of poetry, however, you'll be grateful for the insights Hughes provides, and you'll also be moved by the beauty of his language. After all, apparently a major part of Plath's attraction to him was that he was such a good poet.
Rating:
Summary: harrowing
Review: Having just read readers' reviews I am shocked at how judgemental people are, after all this time. The poetry seems to count for so little. Nobody makes someone commit suicide, it was Plath herself who chose that route. Hughes didn't murder her, he simply didn't want her any more. Anyone out there ever had someone commit suicide on them? It is those who are left behind who suffer, especially children. Any money Hughes made from this book will go straight to the Hughes-Plath children, not to Hughes for God's sake. The poetry is searing, to anyone who knows the unhappy tale of this marriage especially. The poems are like journal entries in places, and they are also powerful, disruptive narratives in what has been a very one-sided debate. I adore Plath's work, and still think it vastly underrated, but here we see the image of Hughes the Iceman having melted, to reveal the damaged human being underneath.
Rating:
Summary: A tour de force of litrary reasoning,
Review: Hughes' poetry is subtle, taking on the mask of the poet's worse fears. In talking about the death of a loved one,Hughes through the gift of beautful words speaks to us through a shadow. intimate and close yet at the same time away from the individual. Plath's relationship with Hughes is well explained from Hughes' point of view. It is his love for her that brings out the richness of the fabric that he has woven for over 35 years. a beautiful, entertaining look at the love of some forgotten one ,long time ago. I recommend this book to people who struggle to find the illusions, and abstract happiness in life.
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Summary: No one sees the natural world as he does
Review: I confess that I have always enjoyed Ted Hughes' work more than that of Sylvia Plath; I grieve that his legacy (more so, I think in this country than in the UK) will forever be intertwined with hers. She had a few moments of feverish brilliance ("Ariel" is a fabulous collection, I readily admit), but the sheer quality of Hughes' work will have, I suspect, a more lasting impact in the world of English language poetry. Hughes, like my favorite American poet Jeffers, is often viewed as remote and inaccessible because his best poetry is about the natural world, rather than about human beings. What Jeffers was to the California coast, Hughes is to beasts everywhere. Time and again, I return to his poems about sheep, or badgers, or trout -- he writes animals like no other poet in English. His best poems in this collection deal once more with animals -- particularly the long, delicate, perfect "59th Bear". I won't quote from it -- I just plead with the reader to ask themselves if this is not the finest description of "bearness" that they have ever read. Much has been written (some of it by Hughes himself) about how he and Sylvia Plath saw the natural world differently -- she with passionate adolescent sentiment, he with a keener, more nuanced gaze. We can wonder what kind of writer Plath might have blossomed into had she lived and "recovered" from her mental illness -- but there is no doubt that these poems, in this collection, represent Hughes at his most mature and his most insightful.
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