#ted hughes

The “Sylvia Plath Calendar” - 62 years ago today:

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’ daughter, Frieda Rebecca Hughes was born on 1 April 1960 at 5:45 a.m. at 3 Chalcot Square, near Primrose Hill, North London, UK

…

“Finally, on the night of March 31 [1960], after she and Ted had taken a walk along Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park that had tired her enough so she fell asleep immediately, Sylvia awoke to labor pains. Then everything happened quickly. By two o’clock when Ted called the midwife, Sylvia’s contractions were violent. By five, she was fully dilated. By five-thirty, when the nurse called the doctor, Sylvia believed the baby would come any minute. And it did—at five-forty-five. A girl, she weighed seven pounds and four ounces and measured twenty-one inches in length. Sylvia called her Frieda Rebecca, and the source of the name was clear. It was Otto’s [Sylvia’s father] sister Frieda, Sylvia’s aunt whom she had described as “resembl[ing] daddy—the same … blue eyes and shape of face.”

During labor and the actual birth, Ted remained at Sylvia’s side; he often held her hand and rubbed her back. As he had hypnotized her over the past few weeks, Ted had offered a posthypnotic suggestion that she have a quick and painless delivery. Though by no means painless, it was—at four and a half hours—relative quick.”

In a letter, Plath stated that “[t]he whole experience of birth and baby seem[s] much deeper, much closer to the bone, than love and marriage.”

–Excerpt from Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath by Paul Alexander, 1991

Picture: Sylvia Plath with Ted Hughes and their daughter Frieda at Knole, UK in May 1960

HAPPY 62nd BIRTHDAY Frieda Rebecca Hughes!!!

(born 1 April 1960 in London, England)

http://www.friedahughes.com/

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Picture: Frieda Hughes in 2015

Source:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Today marks the 59th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death! RIP!

27 October 1932 Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts, USA -
11 February 1963, Primrose Hill, London, England, United Kingdom

***

“I can’t deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide. But the cold reasoning mass of gray entrail in my cranium which parrots “I think, therefore I am,” whispers that there is always the turning, the upgrade, the new slant. And so I wait.”

-–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, diary entry no. 36, 1950

***

59 years ago today:

Sylvia Plath commited suicide on Monday, 11 February 1963 at approximately 4:30 a.m. in her appartment at 23 Fitzroy Road, near Primrose Hill, London, where she moved in with her two children in December 1962 after separating from Ted Hughes; a house William Butler Yeats used to live in from 1867 till 1873.

She was 30 years, 3 months, 2 weeks and 1 day old. Her death certificate states that the cause of her death was “Carbon Monoxide Poisoning (domestic gas) whilst suffering from depression. Did kill herself”.

She left some bread and milk in her children’s (Frieda, almost 3 and Nicholas, 1 year old) room, opened their window and sealed their door off with tape to prevent the gas from entering. She also sealed the kitchen door with wet towels.Sylvia Plath’s dead body was discovered less than five hours later. Her children were unharmed.

Jillian Becker wrote in her memoir Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plaththat “According to Mr. Goodchild, a police officer attached to the coroner’s office … [Plath] had thrust her head far into the gas oven… [and] had really meant to die.”Sylvia Plath is buried in Heptonstall’s parish churchyard of St Thomas the Apostle, the new St Thomas á Becket’s churchyard; near Ted Hughes’ birthplace Mytholmroyd in  West Yorkshire, England.

***

Photo info: Studio portrait of Sylvia Plath holding with a glass ball, 1945-55

Photo source: Peter K. Steiberg’s Twitter @sylviaplathinfo

Today marks the 23rd anniversary of Ted Hughes’ death! RIP!


Edward James Hughes 
(17 August 1930, Mytholmroyd, England – 28 October 1998, London, England)

“The world’s decay where the wind’s hands have passed,
And my head, worn out with love, at rest
In my hands, and my hands full of dust,”

―Ted Hughes, from“Song”, inThe Hawk in the Rain, 1957

Image source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/

Photo credits: Reg Innell/Toronto Star via Getty Images                                                                                                             

HAPPY 91st BIRTHDAY Ted Hughes! RIP!

Edward James Hughes
(17 August 1930, Mytholmroyd, England – 28 October 1998, London, England)

“Those bats had their eyes open. Unlike us,
They knew how, and when, to detach themselves
From the love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

–Ted Hughes, from “Karlsbad Caverns”, in Birthday Letters, 1998

Photo source: https://www1.wdr.de/

“And I am married to a poet. We came together in that church of the chimney sweeps with nothing but love & hope & our own selves: Ted in his old black corduroy jacket & me in mother’s gift of a pink knit dress. Pink rose & black tie. An empty church in watery yellow-gray light of rainy London. Outside, the crowd of thick-ankled tweed-coated mothers & pale, jabbering children waiting for the bus to take them on a church outing to the Zoo.

And here I am: Mrs. Hughes. And wife of a published poet.”

—fromThe Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Cambridge Diary, Monday afternoon: February 25 1957

***

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes first met on 25 February 1956 at party in Cambridge, England. They married only four months later on 16 June 1956 at St George the Martyr, Holborn, Camden, London in honor of Bloomsday with Plath‘s mother Aurelia being the only wedding guest.
They have been married for six years and four months until Plath commited suicide on 11 February 1963.

Even though they have been separated for five months since September 1962, they never got a divorce.
Maybe today would have been their 65th anniversary, if they were alive and stayed together.

Picture: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes photographed by by Lettice Ramsey at Ramsey & Muspratt in Cambridge, England in 1956.

This picture is one of 10 Plath and Hughes had taken a few moths later in November 1956 as their official wedding photos.
They are wearing their actual  wedding attire and Plath wore a “pink knitted suit dress”.

They both ended up hating the photographs.

If you want to find out more on their wedding and the story of these wedding pictures, I highly recommend you to read Ann Kennedy Smith‘s blog post at https://akennedysmith.com/

Photo source:https://www.loftyimages.co.uk

via Pinterest @Fast Lane Tattoo

(Please don’t forget to also like the picture there)

Tattoo done by @emmatattoos, Catskill, NY

***

Today marks the 23rd anniversary of Ted Hughes’ death RIP!

(17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998)

***

In case you are wondering, Hughes is the author of The Iron Giant, the children’s book that has been adapted into the 1999 animation movie with the same title (The Iron Giant) featuring the famous quote: “You are who you choose to be. “ (enen though the quote does not come from the book).

via Twitter @inkmaster

(Please don’t forget to also like the picture there)

Done by @mattobaugh,https://www.blackcobratattoos.com/

Black Cobra Tattoo, 6505 Warden rd. Sherwood, Arkansas, USA

***

HAPPY 91st BIRTHDAY Ted Hughes! RIP!

(17 August 1930 - 28 October 1998)

***

In case you are wondering, Hughes is the author of The Iron Giant, the children’s book that has been adapted into the 1999 animation movie with the same title (The Iron Giant) featuring the famous quote: “You are who you choose to be. “ (although the quote does not come from the book).

kittykat-meowmeow‘s tattoo via https://www.reddit.com/

HAPPY 90th BIRTHDAY Ted Hughes! RIP!

(17 August 1930 - 28 October 1998)

***

In case you are wondering, Hughes is the author of The Iron Giant, the children’s book that has been adapted into the 1999 animation movie with the same title (The Iron Giant) featuring the famous quote: “You are who you choose to be. “ (although the quote does not come from the book).

Tattoo via Simon Armitage’s book Walking Away, 2015

***

CHILD’S PARK

What did they mean to you, the azaela flowers?
Those girls were so happy, rending the branches,
Embracing their darling bouquets, their sumptuous
trousseaux,
The wet, hot-petalled blossoms. Seizing their day,
Having a good time. Your homicidal
Hooded stare met them head on.
As if they were stealing the brands
Of your own burning. I hurried you off. Bullfrogs
Took you down through lily tangle. Your fury
Had to be quenched. Heavy water,
Deeper, deeper, cooling and controlling
Your plutonium secret. You breathed water.

Freed, steadied, resurfaced, your eyes
Alit afresh on colour, so delicate,
Splitting the prism,
As the dragonflies on the solid lilies.
The pileated woodpecker went writhing
Among the catalpas. It clung
To undersides and swooped
Like a pterodactyl. The devilry
Of the uncoiling head, the spooky wings,
And the livid cry
Flung the garden open.
                          You were never
More than a step from Paradise.
You had instant access, your analyst told you,
To the core of your Inferno–
The pit of the hairy flower.
                         At a sunny angle
The fountain threw off its seven veils
As the air swayed it. Here was your stair–
Alchemy’s seven colours.
I watched you as you climbed it all on your own
Into the mouth of the azaela.

You imagined a veil-rending defloration
And a rebirth out of the sun-mixed up together
And somehow the same. You were fearless
To meet your Father
His Word fulfilled, there, in the nuclear core.

What happens in the heart simply happens.

I stepped back. That glare
Flinging your old selves off like underthings
Left your whole Eden radioactive.