Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters

by Erica Wagner

When Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters was published in 1998, it was greeted with astonishment and acclaim, immediately landing on the bestseller list. Few suspected that Hughes had been at work for a quarter of a century on this cycle of poems addressed to his first wife, Sylvia Plath. In Ariel's Gift, Erica Wagner explores the destructive relationship between these two poets through their lives and their writings. She provides a commentary to the poems in Birthday Letters, showing the events that shaped them and, crucially, showing how they draw upon Plath's own work. "Both narratively engaging and scholastically comprehensive."—Thomas Lynch, Los Angeles Times "Wagner has set the poems of Hughes's Birthday Letters in the context of his marriage to Plath with great delicacy."—Times Literary Supplement

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Biography Memoir, Criticism, Literature

322 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Erica Wagner is an American author and critic living in London. She is former literary editor of The Times.

She is the author of several books, including a collection of short stories, Gravity, and Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters, and the novel Seizure.

Her husband, Francis Gilbert, is author of I’m a Teacher, Get Me Out of Here!. She also reviews regularly for The New York Times. A judge for the Man Booker Prize in 2002 and 2014.

Reviews

[Julie]

7.2/10

I picked this up after wading through the collected poems of Ted Hughes, in an effort to gain either more generosity or more understanding of the birthday letters. I can't say this has helped to change my opinion much: I still consider them an assortment of self-deluding camouflage.

I don't believe that Ted Hughes was responsible for Sylvia Plath's suicide any more than I believe the birthday letters can explain their marriage, Plath's mental illness, Hughes's infidelities, Plath's suicide, roughly in that order. In the modern parlance: it is what it is. No one can dictate the heart's desires.

BUT ...

I don't much care for the self-deluded twaddle that slides dangerously close to juvenile justification; Hughes was his own apologist, and whether or not he did it well, that was enough. Wagner doesn't shed any more light on the "letters" except to give off the scent that she was more than a little on Hughes's side of the story. On the surface, the book appears even-handed; the undercurrent gives a different narrative. At the very least, the title is a misdirection to all those who wish a more measured view of what has been written up already.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I studied Literature back in the 80s The Bell Jar was on the curriculum. It made an impression on me, maybe in the light of what I later read about Plath and her marriage to Ted Hughes, but otherwise it was not a favourite read. Much later I started reading some of Ted Hughes' poetry, but I really didn't get why he was considered such a great poet. Then last year I started reading Birthday Letters and I was blown away, I think it is the best book of poetry I have read so far. Subsequently I became aware of this book which deals with Birthday Letters and Plath's poetry and my husband procured it for me, and when I had recovered from reading Birthday Letters, I started reading it and I finished it last night.

In the beginning I thought it was genious, such cleverness demonstrated by the author juggling Birthday Letters and various works by Plath, but when I got about halfway I often found myself confused, several times when the author was referring to 'the poet' I wasn't sure if she meant Plath or Hughes and I had to reread the sentences. That diminished the pleasure a bit.

And in case you should be interested in the feud between Hughes and Plath-fans, I started out mostly in favour of Plath and the interpretation of how he had driven her to suicide, but ended up siding with Hughes, such an absolute brilliant poet who happened to have been together with no less than two women who took their own lives, the last one to take their daughter's life too.

Oh, and the cover, has anyone ever looked more excessively happy together than these two?

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's true that poetry is not biography. and yet, confessional poets abound and their life stories do provide context for their work. the work, however, stands as well alone (at least, it does if it's well-written). plath is among the most controversial and confessional poets of all-time. hughes, her widower, broke his lifelong silence about his first wife, her suicide, and the aftermath when he published his first confessional work in birthday letters the year before his death. in this book, the intersections of biography and the works of both poets are explored. the book is more than just a tour through the lurid details of the poets' lives, it's a worthwhile critical investigation. a good read for anyone who cares about hughes and plath as poets rather than as dramatic characters.

[Silvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really nice read. I'm not much into nonfiction, but I was very interested in Ted and Sylvia's story. This biography was nice, it told the story of the couple through their poetry, and the imaginary that both of them used was very mystical and whimsical.
I'm not here to spread judgments about their private lives, though.
Both of them were really great artist and... interesting people.
That's all.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually 3.5 and certainly worth reading if you want to delve into the mythology of the intertwined poetry and lives of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. I think I would have been more at ease with the rapid fire transitions with which the author analyzes poems from Hughes' "Birthday Letters" had I actually read them;). I am not a Plath acolyte but the despair of her mental illness and Hughes unflinching look at his role in the narrative is enough to make me want to revisit both their poetry.

[Beatrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Quando sei l'unico scrittore creativo in famiglia, possono nascere gelosie e contrasti se gli altri non capiscono perché ti chiudi in una stanza solo con i tuoi pensieri, nel tentativo di corteggiare la musa. Quando si è in due, invece, c'è un'atmosfera di collaborazione. È più facile concentrarsi su cosa si fa, perché tutti e due si fa la stessa cosa. È come cantare insieme al buio."

Se il matrimonio fra Ted Hughes e Sylvia Plath è una canzone intonata al buio, le Lettere di compleanno ne sono la partitura ed Erica Wagner è la simpatica vicina di casa che ti insegna a leggere la musica.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wagner's partial biography of Plath and Hughes, and commentary on Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters, is both admirable and fascinating. Her commentary is well thought out, and whilst relatively slight for a book of this kind, there is a lot of depth to be found. Best read and savoured slowly, as there are a lot of ideas to chew over.

[Alan Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent guide to Hughes' final collection and how they relate to his relationship with Plath and her work

[Demi van Doorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zo een boek dat je mist als het uit is. Liefde, liefde, tragische liefde. Later ga ik een Sylvia Plath en Ted Hughes reis maken.

[Jee Koh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Ariel's Gift, Erica Wagner composes a running commentary on the poems in Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters. The commentary calls on Sylvia Plath's fiction, journals and letters, and on Hughes' few public statements after Plath's death, in order to shine a light on the poems. Wagner is particularly good, I think, on Hughes's sense of fate in the making of his and Plath's poems, and in the events that overtook them. Critics of Hughes may see the avowals of ignorance and helplessness in the Birthday Letters poems as evidence of blame-shifting and self-justification, but the poems themselves convey the ignorance and helplessness in a very palpable way. To enter the poems at all, one must enter them, suspending one's judgment. Wagner tries to be very fair-minded but it becomes clear in the course of her book that she is more sympathetic toward Hughes. The last chapter shows the pain that the living (Hughes and the children, Plath's mother Aurelia) have to bear when the dead is still capable of screaming from her grave.

Perhaps in response to the accusations of self-justification against Hughes, Wagner quotes Seamus Heaney's verdict on Plath's poetry. In his lecture "The Indefatigable Hoof-taps," Heaney explained what he saw as her limitation:

There is nothing poetically flawed about Plath's work. What may finally limit it is its dominant theme of self-discovery and self-definition, even though this concern must be understood as a valiantly unremitting campaign against the black hole of depression and suicide. I do not suggest that the self is not the proper arena of poetry. But I believe that the greatest work occurs when a certain self-forgetfulness is attained or least a fullness of self-possession denied to Sylvia Plath. . . . In "Lady Lazarus" . . . the cultural resonance of the original story is harnessed to a vehemently self-justifying purpose, so that the supra-personal dimensions of knowledge--to which myth typically gives access--are slighted in favor of the intense personal need of the poet.

If Birthday Letters is not a great book of poems because self-justification diminishes it, the same caveat must be applied to Plath's poetry.

[Emi Yoshida · Rating 4 out of 5]

I generally avoid poetry, but made Sylvia Plath and her Bell Jar my exception; in my youth I cried for her tortured soul, her life cut short, and her poor motherless babies. Years later when Birthday Letters came out, I gorged on all the reviews I could find but on principled allegiance to Sylvia I refused to read it myself, as if willing Ted Hughes to suffer for want of my $16.95. I'm so glad to have found Ariel's Gift by Erica Wagner, her exhaustive research shines throughout, and I appreciate her having avoided cluttering such a sadly beautiful work with footnotes. This book gave me chills, it felt suspenseful even though I knew full well what was coming.

Wagner does a phenomenal job presenting even-handed commentary to this fiery subject, including praise and criticism alike. Thanks to this author, I've come away with a more peaceful regard for both Plath and Hughes and their combined brilliance. I still feel Sylvia Plath is a hero, but I can see her mental illness was more of a villain than her husband was to her. I wonder if she'd been allowed to attend her father's funeral, if that would have made a difference in her life?

[Maria Ch · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fairly good account of criticism regarding Ted Hughes’ collection Birthday Letters, 88 poems about Sylvia Plath and his marriage to her. It gives a lot of historical background and approaches poems in a linear chronological order providing information about what was going on in the life of Hughes and Plath at each instance. It also provides parallel readings of poems by both Plath and Hughes with common theme or content that I found very interesting. What I did not particularly like was the fact that by the end of the book I had a general idea of the background of Birthday Letters but there was not a poem by poem close reading or analysis of any of the poems in the collection. In fact most of the time Wagner would jump from one poem to the next and I found it kind of confusing to keep up and concentrate especially if you aim at reading this parallel to the actual collection.

[Simone Di Marzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lettura appagante quanto impegnativa...
Abbiamo un’analisi coincisa delle poesie di Hughes “birthday letters” e quelle di Sylvia.
Le analisi sono accompagnate da una biografia che approfondisce la vita della coppia risalente al momento in cui i versi sono stati scritti .
Spesso ci sono riferimenti sia ai diari che alle lettere scritte alla madre e prima di cimentarvi in questa lettura raccomando di leggere a fondo quest’ultimi.
Consiglio questo libro a coloro che cercano una spiegazione dei versi delle poesie e che sono appassionati della Plath e della poesia confessionale in generale.

10/10 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

One could almost forgive Hughes' philanderings, were he not such a mediocre poet.

I'm not interested in seeing Plath through his eyes. We had enough of that when he destroyed the journals she wrote in the months before her suicide.

"I did it. I." Yes, yes you did. And for your trouble, the far superior writer stuck her head in the gas oven.

[Ilze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe Wagner leaned too much on the emotional content of the poetry, but in all, she manages to provide a fairly clear-headed text comparing Birthday Letters to Plath's work and integrating it with the Hughes' lives.

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Snippets and tidbits...lots of crumbs to follow as I continue this writing journey. Insightful.

[Violet Bell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book should be enlightening, given the subject matter. Alas it is merely highly repetitive. Opening paragraphs that summarise what is to come may be appropriate for high school essays, but not for every chapter of a literary work. Just in case we missed it in the opening of the chapter, important dates and events are repeated - I believe the date of birth of Hughes's and Plath's son Nicholas was repeated four times.

This book definitely reads like a Cliff's Notes guide to Birthday Letters, not a book to shine any insight into the poetry and the process of its creation. Just read Birthday Letters itself and a good biography of Plath and/or Hughes. (and avoid Bitter Fame. The pointless, petty character assassinations of a dead woman who cannot defend herself from the minor charges of - gasp - not accepting a recommendation for where to buy furniture or eating too much, published as appendices to the book, are an incident of spitefulness to what end I cannot tell.)

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every time I think I have read all there is to read about these two, I come across another book. This is a look at Birthday Letters and the stories that lay behind some of the poems. Often they were written in response to Plath's work. A fascinating and insightful read. It made me reach for both their poems again.....

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sylvia Plath had such a gentle soul. It is a disappointment that her husband (Ted Hughes) was so taken with that other woman. If only he had been man enough to tell Sylvia outright, "I want a divorce", rather than having an affair on the side, that led to a pregnancy.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy biographies of poets, and loved both the Bell Jar (Plath) and the movie of the Iron Giant (Hughes).

I thought this was an interesting and insightful book about two very intense artists.

I borrowed and perused Ariel, and now believe that I don’t understand poetry.

[Vineeta · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was pretty one sided portrayal, and after a while felt as if written to show Ted as the victim of public trial and his own silence. We mostly see Sylvia through his poems and has been portrayed suicidal from the beginning. Enjoyed the poems though.

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was ok. It didn't really reveal any new insights on the poets or their work.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good use of poetry to tell their story.

[Doris Raines · Rating 4 out of 5]

BIRTHDAY LETTERS AWESOME BOOK.

[magdalena · Rating 4 out of 5]

dobrze było ją przeczytać. i chyba cieszę się, że zrobiłam to przed dziennikami Plath

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had started Hughes’ Birthday Letters but didn’t really connect with them. This lovely book helped me understand their beauty much better and provided me with yet another lens to view one of the twentieth century amazingly productive/destructive poetic partnerships. The book is especially good in that it does a close analysis of the Birthday Letters but also has lots to say about Plath’s late work.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great introduction to the lives of both Hughes and Plath. To get the most out of it, make sure to read "Birthday Letters" first.

[Katie Marquette · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent analysis of the work of both Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. I now realize that I failed to recognize the sheer brilliance of the poetry contained in Hughes's "Birthday Letters". While I certainly enjoyed the poems and especially appreciated the insights it gave me into the complex marriage of Plath and Hughes, I did not fully comprehend the gravity or poetic genius of the work. Erica Wagner has given me a greater understanding and appreciation for both Plath and Hughes. Wagner is also refreshingly not as anti-Ted as most Sylvia Plath writers - she seems fair minded and objective, yet asserts that perhaps the public (and especially those rowdy feminists) ought to cut Ted a little slack. What I perceived as evasion of blame in Ted's "Birthday Letters", Wagner views as evidence of Ted Hughes's belief in the 'ultimate Will' of the Universe - more often known as "FATE". For Ted, Sylvia's poetic voice - the one we find in "Ariel" - was no less than the voice of God. Sadly, that voice was also the voice of her ultimate demise.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book on a whim, with no real prior exposure to Plath or Hughes. What a fascinating eye-opener!

The author has provided an informed and insightful presentation of Hughes's Birthday Letters, his own biographical poetry account of his relationship with Plath. Through the book, one gets a sense of the general history of their marriage. The vortex of issues and passions that their relationship goes through is disturbingly fascinating - the author presents the Plath experience through her poetry, then balances that against what Hughes presents, many years later, in Birthday Letters. One cannot help but wonder about the roller-coaster that Hughes silently lived through, not only during his marriage, but also after her death, which he was vilified for causing.

I heartily recommend this book. It is a great presentation of a story that, and I hate to use the word yet again, is fascinating. I have since picked up Birthday Letters, and now look forward to exploring the poetry of both Hughes and Plath.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best kind of literary criticism: gives the reader the background (and what context could be more notorious and suffocating than the Hughes/Plath mythology?) without relying wholly on it and still seeing the poetry as exactly that - that is, poetry. Well-researched, measured, thoughtful.