Hughes and Plath

Heather Clark

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Then the worst happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me, who had been hunching around over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had come into the room, but no one told me, came over and was looking hard into my eyes and it was Ted Hughes. I started yelling again about his poems and quoting: ‘most dear unscratchable diamond’ and he yelled back, colossal, in a voice that should have come from a Pole, ‘You like?’ and asking me if I wanted brandy, and me yelling yes … and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hairband off … and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked. And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face. His poem ‘I did it, I.’ Such violence, and I can see how women lie down for artists. The one man in the room who was as big as his poems, huge, with hulk and dynamic chunks of words; his poems are strong and blasting like a high wind in steel girders. And I screamed in myself, thinking: oh, to give myself crashing, fighting, to you.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationTed Hughes in Context
EditorsTerry Gifford
PublisherCambridge University Press
Chapter2
Pages13-22
Number of pages10
Edition1st
ISBN (Electronic)9781108554381
ISBN (Print)9781108425551
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Jun 2018
Externally publishedYes

Publication series

NameLiterature in Context
PublisherCambridge University Press

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