Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

TED HUGHES AND SYLVIA PLATH

Ted Hughes has been commemorated recently by having a plaque placed in, Poets Corner, in the southern transept of Westminster Abbey.

Here is a radio documentary about Ted Hughes. What I found interesting is that it includes an interview, about 28 minutes into the programme, with Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. I've never heard Sylvia Plath's voice before. I found it quite exciting and thrilling to actually hear her speak.

I saw Ted Hughes when I was student, training to be a teacher. I heard him perform some of his most famous poems such as Hawk Roosting, Pike, and The Thought Fox.

The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:

Something else is alive

Beside the clock's loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,

A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;

Two eyes serve a movement, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,

Brilliantly, concentratedly,

Coming about its own business

Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0183glm/Archive_on_4_Ted_Hughes_Memorial_Tones/