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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: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: I have read countless books about the life and works of Sylvia Plath, and in doing so, have attempted to uncover whatever real truths exist about the love affair between Sylvia and Ted. I think this book of gorgeous narrative poems is testimony that often, there is no 'simple answer' or 'person to blame' in a relationship that has failed. It is also testimony to Hughes's undying, colossal love for his former wife, however he may have wrecked it in their youth. It is a beautiful and moving read, particularly if you have read some background material beforehand. All his subtle references take on a much deeper meaning when one knows the details behind them, and the details according to Sylvia. The poetry is lush and shimmers with a sincere, burning love for a troubled woman who left us much too soon.
Rating: 
Summary: "Birthday Letters" and the contradiction of Hughes
Review: Simply put, "Birthday Letters" is not Ted Hughes's best work. It contains some moving poetry, particularly "Life after Death," but overall it is lax and digressive both in form and in content. Many of the poems assume the titles of Plath's own work, but instead of illuminating her, they merely reiterate familiar images. "Birthday Letters" also exposes a contradiction inherent in Hughes himself: while in many of the poems he seems to abrognate responsibility for his wife's suicide by subscribing to the belief that, in a sense, Sylvia was doomed from the start. In his translation of Alcestis, one senses that the character of Admetos is one with whom Hughes identifies: Look what you did: you let her die instead. You live now Only because you let Death take her. You killed her. Point-blank She met the death that you dodged... "Birthday Letters" should not be read biographically, for it is art, not a memoir of Plath or their marriage. To obtain a deeper understanding of Hughes and his marriage, one should read the visionary poetry of Alcestis and Hughes's masterpiece, Crow.
Rating:
Summary: "Birthday Letters" and the contradiction of Hughes
Review: Simply put, "Birthday Letters" is not Ted Hughes's best work. It contains some moving poetry, particularly "Life after Death," but overall it is lax and digressive both in form and in content. Many of the poems assume the titles of Plath's own work, but instead of illuminating her, they merely reiterate familiar images. "Birthday Letters" also exposes a contradiction inherent in Hughes himself: while in many of the poems he seems to abrognate responsibility for his wife's suicide by subscribing to the belief that, in a sense, Sylvia was doomed from the start. In his translation of Alcestis, one senses that the character of Admetos is one with whom Hughes identifies: Look what you did: you let her die instead. You live now Only because you let Death take her. You killed her. Point-blank She met the death that you dodged... "Birthday Letters" should not be read biographically, for it is art, not a memoir of Plath or their marriage. To obtain a deeper understanding of Hughes and his marriage, one should read the visionary poetry of Alcestis and Hughes's masterpiece, Crow.
Rating:
Summary: A BEAUTIFUL BOOK
Review: Since Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963, Ted Hughes had been unfairly demonized by Plath's largely feminist following as an unfaithful domineering bully who allegedly drove his wife over the edge. To his credit, Hughes had always kept a dignified distance from his detractors. He finally broke his silence shortly before his own death in 1998 with this beautiful collection of poems which appear in chronological order as letters of reminiscence about their life together, written in reply to Sylvia Plath's published diary account of their marriage. You only have to read Birthday Letters in conjunction with the Journals of Sylvia Plath to realise how deeply Ted Hughes loved and missed his first wife. Touching and heartbreakingly sad, and very moving.
Rating:
Summary: Very Powerful
Review: Ted Hughes is a powerful poet. His poems are strong. They remind me of a reading I went to once by Lora Baldwin, who wrote a poem called "Shadows". Very mysterious, just like her. With Ted Hughes you also get that mysterious quality that makes you wonder and not be able to get the poems out of your head. Buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book written by obnoxious adelterous man
Review: Yes, I have given it 5 stars ?!?! Because the poetry written by him is brilliant as always. This man, perhaps the best poets of all time, was blessed with incredible talent, but was digustingly unapologetic of his adultery and insensitivity. Some here have said that Sylvia was was singularly responsible for death alone?? How dare you! Do not be blinded by his wonderful poetry into overlooking his harsh nature that largely worsened Sylvia's condition.
I am sorry, but even if Sylvia had been a 'nagging' wife as he had claimed, hell, even if she was the most nagging woman in the world, when she was at the VERY depths of her severe depression, not only did he declare that he was leaving her for life, but he also said that the time he had spent with her was the WORST time of his life, and that he had ALWAYS wanted to leave, and was ALWAYS adelterous throughout her marriage. He also said "I was hoping you had killed yourself already. Atleast I could sell this house then."
Some people say that "Sylvia made her own choice". I am sorry, but when words like this are told to a person who was already feeling so suicidal, she HAS NO CHOICE. Had Mr. Hughes been just a BIT more responsible and sensitive of Sylvia's immense pain and miserable condition then,and TONED DOWN HIS WORDS AND ACTIONS I believe that Ms. Plath would still be alive today. BOTH his wives, had killed themselves in despair of his harshness, and despite his so-known "grief" and "undying love" for them, he kept having affairs with other women by the minute, unto his death. How shameful. This book makes an absolutely terrific read, but DONT use this to exonerate him.
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