When you read the writings of Hughes in Birthday Letters there is a sense of the depth of the immense grieving and pain underlying each word and meaning. Disguised in his poetry, these reminiscing situations bring the story behind them to light in a maze of metaphors exposing the years of thoughts held back by a inner dam of media martyrdom and regrets in Hughes. In The Minotaur and Robbing Myself the poet reveals times and lives where he once lived along side his star crossed love, Sylvia Plath.
The Minotaur. In this poem Hughes delves into the darker sides of Plath, where fits of rage overtook her and depression and pain ruled over her, her anger, and a raging bull, more, a monster existed. It begins with a description of the victims of Plath- a table with nostalgic value, a symbol of his past, and being "mapped with he scars of his whole life"- symbolic of his life, person, and mistakes and pains.
Sylvia Plath
23 Fitzroy Road, London : The house where Sylvia P...
Diane MiddlebrookShe destroys a chair for his being late to care for the children. This could mean that the cause of her anger was his detachment form his children, maybe a detail to emphasize the insanity and reasonless of her rages.
""Marvelous!" I shouted. "Go on, smash it into kindling. That's the stuff you're keeping out of your poems." Hughes tells Plath to take her emotions and put them in poems, he makes the positive out of this rage. He encouraged her to think about things, to get in touch with her emotions as one inevitably does when writing.
"Deep in the cave of you ear The goblin Snapped his fingers. So what had I given him?" Hughes reconsiders the results of his encouragement and wonders if letting the gates open let loose the lion, let...