Hughes Vs. Hitler: The Absurdity of Keyboard Researchers

 

Early this morning, during my usual Facebook perusal, I noticed a particular comment on a friend’s post. Don Levy is a fine poet, and an active reader who shares his interests with others on the web. He’s been posting about a different poet every week, and last week his poet of choice was Ted Hughes, former Poet Laureate of the UK and widower of Sylvia Plath.

Hughes’ role in Plath’s suicide has been debated for decades now. An ardent band of Plath devotees has gone so far as to regularly chip his surname off her headstone, blaming him entirely for her sad ending. Whether these folks take into account her long history of mental illness prior to meeting Hughes is unknown.

Even here in 2023, Don got so much flack for his choice that he felt the need to apologize. Many people supported him, and made the argument for the work and the poet as being separate entities to be considered apart from each other. One gentleman however, with research on Wikipedia to support his opinion, declared Hughes a “psychopath,” and likened his so-called killing spree to that of Hitler.

Anyone’s suicide is a long reaching tragedy that affects many more than can be anticipated. To make Hughes’ case more complicated, his lover, Assia Wevill, lived with for several years afterwards, and ended her own life and that of their small daughter in a similar fashion to Plath. Hughes’ son with Plath, Nicholas Hughes, committed suicide as well, in 2009 and well after the deaths of both his parents.

Considering her long history of mental health struggles in particular, it is difficult to blame Hughes directly for Plath’s suicide. Theirs was a marriage fraught with struggles, the plight of artists as well as husbands and wives. Only those two know the full stories, and we are left to piece together the truth, or some sensible version of it, from diaries, letters, and most unreliably, their poems.

Certainly comparing Hughes to Hitler is an absurdity not even worth discussing with Professor Wiki. Hopefully his next source of “facts” won’t be the wretched Gwyneth Paltrow film of several years ago that exploited the agony. Surviving daughter Frieda Hughes wouldn’t even give permission for their poems to be used, and the producers were reduced to fictional Sylvia and Ted quoting from Shakespeare like starry-eyed freshmen.

Full disclosure- for almost a decade I was the host of an annual event I called, “The Sylvia Plath Bake-Off.” Looking to draw attention to a monthly open mic here in the Hudson Valley, I came up with several themes, and this one took off with a life of its own. I don’t regret the events now, although as I age I do become more acutely sensitive the pain that drove Plath to the oven. No one came in laughing about her method of suicide, although the usual levity was present, the same that one often experiences at funerals. Poems were sympathetic odes, not satirical rants. I have no plans to revive the series, although many remember it with great fondness. I am too old to find much more to ask of Plath and Hughes, having given all I could expect to my selfish cause.

Poet Emeritus? Already?

            I was recently asked to judge a regional poetry contest along with the great Howard Kogan. I eagerly accepted, although my own preferences in poetry are so peculiar that I really should not have. I expect that Howard’s level-headedness will cancel out my impulsiveness, and all submissions will receive a fair shake. 

            However, as part of the bigger picture, I’ve noticed a trend. Earlier this year, I was invited to become a part of a screening committee for the local arts center, representing the literati of my city. I’m also now on the board of CAPS (Calling All Poets), a Beacon based group that hosts a monthly open poetry mic that is streamed online around the universe. My longtime nickname, “Diva,” has inspired a lot of faux scraping and bowing over the years, often by my chronological elders. I am wondering if lately perhaps the notion of some sort of elder status has imposed itself on my poetic career. 

            It may be that merely by hanging around long enough one attains a sort of eligibility for committees and the like. I have lived in the Hudson Valley for 35 years now, and have been active in the poetry scene here for almost that long. For 10 years I hosted the annual Sylvia Plath Bake-Off, a now defunct midwinter love letter to the late poet that in later editions included a baking contest in addition to an open mic. As friends and family began to exit the planet, I lost my taste for morbid mockery, even as it may be creeping back as a way to stay sane in my later years. 

            I’ve participated in readings from Cape Cod to Waterloo Village, and all points in between. I’ve published a bit of work here and there, but not nearly as much as some of my fellows. I’ve put out a few handmade chapbooks along the way, even before computers and home printers made that self-indulgent act far too easy. 

            Now that I think about it, I was a judge for a contest put on by the Stone Ridge Poetry Society back in the late 1980s, a one-day affair they called “Day of the Poet.” My friend Don Levy was one of the other judges, and I believe we both qualified because we’d previously been winners, or at least placed. “Day of the Poet” was brilliant. In one day, three rounds of readings were held, each smaller than the last, and then finally a winner wast chosen. Judging was based on performance as well as words. It was efficient, enjoyable, and even left room for musicians or truly established poets (hello, Ed Sanders!) to round out the activities. It’s a concept that bears repeating. Hmmmm… maybe I should bring that up at the next board meeting. Any board meeting. 

            Have I crossed the line from ‘new voice’ to ‘elder statesperson’? Is there a line at all? Is it a good thing to be asked to judge the work of others? How do others judge me, let alone my work? All good writing prompts. But then again, the fortunes in cookies are often excellent prompts. And I suppose the answers to be above questions might be as easily obtained. So much for wisdom of the elders… 

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