Title: Inferior Hughes
Product review: I'm amazed at all the positive reviews. There are a few good poems in this volume, but so much of it is just special pleading. Hughes presents himself in a deterministic narrative in which he figures as someone caught in the overpowering "Daddy" myth. In other words, he is doomed from the beginning. As an excuse for his behavior, this does not convince. And why he did not see that such excuses diminished him and made him the "little man" Plath rejected is surprising. BIRTHDAY LETTERS does not include a poem that has come to light only recently--a poem in which Hughes acknowledges he was sleeping with another woman in the early morning hours when Plath killed herself.
Would you say this review depicts the product in a flattering or unflattering light?
