The Romance of Poetry

August 22, 2014 07:05 pm | Updated 07:05 pm IST - COIMBATORE

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

“I do not write to you, but of you,/because the paper that we write on/is our perishable skin.” — Melissa Lee-Houghton

The house is filled with books. Writing desks and individual studies are the rule. The milk is forgotten at the door, meals are ordered in, rather than cooked and the children get an indifferent education and upbringing. This seems to be the general idea of a poet couple’s existence. Throw in some volatile fights, some childish pouring of ink on each other’s work – or deleting the document and emptying the Recycle Bin for good measure – and you have most of the clichés down pat. But what’s the reality of poets in love?

We start with the Brownings, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert. Even a passing interest in their life will tell you that Robert had been a long-time admirer of her work before the relationship changed. She, invalid, hesitant, hurt in love, was reluctant, even anxious at his proposal. Their correspondence and courtship was conducted in secret, for fear of her father’s reaction. Post wedding, they moved to Italy, where they had a son and lived happily until Elizabeth’s death. However, their relationship was not the stuff of simple romance and neither was she the quintessential woman poet of yore.

She was original and wrote for herself. And Browning encouraged her to find her own voice. Opinion is divided, though, on his effect on her writing, but when a woman writes, “ How do I love thee/let me count the ways..” for you, you can’t be all bad. Or can you?

In direct contrast to this genteel time is the permissiveness of Beat Poetry. This cultural powerhouse of a movement, anti-establishment and anti-established norms, created a liberated and provocative space. Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky remained in a committed relationship they referred to as a marriage for over four decades. While there was passion and intensity, it was not a relationship of loyalty and devotion. Both men had other partners and Orlovsky was prone to violence and mental illnesses. But their love letters reflect tenderness and concern and a genuine interest in each other’s thoughts and feelings. Not a regular relationship, this, but then which relationship is, anyway?

Tempestuous is how many would describe the marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. During their happy times, they wrote poems to each other, travelled extensively and shared common interests. But this was a troubled relationship, jeopardised by his womanising and her severe bouts of depression. Plath’s confessional poetry speaks candidly of her troubles with her husband and her frailty is patently visible. She committed suicide seven years after her wedding to Hughes and he became an object of deep hatred for some feminists who held him responsible for her death. Plath continues to be one of the most controversial and widely read women poets.

No matter the nature of the relationship, seemingly harmonious as the Brownings or fraught with drama and pain as it was the case with W.H. Auden and his much younger lover, Chester Kallman, poetic collaborations are never lacking in stimulus for thought and work.

And that’s almost always a good thing.

Dr. Srividya is a poet, teacher, blogger and speaker. Read her work at >www.rumwrapt.blogspot.in

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