"I see now that when we met, my writing, like hers, left its old path and started to circle and search. To me, of course, she was not only herself — she was America and American literature in person. I don’t know what I was to her. Apart from the more monumental classics — Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and so on — my background reading was utterly different from hers. But our minds soon became two parts of one operation. We dreamed a lot of shared or complementary dreams. Our telepathy was intrusive. I don’t know whether our verse exchanged much, if we influenced one another that way — not in the early days. Maybe others see that differently. Our methods were not the same. Hers was to collect a heap of vivid objects and good words and make a pattern; the pattern would be projected from somewhere deep inside, from her very distinctly evolved myth. It appears distinctly evolved to a reader now — despite having been totally unconscious to her then. My method was to find a thread end and draw the rest out of a hidden tangle. Her method was more painterly, mine more narrative, perhaps."
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Academics from EnglandNovelists from EnglandPoets from EnglandTranslators from EnglandPoets laureate
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Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes, OM (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator and children's writer who for the last 14 years of his life occupied the role of Poet Laureate. He was the husband of Sylvia Plath, who influenced his writing style.
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