Poetry for Students

Volume 19 187

day Lettersis the only collection in which this

Poem Summary

Author Biography

Ted Hughes was born August 17, 1930, in the vil-

lage of Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, England,

but grew up in Mexborough. In school Hughes was

encouraged to write poetry by teachers who recog-

nized his talent, and he was later awarded a schol-

arship to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he

studied English literature. His fascination with an-

imals and their connections to humankind caused

him to change his major to anthropology, and af-

ter earning his bachelor’s degree in 1954, he moved

to London to work as a zoo attendant and gardener.

Hughes returned to Cambridge for a master’s

degree in the late 1950s. He fell in with the liter-

ary crowd and published several poems in local

journals. At a party he met a young American Ful-

bright scholar named Sylvia Plath, who was also a

poet, and the two were immediately drawn to one

another. Within months they were married, so be-

ginning a tumultuous relationship that neither could

have anticipated would end in such tragedy.

The couple moved to America in 1957 and

both taught at universities in Massachusetts. The

same year, Hughes had his first collection of po-

etry published. In 1959 they moved back to Eng-

land. They had a daughter in 1960 and a son in

1962, and seemed to live simple, pastoral lives

without much money, encouraging one another’s

poetic efforts and enjoying their children. But a

darker side of their marriage came to light when

Hughes had an affair with a German woman, As-

sia Wevill. Plath committed suicide in 1963, a few

months after her husband left her.

For years to come, Plath followers blamed

Hughes’s infidelity for her death, some even at-

tending his readings only to stand up and shout,

“Murderer!” when he took the stage. Tragedy

struck Hughes again in 1969 when Wevill also

committed suicide, adding to the anguish by first

killing their two-year-old daughter.

A year later Hughes married again, moving

with his wife to a farm in Devon where they raised

sheep and cattle. For the next three decades, Hughes

wrote prolifically, publishing poetry, drama, liter-

ary criticism, and works for children, though he was

never able to escape completely his fate as Plath’s

husband, and worse, as one of the reasons for her

death.

Scholars, however, have long recognized

Hughes’s place as one of England’s greatest poets

of the twentieth century. He was made poet laure-

ate of Great Britain in 1984, and was a recipient of

many literary awards in his long career, including

the Guinness Poetry Award in 1958 for The Hawk

in the Rain, and the Whitbread Book of the Year

Award in 1998 for Birthday Letters.Birthday Let-

ters, which contains the bittersweet poem “Perfect

Light,” is Hughes’s tribute to Plath—to their mar-

riage, their love, their children, and their grievous

ending. Only months after publication ofBirthday

Letters, Hughes died of cancer, October 28, 1998,

in Devon.

Poem Summary

Line 1

In the first line of “Perfect Light,” the speaker

establishes the second-person address of the poem,

talking directly to a “you” and implying that he is

looking at a photograph of the person. Though he

does not mention a picture specifically in this line,

the phrase “There you are” suggests the premise

Perfect Light

Ted Hughes

67082 _PFS_V19perfe 186 - 204 .qxd 9/16/2003 9:53 M Page 187