I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.

If I tried too hard to tell them exactly how something happened in the hope of correcting some fantasy I was quite likely to be accused of trying to suppress Free Speech. In 1989 with Hughes under public attack a battle raged in the letters pages of The Guardian and The Independent. During his time in Mexborough he explored Manor Farm at Old Denaby which he said he would come to know "better than any place on earth".

His last poetic work Birthday Letters (1998) explored their complex relationship. His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists and (particularly) American admirers of Plath. Edward James "Ted" Hughes OM (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet and children's writer.