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I probably should have been clearer and pointed out that Alvarez actually met and became friends with Sylvia as well as her husband Ted in England, and I take it this was during her most creative period, the last years of her life, which helps to explain why Alvarez was particularly touched by her suicide and wrote “The Savage God”. Here, he explains how he came to meet Ted and Sylvia.
_ _ _
Since I was the regular poetry critic for The Observer, I saw few writers. To know whom I was reviewing seemed to make too many difficulties: nice men often write bad verse and good poets can be monsters; more often than not, both the man and his work were unspeakable. It seemed easier all around not to be able to put a face to the name, and judge solely on the printed page. I kept to my rule even when I was told that Ted Hughes was living nearby, just across Primrose Hill, with an American wife and a small baby. Three years before, he had brought out “The Hawk in the Rain”, which I admired greatly. But there was something about the poems which made me suspect that he wouldn’t care what I thought. They seem to emerge from an absorbed, physical world that was wholly his own; for all the technical skill deployed they gave the impression that literary goings-on were no concern of the author. “Don’t worry,” I was told, “he never talks shop.” I was also told that he had a wife called Sylvia, who also wrote poetry, “but” - and this was said reassuringly - “she’s very sharp and intelligent.”
-- “The Savage God” by A. Alvarez
_ _ _
There is a ‘joke’ in this, I take it, in that Sylvia would come to eclipse her husband’s literary reputation, albeit posthumously.
_ _ _
Since I was the regular poetry critic for The Observer, I saw few writers. To know whom I was reviewing seemed to make too many difficulties: nice men often write bad verse and good poets can be monsters; more often than not, both the man and his work were unspeakable. It seemed easier all around not to be able to put a face to the name, and judge solely on the printed page. I kept to my rule even when I was told that Ted Hughes was living nearby, just across Primrose Hill, with an American wife and a small baby. Three years before, he had brought out “The Hawk in the Rain”, which I admired greatly. But there was something about the poems which made me suspect that he wouldn’t care what I thought. They seem to emerge from an absorbed, physical world that was wholly his own; for all the technical skill deployed they gave the impression that literary goings-on were no concern of the author. “Don’t worry,” I was told, “he never talks shop.” I was also told that he had a wife called Sylvia, who also wrote poetry, “but” - and this was said reassuringly - “she’s very sharp and intelligent.”
-- “The Savage God” by A. Alvarez
_ _ _
There is a ‘joke’ in this, I take it, in that Sylvia would come to eclipse her husband’s literary reputation, albeit posthumously.
