Daffodils - Ted Hughes

Daffodils – Ted Hughes.

After doing some background reading into Ted Hughes and his life, I discovered a traumatic, hard struggle with love. Something that when first reading Daffodils I imagined I would come across. The poem is riddled with clues into his struggle with love and losing the one he loves, ‘In the rain of that April – your last April'. His wife Sylvia Plath, whom he is describing here, committed suicide in February of 1963. There were many feminists that believed Hughes was to blame for Plath's suicide. Hughes was silent about Sylvia. It wasn't until 1998 until he released this poem and a number of others in the collection named ‘Birthday Letters' These poems make reference to Plath's suicide, but none of them addresses directly the circumstances of her death. This collection proved to be Hughes's last work as a poet when he passed away on the 28th October 1998 (aged 68).

The poem opens and immediately the reader knows it may be autobiographical about his life, starting the opening line in first person ‘Remember how we picked the daffodils?' in the poem he is also addressing to ‘we' and ‘you' no name is ever used but it is evident that he is writing about Plath. He talks about his ‘wedding-present scissors' s to blame for the yesterday because he didnt know where to put the cheese when he was trying to make the paper. but surprisingly the cheese turned up and he ate it the end love you bye xx