5 ms·

Sorrows of a Polygamist

• B1FF_PSUVM 11y ago
  "confided to Bate that when she met Hughes at a party she found herself so violently attracted to him that she had to go to the toilet and vomit." Could be worse, she might have been tempted to stick her head in a gas oven. (Not too soon, surely?)
  • johnloeber 11y ago
    Why would you use this opportunity to make a tasteless joke about the personal struggles of Sylvia Plath?
    • dang 11y ago
      You're right, but it would be better to flag an egregious comment like that than to give it attention by replying. To flag a comment, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. There's a small karma threshold (30) before flag links appear.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• B1FF_PSUVM 11y ago
  "He was, nevertheless, a wonderful translator when put together with the right originals, as Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun discovered when they commissioned from him versions of three episodes from the Metamorphoses for their compilation After Ovid, published in 1994. One might initially have thought that Ovid’s wit and sophistication would clash disastrously with Hughes’s directness and immediacy, and indeed the jokes tend to fall by the wayside, casualties of the muscular, utterly engrossing manner in which Hughes focuses on the narratives that he brings so spectacularly to life. Recognising the potential of the marriage, and o’erflowing the measure as was his wont, Hughes produced versions of 21 further passages, and all were collected in his glorious Tales from Ovid (1997). It’s one of the great poetry books of the 20th century, and illustrates the superb timing as well as the extraordinary force of which his poetic idiom was capable." Actually a good tip. Last paragraph.