ABSTRACT
The poems in Howls & Whispers were among the last that Hughes published in his lifetime. They represent the most recent development in the careers of two writers whose literary conversations with each other are, to use a phrase of Hughes's, 'a way of getting the poems'. If people are to understand the undeniable textual relationship between Sylvia Plath's work and Hughes's, it is instructive to begin by looking in detail at the way that Hughes scholars have treated Sylvia Plath. When Birthday Letters first appeared, commentary on the book was largely the province of journalists. Ironically, Birthday Letters advertises itself as confessional poetry with a certainty that Plath's so-called autobiographical poems never have. The poems, announces the blurb inside the front cover of Birthday Letters, 'are addressed, with just two exceptions, to Sylvia Plath'. A few of Hughes's critics allow that influence can move in the other direction, from Plath to Hughes.
