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Having batted off the Americans, Plath was “invited to dinner by the queerest british couple yet”. The husband worked for the British Council and had published some po- ems, and had a “strange big soft towering wife, who looks like his mother and wears no ring and has graying hair”. Their literary gossip was hugely appealing to Plath. The man was John Press, who had known Louis MacNeice in Greece, and recounted to her the marital affairs of the litera- ti, including Auden, Macneice, Spender, and Kathleen Raine, “I have never heard such a fascinating and disgusting story: they are all linked by some first, second or third wife and have simply traded off wives in the most incredible and burlesque fashion”. She sees the clear potential for drama in this and recommends Hughes use it as the basis for
a new play, “this could be a terrific thing… am I giving you plots?” Having told them about Ted, Press tells her of a poetry contest,
“this contest is american-sponsered by harper’s and as a prize offers only publication of the book, which is the usual prize for such things and would be good auspices to get your book out under. it must be by a poet who has not yet published a book... and about 60 pages. now, I ran right home and counted, estimating your poems double-spaced. 55 pages. almost exact... I’m sure you’ll win this; I feel very queer about it.” Plath’s prescient confidence in Ted’s ability to win the prize is also reflected in her as- sessment of the judging panel of Auden, Spender, and Marianne Moore, “I trust miss moore’s exactness & love of form; and you certainly have enough wit to win auden and social war consciousness to please spender.” She closes the letter with a ten line autograph postscript, “I love you and perish to be with you and lying in bed with you and kissing you all over and go just wild with thinking + wishing + remembering your dear lovely mouth + incredibly lovely made flesh and oh how warm you are. I love you teddy teddy teddy and how I wish I could be with you, living with you, and writing in granchester or something. All my love ever / Your own love wife / sylvia” [41599] £60,000 Sylvia Plath discovers the poetry competition that would make Ted Hughes’s name. John Press was an important figure in postwar British literary and artistic circles, but his mention- ing of the Harper’s poetry contest, following an evening of gossiping about the sex lives of poets, was to make an indelible mark on Plath’s and Hughes’s careers. The contest was open to any poet who had not yet published a book, with the prize being publication by Harper’s. Plath thought her oeuvre was too slight for such a submission, but immediately thought Hughes should enter. She had already written with some prescience that America would be where Hughes would make his mark, when she remarked in a letter to Peter Davison that “London and England are too small for him”. Plath typed up Hughes’s manuscript and submitted it to the competition the following month. She reported her confidence in his genius and inevitable victory in a letter to her mother that month, “I don’t see how they can help but accept this it’s the most rich, power work since Yeats and Dylan Thomas.” Hughes’s success in the competition and subsequent publication of The Hawk In The Rain was announced the following February. It received high acclaim from every reviewer from A. Alvarez to Edwin Muir, and quickly sold out. PROVENANCE: Ted Hughes (1930 - 1998); Frieda Hughes (Hughes and Plath’s daughter).
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