A Difficult Woman

From what I've read of the sadly short life of Sylvia Plath and her relationship with Ted Hughes I've formed the impression that she was, in some ways, a difficult woman to deal with. Perhaps, indeed more than possibly, that's unfair and a bit too close to taking sides. To balance it I should add that TH was obviously a difficult man.

Having just reached the beginning of Plath's poems from 1958 in my sequential reading of the Collected Poems I'd have to say that almost all of what I've read has reinforced my sense of her as difficult. But in the entirely positive sense of that descriptor. The poems reflect a magnificently, exhilaratingly, tempestuously difficult writer even when the complete assurance of the later voice isn't really manifesting itself.

Even a piece consigned to the notes at the rear of the volume, Dialogue Over A Ouija Board, seems to me evidence of a talent that went beyond our conventional understanding of what it means to have a poetic gift.