Ted Hughes, formerly Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II, is recognized as one of the few contemporary poets whose work has a mythic scope and power. Few episodes in postwar literature have the legendary stature of Hughes's romance with, and marriage to, the great American poet Sylvia Plath.

The poems in Birthday Letters are addressed (with just two exceptions) to Plath and were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her tragic suicide in 1963. Some are love letters, others haunted recollections and ruminations. In them, Hughes recalls his and Plath's time together, drawing on the powerful imagery of his work—animal, vegetable, mythological—as well as on Plath's famous verse.

This volume offers us Hughes's own account of their intense relationship. Moreover, it's a truly remarkable collection of poems in its own right.