I searched for where you met.
Cambridge at Christmas.
Now a shoe store, a Top Man,
trees drooled with tinsel.
So I imagined that night
at Falcon Yard in '56
and the church-like windows.
Didn't expect a thunderclap
but it came, a bolt
through a blue night.
The red-hairbanned girl,
tipsy, she loved your work,
your raw debut words.
Amateur dancing,
brandy on your tongue,
a kiss bang smash on the mouth
from her hunky boy.
'Ridiculous to call it love.'
Smitten, she bit,
gnawed on your cheek
to leave her own mountain range.
Her interest - peaked.
Your person - snaffled,
cast as the lead
in her American play.
Feb 20, 2014
Feb 20, 2014 at 2:57 PM UTC
I searched for where you met.
Cambridge at Christmas.
Now a shoe store, a Top Man,
trees drooled with tinsel.
So I imagined that night
at Falcon Yard in '56
and the church-like windows.
Didn't expect a thunderclap
but it came, a bolt
through a blue night.
The red-hairbanned girl,
tipsy, she loved your work,
your raw debut words.
Amateur dancing,
brandy on your tongue,
a kiss bang smash on the mouth
from her hunky boy.
'Ridiculous to call it love.'
Smitten, she bit,
gnawed on your cheek
to leave her own mountain range.
Her interest - peaked.
Your person - snaffled,
cast as the lead
in her American play.
Written: February 2014.
Explanation: A poem (work in progress) that is likely to be part of my third-year university dissertation regarding Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.
On Saturday 25th February 1956, Hughes and Plath met at a party celebrating the launch of Saint Botolph's Review, a literary magazine that Hughes contributed to. This meeting occurred at Falcon Yard, an inn that was located very close to Petty Cury in Cambridge, England.
Hughes is described as a 'hunky boy' in Plath's journals, where she mentions her tipsy state and describes the night as 'a large orgy.' The phrase 'bang smash' is how Plath described Hughes kissing her.
There are no entries by Ted describing the event in as much detail, but in a letter dated 9th April 1956, he sent Sylvia a poem starting with the line 'Ridiculous to call it love.' He immediately lauded her writing to many of his friends, and continued to do so throughout his life.
Feedback, as is the case on all poems, is most welcome and appreciated.
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