A New Chapter of Grief in Plath-Hughes Legacy

David Barstow: FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Before his death in 1998, the English poet Ted Hughes published a searing volume about his life with Sylvia Plath called "Birthday Letters." The poems, almost all addressed to Ms. Plath, explored the beauty and then fracturing of their marriage before her suicide in 1963.

One poem, though, was written to their children, Frieda and Nicholas. Titled "The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother," it warned of ravenous Plath devotees who "will find you every bit as succulent," and it offered a kind of blessing to Nicholas, who had long kept the literati at bay:

So leave her.

Let her be their spoils. Go wrap

Your head in the snowy rivers

of the Brooks Range.