News at Eleven: After the gas-oven suicide of his wife Sylvia Plath

in 1963, when he was 32; and the mirroring suicide of his lover Assia Wevill six years later, [Ted] Hughes's writing changed. He tried to enter the continent straight away, leaving the words to loosen and turn hortatory. No longer did he hold Creation in his foot. Creation--a mystical, grandiose, legend-ridden kind--held him in its foot.

from The New York Times: Yours Sincerely: A Poet on Fish, Bulls and Love
also The New York Times' Paper Cuts: Dear Mrs. Plath

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