News at Eleven: I was the one that she [Sylvia Plath] brought

the poems to when she and Ted [Hughes] were no longer together. She brought all those late poems to me. She felt I knew how to read them, which is true. And I suspect now, thinking it over, that she would write a poem and she and Ted would take it apart or vice versa. They had very intense conversations about each one. When they split up, she came to call on me, I was living down the road a bit, and she came carrying poems and I think I helped her just by being there. I think she needed that. So we swapped notes. She knew I was on Ted's side, that I loved his poetry. But the stuff that she was unloading then was miles better.

from Granta: Interview: Al Alvarez
from The Times Literary Supplemment: Lake poet

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