Frieda Hughes Column

This is a new column by the daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Fieda Hughes. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-2338849.html. I felt it was a humble and enlightening discussion of how she came to poetry despite her resistance to it (due to her famous parents), and also how anyone can enjoy poetry. These paragraphs speak to me: "It seems to me that poetry is often held at arm’s length and viewed with a mixture of suspicion and the attitude that somehow it is not for ordinary people, only for elevated literary types who talk of iambic pentameter and hexameters. But the more one reads the more familiar and accessible poetry becomes. "I believe that poetry explains us to ourselves, through the mirror of the poet’s eye. In the writing of it, it comes from a place deep down inside us that is more honest and real than the superficial face we present to the world, and when a reader finds the right poem, that is the part of them that responds, especially if the poem should describe a familiar experience or a reflection of someone they know — or themselves."