British poet laureate Ted Hughes, whose stormy marriage to the anguished American poet Sylvia Plath dogged his reputation after her suicide, has died. He was 68.
Hughes died Wednesday at his home in Devon after an 18-month battle with cancer, which he had kept secret, said Matthew Evans, chairman of Hughes' publishing company, Faber and Faber."Not only was he one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, but he was the most extraordinary man," Evans said Thursday. "The loss to his family is inestimable."
A collection of searingly intense poems published by Hughes this year called "Birthday Letters" shed new light on his difficult six-year marriage to the tortured Plath.
The reclusive Hughes chose not to defend himself after Plath's suicide on Feb. 11, 1963, months after he had left her for another woman. She gassed herself in the kitchen, leaving milk and cookies for the couple's two children in the next room.