cover image Stonepicker and the Book of Mirrors

Stonepicker and the Book of Mirrors

Frieda Hughes, . . Harper Perennial, $14.99 (200pp) ISBN 978-0-06-056452-0

Hughes is the daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (their son, Nicholas, committed suicide last month), and though several new poems complain that reviewers have not judged Frieda on her merits, many more—remembering the death of her father, taking up his “Crow” image, describing her own traumas in Plath's signature rhythms—keep the poet's parents clearly in mind: “My buried mother,” one complains, “Is up-dug for repeat performances.” Hughes (Forty-Five ) has talents for caricature and for allegory.” Yet those talents are too often eclipsed by failures of technique, by poems that sound too much like diary entries: “My head is full of graves/ Where I have buried my dead./ But in moments of weakness/ I hear them calling.” “Stonepicker,” a persona, represents women who cannot accept blame; “Stunckle,” Stonepicker's uncle, stands for men who want everything and give nothing (so the notes say). The two waltz together through “The Book of Mirrors,” the later and looser of the two sequences in this volume. Yet both characters recede before Frieda Hughes herself: a poet, but also a figure of intense biographical and journalistic interest, whose troubled times, chronicled here, should give life to these lines. (May)