{"id":409,"date":"2009-03-23T19:17:11","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T19:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/nucleus-import\/?p=409"},"modified":"2009-03-23T19:17:11","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T19:17:11","slug":"sylvia-plaths-son-commits-suicide-nicholas-hughes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/sylvia-plaths-son-commits-suicide-nicholas-hughes\/","title":{"rendered":"Sylvia Plath’s son commits suicide: Nicholas Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"
Nicholas Hughes with mother Sylvia Plath, source https:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/uk\/article5956380.ece<\/div>\n

\nNicholas Hughes, son of tragedy-scarred British Poet Ted Hughes and US Poet Sylvia Plath, has killed himself at age 47 years old. “It is with profound sorrow that I must announce the death of my brother, Nicholas Hughes, who died by his own hand on Monday 16th March 2009 at his home in Alaska,” his sister Frieda Hughes said in a statement published by The Times of London.
\nUnmarried and childless, the 47-year-old Hughes had recently left his teaching post at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks’ school of fisheries and ocean sciences to make pottery in a home studio — an “unusual choice,” said Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology. His mother Sylvia Plath committed suicide <\/p>\n

When Nicholas Hughes was one years old his mother US Poet Sylvia Plath, took her own life by breathing in fumes from the gas oven in her kitchen while her two children slept in a nearby room. Six years later when Assia Wevill — the woman for whom Ted Hughes had left Plath — gassed herself and their young daughter on March 23, 1969.<\/p>\n


\nSource Yahoo News<\/a><\/p>\n

Plath addressed one of her last poems, “Nick and the Candlestick” to her son:<\/p>\n


\nNick and the Candlestick<\/b><\/p>\n

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
\nWaxy stalactites
\nDrip and thicken, tears <\/p>\n

The earthen womb
\nExudes from its dead boredom.
\nBlack bat airs <\/p>\n

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
\nCold homicides.
\nThey weld to me like plums. <\/p>\n

Old cave of calcium
\nIcicles, old echoer.
\nEven the newts are white, <\/p>\n

Those holy Joes.
\nAnd the fish, the fish –
\nChrist! they are panes of ice, <\/p>\n

A vice of knives,
\nA piranha
\nReligion, drinking <\/p>\n

Its first communion out of my live toes.
\nThe candle
\nGulps and recovers its small altitude, <\/p>\n

Its yellows hearten.
\nO love, how did you get here?
\nO embryo <\/p>\n

Remembering, even in sleep,
\nYour crossed position.
\nThe blood blooms clean <\/p>\n

In you, ruby.
\nThe pain
\nYou wake to is not yours. <\/p>\n

Love, love,
\nI have hung our cave with roses,
\nWith soft rugs – <\/p>\n

The last of Victoriana.
\nLet the stars
\nPlummet to their dark address, <\/p>\n

Let the mercuric
\nAtoms that cripple drip
\nInto the terrible well, <\/p>\n

You are the one
\nSolid the spaces lean on, envious.
\nYou are the baby in the barn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Hughes, son of tragedy-scarred British Poet Ted Hughes and US Poet Sylvia Plath, has killed himself at age 47 years old. “It is with profound sorrow that I must announce the death of my brother, Nicholas Hughes, who died by his own hand on Monday 16th March 2009 at his home in Alaska,” his […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":550,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/550"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}