Trying to get inside another's poet's pain is probably one of the hardest and most courageous acts a reader can perform, especially when the poet has prevented you from ever learning whether you've grasped the meaning of the pain that caused the stuffing of rags into the windows......the sweet gas and killing sleep that Sylvia Path finally found. Mr. Bobkoff took his conversation with the dead poet to a new depth, when he tried to learn the meaning of it through a playwright's efforts. His own sensitivity to the reasons behind the suicide of a beautiful and gifted person seems heightened by what he has probably gone through in living with his own conversation with his brother's suicide.
The interplay of Ned's conversation with Sylvia Plath, his own family pain and what he learned through the action of an actress finishing out the puzzle of Plath's enormous reluctance to live out her story is told with great sensitivity. What a shame Ted Hughes didn't take the time to do more than profit from the poetry of a life lived too briefly, and too publicly.
June Zaner
