Abstract: Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters is a collection of 88 poems, of which lies in its untypical textual features much more than the life study of Ted Hughes and American poet Sylvia Plath who is well-known for her confessional poems. As a kind of untypical autobiography in verse, its textual features are mainly embodied in three respects. First of all whether it is a memoir or autobiography is still in dispute. Secondly, from the perspective of biographical literature, the text of autobiography in prose renders the life story a linear flowing style, whereas Birth Letters, as an autobiography in verse, renders life writing a collage style. Lastly, there exists a paradox between the fragmentation of its autobiographic story and the clear-cut plot of its subtext. The  of Birthday Letters as a biographical text mainly lies in the co-existence of truth and fiction of life.

Key words: Birthday Letters; autobiographical text in verse; fragmented story; subtext

Zhang Huifang (1973-) is an Associate Professor of Literature at School of Humanities, Tianjin University of Finance & Economics.