Nicholas Hughes, the son of poet Sylvia Plath, has killed himself, 46 years after his mother committed suicide. He was 47 and had reportedly suffered from depression. Hughes, who was not married and had no children, hanged himself at his Fairbanks, Alaska, home March 16, Alaska State Troopers said. A fisheries biologist and expert in stream salmonid ecology, he spent more than a decade on the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Marmian Grimes, the university's senior public information officer, said he left about a year ago. Nicholas Hughes was only 9 months old when his parents, Plath and poet Ted Hughes, separated, and he was still an infant when his mother died in February 1963. A few months earlier, she had written of Nicholas: "You are the one/Solid the spaces lean on, envious/You are the baby in the barn." Ted Hughes, England's poet laureate, was reluctant to discuss Plath until near the end of his life when he published the best-selling "Birthday Letters," a collection of deeply personal poems that came out in 1998. He died of cancer the same year.
Nicholas Hughes, the son of poet Sylvia Plath, has killed himself, 46 years after his mother committed suicide. He was 47 and had reportedly suffered from depression. Hughes, who was not married and had no children, hanged himself at his Fairbanks, Alaska, home March 16, Alaska State Troopers said. A fisheries biologist and expert in stream salmonid ecology, he spent more than a decade on the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Marmian Grimes, the university's senior public information officer, said he left about a year ago. Nicholas Hughes was only 9 months old when his parents, Plath and poet Ted Hughes, separated, and he was still an infant when his mother died in February 1963. A few months earlier, she had written of Nicholas: "You are the one/Solid the spaces lean on, envious/You are the baby in the barn." Ted Hughes, England's poet laureate, was reluctant to discuss Plath until near the end of his life when he published the best-selling "Birthday Letters," a collection of deeply personal poems that came out in 1998. He died of cancer the same year.
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