Shakepsear

Uncertainty takes over in the repeated use of the modal “maybe”, contrasted with the detail of the reference to her appearance “long hair, loose waves – / Your Veronica Lake bang.” This suggestion of attraction and moment of loving is quickly dispelled by the negative phrase, “Not what it hid”, which immediately alerts the reader to a darker side. The elusiveness of the memory is captured in his contradictory admission: “Then I forgot. Yet I remember/The picture: the Fulbright scholars.” The first person pronoun is set against the second person throughout the poem reflecting the subsequent opposition of Hughes and Plath. In the last few lines the poem moves away from the issue of unreliable and oppositional memories stimulated by the photo to the certainty of what he was doing at the time, walking “sore-footed, under hot sun, hot pavements”, when he bought a peach from Charing Cross Station. It is in this section that the poem changes in tone from conflictual to sentimental and even romantic. The purchase of the peach can be seen as a metaphor for the beginning of their relationship which came at a time when he was not comfortable with himself:

…the first peach I ever tasted.
I could hardly believe how delicious.
At twenty-five I was dumbfounded afresh
by my ignorance of the simplest things.

These last few lines demonstrate the power of the poem and of poetry to convey a point of view. The pleasure of this memory of something new and fresh becomes associated with Plath, despite the uncertainty of how they first met. All the contradictions that characterise the first part of the poem are lost in the certainty of the experience. It is a subtle but pointed comment that illustrates different perspectives in the poem: from factual account of a newspaper photo to a sensual account of the experience of eating a peach, imbued with sexual connotations.