Did he write it in as the answer Sylvia Plaths unpublished poem, Mad Girl´s Lovesong?
“. Ted’s poem was not related to Sylvia’s in any significant way other than that they both happened to be about love. ‘Lovesong’, was first published in The Northwest Review in 1967 as ‘Second Bedtime Story’. It was published several times in different places before being collected in Crow as ‘Lovesong’. It was part of the sequence of poems which Ted wrote about Crow, his curious, soul-less, amoral bird who began, as Hughes said, as “God’s nightmare” ( Adelaide Festival transcript) and who wanted to become human. Crow is not immoral or knowingly cruel: he is a-moral (morality is not part of his world) and displays all the atavistic characteristics of the crow species. His experiments, as he tries to learn to become human, often go terribly wrong. Crow has particular difficulty in relating to the female elements of nature (his nature and Nature). At one stage on his questing journey he meets an old woman who questions him. One question is “who paid most, him or her?” – ‘Lovesong’ is an
