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Review of Perfect Light
“Perfect Light”, is a poem about memory, loss and the anticipation of death. Hughes looks at a photograph of Sylvia Plath with their two children and tries to see within an apparently innocent family moment something that the photograph itself could not reveal.
The word “innocence” is central to the opening of the poem and acquires a tragic meaning. Sylvia appears as a mother, surrounded by daffodils, holding her newborn son while her young daughter stands beside her.