Birthday Letters fascination with a persistent mystery surrounding the lives of the two icons. Within a short period of time the collection was awarded the Forward Poetry Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Whitbread Poetry and Whitbread British Book of the Year prizes. Birthday Letters Birthday Letters, published in 1998, is a collection of poetry by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes's death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards. This collection of eighty-eight poems is widely considered to be Hughes's most explicit response to the suicide of his estranged wife Sylvia
Letters to a Young Poet reading criticism and advised him to trust his inner judgment, commenting that "Nobody can advise you and help you. Nobody. There is only one way—Go into yourself." Rilke provided advice that inspired Kappus to search broader issues of intimacy and the nature of beauty and art, as well as probing philosophical and existential questions. The letters address personal issues that Kappus had apparently revealed to Rilke; ranging from atheism, loneliness, and career choices. The collection does not include Kappus' letters to Rilke, though the original German collection does include one sonnet of Kappus' own that Rilke sent back to him