Still Pounding the Plath Pavement

I'm reading Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters, which is a collection of 88 poems written to or about his estranged wife, Sylvia Plath. It came out in 1998, just months before he died and 35 years after she killed herself. Previous to this publication, he had remained silent on the subject. Some thought this proved his culpability in Plath's suicide. Some thought he was just being respectful. I find the poems sad and touching. It is hard to believe he published it, giving his version of some of the same moments that she immortalized in her poems, letters, and journals. Did he do it simply to clear his name? To try and even things up in the eyes of the public? To have the last word? He writes as if he really loved her, as if she were his north star, as if their split was beyond anyone's control.

His poems have sent me to the dictionary to look up the following words: purlin, irrupt, inure, copse, miasma, blowfly and sostenuto. Definitions given in comments.