Hughe’s articulate and diversely structured poetry regarding Plath and their association encourages the audience to understand the situations within their relationship from his perspective. Hughe’s poem, ‘Sam’ is his version of Plath’s ‘Whiteness I Remember’ reflecting on the memory of a horse riding incident. A variety of techniques are used throughout the poem creating conflicting textual form, including the use of rhetorical questions, ‘Did you have a helmet? How did you cling on?’Immediately this personalizes the poem as if he is talking to Plath herself. The tone and emotive language during the poem also intensifies Hughe’s sentiment towards Sylvia. Imagery is used frequently throughout the text, and in conjunction with alliteration, ‘that horribly hard swift river’ reinforces the intensity of the situation and involves the audience by allowing them to visually imagine the scene, dramatising the situation from Hughe’s position.
Controversially Plath’s poetry leads her audience to perceive the events and information through her assortment of techniques and conflicting emotions. A conflict to Hughe’s perspective represented in ‘Sam’ is Plath’s poem, ‘Whiteness I Remember’ conveying her account of the particular situation. Plath’s outlook is very emotional and uses techniques to assist her in portraying the event from her perspective. Metaphor is used in the expression ‘green grass steaming,