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<\/i>) – anyway, she spent most of her honeymoon huddled over a sketch pad. She drew the streets, the fruit baskets, the fishing boats. Was there pleasure in it for her? I don’t know. I think it was a way to unhinge her brain for a moment, lose herself in the moment – where all she could do, all she was able to do, was just copy what she saw. She didn’t have to find the right word, or struggle with the poetry muse … she just had to sit down and copy what she saw. Ted Hughes wrote a poem, too, about her drawing.<\/p>\nI haven’t yet written a real piece on Sylvia Plath – because I know when I finaly get to it, it’ll be a doozy. It’ll take me hours of research, and compiling quotes, and snippets, and poems, and yadda yadda. I need to have the time to invest. That’s just the deal with certain topics – and Sylvia Plath is one of them.<\/p>\n
In honor of the birthday of this eventually astonishing poet (she didn’t start out that way, although she was certainly precocious – but NONE of her early work could prepare you for what her work became in the last 2 years of her life – it’s like another PERSON came out of her ….) – I have dug up some wonderful old photographs of her. She was a chameleon. She was an all-American girl. She was a bleached blonde beach-blanket-bingo girl. She was an intense prodigy. She was a depressive who had survived a suicide attempt her junior year in college. She was the woman who married the big brash English outdoorsman, and suddenly found herself fishing, and hunting, and tromping through the woods in galoshes. Who was she? I have no idea. But you can take a look at all the photographs and see how startling are the transformations. This is not just about the passage of time, and someone looking different as they grew older … this really seems to be about a shedding of selves (like she writes in Lady Lazarus<\/i>, in one of my favorite lines: “my selves dissolving, old whores petticoats”) –<\/p>\n
I look at the picture of the bodacious blonde at the beach:<\/p>\n
This was from her summer of recovery from her suicide attempt in college. She spent months in an institution – and then went back to Smith to finish out her education. When summer came – she bleached her hair. Her mother – the controlling prudish Aurelia Plath – and yes, there’s enough information out there on this woman for me to feel completely comfortable labeling her as that – was shocked. She pretended to be supportive – but deep down, she wanted a conventional daughter. Well, sorry, Aurelia, ain’t never gonna happen. Sylvia tormented herself trying to be conventional (many of her problems arose from what she felt was expected from her – as a daughter, as a wife, as a woman, in general) – and bleaching her hair was part of a necessary rebellion. Also, she started having sex. Left and right. Willy nilly. No more good 1950s girl. That “be a good girl” thing had nearly killed her. Her doctor at the time encouraged this rebellion, and taught her about birth control, so she could at least have sex safely. This was a revelation to Sylvia. She was a very sexual person, passionate, kind of wild actually – even with all that “ooh, I’m a poetic prodigy” thing – and you know, the thing is – any type of artist will always be on the fringe of polite society. If an artist tries desperately to fit in to some mainstream – if an artist really worries about what an uptight person thinks of how he or she lives … then that artist just won’t survive. The strict rules on women at that time were fetters around Sylvia’s wrists. NOT CARING what people thought of her – was one of the biggest breakthroughs in her life. NOT CARING if people whispered, “She’s a slut.” And they did. Especially when she got to England on her Fulbright. Tapping into her REBEL, into her “I just don’t care” persona … was really important – but ultimately, it didn’t matter at all. Because once she got married and once she had kids – these old conventional “roles” started constricting her again (she writes about it extensively in her poems) … It seemed that there was an incompatability: between the poetess and the woman. Could she be a wife and ALSO a poet? What were the expectations of her? It did not help matters (although she might have thought it would) that she married not just another poet – but one of the most important up-and-coming poets in England – a man who eventually (years later) would be Poet Laureate. Like – Ted Hughes was a big deal. And he was on his way to becoming a big deal when Sylvia met him. How can two poets tryiing to make their names – live together? Was Sylvia expected to be a good 1950s wife? Ted Hughes insists (and he has also written extensively about it) that he did not expect that at all. When he first met Sylvia at a party – they both were drunk – and they basically found themselves in an empty room – making out ferociously. Sylvia bit his cheek so hard she drew blood. They were married 4 months later. THIS was their beginning. There was no nice good-girl 1950s courtship. They didn’t go out for sodas and a drive-in. No. They were bohemians, for God’s sake. They were poets. People like that don’t live by society’s rules, nor should they. (Especially if the rules are stupid.) But Ted, in some of his later poems, has described how baffled and hurt he was – after their marriage – when Sylvia suddenly got writer’s block. She had writer’s block for an agonizing year, year and a half – directly after their wedding. Hmmmm, coincidence? I think not. It seems apparent that Sylvia was so terrified of doing BETTER than her husband that … everything shut down. She then tried to be the perfect housewife – and … Ted, again, was hurt and confused by this. Where is that wild poetess? Where is my crazy American girl who shouts out lines of Chaucer to the cows? Why is she in the kitchen, tears running down her face, trying to bake pies? I mean … what has happened??<\/p>\n
Then I look at the picture of her with her two kids (taken a month or so before she committed suicide) –<\/p>\n
Actually, I believe her mother took that photograph during her fateful visit to her daughter. Sylvia was living in England – and her husband Ted Hughes had just left her for another woman. Comparing that photograph to the blonde bikini one – it;s hard to believe it’s the same person. Perhaps there’s something similar in the smile – there’s something phony in both smiles, to my eye. Anyway, I find it fascinating – perusing the photos of Sylvia Plath.<\/p>\n
Not nearly as fascinating as her poems themselves which have never lost their power – no matter how times I have read them.<\/p>\n
I have gone through a bunch of Plath phases – and I am sure I will go through more. I continue to re-visit her work, every couple of years … and re-read all those 1960-1963 poems again – sometimes in order – sometimes muddling it up – and every single time, even though I always have different responses, and sometimes one poem suddenly seems THE BEST when a couple years before it was another poem that was obviously HER BEST – but anyway, every single time I read those poems from her last 3 years, they take my breath away. They’re no picnic – they are bleak bleak bleak – especially if you read them chronologically. If you read them chronologically – you can feel herself get manic – in October of 62 – and she starts cranking out 2, 3, sometimes 4 poems a day. These were not pot-boilers, folks. These poems are now taught in colleges. These are the poems that would make her name. She wasn’t just scribbling out insane manic fantasies – these are highly intricate, passionate, unbeLIEVable poems. Obviously manic – when you see how many she was putting out a day … and then there is a brief falling away for a month – December … she was still writing, but obviously it was the calm before the storm. Then January and February 1963 came along – and I believe it was the coldest winter London had ever had – and her pipes froze – and she had no help, and two young babies – and things started getting worse and worse in her mind. And her art kicked in yet again – with ferocity and power. She would write these poems at 4 in the morning – her only time to herself. So you can feel the wheels start cranking again – in January, February – she wrote some of her best poems then. They are more frightening, however, than the October poems. She is staring at death, she is beginning to embrace the idea of death … Death is always a factor in Plath’s poems, but it takes on a new form in those last couple of poems. It is no longer just a fantasy, death is no longer a dream-lover in the night … she is now making plans. The rage of October (which gave us such poems as Daddy, and Poppies in October, and the entire fanTASTIC bee-keeping sequence) is now gone. And you can feel a chilling resolve creep into her work. She is getting ready to go.<\/p>\n
I have interspersed the photos of Plath I found with some of my favorite of her poems.<\/p>\n
I still need to do a big old Plath fest one day – I have too much to say about her, and need to get my thoughts together better.<\/p>\n
In honor of her birthday, here’s one that she actually wrote about her upcoming birthday – in 1962. She wrote this poem, now one of her most well-known, on Sept. 30 1962 … right before the blast of creativity and rage that would fuel her through that painful next month. Sylvia always had a fatalistic thing with birthdays:<\/p>\n
A Birthday Present<\/b><\/p>\n
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
\nIt is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?<\/p>\n
I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
\nWhen I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking<\/p>\n
‘Is this the one I am too appear for,
\nIs this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?<\/p>\n
Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
\nAdhering to rules, to rules, to rules.<\/p>\n
Is this the one for the annunciation?
\nMy god, what a laugh!’<\/p>\n
But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
\nI would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.<\/p>\n
I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
\nAfter all I am alive only by accident.<\/p>\n
I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
\nNow there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,<\/p>\n
The diaphanous satins of a January window
\nWhite as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!<\/p>\n
It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
\nCan you not see I do not mind what it is.<\/p>\n
Can you not give it to me?
\nDo not be ashamed–I do not mind if it is small.<\/p>\n
Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
\nLet us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,<\/p>\n
The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
\nLet us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.<\/p>\n
I know why you will not give it to me,
\nYou are terrified<\/p>\n
The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
\nBossed, brazen, an antique shield,<\/p>\n
A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
\nDo not be afraid, it is not so.<\/p>\n
I will only take it and go aside quietly.
\nYou will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,<\/p>\n
No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
\nI do not think you credit me with this discretion.<\/p>\n
If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
\nTo you they are only transparencies, clear air.<\/p>\n
But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
\nArmies of them. They are carbon monoxide.<\/p>\n
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
\nFilling my veins with invisibles, with the million<\/p>\n
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
\nYou are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine—–<\/p>\n
Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
\nMust you stamp each piece purple,<\/p>\n
Must you kill what you can?
\nThere is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.<\/p>\n
It stands at my window, big as the sky.
\nIt breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center<\/p>\n
Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
\nLet it not come by the mail, finger by finger.<\/p>\n
Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
\nBy the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.<\/p>\n
Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
\nIf it were death<\/p>\n
I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
\nI would know you were serious.<\/p>\n
There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
\nAnd the knife not carve, but enter<\/p>\n
Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
\nAnd the universe slide from my side.<\/p>\n
That’s a picture of Sylvia from 1953 – right before her first suicide attempt. She was living with her mother – and her mother made her take shorthand classes and typing classes (again: there is something evil about that. That very same attitude is why Barbra Streisand has always had such long nails. People laugh at those nails, or make fun of Babs for them … but I see them, and I love them. Because to her – those nails meant freedom. Her mother was pretty much totally negative about Barbra’s actual goals – she wanted to have a normal daughter – so she signed her up for typing classes. In rebellion, Babs grew her nails to extraordinary length so that even if she wanted to learn how to type – she couldn’t. The nails got in the way. So when I see those nails now – on a 60 something year old woman – I smile. It’s a reminder.) There is a story here – of the mother who truly DOESN’T love her daughter. She doesn’t. Otherwise – she would love her for who she actually IS, not who she wants her to be. Aurelia Plath never got that. Sylvia, at the end of her life, was starting to come to terms with that. She writes, quite blatantly, in her journal, “I can never live near my mother again.” And her mother comes to visit in Oct. 1962 – right after Ted has moved out – to be with Assia Wevill – the woman he was having an affair with – and Sylvia was absolutely tormented by having her mother see her in such a weak moment. To her, it was unforgivable. She wrote her poem “Medusa” about that experience – which is, you know, shocking in its hatred, and anger. But again: poets who live by society’s rules and play well with others are usually not poets to be reckoned with. Sylvia coming to terms with her rage was part of her finding her voice.<\/p>\n
“The Moon and the Yew Tree” was written in 1961 – and is considered a breakthrough – by those who have studied Plath’s work. In it – she finds some of that cold clear eerie imagery – that she will write about until the very end. She looks out her window and sees a moon, a church, and a black yew tree. It is a beautiful image – and yet … in the poem … it becomes a harbinger. Of death, doom.<\/p>\n
And personally – I think the first line of this poem is one of her best lines ever.<\/p>\n
The moon and the yew tree<\/b><\/p>\n
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
\nThe trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
\nThe grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
\nPrickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
\nFumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
\nSeparated from my house by a row of headstones.
\nI simply cannot see where there is to get to.<\/p>\n
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
\nWhite as a knuckle and terribly upset.
\nIt drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
\nWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
\nTwice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky —-
\nEight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
\nAt the end, they soberly bong out their names.<\/p>\n
The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
\nThe eyes lift after it and find the moon.
\nThe moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
\nHer blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
\nHow I would like to believe in tenderness —-
\nThe face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
\nBending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.<\/p>\n
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
\nBlue and mystical over the face of the stars
\nInside the church, the saints will all be blue,
\nFloating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
\nTheir hands and faces stiff with holiness.
\nThe moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
\nAnd the message of the yew tree is blackness — blackness and silence<\/p>\n
Little Fugue<\/b><\/p>\n
The yew’s black fingers wag:
\nCold clouds go over.
\nSo the deaf and dumb
\nSignal the blind, and are ignored.<\/p>\n
I like black statements.
\nThe featurelessness of that cloud, now!
\nWhite as an eye all over!
\nThe eye of the blind pianist<\/p>\n
At my table on the ship.
\nHe felt for his food.
\nHis fingers had the noses of weasels.
\nI couldn’t stop looking.<\/p>\n
He could hear Beethoven:
\nBlack yew, white cloud,
\nThe horrific complications.
\nFinger-traps–a tumult of keys.<\/p>\n
Empty and silly as plates,
\nSo the blind smile.
\nI envy big noises,
\nThe yew hedge of the Grosse Fuge.
\nDeafness is something else.
\nSuch a dark funnel, my father!
\nI see your voice
\nBlack and leafy, as in my childhood.<\/p>\n
A yew hedge of orders,
\nGothic and barbarous, pure German.
\nDead men cry from it.
\nI am guilty of nothing.<\/p>\n
The yew my Christ, then.
\nIs it not as tortured?
\nAnd you, during the Great War
\nIn the California delicatessen<\/p>\n
Lopping off the sausages!
\nThey colour my sleep,
\nRed, mottled, like cut necks.
\nThere was a silence!<\/p>\n
Great silence of another order.
\nI was seven, I knew nothing.
\nThe world occurred.
\nYou had one leg, and a Prussian mind.<\/p>\n
Now similar clouds
\nAre spreading their vacuous sheets.
\nDo you say nothing?
\nI am lame in the memory.<\/p>\n
I remember a blue eye,
\nA briefcase of tangerines.
\nThis was a man, then!
\nDeath opened, like a black tree, blackly.<\/p>\n
I survive the while,
\nArranging my morning.
\nThese are my fingers, this my baby.
\nThe clouds are a marriage of dress, of that pallor.<\/p>\n
The Bee Meeting<\/b> (this is one of the poems in her famous “bee sequence” – which she cranked out at 1 or 2 a day, during October of 1962.)<\/p>\n
Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the villagers —
\nThe rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.
\nIn my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,
\nAnd they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?
\nThey are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.<\/p>\n
I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?
\nYes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,
\nButtoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit from my neck to my knees.
\nNow I am milkweed silk, the bees will not notice.
\nThey will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.<\/p>\n
Which is the rector now, is it that man in black?
\nWhich is the midwife, is that her blue coat?
\nEverybody is nodding a square black head, they are knights in visors,
\nBreastplates of cheesecloth knotted under the armpits.<\/p>\n
Their smiles and their voces are changing. I am led through a beanfield.<\/p>\n
Strips of tinfoil winking like people,
\nFeather dusters fanning their hands in a sea of bean flowers,
\nCreamy bean flowers with black eyes and leaves like bored hearts.
\nIs it blood clots the tendrils are dragging up that string?
\nNo, no, it is scarlet flowers that will one day be edible.<\/p>\n
Now they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hat
\nAnd a black veil that molds to my face, they are making me one of them.
\nThey are leading me to the shorn grove, the circle of hives.
\nIs it the hawthorn that smells so sick?
\nThe barren body of hawthon, etherizing its children.<\/p>\n
Is it some operation that is taking place?
\nIt is the surgeon my neighbors are waiting for,
\nThis apparition in a green helmet,
\nShining gloves and white suit.
\nIs it the butcher, the grocer, the postman, someone I know?<\/p>\n
I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts me
\nWith its yellow purses, its spiky armory.
\nI could not run without having to run forever.
\nThe white hive is snug as a virgin,
\nSealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.<\/p>\n
Smoke rolls and scarves in the grove.
\nThe mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.
\nHere they come, the outriders, on their hysterical elastics.
\nIf I stand very still, they will think I am cow-parsley,
\nA gullible head untouched by their animosity,<\/p>\n
Not even nodding, a personage in a hedgerow.
\nThe villagers open the chambers, they are hunting the queen.
\nIs she hiding, is she eating honey? She is very clever.
\nShe is old, old, old, she must live another year, and she knows it.
\nWhile in their fingerjoint cells the new virgins<\/p>\n
Dream of a duel they will win inevitably,
\nA curtain of wax dividing them from the bride flight,
\nThe upflight of the murderess into a heaven that loves her.
\nThe villagers are moving the virgins, there will be no killing.
\nThe old queen does not show herself, is she so ungrateful?<\/p>\n
I am exhausted, I am exhausted —
\nPillar of white in a blackout of knives.
\nI am the magician’s girl who does not flinch.
\nThe villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.
\nWhose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished, why am I cold.<\/p>\n
Fever 103<\/b> (another Oct. 1962 poem)<\/p>\n
Pure? What does it mean?
\nThe tongues of hell
\nAre dull, dull as the triple<\/p>\n
Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
\nWho wheezes at the gate. Incapable
\nOf licking clean<\/p>\n
The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
\nThe tinder cries.
\nThe indelible smell<\/p>\n
Of a snuffed candle!
\nLove, love, the low smokes roll
\nFrom me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright<\/p>\n
One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
\nSuch yellow sullen smokes
\nMake their own element. They will not rise,<\/p>\n
But trundle round the globe
\nChoking the aged and the meek,
\nThe weak<\/p>\n
Hothouse baby in its crib,
\nThe ghastly orchid
\nHanging its hanging garden in the air,<\/p>\n
Devilish leopard!
\nRadiation turned it white
\nAnd killed it in an hour.<\/p>\n
Greasing the bodies of adulterers
\nLike Hiroshima ash and eating in.
\nThe sin. The sin.<\/p>\n
Darling, all night
\nI have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
\nThe sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.<\/p>\n
Three days. Three nights.
\nLemon water, chicken
\nWater, water make me retch.<\/p>\n
I am too pure for you or anyone.
\nYour body
\nHurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern —<\/p>\n
My head a moon
\nOf Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
\nInfinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.<\/p>\n
Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
\nAll by myself I am a huge camellia
\nGlowing and coming and going, flush on flush.<\/p>\n
I think I am going up,
\nI think I may rise —
\nThe beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I<\/p>\n
Am a pure acetylene
\nVirgin
\nAttended by roses,<\/p>\n
By kisses, by cherubim,
\nBy whatever these pink things mean.
\nNot you, nor him.<\/p>\n
Not him, nor him
\n(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) —
\nTo Paradise.<\/p>\n
The Couriers<\/b> (written in Nov. 1962)<\/p>\n
The word of a snail on the plate of a leaf?
\nIt is not mine. Do not accept it.<\/p>\n
Acetic acid in a sealed tin?
\nDo not accept it. It is not genuine.<\/p>\n
A ring of gold with the sun in it?
\nLies. Lies and a grief.<\/p>\n
Frost on a leaf, the immaculate
\nCauldron, talking and crackling<\/p>\n
All to itself on the top of each
\nOf nine black Alps.<\/p>\n
A disturbance in mirrors,
\nThe sea shattering its grey one –<\/p>\n
Love, love, my season.<\/p>\n
I think the following poem is the saddest she ever wrote. Now who can ever say what is in the mind of another – and it is always a dangerous thing to read too much into these poems (at least in a biographical way). They are, after all, art. But I believe that one of the reasons she killed herself is to spare her children a mother whose face was “a ceiling without a star”. Not that that excuses her actions. But she wrote this poem in January of 1963, 2 weeks before she put her head in the oven. I find this poem nearly unreadable in its sadness. Yet – wonderful writing as well.<\/p>\n
Child<\/b><\/p>\n
Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
\nI want to fill it with color and ducks,
\nThe zoo of the new<\/p>\n
Whose names you meditate —
\nApril snowdrop, Indian pipe,
\nLittle<\/p>\n
Stalk without wrinkle,
\nPool in which images
\nShould be grand and classical<\/p>\n
Not this troublous
\nWringing of hands, this dark
\nCeiling without a star.<\/p>\n
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes – newlyweds. Happier days. What a gorgeous couple they were.<\/p>\n
And this is the last poem that Sylvia Plath completed. It’s chilling, yes, but standing alone – as a poem – I think there’s a lot to talk about here, a lot of stuff – not just biographical.<\/p>\n
And I’m sorry – but the line “her blacks crackle and drag” is … I mean, it’s just fantastic genius-level imagery with major staying power, that’s all. “Her blacks crackle and drag.” (And yes … let me just throw a shout-out to Paul Westerberg – who has also recognized the genius imagery in that line.) It’s scary. “Crackle”? “Drag?” All kinds of very frightening images come to mind in those two simple words … and the internal rhyme of “blacks” and “crackle” make it seem even more eerie. I’m not a literary critic but I will NEVER be done reading this last poem. She completed it on February 4, 1963. She killed herself on February 11.<\/p>\n
Edge<\/b><\/p>\n
The woman is perfected.
\nHer dead
\nBody wears the smile of accomplishment,
\nThe illusion of a Greek necessity
\nFlows in the scrolls of her toga,
\nHer bare
\nFeet seem to be saying:
\nWe have come so far, it is over.
\nEach dead child coiled, a white serpent,
\nOne at each little
\nPitcher of milk, now empty.
\nShe has folded
\nThem back into her body as petals
\nOf a rose close when the garden
\nStiffens and odors bleed
\nFrom the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
\nThe moon has nothing to be sad about,
\nStaring from her hood of bone.
\nShe is used to this sort of thing.
\nHer blacks crackle and drag.<\/p>\n
\nLet us not do a disservice to this great artist and see her only in terms of her self-inflicted end. Let us look at her art, please. Let us focus on that. If we can remove the context of her life from the poems; what is left? What do we see? What about those words, huh? What about her WORK?<\/p>\n
\nOther posts I have written about Plath:<\/p>\n
Plath’s writer’s block of 1959-1960<\/a><\/p>\n On the re-issuing of “Ariel”<\/a><\/p>\n The Plath\/Hughes exhibit<\/a><\/p>\n On Assia Wevill<\/a><\/p>\n My good friend RTG took Plath obsession to a new level – Here’s a post she wrote about it<\/a> … and another one<\/a> … We maintain a fantasy that one day we will meet up at the Lilly Library to go through Plath’s papers together. It will happen!!<\/p>\n \n