New article on Sylvia Plath, and more!

Look for “‘The Feeding of Young Women’: Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, Mademoiselle Magazine, and the Domestic Ideal” by Caroline Smith, Assistant Professor of Writing at George Washington University in College Literature - October, or Fall 2010.

If you’re interested in the history of Plath in College Literature, look no further than their 30 year index (link removed due to being broken - pks 9 Nov.):

To sum, they have published articles in the following issues. (6.2 means Volume 6, Number 2)

6.2: 121-28; ("On Reading Sylvia Plath" by Margaret Dickie Uroff)

19.2: 60-82; (“‘The Woman is Perfected. Her Dead Body Wears the Smile of Accomplishment’: Sylvia Plath and Mademoiselle Magazine” by Garry M. Leonard)

29.3: 17-34; "Plath, Domesticity, and the Art of Advertising" by Marsha Bryant)

29.3: 35-56 ("Sylvia Plath's Transformations of Modernist Paintings" by Sherry Lutz Zivley)

Plath was most recently featured in the article “Mad Girls' Love Songs: Two Women Poets--a Professor and Graduate Student--Discuss Sylvia Plath, Angst, and the Poetics of Female Adolescence” by Arielle Greenberg and Becca Klaver (Fall 2009, Volume 36, Number 4).

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The following title was recently made aware to me by Ann Skea.

A Postcard to Sylvia Plath: Poems from the dark edge by Patricia Jones.

Patricia writes with passion, incisiveness and lucidity to reveal a life filled and felt to the hilt. Her work brings to mind my favourite piece by the artist Louise Bourgoise, who once embroidered on a handkerchief in perfect stitch, "I have been to hell and back and let me tell you it was wonderful". So too are the depths and heights that Patricia descends and scales, taking the reader with her all the way.' - Carole Douglas, artist, writer, traveller.

'Patricia Jones has a unique voice that comes from the intensity of her life's experience. Although that voice is her own, it resonates much more widely. Her eye for the darker side of life is unflinching, but it is softened with humanity, compassion and a gentle humour that lifts the spirit. Read her poems and allow your own heart to be touched.' - Louise Gilmore, meditation teacher, writer.

Patricia Jones, playwright, artist and poet, does not let the reader off lightly. Her poetry is strong, sensual, sometimes confronting raw truths. She fills the reader with creative images and clever juxtaposition. Her work demands the reader's attention. There is no prissy emotion here. Patricia's work takes no prisoners yet at the same time is food for the soul' - Margaret L. Grace, poet, artist and writer.

ISBN: 978 1 74027 649 8, 50pp, $20.00 (Australian). For more information, visit the Gininderra Press website here.

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A reminder that today kicks off the first of two events as Plath is inducted to Poet’s Corner at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. At 7:30pm tonight, poets and Plath scholars will take part in the celebration. Participants include Poet in Residence Marilyn Nelson; poet Paul Muldoon; Karen Kukil, Associate Curator, Special Collections & Archivist, Plath Papers, Smith College, speaking on her extensive work with Plath manuscripts, both as archivist and editor of the unabridged journals; poet/scholar Annie Finch speaking on the meter and music of Plath’s poetry; playwright/screenwriter/actress Tristine Skyler; and louderArts Project poets Corrina Bain, Elana Bell, Sean Patrick Conlon, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, and Lynne Procope reading Plath poems.