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When Sylvia Plath Rocked Cleveland

In late September and early October I took a vacation, the purpose of which was to enjoy the last hold of summer and enjoy the American pastime: baseball. I found myself in Cleveland, Ohio, a city in which there is almost nothing to do (it took me 6 hours of walking around just to find a postcard).

So, before attending the Minnesota Twins versus the Cleveland Indians baseball game that night, a game won by the Twins and in which I caught a home run ball hit during Twins batting practice, I visited the Cleveland Public Library to, of course, look through microfilm of their 1953 newspapers. As you do, right?

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer was available through a database but I did not find an article there. Two other papers, the Cleveland News and the Cleveland Press were available on microfilm only so I spent an hour or so looking through the papers this way. Happily! I found one article in each paper, which adds to the list of articles on Plath's first suicide attempt/disappearance.

"Smith College Student Missing." Cleveland News. August 26, 1953: 1.
"Hunt Top Student." Cleveland Press. August 26, 1953: 12.

These two articles bring the total up to 198 articles found.

Before Cleveland, in Cincinnati which is a city with even less to do (especially during the rain delay of the Chicago Cubs versus the Cincinnati Reds baseball game), it did not occur to me to look through their microfilm in their public library (which has a beautiful book sculpture on Vine Street). We were so bored one day by 8 a.m. that I asked my wife if we could pop over to the Lilly Library for the day but she said no.

I requested the Cincinnati newspaper via Interlibrary Loan so perhaps the city might have covered it and will redeem itself, somehow. That's disingenuous and maybe unfair as the food was fine at Taste of Belgium and Melt Eclectic. The other city we hit, Pittsburgh, was amazing on all fronts: feel/vibe, food, ballpark and quality of baseball.

Later . . . not like you can tell . . . But after a couple of weeks the Boston Public Library received the Cincinnati Enquirer for me on microfilm via Interlibrary loan and the Queen City only marginally redeemed itself by yielding an addition article on Plath's first suicide attempt, bringing our total to 199.

"Missing Student Found." Cincinnati Enquirer. August 27, 1953: 11.



See the complete, in progress, bibliography here.

Some images of the beautiful ballparks at night:

Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark
Cleveland's Progressive Field
Pittsburgh's PNC Park

All links accessed 6 October 2015.

You can see a bibliography of articles on Plath's first suicide attempt, and read PDF's of them, over at A celebration, this is.

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