Sylvia Plath on the wall

There are about four limited edition broadsides of Sylvia Plath's work. If you buy any and want it framed, please spend the money to have archival quality materials used that will not damage the item.

Ariel and Morning Song - 1971

Among the Narcissi - 1971 - Ashington, Northumberland: MidNAG [Mid-Northumberland Arts Group], n.d., 16.5 x 23.5 inches, 300 copies

Child - London Underground - Poems on the Underground- 1992

Pigeon Post - Small broadside of a previously unpublished poem by Plath. No copies were offered for sale. 1993. (3 copies on WorldCat)

Among the Narcissi is a lovely poem, and an even lovelier broadside. Currently, there are two copies of Among the Narcissi for sale via abebooks.com. It is an extremely lovely work (see picture).

Ariel and Morning Song is quite rare; In the last ten years, I have seen only one copy for sale. There are no records in WorldCat that suggest any libraries hold it. The broadside is dark, the poems barely readable, and the image on it is of a woman curled into a fetal position.

Any rider of the London Underground should be familiar with their series Poems on the Underground. According to WorldCat, they released a limited number of Plath's poem "Child" for sale. This broadside is wider than it is tall and features the London Underground symbol and the poem only. It is a fine poem to read whilst on the underground.

Pigeon Post was new to me. The University of Chicago, Princeton University and Cambridge University all list that they hold this work. It would be very nice to see this, and also to read this unpublished poem. If anyone knows when Plath wrote, please post to the comments.

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove...

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de...

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last...

Search This Blog