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Links, reviews, etc. - Week ending 21 June 2008

Geoffrey Brock's poem "Daddy: 1933" appears in the current Poetry (June 2008). The bulk of the poem comes from Otto Emil Plath's classic treatise, Bumblebees and Their Ways (New York: MacMillan, 1934).

The Glen Falls Post Star
recently ran an article on Yaddo which mentioned Plath and a few of the poems she wrote about the writer's colony ("The Manor Garden," "The Burnt-Out Spa" and "Yaddo: The Grand Manor").

The New York Times asked critic and author Katha Pollitt Stray Questions. Pollitt & Plath frequently appear together in The New York Times.

The National Post (Canada) has an article ("The Book of revelation" ) in which writers discuss beloved novels that have inspired or informed their own works. Ibi Kaslik's is Plath's The Bell Jar. Kaslik's comments on the novel are interesting.

The childhood home of Ted Hughes at Number one Aspinal Street, in Mytholmroyd, England, is featured in The Yorkshire Post. The house was recently renovated into a writer's retreat and a holiday home. Literary luminaries such as Simon Armitage, Andrew Motion, and Frieda Hughes will be on-site for the opening.

A few updates to note for my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is. Two book covers of translations of The Bell Jar are now on the website. A Turkish edition (Sirça fanus) and a Japanese edition (Beru jā)!

Many people are interested in Plath Profiles. I know I am! The webpage is not complete, but if you're interested in seeing it, please click here! Look for the first Volume to be online sometime in mid-to-late July or early August. The link on the left hand side of the page to Volume 1 won't work, so please don't click it. If anyone does find out the secret link name, kudos! But, visible for all now is a listed of the esteemed Editorial Board, Submission Guidelines, and a list of support staff. The site is restricted from being cached by search engines, so the link above is just about the only way you'll find it for a while.

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Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

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Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

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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...