- The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C., opens a new exhibition on 10 October called "Women of Our Time: Twentieth Century Photographs". The exhibit runs through February 1, 2009. The photograph of Plath by Rollie McKenna, taken in Boston in 1959, is included. And, there is an online gallery, with some contextual information on Plath. It is not the best piece of writing on her.
- Along with the exhibit comes Women of Our Time: An Album of Twentieth-Century Photographs by Frederick S. Voss, with a preface by Cokie Roberts, 2002; 176 pages; hardcover, $35 (ISBN 1-85894-169-5). Anne Sexton is also one of the featured women. The National Portrait Gallery is located at Eighth and F Streets, NW, D.C., 20001. They are open daily 11:30 a.m.-7:00 p.m. daily - however they are closed on Christmas Day. Admission is free.
- Published this month is Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar and Poems (Writers and Their Works) by Raychel Haugrud Reiff. Published by Marshall Cavendish Benchmark Books (NY), the book is $42.79 (076142962X). If this is too much to spend, keep an eye out on WorldCat to see if the book is in a library near you. At 144 pages, the reading level suggested by Amazon is 9th-12th grade, so it is likely another introductory examination of Plath. Though, the title suggests it is less biographical than perhaps critical.
- BBC Radio 3 will air a programme on Elegy on Sunday 12 October, 2008, at 22:15 (local time) - certainly an elegiac time of the day. They may be using a portion of Plath's poem "Daddy". Let's hope that they do; it's the 46th anniversary of that poems composition.
- I recently received via email scans of five Non-English book covers by or about Sylvia Plath from Florian and Sonja Flur. The books, all Swedish editions, are Glaskupan (The Bell Jar), Johnny Panic och Drömbibeln (Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams), Sängboken (The Bed Book), Ett Diktarliv (Bitter Fame) by Anne Stevenson, and Övervintring (Wintering) by Kate Moses.
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...