Links, Reviews, etc. - Week ending 11 April 2009

Just a few things to point out and/or promote this weekend...

Recently I found a very lovely blog: Sylvia and Ted Collection. In Sylvia and Ted Collection, Laurie is highlighting rare, limited, first, signed, and other editions of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, etc. in her personal collection. It is an extremely generous offering with very lovely images as well as bibliographic and other commentary. Collecting Sylvia Plath (or Ted Hughes or another author) can be a very rewarding experience. Although some of these books, broadsides, long playing records probably cannot be or have not been read, handled or even opened, there must be a huge amount of joy in just getting to look at them daily. I've worked with many of these book myself at rare book rooms and I've gazed admiringly at them at Book Fairs. What Laurie is doing is something unique and fantastic for those who find themselves to be inclined to Plath.
Plath Profiles, Volume 2, is really coming together. Are you working on a paper or poem or book review for submission? According to the deadline I actually set, you have only until 15 April to submit! I'm not sure how hard a date that is really, but if you've got something we'd love to consider it.
The Woodberry Poetry Room hosts listening hours of its archival poetry recordings most Friday's during the academic year. On Friday, 17 April, I'll be introducing a listening hour of Sylvia Plath's poetry, as well as selecting those poems that will be heard. The Woodberry Poetry Room is open to the public, so come on by. We start at 3 PM. I'll also be showing off some of the Woodberry's holdings: such as the proof's of The Colossus (Heinemann) and Ariel (Faber) and the original reel-to-reel tape containers from June 13, 1958 and February 22, 1959 with the poems handwritten in by Plath.

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...

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