Links, reviews, etc. - Week ending 12 September 2009

There is an article in The Times by Ben Hoyle today on Ted Hughes and his recently discovered children's story, Timmy the Tug, written in 1956. The article, "Ted Hughes’s first children’s story has emerged after 50 years" is online here. This is the first time I remember reading about Jim Downer - and that Plath visited down in the winter of 1963 shortly before she died. Downer, and his wife Wendy, lived, according to Plath's addressbook (housed at Smith), at 214 Old Brompton Road in London. The article includes some of Downer's illustrations. Look for Timmy the Tug on 21 September.

There is a companion article to the one above, entitled "Jim Downer and Ted Hughes's excellent adventure" by Alan Franks.
An article that ran in the Marin Independent Journal mentions one of the most unique uses of Plath's poetry I can remember. In Jane Scurich's "Master Gardener: Garden Show focues on climate change, drought and sustainability", she talks about "A Garden of Mouthings", a garden "complete with garden complete with a honeycomb structure, bee-friendly plantings and a sound installation based on a poem ["The Beekeeper's Daughter"] by Sylvia Plath." The garden designer is Shirley Alexandra Watts. I'd love to see some pictures or video of this.

Garden designer Shirley Alexandra Watts, will work with bee expert Jaime Pawelek, architect Andrew Kudless and builder Ross Craig to create "A Garden of Mouthings." Visitors will have an opportunity to seek advice from bee experts and enjoy some honey tastings. Watts says she "seeks to inform, delight and inspire its viewers by celebrating not only honey bees, but also our often overlooked native bees." Now, this is creative.
Catherine Bowman is scheduled to read from The Plath Cabinet on Friday 13 November, 2009, at 5 p.m, at the Woodberry Poetry Room. The Woodberry Poetry Room is located at Room 330, Lamont Library, Harvard University. In addition to reading from her recent collection of Plath, she will curate a close-listening experience to the recordings of Plath held by the Woodberry Poetry Room. This comes a semester after my own curated stroll through Plath's voice. I'm also planning to curate a little exhibit of some of the Woodberry's non-audio Plath holdings. If you're in the Eastern Massachusetts area please come - the event is free and open to the public.

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

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 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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