- Thanks to Susan in Australia for this link to an audio interview (with transcript) of Helen Vendler discussing her recently published Last Looks, Last Books.
- Ariel by Faber is now available.
- Recently published online are two articles by Jessica Ferri, a Brooklyn based writer. See "In Which We Flay Ourselves Into Poets" on thisrecording.com and Writing Food, Writing Life on themillions.com. From last September, there is Ferri's "Another Side of Sylvia," which is a review of Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams.
The review of Johnny Panic has a few inaccuracies, such as "Stone Boy With Dolphin" far pre-dates "Mothers." And it was "Stone Boy with Dolphin," not "Mothers," that could have been part of "Falcon Yard" which was the title of Plath's first novel attempt. Hughes' infidelity was discovered in the summer of 1962, not spring. I'm drawing a blank here, but do we know what the title of the novel Plath destroyed was? Was Plath being "green" and recycling the title? "Snow Blitz," "The Smiths," and "America! America!," also, were not stories written for the women's magazines, they a mixture of non-fiction writings. Plath's writing for women's magazines includes "Day of Success," and a few stories not included in Johnny Panic such as "The Perfect Place," "Shadow Girl," and "A Winter's Tale."
Also, in Ferri's "In Which We Flay Ourselves Into Poets" she suggests that Plath's journals capture her frustration about not finding a publisher for The Bell Jar. Um, do you have the missing journals because that is most certainly not in the Unabridged Journals I have open next to my computer. There is one actual mention of Plath's novel in the Unabridged Journals. See the note on page 696, where Karen Kukil indicates that Plath annotated her journal entry from December 12, 1958. In the journal Plath wrote "Why don't I write a novel?" The annotation reads, "I have! August 22, 1961: THE BELL JAR". There is much "palpable" "anguish" regarding other attempts by Plath to have works published throughout the Unabridged Journals, but not in reference to The Bell Jar, which, like The Colossus, was published rather easily in Britain.
- UPDATE 9 May 2010: NEW LINK:
Robert McCrum at The Observer, published "Ted Hughes: The Poet Who is Coming in from the Cold" on 9 May. The article appeared in the New Review section, page 45.