Alexis Soloski blogs on The Guardian's website about Sylvia Plath's "Three Women" and more in " What makes a play unstageable ?" Of course, I'm in the camp that views "Three Women" as a poem based on how Plath refers to it in Letters Home and how typescripts I've seen held in various archives call it "A Poem for Three Voices." Some of these are contemporary to its first radio broadcast in August 1962, too. But, I'm also open to it being produced and termed as a play, given the narrative structure.

Somehow I missed Alexis Soloski’s write up on the imminent Robert Shaw production of Sylvia Plath's “Three Women” at Manhattan’s 59E59 Theaters on the Sept.21st. While the article has been online for a few days, it just ran in Sunday's (Sept. 26) print edition, see page 7 in the AR section. Read the article here .

Lucas Myers’ new book An Essential Self: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath is now available for purchase via Inpress Books for immediate dispatch. Copies were featured for sale at the Ted Hughes Conference at Pembroke. You can order your copy here . Thanks to Ann Skea and Kim for letting us know about the titles early availability. (The Amazon’s (.com & .co.uk) still list a January 2011 publication date.)

Now that fall is here (Hello Fall), let’s take a brief look at what people in New York City have to look forward to this season. Broadway World has a preview of Robert Shaw’s production of Sylvia Plath’s “Three Women” . and Edward Anthony’s “Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath” starring Elisabeth Gray . New York Theater Guide has also written up “ Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath ”. I’ve recently had an email from Robert Shaw stating that rehearsals are underway in Manhattan with the cast starring Francis Benhamou, Angela Church, and Kina Bermudez. I’m told that the set will be slightly redesigned from the performances in Edinburgh (for any repeat attendees). Look for some media coverage around 3 October in the New York Times. You can find more information on “ Three Women here ” and on “Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath” here . And, don’t forget that Plath is being inducted into Poet’s Corner in New York’s own Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Read about it here . If you happen to live in England, y...

In this evenings program of Jeopardy, the following answer was worth $1200: Congratulations and thank you to Marisa, an archives assistant, for answering correctly! Marisa could buy a nice copy of The Bell Jar with that money!

Sylvia Plath features, briefly, on page 164 of Ian McEwan’s most recent novel Solar . McEwan locates one of the character’s flats “almost opposite the building where Sylvia Plath once put her head in the oven after setting out bread and milk for her sleeping children.” He continues, “The poet, a daughter of the fifties, was a diligent housewife who kept about her an unpoetically tidy domain...” Naturally my antennae paid quite close attention to this development in the novel. So, disappointed was I to read that the normally careful McEwan placed the flat in Primrose Hill at Fitzory Street. But that’s obviously not right at all! Fitzroy Street sits squarely in the middle of Fitzrovia, near Euston Station and the BT Tower. Not Primose Hill at all. For the paperback edition, please consider changing it to the correct name: Fitzroy Road. Also, see pages 122-126 for, perhaps, one of the most clearly written, evocative,exotic and mouth-watering descriptions of all time of what it is l...

Ted Hughes is in the news again, this time for letters that his sister Olwyn recently sold to the British Library, the BBC reports . While speaking at the Ted Hughes Conference at Pembroke College Cambridge, Helen Broderick, Curator of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library, broke the news. The archive of 41 letters from Plath and Hughes compliments their existing Hughes acquisitions and holdings. They include some unpublished Hughes poems and a play; but from the BBC report it doesn't appear that any new Plath creative works are included (unless you count kindly sentiments for her sister-in-law). Missing from the BBC report, however, but included in others floating around the internet, is the following, "The literary drafts in the archive highlight the creative development of both poets and many of the drafts were later published in Lupercal and The Colossus in 1960 by Hughes and Plath respectively. " If I'm reading this right, there are drafts of Plath...

The archives of the periodical The Review are held by the Northern Illinois University Rare Books and Special Collections Department. As many of us know, the October 1963 issue of The Review featured Plath. In addition to printing nine poems, the Plath issue ran an well-known article by A. Alvarez, which he wrote for a BBC broadcast from July 1963. The Plath materials located in the archives of The Review can be found in: Box 1 Folder 9: Typescripts of seven poems by Sylvia Plath ("Daddy", "Lady Lazarus", "Fever 103°", "Nick and the Candlestick", "Brasilia", "Mary's Song", and "Lesbos") and typescripts of A. Alvarez's radio program "The Poetry of Sylvia Plath" (three copies, once of which is a BBC transcript). and Box 6, Folder 67: Letters from Ted Hughes to Ian Hamilton. Aside from certainly being from 1963, the letters are undated. For more information about this collection, contact t...

Vanessa Thorpe in Sunday's Observer publishes " Sylvia Plath fans call for a fitting memorial to the poet ." Being that two of my good friends, Gail Crowther and Elizabeth Sigmund, were quoted in the article, I have to say outright I knew it was coming. I found both of their comments very sensitive and smart. The article was supposed to be about Elizabeth's poem "Shep-en-Mut" which appeared in Gail and Elizabeth's paper " A Poem, A Friend ", recently published in Plath Profiles 3 . But the article took a turn for the dramatic, as they are want to do by the editors wanting to get more hits and sell more papers. Can't fault them there, honestly. But it is a little disappointing to have had some expectation that were dashed and shattered. This is probably my own fault for foolishly being optimistic that Gail and Elizabeth's paper would receive some press, and that this might then give Plath Profiles greater visibility and awareness th...

From 5-31 October at New York City's 59E59 Theaters , you can see Three Women by Sylvia Plath, directed by Robert Shaw. Robert recently sent me the cast list with the intention that this blogs readers be amongst the first to know! The full cast is: The Wife - Francis Benhamou The Secretary - Angela Church The Student - Kina Bermudez If anyone out there is planning to attend and feels charitable to assist in bringing Three Women to New York & to an American audience, please consider a donation to Three Women's page on Kickstarter , a fund-raising project started by the director. There is even a short video excerpt of one of the previous performances. Lastly, the event that is Three Women is now on Facebook .

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine’s Poet in Residence and Electors have chosen Sylvia Plath as the 2010 inductee to their Poets' Corner . Plath will join such poets as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, and Tennessee Williams, last year’s inductee. The Poet’s Corner was established in 1983, and each poet has a stone engraved with a line from her or his work. The Cathedral will present a program celebrating Sylvia Plath on Thursday November 4th at 7:30 p.m.; the formal induction will take place on Sunday the 7th at the 4 p.m. Evensong. At this time, the Cathedral staff are still putting the details of the two events together with Marilyn Nelson , the Cathedral’s Poet in Residence. Confirmed participants in the program include Carol Muske-Dukes ; Annie Finch ; and Karen V. Kukil . Additionally, several young poets connected with the louderARTS Project in lower Manhattan ; former Poets in Residence; the Cathedral’s Electors; and many from the extended poetry communi...