Sylvia Plath: Double did you know...

Sylvia Plath published frequently in Seventeen and Mademoiselle throughout her undergraduate college years. Did you know that both periodicals purchased poems but that these poems appear never to have been printed? Seventeen purchased "Sonnet to a Dissembling Spring" in March 1953. Mademoiselle purchased for "inventory" Plath's poem "Parallax" on 17 November 1954.

My suspicion is that Seventeen erroneously purchased "Sonnet to a Dissembling Spring" in March 1953. Plath had a number of poems and stories printed, mostly in the "It's All Yours" section of the periodical. By March 1953, Plath was 20 years old and Seventeen typically only printed poems and stories in "It's All Yours" by those still in their teens.

As for "Parallax"... Sylvia Plath won Honorable Mention in Mademoiselle's first Dylan Thomas Poetry Award in January 1955. It may be that this was her submission... The collegiate winner was Linda Pastan, who has had a remarkable poetry career. In Spring 1971, Pastan published "For Sylvia Plath" in the Michigan Quarterly Review (Vol. 10, No. 2), page 93. This is one of the better treatments of Plath, poetically.

In February 1955, Mademoiselle turned 20. They summarized highlights of each year with memorable topics and contributors. Did you know, that for 1952, Plath was listed among the contributors? Remarkable that only three years into her publishing association with the magazine that they selected her as a notable writer. 1952, of course, was the year in which Plath's story "Sunday at the Mintons" won first prize in their college fiction contest and was published in their August 1952 issue. (pictured here)

I will have another, biggish "Did you know..." on Plath and Seventeen in November ...

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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