If it felt like a big year for Sylvia Plath it is because it was. There were periods of quiet, but that is fine as it gives us a chance to rest, reflect, write, etc.  I do find it hard to sum up a year but have in the past so will attempt to continue now... Sadly, we lost two valuable contributors to Plath scholarship. In June, Jim Long passed away . And before that, quietly in February, Nephie Christodoulides. Nephie is the author of numerous articles on Plath, H.D. and others. Her book Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking: Motherhood in Sylvia Plath's Work was published in 2005 by Rodopi Editions in Amsterdam. You can read a review of Nephie's book by fellow Plath scholar Toni Saldivar here. Books about Plath published this year were many and each provides valuable insight and a great contribution to the scholarship in Plath studies. The year started off with a "bang, smash" in Heather Clark's The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes (...

Back in 2009, I made an Otto Plath cookie .  I decided to make this year, 2011, a very Sylvia Plath Christmas. **  Inspired by "The Applicant," "We make new stock from the salt." And, further inspired by "Daddy," Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. And... There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. ** Disclaimer: Several sugar cookies were harmed in the making of this update.

Sylvia Plath lived from 27 October 1932 to 11 February 1963. This was 11,064 days; or 30 years, 3 months, 15 days. Sylvia Plath's mid-life was, then, 5532 days. Did you know that that date -Sylvia Plath's mid-life - fell on 20 December 1947 (a Saturday that year). She was 15 years, 1 month, and 23 days; in tenth grade, in her first year at Gamaliel Bradford High School, and it was during this school year she took her first class, English 21, with Wilbury Crockett. In this class, the readings and assignments were vigorous, and not for those seeking only to be generally educated. Many of Plath's papers from this class are now held at the Lilly Library, and from examining them, we know which books she read, many of which are cataloged in LibraryThing . One of the poems Plath wrote this year was "I Thought That I Could Not Be Hurt." Her activities that year included basketball, orchestra, and she worked for the school newspaper, The Bradford . It was in this fir...

Earlier this week, BBC Radio 4 aired " Ted Hughes Memorial Tones ." It is a 58 minute long program about his recent memorializing in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey. The program can be listened to until 17 December. Among those interviewed were Seamus Heaney, Carol Hughes, and Melvyn Bragg, who is the narrator. As can be fathomed, topics discussed include Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Court Green. In addition, there are audio snippets of Hughes reading, as well as from the "Two of a Kind" interview from 1961.

If you are in London this week, plan to see "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings" at the Mayor Gallery now for the exhibit is coming down by the 16th. Our friend in Plath, Gail Crowther, visited the cloudy city this weekend and send on some more pictures of the exhibit.... Thanks Gail! The first picture is the Willow tree from Grantchester. Perhaps this is the one where she placed her Earthenware head... This picture shows many of the drawings. The second one on the long wall from the corner, you can see, is missing. This is one of a few that are no longer in the gallery and presumably already with their new owner... Here is another view of the willow, as well as of "Horse Chestnut," "Horse Chestnuts," and "Cow." If you visited the exhibit and want to write a guest post about the experience please send me an email!

On Tuesday 6 December 2011, Ted Hughes will be memorialized in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey in London. Frieda Hughes, Carol Hughes, and Seamus Heaney are three among the many expected to attend the service. This news broke in early 2010 . A more recent article appeared on Westminster Abbey's website in early November. The Mayor Gallery in London, which is exhibiting "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings" through 16 December, recently informed me that they have three rare copies of the limited edition Pursuit for sale. Copies are £1,000 and were formerly in the possession of Frieda Hughes. The book was limited to 100 numbered copies and these three copies are numbered 20, 22, and 23. I have a photograph of the title page of Pursuit on my website . There are also a few copies of The Crystal Gazer still available, numbered sequentially 271-277. Bloomsbury Auctions will be selling two copies of The Bell Jar on their Books, Manuscripts, Maps and Works on Paper auction on 14...

Recently found the following citations for articles on Sylvia Plath which either have appeared or will appear in journals or in books... Aragno, Anna. "Silent Cries, Dancing Tears: The Metapsychology of Art Revisited/Revised." Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 59: 2. April 2011: 239-288 Boswell, Matthew . "Poetry. Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1965) and Other Poems." In Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Music and Film . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Leake, Elizabeth. "The Corpus and the Corpse: Amelia Rosselli, Jacques Derrida, Sylvia Plath, Sarah Kofman." In After Words: Suicide and Authorship in Twentieth-Century Italy . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011: 65-103. Lester D., and McSwain S. "A Text Analysis of the Poems of Sylvia Plath". Psychological Reports 109:1. 2011:  73-76. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. "'At My Cooking I Feel It Looking': Food, Domestic Fantasies, and Consumer Anxiety in Syl...

The Mayor Gallery has posted their installation photographs from the Sylvia Plath exhibit, which closes in just under a months time. Over on the TLS blog, Thea Lenarduzzi posted, on 10 November, " Sylvia Plath, the doodler. " The majority of these are not doodles, and the majority of the article is not on the drawings...

Before we look at Plath at the Boston Book Fair, I have recently learned that several limited edition books of Plath's published by the Rainbow Press are for sale through the Mayor Gallery in London. These books are being sold by both Frieda Hughes and her aunt, Olwyn Hughes. It appears that there is almost a complete liquidation of Plath by her daughter. That appalling thought notwithstanding, I have seen these books in libraries and they are nice books and the second two, Dialogue Over a Ouija Board and Lyonnesse , at that price point, are quite reasonable given their rarity. Lyonnesse is particularly nice as the endpapers contain a facsimile of Plath's poem "Lyonnesse," though under its original title "Amnesiac: The Man With Amnesia." Crystal Gazer and Other Poems £250 Rainbow Press, London, 1971 Limited edition of 400 (only 25 available) There is a reproduction of the 'Study of a Figurine' in this book. Dialogue over a Ouija Board £...

Earlier this year we were pleased with a Plath doodle .  Then came the exhibit in London at the Mayor Gallery of "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings". This led me to "the Google" and I found the following drawing made by a very young Plath. This comes from an article called "Some Relics of Childhood" by Rodney Phillips , which appeared in issue 9 of Cabinet Magazine and was published in Winter 2002/3. The book Plath traced the cat and the dog from, Manners Can Be Fun , sounds like a great read and one that certainly could help me in life (though I'm not sure the book advocated eating all of Dido Merwin’s food in France in 1961 but we can hardly blame Plath for that).  The dog, too, came from this book. I found a cover online of a revised edition (1958), which features a very similar looking dog in the bottom left. For those that don't or won't see the interest in this kind of thing, remember that Plath's learning to trace drawi...

This weekend (11-13 November 2011) is the 35th Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair to be held as usual at the Hynes Convention Center. As usual I will walk around and obsess and drool over all things Plath and report back back books, prices and what not. Hopefully will score some photographs, too, to share with you. Read about the fair in 2010 here . And I did two posts in 2008: the first and the second ... The blog over at the valuable Fine Books & Collections also has a preview and Plath made the list of neat items to see. Unrelated to the Boston Book Fair...US readers will finally have a new Kindle option of a Sylvia Plath book. The Colossus will be released in Kindle format on 23 November. Let’s hope this is the first step is allowing electronic access to Plath’s works to this market. The book will be published via Random House Digital, Inc. Again, if you are interested in helping to make Plath's books available through Kindle, you can have your say. Please ...

Sylvia Plath was the $800 answer today on Jeopardy's category "Verse Case Scenario". The best part is, the guy that got it right's first name was Buddy! Sorry about the flash glare. For those concerned, the line is "Dying is an art..."  This is Plath's second recent appearance on Jeopardy .

Two new reviews to mention today on the exhibit of "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings." Sam Leith at The Observer reviews quite favorably the exhibit in " These drawings give us a whole new Sylvia Plath – sprightly, witty and fun " which appeared on 6 November 2011. B.K. at The Economist lightly reviews in " Sylvia Plath’s Drawings: An Unbearable Lightness " on 7 November 2011.  It is clear that many prefer Plath's poetry; however, it seems these people are trying to compare apples to oranges. This is why Plath wanted to publish The Bell Jar under a pseudonym, isn't it? Because she did not want -among other reasons- for her novel to be judged as the work of a poet. Same goes for the drawings...

Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings. (London: The Mayor Gallery, 2011) , 63 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9558367-8-7. Illustrated. Hardcover, no dust wrapper, as issued. The catalogue for the exhibit of "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings" is a gem. The bold red cover is of a quintessential Plathian nature, and is reminiscent of the exhibition catalogue for Karen V. Kukil and Stephen Enniss' "No Other Appetite": Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Blood Jet of Poetry (Grolier Club, 2005). Published in a limited edition to 1,000 copies, the full color scans throughout are bound to delight Plath's readers (scholars, fans: we are all in this together). The introduction by Frieda Hughes was largely published in a slightly different format in both her Vogue UK ("Drawings from the Past," November 2011, pp 103-104) and Observer ( "Lines of Beauty," 22 October 2011, p 22) articles.  It is a cool, factual, point-to-point introduction that lacks an emotio...

Michael Glover at The Independent coolly reviews the exhibition "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings" which is now on at the Mayor Gallery in London. The subtitle to the review, "Plath the tortured poet's pictures are too polite to be a big draw" says all you'll need to read... But he just does not get it. Or, at least he does not get Plath. Glover asks, "What we really want to know about this exhibition is this: how does it connect with the rest of her tragic life? Are these drawings pent, febrile and tortured in the way that many of the greatest of the poems are pent, febrile and tortured? Have the things that she is drawing – flowers, animals, bottles, trees – been turned into terrible symbols of themselves?" Several of the drawings in the exhibit show a duplicitous or two-sided curiosity in objects, which directly relates to a large theme in Plath's writings. There are two drawings of the "Pleasures of Odds and Ends"; two of horse ches...

The Mayor Gallery exhibit of "Sylvia Plath's Drawings" opens today at their space at 22A Cork Street in London. Containing 44 drawings, this is the first British exhibition of Plath's artwork.  In the "Current" section of their website, it is possible to view all 44 drawings . Bravo! In 2002 at the Sylvia Plath 70th Year Symposium held at Indiana University, many of Plath's creations were exhibited from the collections of both Smith College and Indiana University. Yesterday, Matilda Battersby of the Indpendent wrote " Unseen Sylvia Plath Drawings Go on Show ." The page containing the article has been loading painfully slowly, so your patience is I'm sure appreciated.

Recently published by Baseline Press , The Black Car by Christine Walde features poems inspired by Sylvia Plath. In these poems we join Walde on an journey into Plath's brief sojourn to Canada in the summer of 1959. Subtitled Reflections on Lethe , The Black Car also finds its poetry sourced from H.D., Charles Baudelaire, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poems are completely original and in Walde's own unmistakable voice.  In the "Afterword," we learn a bit about the books genesis; the prose and the story are inspiring. Exquisitely produced in a limited edition that is sure not to last, The Black Car is a book worth owning and cherishing. 36 pp., ISBN 978-0-9869570-1-7, $10. The cover is of St. Armand Canal, and the flyleaf of Tibetan Cloud. The book is available for on-line purchase through the link above. Christine Walde (London, Ontario) is the author of the novel, The Candy Darlings (Penguin Canada and Houghton Mifflin). A second novel, Burning Down ...

Readers of this blog, Plath Profiles , and contemporary American poetry will be familiar with the name of the poet and writer David Trinidad. Recently Dear Prudence , his new and selected poems, was published by Turtle Point Press and within its wonderful pages are a number of poems on Sylvia Plath. Trinidad has a way of getting at the essence of Sylvia Plath in his poems.  His poetry shows evidence of his passion for Plath, and there is truthfulness in his methodological use of her archival materials and creative works. And of course, the range of poems held within the older, selected titles is moving. Seeing a poets progression through the medium of a new and selected volume is inspiring. I admire him and his poetry a great deal, and cannot recommend this book enough. Trinidad’s poetry is candid, intimate, and deeply affecting.   The book is also available in a Kindle edition . Other writing by David Trinidad worth your while is (and available free online): On the ...

The Telegraph has additional images and information about the forthcoming show of Sylvia Plath's drawings on at the Mayor Gallery in London (2 November - 16 December). An additional article on the exhibit appeared on Spoonfed.co.uk .

In The Observer , issue printed on 23 October 2011, Frieda Hughes has more to say on her mother, Sylvia Plath's, art in " Lines of Beauty: The Art of Sylvia Plath ."  Excellently, included is a gallery of 11of  Plath's drawings . Thank you for sharing this artwork with us, Ms. Hughes.

Thanks to Melanie for the link to Troy Brooks' website , in which Sylvia Plath connoisseurs can view images of his paintings from his 'Colossus' series.

Earlier this week, I launched new thumbnail pages on my website for Sylvia Plath ( A celebration, this is ). The new thumbnail pages are a bit fancier than before, and I hope that it is an enhancement that makes being on the website more enjoyable. The main landing page for the photo galleries is here . In each page, when you click a thumbnail, the image will pop up. Beneath the image will be some data about the book or place. For the thumbnail gallery of places Plath lived in, visited, or wrote about in her creative works and personal papers, etc. there is a caption beneath the image, but because of space, referential information still appears next to the thumbnail (this happens on one of the book pages, too). Depending on the resolution of your screen and the size, some of the text in the pop up box may appear below below the bottom of your screen. If you reduce the screen from 100% to something like 75% you should be able to see all the text. To escape the pop-up, click the X in ...

Our good friend in Plath P H Davies has just blogged about the Frieda Hughes article in Vogue (UK) over on his website. Please give it a careful read. Also he gives more information on the exhibit of Sylvia Plath's drawings on at the Mayor Gallery in London .

Whilst details of the exhibition are sketchy, the November issue of Vogue (UK) , reports, "On the eve of an exhibition of her mother's sketches, Frieda Hughes , daughter of Sylvia Plath, writes movingly on living with the Plath-Hughes legacy - and what it means to her - in Drawings of the Past ." If anyone has access to the full article please let us know! Thanks to Kristina "the Macedonian Madonna" for drawing our attention to this...

The following are some recently published articles on Sylvia Plath: Demjen, Zsofia. " Motion and conflicted self metaphors in Sylvia Plath's 'Smith Journal' ." Metaphor and the Social World 1:1. 2011: 7-25. Kalfopoulou, Adrianne. "Sylvia Plath's Emersonian I/Eye". Women's Studies . 40:7. October 2011: 890-909. Kumlu, Esin. " The Mona Lisa Smile Of Sylvia Plath: Destroying The Distorted Picture Of Reality ." Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi 25. 2011. Flannery Dean over at Maclean’s Magazine has written on " The Bell Jar at 40 " (just like Emily Gould from the Poetry Foundation did in July). Deanna Darr of the unassailable Boise Weekly writes on " The Greatest Lost Books Never Read ," among them the tenth being Plath's "Double Exposure."

Congratulations to Janet Badia, whose book Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers was recently published by University of Massachusetts Press. You can purchase the book from Amazon.com ; UMass Press ; Amazon.co.uk ; and you can like it on Facebook . The book looks most promising and I expect to review it on this blog before too long. Chapters include: Introduction: "There Is No Such Thing as a Death Girl": Literary Bullying and the Plath Reader; "Dissatisfied, Family-Hating Shrews": Women Readers and the Politics of Sylvia Plath's Literary Reception;  "Oh, You Are Dark": The Plath Reader in Popular Culture; "We Did Not Wish to Give the Impression": Plath Fandom and the Question of Representation; "A Fiercely Fought Defense": Ted Hughes and the Plath Reader; and Conclusion: "I Don’t Mean Any Harm": Frieda Hughes, Plath Readers, and the Question of Resistance.

P H Davies recently visited North Tawton and writes about it on his blog. The photographs of Court Green are among the best I've ever seen (and the rest of his blog and website are worthy of reading too, so, go on, treat yourself). You will remember the excellent book reviews he has posted, most recently on Heather Clark's The Grief of Influence and Kathleen Connors and Sally Bayley's Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual , and evocative poem " Heptonstall " in Plath Profiles 4 . Several weeks ago (wow, in July - I'm behind), on The Telegraph 's website, there appeared the article " Ways With Words: Ted Hughes catches the animal within " by Blake Morrison. Going further back, thanks to Gail Crowther we have "' Could I have done more for Sylvia Plath?' - Poet's doctor John Horder on his role in her final days " from the 11 November 2010 Camden New Journal , in which Dr. John Horder talks a bit about Plath. ...

The Poetry Foundation has announced that in 2012, the US Postal Service will be honoring ten poets with postage stamps . UPDATE: The Observer ran an article, " Sylvia Plath given stamp of approval ", by Vanessa Thorpe on Sunday 18 September.

Hello, the first of some biggish changes was activated today on my website for Sylvia Plath, A celebration, this is . On the homepage (linked just above), I have added a Google custom search tool. This will enable web browsers to search the entire website, which I hope means that you will find your content even faster. When you type in the search box, a new tab or window will appear with the search results (they frequently appear beneath a Google ad or two...sorry, it was not avoidable without paying a fee...). Thanks to three of my great Plath friends for testing this feature out.  Please let me know how you like it (or if you don't). The decision to have results open in a new tab was made because this way your search results are saved in the original tab. If done the other way, where the result is opened in the same/original tab, if you click the back browser your search query is lost and thus you'd have to do it again (one year in every ten, perhaps). The next cha...

Cambridge University Press has published the Cambridge Companion to Ted Hughes , edited by Terry Gifford. Like Jo Gill's Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath , the book starts with a chapter titled "The Problem of Biography;" however, Hughes' "Problem of Biography" is written by Joanny Moulin. I am beginning to see a trend here with "biography" and "problems" and these poets... Jo Gill contributes a chapter, "Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath" and Tracy Brain writes on "Ted Hughes and feminism." As Plath was such a major part of Ted Hughes' life and writing, no doubt additional essays in the book will feature or focus on her. The book is available now and will go for $28.99 or (£17.99). Another new article of potential interest is in the inaugural issue of the Ted Hughes Society Journal : "Opened Ground: Discourses of Descent in Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath" by Janne Stigen Drangsholt. Unlike the content...

As Hurricane Irene aims for Massachusetts and much of the east coast of the US, the New Yorker's Book Bench posted some good hurricane reads , including as you might hope, Sylvia Plath's "Ocean 1212-W." Unfortunately for the blogger, Macy Halford, she seems to have relied on the dating of "Ocean 1212-W" to what is printed in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams ...she should have read through some of the articles I co-wrote with Gail Crowther (in particular, "These Ghostly Archives" | These Ghostly Archives, Redux" ) to get it correct that the prose piece was not written until late January 1963 (sent to the BBC on 28 January 1963). I wish she would have mentioned "The Disquieting Muses," too... "In the hurricane, when father's twelve Study windows bellied in Like bubbles about to break, you fed My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine And helped the two of us to choir: "Thor is angry: boom boom boom! Thor is an...

Fifty years ago today, on August 22, 1961, Sylvia Plath sent her friend Jack Sweeney, then curator of the Woodberry Poetry Room, a letter and enclosed the worksheets/drafts of her poem "Tulips." Did you know that shortly thereafter - about two months - Sweeney put the poem on display at the Woodberry Poetry Room? The first notice of the exhibit appears in the "Metropolitan Boston Calendar: A Guide to This Week's Events" in the Boston Globe on October 29, 1961, on page 74. The notice reads, "A manuscript poem ("Tulips") on display at Lamont Library." Additional notices about the exhibit ran on November 5 (page 67); November 12 (page 65); and December 10 (page 83), of the editions I browsed via microfilm at the Boston Public Library. The worksheets and letter are now held by the Houghton Library (which oversees the Woodberry Poetry Room) and can be requested for research. It is one of only a few of the Ariel poems not held by Smith C...

Cambridge University Press has published Representing Sylvia Plath , edited by Tracy Brain and Sally Bayley. The book is now available in the UK and will be available in the USA in September, though you may be able to order from CUP now... To order the book through Cambridge University Press, click here . The retail price is £50.00, which is substantial but I suspect work every penny or pence. Other metadata include: ISBN: 9781107006751 Publication date: August 2011 264 pages 22 b/w illus. Dimensions: 228 x 152 mm Weight: 0.56 kg The books contents include: Introduction: 'Purdah' and the enigma of representation by Sally Bayley and Tracy Brain Part I. Contexts: 1. 'Mailed into space': on Sylvia Plath's letters by Jonathan Ellis 2. 'The photographic chamber of the eye': Plath photography, and the post-confessional muse by Anita Helle 3. 'O the tangles of that old bed': fantasies of incest and the 'Daddy' narrative in Ariel...

On Saturday, Gail Crowther, who is visiting from England, and I did a little tour of Winthrop, Nahant, and Swampscott to see Plath's North Shore. While on the beach at Nahant, we decided to conduct a bit of an archaeological dig to try to make and discover a bit of history... For those interested, please re-read the first bit of Chapter Thirteen of The Bell Jar , and then view the following... For more Sylvia Plath Info Videos, see the YouTube page .

Emily Gould over at the Poetry Foundation has recently published " The Bell Jar at 40 ." Of course this being 2011, it is the 40th anniversary of The Bell Jar 's publication in America, an anniversary which previously escaped my cognizance. Although you didn't ask, I do not care much for the article's subtitle: "Plath's YA novel reaches middle age." Perhaps for obvious reasons? YA (Young Adult) has a different meaning to me than perhaps Gould intended? Novel about a young adult, yes, but I feel the content and themes of The Bell Jar are adult. Maybe I don't give enough credit to its youngest readers...who I do recognize can be quite young. The article itself is good; though be wary of the handful, or more, of instances of careless biographic and/or bibliographic reporting. A couple of points below should maybe clarify some of these, just in case her readers want the truth or a fuller version/a different perspective represented by some of h...