Sylvia Plath Trivia Answers

Thanks to Anonymous for being the only one to respond to the trivia questions. This was my second attempt at this (See the trivia 16 June 2008 and the answers on 29 June 2008) and both were relatively poorly received. Ho hum; seems like the “Did you know...” is a better way to go.

The answers are:

1. In the fall of 1954, during the first semester of her senior year at Smith College, which charitable activity did Sylvia Plath do?

D. Read aloud to a dear old blind man.

2. To whom did she write of this activity?

B. Gordon Lameyer

In a letter simply dated "Saturday" Plath asked id he mentioned this activity to him. She reported that she read aloud to the dear old blind man on Monday's.

3. How much money did Sylvia Plath lose playing roulette in Monte Carlo during her winter break from Cambridge in December 1955/January 1956?

C. $3

In a letter from January 21, 1956 to Gordon Lameyer, Plath recounts her continental excursions, admitting to the loss of funds.

4. Who did Sylvia Plath credit in a letter for the title of her poem “Circus in Three Rings”?

D. Gordon Lameyer

In a letter dated simply "Thursday morning" (likely late November or early December 1954), Plath mentioned that her story "In the Mountains" and poem "Circus in Three Rings" had come out in the Smith Review, and does indeed mention "your great title" regarding the poem.

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...

Some final photographs of Sylvia Plath

Susan O'Neill-Roe took a series of photographs of Sylvia Plath and her children from October to late November (or maybe early December) 1962 while she was a day nanny/mother's help at Court Green. From nearby Belstone , it was a short drive to North Tawton and the aid she provided enabled Plath to complete the masterful October and November poems and also to make day or overnight trips to London for poetry business and other business. Some of O'Neill-Roe's photographs are well-known. However, a cache of photographs formed a part of the papers of failed biographer Harriet Rosenstein. They were sold separately from the rest of her papers that went to Emory. I was fortunate enough to see low resolution scans of them a while back so please note these are being posted today as mere reference quality images. There are two series here. The first of the children with Plath dressed in red and black. (This should be referred to in the future, please, as Plath's Stendhal-c...

Amy C. Rea Reviews Heather Clark's Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

Here’s a thing about me: I’m a voracious reader, but very rarely have a physically based emotional response to something I’m reading. I don’t laugh out loud, I don’t cry, both of which I do when watching movies. It’s not that I don’t find things funny or sad when I read, but apparently I need more of a visual cue. So it’s telling that when I got to the end of Dr. Heather Clark’s new biography of Sylvia Plath, Red Comet , I cried. It’s not as if I didn’t know how the story ended. But the level of detail and analysis Clark brings to her study of Plath is so detailed, and her examination of those brutal last weeks so deeply explored, that it broke my heart. Clark has done some tremendously important and much-needed work with this biography. It would be remiss of me not to note the aid she received from Peter K. Steinberg and the work he did compiling Plath’s Letters . Clark clearly spent a great deal of time studying these source materials, as well as others that were not available ...

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