Ted Hughes, in April, received a blue plaque in North Tawton . Thanks to Cath for the link. The poor Sylvia Plath letter that failed to sell in February through Bonham’s, also failed to sell in a June 22 auction and Bonham’s in New York , and for a reduced estimate. I have about $45 dollars to my name so in another year, at this rate, I might be able to buy it! If you have an estimated 3,000-5,000 GBP to spare, on July 14, Sotheby’s is auctioning a self-portrait of Plath dated 7/25/1949. I hardly see a resemblance but it must be real. See Lot 98 . Plath Profiles 4 is in production, it is looking like it will be just under 400 pages of great greatness. Expect publication in the first week or so of July. Details to follow!

This afternoon Sylvia Plath scholarship lost a friend. James H "Jim" Long passed away after a nearly year-long battle with cancer. Many of you will remember Jim's contributions both to the Sylvia Plath Forum and to this blog. He was a passionate expert, even-toned, and very giving man: and this is just towards Plath. I never met Jim but he was a friend. Jim published three poems in Plath Profiles 2 in 2009.  In 2008, he published his first collection of poems, Between Wings: Poems . Rest in peace Jim.

PH Davies has reviewed Heather Clark’s The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes .  A wonderfully, beautifully written review. Recently I learned of a two articles that were previously not a part of any known Plath bibliography.  They are now a part of the one I am building... Reilly, Erlene. "Sylvia Plath: Talent Poet Tortured Women." Perspectives in Psychiatric Care 16:3. May 1978: 129-136. Holbrook, David. "The Agony of Sylvia Plath." Higher Education Quarterly 39:3. June 1985: 249-265. And then I also learned of this one, which was published well after Tabor's bibliography... Foster, A. V. M. and M. E. Edmonds. "The Roots of Ariel: Sylvia Plath and Her Father's Foot." Diabetic Medicine 12:7. July 1995: 580-584. And this one: Abse, Dannie. "The Dread of Sylvia Plath." The Two Roads Taken: A Prose Miscellany . London: Enitharmon Press, 2003. Other Matters: Thanks to ~VC for the following Plath reference from, OMG...

Last Friday I gave a brief paper entitled "A Perfectly Beautiful Time: Plath’s Nostalgia" in a panel organized by Steven Gould Axelrod called "Robert Lowell & His Circle" at the 22nd Annual American Literature Association conference in Boston. You will never guess the subject of my paper... True confession: I cheated a bit. For the main portion of the paper I used the introduction to my paper for Plath Profiles 4, which is titled "A Perfectly Beautiful Time: Sylvia Plath at Camp Helen Storrow," and wrote a brief introduction to connect it up a bit with Robert Lowell and his influence on Plath. And I thought maybe I could/should post that introduction here to maybe get a bit of conversation going on the subject of Plath and Lowell; and nostalgia as used in Plath's poetry (and other works, too), as learned from Lowell, particularly as I see it in his 1959 volume Life Studies .  Plath and Nostalgia is not a subject that has been explicitl...