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...
Ahhhhhhh must write letters to people populated with poets.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to receive a letter (what an old fashioned idea!) from a Plath reader with a Plath stamp on it and respond with my own letter with a Plath stamp on it.
ReplyDeleteI shall be hoarding my Plath stamps, not sharing with anyone! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI think I shall be heading to the post office sometime soon ;)
ReplyDeleteCan you buy the stamp in a post office in the US or where do you buy stamps over there? Just the Sylvia Plath stamp or do you have to buy the whole collection at once?
ReplyDeleteI'm not from the USA, but I would die to own a stamp like that! If I know the details, maybe I can bother some friends to buy me a stamp like that! ;)
Anna
ReplyDeleteHi. I'm not sure if you can just buy the Plath one or not. You can order a book (about $9) from the USPS website. If one were to visit a post office perhaps one could request just the Plath one but as they are self-adhesive and come as the image shows, I'm not sure how it would work. The back of the stamps is perforated so it might be possible to separate them out.
Speaking of which, The back of the stamps has information about the poet and a snippet quote (this does not directly line up with the stamp of the poet). Plath's is from "Daddy." While you might expect, it to be, being a stamp:
"There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through."
It is not, it is actually the first stanza:
"You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo."
There are better lines I think they could have chosen.
pks