Sylvia Plath Anthologized

I recently learned (or rather was reminded) that two of Sylvia Plath's poems and a photograph of her were printed in an anthology in 1963, just a few months after her death. Two poems and a photo of Ted Hughes were included, too. This book and the poems are not listed in Stephen Tabor's Analytical Bibliography.

The book is The Modern Poets: An American-British Anthology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963). It was edited by John Malcolm Brinnin and Bill Read and includes photographs by Rollie McKenna. Brinnin would have known McKenna for years as she famously photographed his Welsh buddy, the poet Dylan Thomas. And McKenna photographed Plath and Hughes in Boston sometime during the Boston year in 1958-1959. A review of the book, "Handsomest of Poetry Anthologies", appeared in the Boston Globe on 19 May 1963, next to the article "Anne Sexton Plans Tour of Europe: Commitment Necessary To Be Poet".

The two Hughes poems are "Hawk Roosting" and "View of a Pig".

The two Plath poems are "Black Rook in Rainy Weather" and "The Colossus".

I think it is great Plath was included. (And it possibly might have given her the smile of accomplishment that Adrienne Rich was not!) But I cannot help but wonder when the poems were selected for inclusion? Perhaps it was when Brinnin and Read visited Plath & Hughes at Court Green on 25 August 1962 (reported in Stevenson, see also Trinidad; during this visit offered Hughes a teaching position at the University of Connecticut. Plath refers to this visit and these men in some of the worksheets for "Death & Co.)". The thing that really floors me was that Plath's mini-biography includes the detail that she died by suicide.

It is always, always strange for me to recall that as poems like "Black Rook in Rainy Weather" and "The Colossus" were appearing in anthologies such as this, Plath has already moved so far beyond them. Remember, "Black Rook" was written in November 1956 and "The Colossus" in October 1959. By May 1963, Plath had died, obviously, but she was a full year removed from some of her most powerful verses such as "Three Women", "Elm" and "The Rabbit Catcher". This is not the only example. "Leaving Early" was published by London Magazine in August 1961 and then in Harper's in December 1962, just a few months before "The Arrival of the Bee Box" and "Wintering" in The Atlantic Monthly.

Because it is contemporary, here is the photo of the American poet W.S. Merwin that is in the book.

I like looking at the photographs of the poets (and reading their poems). Especially their photographs as many look just as Plath would have known them. Such as, for example, Merwin, Robert Bagg, Philip Booth, John Lehmann, Marianne Moore, Howard Moss (pretty sure they never met in person, but he was an important figure), Anne Sexton, and George Starbuck, among many others. E.E. Cummings and Ezra Pound were not photographed; Cummings because he passed away in September 1962 when the book was still being compiled and Pound was in Italy doing what Ezra Pound did.

Ted Hughes' copy, which he received in May 1963, is held by Emory University. A copy is available to view via Archive.org. There was a second edition of the book published in 1970.


All links accessed 17-18 May 2018.