Sylvia Plath wrote her most famous villanelle on 21 February 1953 about Myron "Mike" Lotz, of Yale, whom she met over the Thanksgiving holiday in November 1952. I suspect many of us have been in that position before about a love interest; and in fact maybe some of you feel this degree of beautifully painful longing waiting for the next exciting Sylvia Plath Info Blog post? Right…
Anyway, Plath sent the poem off to The New Yorker and Harper's. A typescript copy of "Mad Girl’s Love Song" held by Lilly Library, probably sent by Plath to her mother in her letter dated the same day of composition, includes the following note typed at the top: "this one had the honor of being inspired by one myron lotz…" (Letters of Sylvia Plath, 567).
The poem has quite an interesting publication history. "Mad Girl's Love Song" was first published in the Smith Review (Spring 1953). It then appeared in the August 1953 issue of Mademoiselle.
Mademoiselle authorized "Mad Girl's Love Song" to be reprinted in at least three editions of the Boston Evening American which was then covering Plath's disappearance during her first suicide attempt. It accompanied articles with some lurid headlines. First in "Police, Kin Fear Smith Girl Suicide" (Final Edition), and then in two articles from later editions with headlines "Smith Girl in Coma At Own Home" ((Sports Charts Entries Edition) and (Sports Entries Results Edition). You can see the 256 articles on Plath suicide attempt that I have found here.
After several years off, Plath saw "Mad Girl's Love Song" published along with "Soliloquy of the Solipsist" in Granta, 4 May 1957. In a letter home written on 22 October 1956, Plath called Granta, "the 'new yorker' of Cambridge undergraduate life" (Letters of Sylvia Plath, 1322).
A decade later, after Plath's death, the Estate of Sylvia Plath allowed "Mad Girl's Love Song" to be published in the Harvard Advocate, May 1967. This appearance featured a number of other other poems Plath wrote as an undergraduate at Smith: "Danse Macabre", "Admonition" [from "Trio of Love Songs"], "Doomsday", "Dialogue en Route", and "Circus in Three Rings".
In 1971 it was printed twice. It appeared in Lois Ames' "Afterword" in the American edition of The Bell Jar and in the limited edition Crystal Gazer and Other Poems. Crystal Gazer includes poems written over a ten year period from 1952 to 1962.
After this: Nothing. The poem may have appeared in some anthologies but this is a rabbit hole down which I have no intention to go. "Mad Girl's Love Song" was not included in Plath's Pulitzer Prize winning Collected Poems, either as poem in the "Juvenilia" section or even listed as a poem she wrote in the "Uncollected Juvenilia: A complete list of poems composed before 1956" in the Index; which is thus hardly "complete". Though to be honest this is one of many pre-1956 omissions.
All links accessed 24 December 2017.
Anyway, Plath sent the poem off to The New Yorker and Harper's. A typescript copy of "Mad Girl’s Love Song" held by Lilly Library, probably sent by Plath to her mother in her letter dated the same day of composition, includes the following note typed at the top: "this one had the honor of being inspired by one myron lotz…" (Letters of Sylvia Plath, 567).
The poem has quite an interesting publication history. "Mad Girl's Love Song" was first published in the Smith Review (Spring 1953). It then appeared in the August 1953 issue of Mademoiselle.
Mademoiselle authorized "Mad Girl's Love Song" to be reprinted in at least three editions of the Boston Evening American which was then covering Plath's disappearance during her first suicide attempt. It accompanied articles with some lurid headlines. First in "Police, Kin Fear Smith Girl Suicide" (Final Edition), and then in two articles from later editions with headlines "Smith Girl in Coma At Own Home" ((Sports Charts Entries Edition) and (Sports Entries Results Edition). You can see the 256 articles on Plath suicide attempt that I have found here.
After several years off, Plath saw "Mad Girl's Love Song" published along with "Soliloquy of the Solipsist" in Granta, 4 May 1957. In a letter home written on 22 October 1956, Plath called Granta, "the 'new yorker' of Cambridge undergraduate life" (Letters of Sylvia Plath, 1322).
A decade later, after Plath's death, the Estate of Sylvia Plath allowed "Mad Girl's Love Song" to be published in the Harvard Advocate, May 1967. This appearance featured a number of other other poems Plath wrote as an undergraduate at Smith: "Danse Macabre", "Admonition" [from "Trio of Love Songs"], "Doomsday", "Dialogue en Route", and "Circus in Three Rings".
In 1971 it was printed twice. It appeared in Lois Ames' "Afterword" in the American edition of The Bell Jar and in the limited edition Crystal Gazer and Other Poems. Crystal Gazer includes poems written over a ten year period from 1952 to 1962.
After this: Nothing. The poem may have appeared in some anthologies but this is a rabbit hole down which I have no intention to go. "Mad Girl's Love Song" was not included in Plath's Pulitzer Prize winning Collected Poems, either as poem in the "Juvenilia" section or even listed as a poem she wrote in the "Uncollected Juvenilia: A complete list of poems composed before 1956" in the Index; which is thus hardly "complete". Though to be honest this is one of many pre-1956 omissions.
All links accessed 24 December 2017.
Thanks for these informations, do you know if actually there is an editor for this poem ?
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