New Works by and on Sylvia Plath

Fun Fact: Did you know that Sylvia Plath uses the word "perched" seven times in The Bell Jar?

Right...

There is some new work to promote that has come out in the last week by and on Sylvia Plath.

The Hudson Review has published, in full, the text of Sylvia Plath's short story "Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom" in their Spring issue.

It was the intention all along that the story appear in the Hudson before the decision was made by the Estate of Sylvia Plath and Faber to publish it in book form. I was asked by the Hudson to cheer lead their effort, which I was happy to do, to have the story appear first in their pages. I guess I did too good of a job? There is an essay by Karen V. Kukil on the story, too.

Next, Marsha Bryant has recently published "Queen bees: Edith Sitwell, Sylvia Plath & cross-Atlantic affiliations" in Feminist Modernist Studies. The abstract reads,

Drawing on the convergence of Edith Sitwell and Sylvia Plath in the April 1963 issue of The Atlantic, this essay recovers a mostly forgotten affiliation between iconic poets of the twentieth century. Sitwell was modernism’s midcentury Queen of Letters, crossing over from the literary magazines to popular American periodicals. She rose to prominence as a poet-critic during the heyday of the New Criticism and its male purveyors, yet fell to marginal status in the women’s poetry anthologies of the 1970s and 1980s. Plath admired Sitwell and considered her a formidable modernist foremother. The younger poet owned a copy of The Canticle of the Rose, and assessed Sitwell’s work in two college papers. Adorned in accolades and brocades, Dame Sitwell was modern poetry’s ultimate Queen Bee. Focusing on Plath’s initial reactions to her predecessor’s poetics, this essay also considers her Atlantic bee poems in light of Sitwell’s earlier “The Bee Oracles.” In addition, the essay discusses American women poets’ reception of Sitwell – and vice versa. Reconnecting these iconic women poets prompts new understandings of female literary influence that prove more technical than experiential. The understudied lines of affiliation between Sitwell and Plath can reveal new plotlines in modernist literary history.

Marsha Bryant is Professor of English & Distinguished Teaching Scholar and Director of Graduate Student Teaching at University of Florida.

All links accessed 6 June 2019.

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

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last

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