Save the Date: Sylvia Plath Event, 24 April 2021

A short while ago I saw a tweet by Sarah Bahr about her presenting a Sylvia Plath paper at a conference. The topic was "'Dying is an Art': Sylvia Plath's Theatricality of Death."

Well, I want to hear this and it got me thinking that it was about time for another virtual Plath thing. But not a full on Zoomposium, that was a good thing but took a lot of time. So I thought it might be worthwhile to try a small panel of three or so people.

Poet and Plath fiend Kathleen Ossip, whom I at the 2012 Plath Symposium at Indiana consented to participate, too.

To round the thing out, Emily Van Duyne said she was on board to discuss another virtual Plath series that we have been concocting and jonesing to start up (which will feature both Gail Crowther and Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick, among others), once schedules start to open up in May. In addition to this series, I am hopeful of hosting and co-hosting more virtual Plath events in the future. So, if you have a paper you have given on Plath and want to participate in a future event, please get it touch with me via email.

So, good people, mark your calendars for three weeks from today, 24 April 2021, at 10:30 am Eastern US time.

I am still working on which conference platform to us so please look for updates here and on Twitter.

All links accessed 25 March 2021.

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

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 and McLean Hospital

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