Sylvia Plath's Excuses

In Box 10 of Plath mss II at the Lilly Library is perhaps one of my favorite documents Sylvia Plath created. Folder 6 in said box contains a six lovely and wonderful items that were once a part of Plath's day-to-day life. The folder name on the finding aid is simply "Miscellaneous."

The first item in the folder is a typed list of poetry and prose submissions, annotated with acceptances (dates, periodicals, and money earned) from 1948 to 1952. It is the first of such submissions lists which have been more famously made use of for the 1959 to 1963 period (these leafs are held by Smith College).

The second item is a beautiful handwritten thing of "Excuses for unwanted dates".

The third item is a catalog of "boys gone out with [in the] 1948-1949 (school year)". The back page is "Boys who asked & were unlucky".

Fourth, is a two-paragraph "Leaves from a Date-Palm Tree" in which Plath incorporates the last names of the boys she dated as part of the narrative. The surnames include Still, Shepardson, Sides, Fox, Norton, Hoag, Elwell, Mason, Hall, Russell, Hodges, Short, Stout, Bothfeld, Pollard, Gasse.

Fifth is the sheet music and lyrics for "Class Song - 1950". Plath wrote the words, the music was by Robert Blakesley.

The second item, "Excuses" warrants more description. There are two names that she forbade herself from dating: Paul and Jay. She drew a mug shot---front view and side view---and offered $1000 for "extermination." That is rather extreme. The four actual excuses are 1) previous date; 2) babysitting; 3) an infectious disease including, as a final deterrent, cancer; and 4) that she had turned communist.

If you benefited from this post or any content on the Sylvia Plath Info Blog, my website for Sylvia Plath (A celebration, this is), and @sylviaplathinfo on Twitter, then please consider sending me a tip via PayPal. Thank you for at least considering!

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

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

Search This Blog