Two new reviews to mention today on the exhibit of "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings." Sam Leith at The Observer reviews quite favorably the exhibit in " These drawings give us a whole new Sylvia Plath – sprightly, witty and fun " which appeared on 6 November 2011. B.K. at The Economist lightly reviews in " Sylvia Plath’s Drawings: An Unbearable Lightness " on 7 November 2011.  It is clear that many prefer Plath's poetry; however, it seems these people are trying to compare apples to oranges. This is why Plath wanted to publish The Bell Jar under a pseudonym, isn't it? Because she did not want -among other reasons- for her novel to be judged as the work of a poet. Same goes for the drawings...

Michael Glover at The Independent coolly reviews the exhibition "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings" which is now on at the Mayor Gallery in London. The subtitle to the review, "Plath the tortured poet's pictures are too polite to be a big draw" says all you'll need to read... But he just does not get it. Or, at least he does not get Plath. Glover asks, "What we really want to know about this exhibition is this: how does it connect with the rest of her tragic life? Are these drawings pent, febrile and tortured in the way that many of the greatest of the poems are pent, febrile and tortured? Have the things that she is drawing – flowers, animals, bottles, trees – been turned into terrible symbols of themselves?" Several of the drawings in the exhibit show a duplicitous or two-sided curiosity in objects, which directly relates to a large theme in Plath's writings. There are two drawings of the "Pleasures of Odds and Ends"; two of horse ches...

Among Robert Shaw’s directions to to his “Three Women” include the short, simple “Trust Sylvia.” After successful runs in London and Edinburgh, “Three Women” came to New York. The theater at 59 E. 59th Street sits squarely in between the Barbizon Hotel and 575 Madison Avenue, where Plath lived and worked in June 1953 as a Guest Editor for Mademoiselle . It is an area she got to know well in those weeks and so seems a great fit. “Three Women,” along with Edward Anthony’s “Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath,” is part of 59E59’s “A Plethora of Plath.” They have three theaters, and I wish they could have also staged something like “Dialogue Over a Ouija Board” or a reading of Ariel or something. But then I might have exploded in all the Plathcitement." “Three Women” is something I only ever imagined hearing: not seeing. Plath wrote it for the radio and the purist in me wanted it to stay that way. (I was tempted to just shut my eyes and listen, but being in the second row I thought that mi...

Al Alvarez's reaction to Ted Hughes' "Last Letter" appeared on The Guardian 's website a short while ago. The article, from what I can tell & was told, was in Saturday's Review section of said newspaper. Elisabeth Gray's "Wish I had a Sylvia Plath" was reviewed by TheaterMania.com and by BroadwayWorld.com . I saw "Three Women" twice on Saturday and have a review of it; but with all this other news going on will wait a day or so to post it. Emily Banas at Indiana University Northwest has written the following news release: IU Northwest English professor William Buckley publishes Volume Three of Plath Profiles . You will find the announcement to which I refer in the title of this post within the news release.

Lorna Bradbury of The Telegraph reviews the Spoken Word Sylvia Plath CD in her review, " From the Archive: The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath ." Not perfect (Assia Wevill and Ted Hughes were not married... how many times have we been over this?) and not a complete review (its focus, like many others, is on "Two of a Kind"), but another positive opinion on the British Library publication. What I think is best about all that's been written so far is that the focus has shifted so far away from the perpetual doom & gloom opinion of Plath. The recordings show her as so lively & personable & professional. And critical, such as, in "Two of a Kind", when she turns the tables on Owen Leeming and leaves him a stumbling-bumbling mess. A true step forward.

Poet, writer, and blogger P. Viktor has two reviews of the British Library's Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath CD. The first, posted on 26 April, is a review of the disc itself. Read " Sylvia Plath - The Spoken Word, Review. " The second, posted today, is a more critical look at "Two of a Kind" & the marriage of Plath and Hughes. Read " Sylvia Plath - The Spoken Word: Why the Plath-Hughes Marriage Failed. " Over at Amazon.co.uk, Cathy Earnshaw (love the name) gave a five-star review, too.

The following is a review of the British Library's recent publication The Spoken Word and is written by Dr. Gail Crowther. Sylvia Plath Speaks: a review of The Spoken Word First, there is the packaging. Slick hues of black and grey with dashes of red and yellow. The disc case sits comfortably in the palm of your hand. Turn it over to see the track listings, all the surviving BBC broadcasts from the years 1960-1963. Remove the booklet; a flash of yellow on the back page with the distinctive British Library logo. Open the first page and fall straight into Peter K Steinberg’s introduction. Sharp, authoritative and full of energy, he guides us through the contents of the CD, telling us what to listen out for, bringing alive the sound of Plath’s breath, the shuffling of her papers, the background sniggering of her interviewer as she makes another Esther Greenwood-like wisecrack. This introduction also prepares us for the sheer output and involvement that Plath had with the BBC in that...

This 30 minute program on "Wuthering Heights" (and other poems) by Sylvia Plath is well done. The commentary by Owen Sheers - with one notable exception - was thoughtful, informative, accurate, etc. The footage of Sheers in Yorkshire, as well as the high resolution images of Plath, her book covers, etc. added to the beauty of Karen McCallion's production. I have always found that being in the place Plath wrote about adds authenticity and understanding to the work at hand. Sylvia Plath is the only American writer to be included in this BBC Four series, A Poet's View of Britain . This is an accomplishment. Sheers discusses Plath's Yorkshire poems "The Great Carbuncle" and "Hardcastle Crags" before setting on the title poem, "Wuthering Heights". He discusses how both Plath experiences in Yorkshire and her earlier poems paved the way towards the composition of "Wuthering Heights". These poems well place Plath within the traditio...

Reviews started pouring in on 8 January for Robert Shaw's production of Three Women. The reviews continued into the next day. Here are a list of links... Lyn Gardner at The Guardian (9 January) A mixed review: while Gardner recognizes the power of Plath's poetry, it's translation from a radio drama to stage doesn't work for her. Benedict Nightingale at the Times (9 January) A more enthusiastic review, though Nightingale wishes there was more acting. Ian Shuttleworth at the Financial Times (8 January) Shuttleworth's title says it all, "The words do all the work." His review concludes, "Three Women resonates soul-deep, regardless of one’s experiences or one’s sex. But the power is all Plath’s, and nothing to do with the staging." Fiona Mountford of The Evening Standard at This is London (8 January) Mountford also seems more optimistic about the text of the poem, versus its being performed. She says, "there can be no getting around the fac...

Viv Groskop at The Guardian reviews the Robert Shaw production of Sylvia Plath's "Three Women" here ! The review is as good as I was hoping it would be. While I am envious of those who are in attendance, at least the text is available for reading and consideration at any time.

The Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium at Smith College, held on 25-26 April, brought together a wide variety of Plath's readers. Nearly all the papers and presentations given were first heard at the Oxford Symposium in October 2007. Additional content included a fascinating paper by Susan van Dyne ("'The endless gladitorial event': Who was Hughes as Plath's editor?"), author of Revising Life: Sylvia Plath's Ariel Poems , and a panel of friends of Sylvia Plath, which included Judith Kroll, who read letters they received from either Sylvia Plath or, in the case of Kroll, from Aurelia Plath. Attendance consisted mainly of people from the Northampton area, but some drove in from all over New England, or flew in from places as far as Texas and Japan. The events kicked off on Friday with a community reading of Ariel: The Restored Edition . Plath fans, scholars, poets, and other distinguished guests read the poems one by one. Phil McCurdy began the reading with a...

2007 review 2007 marked the 75th anniversary of Plath's birth, and it was an interesting and exciting year for the late poet. Several books were published, including three unique compilations of essays and a work of biographical poems. One book, Linda Wagner-Martin's Sylvia Plath's Poetry , was delayed for various reasons, disappointing many, including myself. The book is now scheduled for release on 7 August 2008. Books about Sylvia Plath that were published this year include: The Unraveling Archive: essays on Sylvia Plath edited by Anita Helle Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual edited by Kathleen Connors and Sally Bayley Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's rival and Ted Hughes's doomed love by Eilat Negev and Yehuda Koren Chapters in a mythology: the poetry of Sylvia Plath by Judith Kroll Sylvia Plath (Bloom's Modern Critical Views) edited by Harold Bloom Your own, Sylvia: a verse portrait of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Hemphill Le...

Amazon.com lists that Kathleen Connors and Sally Bayley's Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's art of the visual is available (effective 6 November) for immediate shipping. The local Borders in Boston also lists the book as imminently available in stores. Additionally, OUP's USA site states that the book is available as well. It is clear that the 26 December release date was moved up. Adam Philips at The Observer reviews the Letters of Ted Hughes in today's paper. A number of my pages on my Sylvia Plath website are updated: index2.html , resources.html , and books.html . All other web pages are updated, but won't be online for several weeks yet. The image here is of a test page. I am still working on formating and content. When everything is up, there should be in excess of 350 images - both photographic images of Sylvia Plath places and scanned book covers.

For any Swedish readers of Sylvia Plath, Symposium panelist Annika J. Hagström (Saturday afternoon session on Images and Viewers of Plath, paper title "Stasis in Darkness: Sylvia Plath as a Fictive Character") recently published this article in the Helsingborgs Dagblad .

The Sylvia Plath 75 th Year Symposium featured several extra-curricular events for delegates and attendees. Each night during the symposium, Elisabeth Gray performed the one woman play Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath. I had the opportunity to see the play Friday night, which featured a lively but curtailed introduction by Dr. Barbara Mossberg , of California State University at Monterrey Bay. The play itself is somewhat reminiscent of Paul Alexander’s Edge, whereas Edge takes place in the last day/night of Plath’s life, Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath takes place in the last ten minutes of her life. Gray’s character is Esther Greenwood, and the play starts with her head in an oven. In fact, when you enter the theatre, she’s already there. What followed was an emotional adventure. Alternating between deeply funny and tear-inducing sad, Gray hallucinates her way through a re-creation of events. She converses with her oven in a voice ripped off from the teacher in Charlie Brown, “ waa - waa whaa -...

Recently The Scotsman and the Daily Mail reviewed The Letters of Ted Hughes, edited by Christopher Reid. The Daily Mail review includes some photographs, including a "new" one of Sylvia Plath at which her fans and scholars alike will marvel.

Al. Alvarez and Sally Bayley engaged in a long talk about Alvarez’s friendship with Plath and Hughes. The conversation stayed mostly on the former, despite the opportunity for a longer friendship with the latter. Alvarez started by explaining his role and presence at the Symposium. He asked Sally, when approached, if he was to be a participant or an exhibition! Laughter rolled through the audience. Alvarez read Plath’s “The Moon and the Yew Tree”, discussing as he did in Voices and Visions how the poem shows two voices, both vying for supremacy. Ultimately, Plath’s true poetic voice triumphed, evidenced in lines such as “I simply cannot see where there is to get to.” On this transformation of Plath’s voice, Alvarez says, “She said fuck it! To hell with all this English gentility.” He also commented that there is “much more life in Plath’s writing about death… There is energy…” Alvarez was quite candid. At one point his train of thought derailed, so he turned to Sally and questioned...

This morning commenced with an informal morning forum on Sylvia Plath websites, led by me. As the crowd was slow to assemble, I held off on my memorial for the late Sylvia Plath Forum moderated Elaine Connell. I discussed three Sylvia Plath web sites, highlighting each websites focus. Anja Beckmann’s www.sylviaplath.de , Elaine Connell’s www.sylviaplathforum , and my own www.sylviaplath.info received some attention. I included slides details some of the towns, cities, states, and countries that I’ve traveled to in order capture physical locations in film of places where Plath lived or places about which she wrote. For the concluding twenty minutes, several audience members and I got into a small dialogue about Plath websites in general, and I showed a slide show of photographs and book covers that seemed, I think, to entertain. I was so pleased to have had this opportunity to discuss my contribution to Plath’s presence on the web, and am thankful for the feedback received through...

Day three at the Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium is done; it was the biggest day on the schedule in terms of featured and guest speakers in included a very big surprise guest. The morning started with an informal forum on the Plath archives at Smith College, the Lilly Library (Indiana University) and Emory University. Karen Kukil discussed the holdings at Smith, and discussed the differences in their holdings from that of IU or Emory. She also discussed how the archives each came to hold separate, though obviously complimentary collections. The first round of featured speakers after this forum was Karen Kukil and Robin Peel. Karen’s talk was "Sylvia Plath’s Women and Poetry"; she discussed Plath’s association through the years with women such as Marianne Moore, Lynn Lawner, Elizabeth Bishop, Judith Jones (her editor at Knopf), Assia Wevill, Frieda Hughes, and Anne Sexton. Her paper drew from the collections at Smith, University of Texas at Austin, the Massachusetts Historica...

The morning started with an informal, optional forum of a new journal called Plath Profiles, conceived by Prof. Bill Buckley of IU Northwest. The journal, which will be online and in print, though in print less frequently, will feature a variety of content ranging from standard academic essays to note and reactions to single poems or groups of poems, to interdisciplinary thoughts to Plath’s work. And much, much more. A second part to the Forum will take place today, to further brainstorm. Following this, Lynda K. Bundtzen and Tim Kendall presented on very interesting subjects. Bundtzen’s paper “Confession, Contrition, and Concealment in Ted Hughes’s Howls and Whispers”; which is a chapter, or part of a chapter of a longer work on Hughes. Howls and Whispers, for those who do not know, is a small, eleven poem collection printed in limited numbers (110) and intended for ownership by rare book rooms, special collections, or very wealthy private owners. They are poems written in a sim...