Two news items to report this week: Plath Profiles is making progress. I've recently been informed about a new publication that Sylvia Plath readers might be interested in reading. It is Lady Lazarus by Andrew F. Altschul. The book is about "poetry, punk rock, and suicide." It's the story of Calliope Bird Morath, the daughter of famous punk rockers. Her father committed suicide when she was four years old, and she has grown up to be a "confessional poet," hounded by the media and haunted by her memories of her father. It's set in Southern California during the "grunge revolution" of the early 1990s, as well as in the crazed celebrity culture of the 21st century, and is partly narrated by a washed-up music journalist who has become obsessed with Calliope, her father, and the connections between rock and roll and poetry. Lady Lazarus is not about Sylvia Plath... however, the title is an obvious reference, and in general I think the main charac...

Last night, I updated all the individual works pages on my website for Sylvia Plath , "A celebration, this is". Each page now features bibliographies of reviews that appeared around the time of publication. I wish it were possible to provide links to the articles, but copyright being what it is... Nevertheless, I hope these lists prove useful in reading the very important reviews contemporary to each publication. A note about the page for Plath's Children's Stories. The text there is temporary and unfinished. I should have better content there by Sunday. The webpages are: Ariel (Please see the Poetry Works page) Ariel: The Restored Edition (Please see the Poetry Works page) The Bell Jar (Also in Prose Works ) Children's Stories (Please see the Prose Works page) The Colossus (Please see the Poetry Works page) The Collected Poems (Please see the Poetry Works page) Crossing the Water (Please see the Poetry Works page) The Journals of Sylvi...

In 1998, a journal titled Death Studies published a special issue on Sylvia Plath. Death Studies publishes "on significant research, scholarship, and practical approaches in the fast growing areas of bereavement and loss, grief therapy, death attitudes, suicide, and death education. It provides an international interdisciplinary forum in which a variety of professionals share results of research and practice, with the aim of better understanding the human encounter with death and assisting those who work with the dying and their families." If you are interested in a little bit of light, late winter reading, the articles are available in full-text PDF files through Academic Search Complete, which many people have access to via their colleges and universities. If, however, you do not have access and would like the articles, please email me. The following articles appeared in this issue. Firestone, Lisa, and Joyce Catlett. 1998. "The treatment of Sylvia Plath." Deat...

This is late news, but... While many of us were fresh off of participating in the Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium at Oxford last fall, James Michie, Plath's editor at Heinemann, passed away. The Guardian's obituary is here . Michie was responsible for seeing The Colossus and The Bell Jar in print.

The Woodberry Poetry Room, located in Lamont Library at Harvard, holds typescripts of five poems by Sylvia Plath. The poems are all "addressed" 337 Elm Street in the top right corner. This was her residence at Northampton, Mass. from 1957-1958. The poems are: "The Disquieting Muses" "Poem for Paul Klee's 'Perseus: The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering'" "The Earthenware Head" "Departure of the Ghost" "On the Decline of Oracles" It is possible these are the typescripts for a reading she gave on 13 June 1958 at the Woodberry Poetry Room, but one of the poems, "Poem for Paul Klee's 'Perseus: The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering'" was not read at the time. (It was also not read on her second reading there on 22 February 1959.) I think these many be somehow connected to the poems she read for Lee Anderson in April 1958, as all five were read at that time. "The Disquieting Muses" has at least...

In today's Guardian, Sylvia Plath is featured as one of their chosen greatest poets of the 20th century. Read it here, now .

Over the next week, The Guardian will publish small booklets of poems by the 20th century's greatest poets. The poets include T. S. Eliot (today), W. H. Auden (12 March) Sylvia Plath (13 March), Philip Larkin (14 March), Ted Hughes (16 March), Seamus Heaney (17 March), and Siegfried Sassoon (18 March). Each booklet includes a foreword by a prominent scholar, writer, or critic. Read more...