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Blackbird February 9, 2007

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Yesterday was really interesting! I got to meet Dr. Donovan the editor for Blackbird the online literary journal at VCU, which recently published a newly discovered Plath sonnet. He told me the story of how they found the poem and were able to get the publishing rights:
apparently one of the MFA graduate students was writing a paper on F. Scott Fitzgerald but what she really wanted to do was study Sylvia Plath, so she asked around to see if there were any links between the two authors. She found a library that had a huge amount of data on Fitzgerald, including Plath’s undergraduate copy of The Great Gatsby. So, then she went and found an article about this particular book of Plath’s and how on a certain page (which you can see by going to blackbird’s website) there is a note “L’Ennui” which corresponds to a poem. Having never heard of this poem, the student contacted the Lilly library which has all of Plath’s manuscripts and asked for the poem which (for a fee) they sent her. They sent her two typed pages: one with Plath’s name and address at the top and another without. The student inquired as to where this poem was published and the library responded that it was not published because the copy that didn’t have her name indicated that Plath maybe didn’t want to publish it. Blackbird worked for two years to get the rights to this sonnet, contacting Faber and faber (Plath’s publishers) and both of Plath’s children who now have the rights to her work (they never succeeded in reaching her children) and finally after paying on two-hundred dollars they recieved publishing rights! News of the new poem spread around the world (including a weird amount of interest from Turkey….which is weird) and gave a great deal of acclaim to the Blackbird journal.
I also learned that there are many pieces of Plath’s Juvenelia in this same library that have still never been published. I think it is really interesting that they would publish her journals and letters and all kinds of documents that she couldn’t have possibly envisioned being publish(able) and yet they don’t publish these early poems that are so helpful in understanding the origins of her creative process, claiming that she didn’t intend them to be published!
Another great thing about this Blackbird publication is the way in which it introduces the poem and has links to the origional scanned documents. Dr. Donovan agreed with me that it is a shame that she is not given credit for her poetic skill and rather her death is treated like a masterpiece. In his effort to curb this belief, he displayed the poem as a kind of momento to her early self-discipline and practice as a poet. Because it is true, from a very young age Plath worked extremely hard, read as much as she could and wrote at legnth each and every day, and amongst her writing she created a lot of poetry, that while nowhere near as skillfully beautiful as her Ariel poems, are incredibly valuable stepping stones on the way.

so, visit Blackbird and check out “Ennui” by Sylvia Plath!

Just So I Don’t Forget February 8, 2007

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This is really more of a bookmark than an actual post, but I wanted to note that I read an article yesterday that stated that “Medusa” was actually written about Plath’s mother! I think this is interesting because my immediate assumption when I read such words as “umbilical” is to assume that she is speaking about her own children immediately disregarding the fact that she is someone else’s child….

*more on this later….including: the implications of this new subject and then this subject in comparison to her other poems about maternity.
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AND I’M BACK:

So this article I read gave some insight into Plath’s relationship with her mother Aurelia. Apprently in adulthood (despite kind letters) Plath and her mother did not get along. There are entire transcripts of Plath talking to her therapist about how much she hates her mother. Theoretically the problem lies in Aurelia’s attempts to live vicarioulsy through her children, which put added pressure on the already self-assured perfectionist Plath and resulted in little praise. This now makes so much more sense in terms of the poem “Medusa” which describes a blood-sucking, Life-leaching monster…tied somehow maternally to the speaker. It also helps to explain Plath’s sense of detachement in the poems she wrote about her own children. It makes perfect sense (to me at least) that if you are dissatisfied with your own mother, you would try to be the opposite kind of mother to your own children. The opposite of a mother striving to live vicariously through her children is a mother who detaches herself almost completely from the lives of her children, recognizing their individuality from her immediatly. In a way this softens my opinion about Plath maternally as well. It is less that she wished to be detached from her children and more that she was trying to detach herself from them because she saw it as the best way for them to thrive.

I could be way off base here but I think this makes sense!

Everybody Is Crazy February 7, 2007

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After another really great meeting with professor Emerson I am once again prompted to revisit my aim in this project or rather speculate on something brand new yet totally relevant.
We spoke a lot about the idea of “passing” or rather the notion of “crazy” people (whether they be emotional or physical or anything outside of the realm of typical normalcy) walk amongst us everyday in an effort to hide or “pass” as “normal”. In the article I eluded to several posts back I quoted the author as describing Plath’s life as “coping” and I think this is a similar sentiment. I am left to wonder if this “passing/coping” situation is really occuring or if we try to convince ourselves this is the case to make our lives easier, because we can’t be held accountable if we never notice. There is also the idea of self-accepted eccentricity, or rather the notion that the people we label, stigmatize and isolate as “crazy” know and don’t care, and it is really our own discomfort with the idea that they know and don’t care that tries to make us believe that they are likewise ashamed and trying to “pass”.
It is so easy to look at the end of Plath’s life and shrug and say “eh she lost her mind and she commmitted suicide, but she was crazy and it’s what she wanted” and I wonder why it is so easy for us to give her back her agency at the end? How it can be that her whole life’s talent is reduced to crazy emotional impulses out of her control, where everyone wants the credit and no one wants to give it to Sylvia Plath the poet, but her suicide is absolutely hers? The way they look at how premeditated it was and how carefully planned it was and yet no one saw it coming because she was so good at “coping”?
I don’t know it just seems horribly unfair to take the power out of her poetics but restore it to her death and then to treat said death like one of her masterpieces.

I leant Professor Emerson this documentary called “The Beales of Grey Gardens”. It was filmed in the seventies by two brothers, Albert and David Maysles, in which they spent countless hours at the East Hampton estate “Grey Garden” with mother and daughter recluses (big) Edith and (little) Edith Beale. Little Edith is a first cousin to Jaqueline Kennedy, thus they are old debutantes. The two woman around 60 and mid 80’s respectively live alone in this dilaptated estate that is always on the verge of condemnation by the Hampton authorities. The film chronicles their lives and thoughts including dancing and singing and poetry recitation. I personally am obsessed with them. I think they are completely charming and so very much in control of their own lives, however, reviews on the films are mixed, and many people who watch them find it sad and label them crazy.
Just for fun, here is a clip of the movie, and tell me what you think!
this is a long and confusing post I know, but stick with me! and here is a reward:

it is interesting to wonder how gender plays into this idea of crazy, and if Plath had been a man, would we not be looking for someone to blame for his suicide rather blaming the man himself? and is it really any better?

Midnight Musings February 4, 2007

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It might be important to first note that if you cannot sleep you should not read Sylvia Plath…it is NOT soothing!
I am reading the second half of Ariel (the restored edition) and I’ve now read everything but the bee poems at the very end, i’m not sure why i’m saving them, but they seem to belong to their own sub-category and I would like to read them apart, so, I’ll probably get to them on Tuesday.
But, as far as my initial reactions to this second half of the volume, there are a few incredibly striking changes. I am immediately aware of why the critics laud these final twenty (or so) poems as her strongest, because they are undoubtedly so. They are eerily vivid and varied as compared to her earlier poems.
“Nick and the Candlestick” is a nice departure from her other poems about babies (i.e. “Morning Song) in many cases she is still rather removed and subservient to the baby, but there is also a sense that she worships him. She quite literally compares him to the christ child: “remembering even in sleep,/your crossed position” which, albeit isn’t completely non-creepy, but isn’t altogether non-endearing either. This poem reads incredibly charming especially when you get to the poem “Medusa” which I think (although only tentatively still) is about a baby and even if it’s not, it is so visually upsetting either way that i’ll need to do more research to comment further.
The moon becomes a star figure (pun intended) in these poems. “She” (as the moon is consistently a feminine figure) is this sterile, mostly sinister, incredibly regal being that involves herself in almost every poem to some capacity. I was very interested in the poem “The Rival” which I had never read before but which really describes the moon or rather Plath’s moon, as synonymous with the human subject of the poem (possibly and again tentatively her mother…but I am quite probably very wrong). It is one of the clearest articulations of the moon’s attributes according to Plath (here are a few lines):
“The Rival”
If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world: yours is unaffected.

(73)

I will do more research on these poems but i’ll leave with that for now….(notice how vivid and clear this is….and could not possibly be simply emotional outpourings)

Some Secondary Reading February 2, 2007

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Last night I read the article “Domesticated Goddess” by Cristina Nehring from “The Atlantic Monthly” (2004). It focused on the variety of representations of Plath’s biography. This article totally inspired if not discouraged me. It is the article I wish I’d written and captured the ideas that I was hoping to express in a vain attempt at origionality. This is of course an impossible goal because Plath has been so widely studied from the time of her suicide that there is little new speculation. So, in my paper I will borrow heavily from Nehring’s ideas and it will of course have a much heavier focus on her poetry (which i’m excited to get back to). The main idea of this article, or rather the idea that resonated the most with me is this:
“Plath didn’t curse or cower in her daily life; she coped. She got up in the morning and told herself she was happy; otherwise she couldn not have accomplished all the child care, household duties, moves, mailings, meetings with editors, typing for Ted, horseback riding, knitting, German study, beekeeping, and writing in several genres that we know she did…That does not mean there wasn’t a level at which Plath gave free reign to her doubts, at which she permitted herself to be pessismistic, to be brutal, to fallow her fears, her fantasies, her darker intuitions, as far down or up as they would take her. It seems to me that the critics who call Plath schizophrenic are pretending that people are simpler than they are.” (124)

This is EXACTLY what i’ve been trying to articulate. Plath wasn’t simply emotionally disturbed, she was also a busy working mother and wife (which had its own repercussions) in a way this realization ruins the mystique, but I think that it is this “mystique” that needs to be ruined. And if you are going to appreciate Plath’s poetry because of her personal life, you should do so not because she was “crazy” but because she was able to write (and to write skillfully/beautifully) despite her incredibly busy life.
Anyway, that’s what i’ve been up to! If iv’e been unclear in some of my aims or my opinions, hopefully this quote will clear things up!

*also as a side note, i think it is totally insane that Hughes had Plath do his typing for her….and you want to talk about “crazy”? consider that Hughes CONTINUED to have high profile affairs throughout his entire life even though his first two wives committed suicide!?!? I think THAT is crazy!