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Showing posts from May, 2009

Sylvia Plath's Last Book of Poetry

For the last week, many visitors to the blog have come via the keywords "Sylvia Plath's last book of poetry". In order to help you out with this, here is a summary of Sylvia Plath's "last book of poetry". The Colossus : This was Sylvia Plath's first published book of poetry. It was also the last book of poetry published in her lifetime. Ariel : this was the last book of poetry Sylvia Plath prepared for publication before her death. It was also the last book of poetry published under her name in the 1960s. Winter Trees : This collection was the last book of poetry published - not including limited editions - in the 1970s. The Collected Poems was, for four years, the last book of Sylvia Plath's poetry published until the Selected Poems was published in England in 1985 and in the US in 1998. Ariel: The Restored Edition , published in 2004, is the last book of poetry by Sylvia Plath prepared to be published. The Collected Poems was re-issued in 2008 b

On Sylvia Plath

The following post was submitted to Sylvia Plath Info Blog from Jim Long. I've just been reading the recently-published Words on Air: the complete correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) . I thought perhaps readers of this blog might be interested in a couple of comments between them on Plath, and on Richard Wilbur’s poem “Cottage Street, 1953”, in which he describes an early encounter with Sylvia and her mother, shortly after Sylvia’s breakdown and suicide attempt. In October 1963, the journal Encounter published posthumously a set of 10 of Plath's late poems: "Death & Co", "The Swarm", "The Other", "Getting There", " Lady Lazarus ", "Little Fugue", "Childless Woman", "The Jailor", "Thalidomide" and "Daddy". On October 27th 1963 (Sylvia's birthday!), Lowell wrote to Bishop: "Have you read the posthumous poe

Stonepicker & The Book of Mirrors, reviewed

Elizabeth Lund, of The Christian Science Monitor , favorably reviews the recent poetry collection by Freida Hughes , Stonepicker & The Book of Mirrors . The Book of Mirrors will be published in the UK this fall , on 10 October.

Sylvia Plath collections: Nathaniel Tarn papers, ca. 1939-2000

The papers of poet Nathaniel Tarn are held at Stanford University in California. Tarn took notes based on conversations, experiences, and things heard with David Wevill and Assia Wevill which involved the beginning of the affair between Assia and Ted Hughes in July 1962, the demise of the Plath-Hughes marriage, Plath's suicide, and beyond. Certain bits were quoted by Diane Middlebrook in Her Husband: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes-a marriage and by Eilat Negev and Yedhuda Koren in their 2006 biography of Assia Wevill, A Lover of Unreason . Tarn's handwriting is not easy to read, but it is a fascinating look at what was going on at the time. The entry from the finding aid looks like this: Series I. Books and Manuscripts Subseries C. British Authors Single Correspondence Files [ Box 29 ] [ Folder 3 ] Wevill, David, and Wevill, Assia. DW: 5 als, 11 tls, 1 handwritten postcard; 26 pages & 12 pp. of photocopied poems & several poems in cuttings, 1958-86;AW: 6 als,

New Thumbnail page on Sylvia Plath Info

I'd like to call your attention to a new page on A celebration, this is , my website for Sylvia Plath. The new page is a thumbnail gallery of periodical covers which published Plath's poems, stories, etc. As I find new images they will be added. Enjoy! Many people are to be thanked for their contributions to this page. You know who you are: with deep thanks. To introduce this page, I'm publishing here the cover of My Weekly . It was in this issue that Plath's short story "The Perfect Place" appeared on 28 October 1961. Drafted in late 1960 under the title of "The Lucky Stone", this story went unacknowledged for more than 40 years. To read more on its discovery - with the aide of Irralie Doel and Lena Friesen, see my essay in Plath Profiles . See here also the first page of the story.

Review : "Wuthering Heights" from A POET'S GUIDE TO BRITAIN‏

The following review of the BBC Four's recent A Poet's Guide to Britain: Sylvia Plath, which looked at Plath's poem "Wuthering Heights" is by Sheila Hamilton (aka "panther" as a commenter on this blog). I would like to thank her for taking the time to write these thoughtful, insightful comments about the program. REVIEW This programme was the second in a series of six, all scheduled for showing on BBC4 on Monday evenings, and each presented by the young British poet and novelist Owen Sheers. The title of the whole series is A POET'S GUIDE TO BRITAIN and in it, Sheers has sought to examine not so much the lives of six landscape poets but rather, the lives of six poems, each of which explores a different British landscape. In this second programme, he looked at Sylvia Plath's poem "Wuthering Heights", written in 1961 and first published in book-form in CROSSING THE WATER (1971). The life of a poem, then, rather than a heavy focus on the l

Sylvia Plath's Wuthering Heights on BBC iPlayer

For those in the UK, you can watch the BBC Four's recent A Poet's Guide to Britain: Sylvia Plath, which featured her poem "Wuthering Heights" by clicking here . It is available only to those in the UK until 7:59pm Monday 15th June 2009. Enjoy, over and over again. Thanks to Plinius for the link and Mapper.ACME for the image .

New Sylvia Plath Books Available Now

For those who are collecting Sylvia Plath, Faber's special 80th Anniversary editions of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Selected Poems are now available through Faber's website, or places like Amazon.co.uk. And for those with access to BBC Four, don't forget that Sylvia Plath's "Wuthering Weights" will aire at 8.30 pm tonight. Look for a review here by a watcher sometime later this week!

Sylvia Plath's "Wuthering Heights" On BBC Four

On Monday, 11 May 2009, at 8.30 PM, tune in the BBC Four for "Wuthering Heights" by Sylvia Plath, the second episode in the Poet's Guide to Britain, presented by Owen Sheers. Sylvia Plath Info Blog will feature a guest posting - in the form a review of the program - next week. I've got a "contributors" copy on the way to me, so I'll chime in once I see it, too...

Letters Home: Corrected uncorrected proof

Following Laurie's excellent post on the uncorrected proof of Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950-1963 , we decided to see if it would be possible to uncover the mystery of the white-outs she mentions. Carefully holding the book up to the light, I was able to make out two of the three whited-out sections...  Acknowledgments Proof: Page /First edition: Page ix "Of course this book could not exist without the permission given me by Ted and Olwyn Hughes, who have allowed me to publish sections from my daughter's correspondence and have given me the copyright for the selections from her letters."  Proof: Page 426/First edition: Page 483/486 "It is my belief that the last blow may well have been the immediate penetration of her pseudonym 'Victoria Lucas'. She now realized that the fused, caricaturized [sic.] figures in The Bell Jar which bore recognizable idiosyncrasies, were going to be identified. Those who had sacrificed for her, served and lover her were to

BBC Four: Poet's Guide to Britain: Sylvia Plath

This spring, on BBC Four, poet and author Owen Sheers explores six great works of poetry set in the British landscape. The poems by William Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Lynette Roberts, Sylvia Plath, Louis MacNeice and George Mackay Brown explore a sense of place and identity across Britain and open doors to captivating stories about the poems, the places and the lives of the poets themselves. Wordworth's "Upon Westminster Bridge" will air on 4 May at 20:30. Plath's "Wuthering Heights" is representing the lovely Yorkshire region and will air on 11 May at 8.30 PM (30 mins). It will re-air on 12 May at 2.15 am so that the surgeons can watch, too. An early inspiration to Plath, Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" is another poem included in the series. Here is a blurb on Plath's program: "Poet and author Owen Sheers explores six great works of poetry set in the British landscape. He looks at Sylvia Plath's Wuthering Heights, part of a rich