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Showing posts from October, 2011

On Sylvia Plath’s 79th Birthday …

Readers of this blog, Plath Profiles , and contemporary American poetry will be familiar with the name of the poet and writer David Trinidad. Recently Dear Prudence , his new and selected poems, was published by Turtle Point Press and within its wonderful pages are a number of poems on Sylvia Plath. Trinidad has a way of getting at the essence of Sylvia Plath in his poems.  His poetry shows evidence of his passion for Plath, and there is truthfulness in his methodological use of her archival materials and creative works. And of course, the range of poems held within the older, selected titles is moving. Seeing a poets progression through the medium of a new and selected volume is inspiring. I admire him and his poetry a great deal, and cannot recommend this book enough. Trinidad’s poetry is candid, intimate, and deeply affecting.   The book is also available in a Kindle edition . Other writing by David Trinidad worth your while is (and available free online): On the Road with

More Sylvia Plath Drawings Online

The Telegraph has additional images and information about the forthcoming show of Sylvia Plath's drawings on at the Mayor Gallery in London (2 November - 16 December). An additional article on the exhibit appeared on Spoonfed.co.uk .

Frieda Hughes on Sylvia Plath's art

In The Observer , issue printed on 23 October 2011, Frieda Hughes has more to say on her mother, Sylvia Plath's, art in " Lines of Beauty: The Art of Sylvia Plath ."  Excellently, included is a gallery of 11of  Plath's drawings . Thank you for sharing this artwork with us, Ms. Hughes.

Minority Report: A Review of Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers by Janet Badia

The essays in Janet Badia's Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers are tightly wound around the central thesis that there is a "reliance of literary and popular culture on the tropes meant to disparage Plath's fans, especially the young women readers among them, as uncritical consumers, as Plath addicts, and even as literary cannibals" (2). In following a discourse that "rather unabashedly constructs women readers as a body of uncritical, misguided [and] pathological readers, she traces this discourses "eruptions and evolutions throughout literary and popular culture in order to demonstrate the significant effect it has has on the production, reception, and evaluation of Plath's oeuvre" (8). She does so effectively, expertly, and carefully. Not being female - and I did check relatively recently - leaves me possibly at somewhat of a disadvantage to read, and to be so bold as to review, a book whose focus is squarely opposite to whatever

An artist responds to Sylvia Plath

Thanks to Melanie for the link to Troy Brooks' website , in which Sylvia Plath connoisseurs can view images of his paintings from his 'Colossus' series.

New Sylvia Plath thumbnail pages on sylviaplath.info

Earlier this week, I launched new thumbnail pages on my website for Sylvia Plath ( A celebration, this is ). The new thumbnail pages are a bit fancier than before, and I hope that it is an enhancement that makes being on the website more enjoyable. The main landing page for the photo galleries is here . In each page, when you click a thumbnail, the image will pop up. Beneath the image will be some data about the book or place. For the thumbnail gallery of places Plath lived in, visited, or wrote about in her creative works and personal papers, etc. there is a caption beneath the image, but because of space, referential information still appears next to the thumbnail (this happens on one of the book pages, too). Depending on the resolution of your screen and the size, some of the text in the pop up box may appear below below the bottom of your screen. If you reduce the screen from 100% to something like 75% you should be able to see all the text. To escape the pop-up, click the X in

Davies on Representing Sylvia Plath

P. H. Davies has recently reviewed Cambridge University Presses book Representing Sylvia Plath , edited by Sally Bayley and Tracy Brain.  As we've come to know, Davies has a keen eye and a knack for critical perspective, this review is no different. The book's publication date was in flux for a while but it does appear now to be available in the United States (though CUP's website still says it is not available, some other booksellers do list it as in stock and available). In addition to the traditional monograph format, Amazon.com is offering Representing Sylvia Plath in a Kindle edition . I hope to offer my own review for your consumption in a few weeks.

More on Frieda Hughes & the Sylvia Plath exhibit

Our good friend in Plath P H Davies has just blogged about the Frieda Hughes article in Vogue (UK) over on his website. Please give it a careful read. Also he gives more information on the exhibit of Sylvia Plath's drawings on at the Mayor Gallery in London .

Arlaina Tibensky's And Then Things Fall Apart

On 26 July, 2011, Arlaina Tibensky's novel And Then Things Fall Apart   was published. A working title of the book was "Bell Jar Summer," and you may remember that I mentioned it in a blog post back in the summer of 2010 . My deepest apologies to her and the books potential readers, through this blog, for failing to publicize the novel before now. And Then Things Fall Apart is the summer story of Keek as she goes through some terrible trials of not only adolescence, but of life. Parents divorcing, chicken pox, fight with boyfriend, not on speaking terms with best friends, and to top it off, she's left to stay with her grandmother, who might just be a Luddite. What does she did to get by? She reads and discusses Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar and types her own story on a typewriter. It's a very good story, well written and engaging, and the characters are drawn in a way which enables us to sympathize with them (even though from time to time I think Ke

Sylvia Plath Strikes a Pose

Whilst details of the exhibition are sketchy, the November issue of Vogue (UK) , reports, "On the eve of an exhibition of her mother's sketches, Frieda Hughes , daughter of Sylvia Plath, writes movingly on living with the Plath-Hughes legacy - and what it means to her - in Drawings of the Past ." If anyone has access to the full article please let us know! Thanks to Kristina "the Macedonian Madonna" for drawing our attention to this...

Articles on Sylvia Plath!

The following are some recently published articles on Sylvia Plath: Demjen, Zsofia. " Motion and conflicted self metaphors in Sylvia Plath's 'Smith Journal' ." Metaphor and the Social World 1:1. 2011: 7-25. Kalfopoulou, Adrianne. "Sylvia Plath's Emersonian I/Eye". Women's Studies . 40:7. October 2011: 890-909. Kumlu, Esin. " The Mona Lisa Smile Of Sylvia Plath: Destroying The Distorted Picture Of Reality ." Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi 25. 2011. Flannery Dean over at Maclean’s Magazine has written on " The Bell Jar at 40 " (just like Emily Gould from the Poetry Foundation did in July). Deanna Darr of the unassailable Boise Weekly writes on " The Greatest Lost Books Never Read ," among them the tenth being Plath's "Double Exposure."