#Red Comet - The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

[lovingsylvia]

!NEW RELEASE!

Title: Sylvia Plath: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Heather Clark (author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, 2020)

Publication date: already out in the UK, US: 21 November 2024

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Pages: 144

Image source (cover & description): https://global.oup.com/

About the book:

Provides a concise introduction to one of the most influential and iconic American writers of the twentieth century, exploring the major events in Plath's life and themes in her work

Reframes Plath's work within the broader context of poetic confessionalism, biography, feminism, politics, and mental illness

Written by a leading expert on Sylvia Plath

Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over ten million copies sold worldwide

...

It's the perfect book for you if you have just discovered Sylvia Plath and want to get a quick overview of her life and work. It's also a great as a first book if you want to introduce her to someone else. Or if you want to brush-up your knowledge!

[derangedrhythms]

NEUTRALITY, BOREDOM become worse sins than murder, worse than illicit love affairs. BE RIGHT OR WRONG, don’t be indifferent, don’t be NOTHING. 

Sylvia Plath, to her Smith College students in 1958, quoted in ‘Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath’ by Heather Clark

[aliteraryprincess]

@therefugeofbooks made one of these and it seemed really fun!

[lessnearthesun]

Btw if anyone cares, these were my top 10 reads for 2024:

1. Intermezzo - Sally Rooney

2. Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner

3. Democracy - Joan Didion

4. Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky

5. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

6. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath - Heather Clark

7. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

8. The Idiot - Elif Batuman

9. Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

10. The Familiar - Leigh Bardugo

(N.B. This is not an objective ranking of these novels as works of literature, this is just about my PERSONAL enjoyment of them as books)

[sleepysera]

"During the month of October, Plath wrote almost a poem a day--one of the most extraordinary literary outpourings of the twentieth century. In four weeks she would produce nearly as many poems as she had written in 1960 and 1961. These were the poems that would, as she predicted, make her name. Plath lifted the veil to reveal the ugly realities about her own life, and her society. She filled these poems with images of torture, murder, genocide, war, suicide, illness, revenge, and fury--but also spring, rebirth, and triumph. Her language would shock and startle, but her path was well trodden. For Plath, as for Yeats and Dante, the fires of hell were purifying."

-Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (2020)

[headlightsforever]

Sylvia was amazed by the clarity of the night sky in Maine. She saw her first shooting star and called the Milky Way “a gossamer scar flung across the sky.”

Heather Clark from Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

[wiswa09]

I'm thrilled to have "Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath" by Heather Clark in my hands. This monumental biography, spanning over 1,000 pages, offers a detailed and comprehensive reappraisal of Plath’s life and work. Through deep analysis and unprecedented access to unpublished letters and archives, Clark paints a nuanced portrait of Plath, highlighting her brilliance and the complexity of her life beyond the tragic myths that often surround her. I can't wait to dive into this read and discover new facets of one of the most important, iconic and enigmatic poets of the 20th century.

[lesbiancolumbo]

hi sydney 😊 hope you're doing well! I was just wondering, do you have any recommendations for books/documentaries about marilyn monroe?? there's so many out there but I just don't trust a lot of men's takes on marilyn

awwww hi! well the marilyn books i enjoy are the elizabeth winder one that focuses on her year in manhattan and the charles casillo book for the best general overview of her life. i’ve said this before and i’ll say it again: i am begging someone to give her the red comet: the short life and blazing art of sylvia plath by heather clark treatment!!!!! i need a 1000+ page book ASAP!!!!! the problem with a lot of biographies of her is that there’s a lot they get right and so much more they got wrong…. i was enjoying the barbara leaming bio until she decided to start peddling the “her death was a suicide” theory which i have no time for. books that are on deck for me are the sarah churchwell book (recommended to me by a highly trusted source) and marilyn’s own aborted memoir. i haven’t read oates’s blonde and go back and forth on if i want to attempt that. i will say the book that deepened my love and appreciation for her as an ARTIST as much as a person is called fragments and is a collection of her poems, notes, and intimate letters. i love it dearly. it broke my heart and made me love her so much.

where documentaries are concerned i simply cannot and do not rec true crime docs so i can’t help you there! most of them are very bad and you shouldn’t bother! your time is honestly better spent watching her filmography and reading the above mentioned books

i hope that helps! report back on how you like them <3

[benevolent-blackhole]

August Resolutions Post

I resolved to read four books (at least one novel) and listen to two new-to-me (if not new) albums a month. And I record them here

Novels:

Games for Dead Girls (2023)-Jen Williams

Our Wives under the Sea (2022)-Julia Armfield

Nonfiction:

The Global History of Black Girlhood (2022)- Corinne Field and LaKisha Michelle Simmons

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (2020)- Heather Clark

Music:

Songs Written for Piano (2022)-Katie Gregson-MacLeod

Unreal Unearth (2023)- Hozier

Highlights: Our Wives under the Sea, Red Comet

[lovingsylvia]

Did you know?

On 10 August 1941, Sylvia Plath published her first poem, titled simply "Poem" on the "Good Sport" page of the Sunday Boston Herald. In the note to the editor, she described the poem as "a short poem about what I see and hear on hot summer nights":

Hear the crickets chirping In the dewy grass Bright little fireflies Twinkle as they pass.

Source: Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (2020)

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

I wanted to be where

nobody I knew

could ever

come.

—Sylvia Plath, Bell Jar

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plat

[derangedrhythms]

I am in a reverie of happiness for I love books. 

Sylvia Plath, aged 11, quoted in ‘Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath’ by Heather Clark

[aliteraryprincess]

August 2024 Wrap Up

And just like that summer is over. It went by in the blink of an eye. It was a good, if uneventful, month. I had my birthday, which always means new books! And that's enough to make me happy haha.

(Also please click the photo for better quality. Why must tumblr make them look bad?)

Books Read: 9

And it was a pretty great reading month! My favorite was Red Comet, which is current my top read of the year. And I don't think anything better is going to come along, but you never know. My least favorite was A Lesson in Vengeance, which I found disappointing. I was interested in what was happening, but there were a lot of small details that just ruined any believability for me. I also read my first book in French! I'm really proud of myself.

The Dry by Jane Harper - 3.5 stars

The Moors and the Fens by Charlotte Riddell - 3 stars

A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee - 2.5 stars

Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes - 4 stars

The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - 4.5 stars

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim - 4 stars

The Harpy by Megan Hunter - 4 stars

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark - 5 stars

Histoires ou contes du temps passé: contes de ma mère l'oie by Charles Perrault - 5 stars

On Tumblr:

Well at least there's a few things here.

July 2024 Wrap Up

Book Quotes: The Dry by Jane Harper

Book Quotes: The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Tagged: Top 5 Book Poll

On YouTube:

And as always, there's plenty here.

July Wrap Up | 8 books for #janeaustenjuly

What I Read for My PhD in English Literature | Feminist Theory

What Books Have I Reread the Most?

Currently Reading 8/12/24

Birthday Book Haul! (plus some extras)

September TBR | Shaketember, Shorty September, & more!

[lessnearthesun]

I’ve written three poems in the last two days, I just had pasta with vodka sauce and garlic bread for dinner, I bought some shoes earlier, and now I’m peacefully drinking a can of Olipop peaches and cream soda while reading Red Comet: the short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark. Peace and love on planet earth 🫶

[sleepysera]

"She came to feel that in her parents lay the root of her anxieties, and, encouraged by her psychiatrist in the late fifties, she began to lash out at them in her journals and, later, her poems. Plath would express rage toward her parents--at her father for abandoning her, at her mother for hovering too close. They remain distorted caricatures, stuck in amber."

-Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (2020)