#Sylvia Plath biography

[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)

[derangedrhythms]

She struck me as having a very exceptional quality of mind – both imaginative and controlled, both lucid and intense.

Newton Arvin, quoted in ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted’ 

[seafoamme]

"Kiss me, and you will see how important I am." - Sylvia Plath, 'The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath"

[cheshire-castle-library]

Sylvia Plath Annotations Day 2/??

Winter Landscape, with Rooks

[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)

[kindledspiritsbooks]

My Month in Books: January 2023

Red Comet: The Short and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark Many would ask how it is possible to write a 1300 page biography about a woman who only lived for thirty years. Those people clearly don’t understand just how much incredible and ground-breaking writing Sylvia Plath managed to produce in such a tragically short period of time. Clark paints a vivid and human portrait of a…

[zonetrente-trois]

Can be pre-ordered for $15 - Expected to ship: 15 August 2024

[lejournaldupeintre]

Sylvia Plath

Almost six decades since her tragic death, Sylvia Plath still continues to mystify and intrigue much of our modern day literary landscape. Much of this fascination, it seems, is attributed to the ongoing success of her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, which still appears on countless college reading lists worldwide, and the posthumous creation of her legacy as the Marilyn Monroe of…

[fernhelm]

WHO IS LILY EVANS?

HP, HBP / Simone Weil: An Intellectual Biography - Gabriella Fiori / HP, OP / The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath / Cain - Lord Byron / HP, SS / Violence and the Sacred - René Girard / "How Do you Solve a Problem Like Maria?" - The Sound of Music

[taylortruther]

I'm very curious about clara bow, especially because it seems to me that it would be taylor comparing herself to clara bow and how she felt during the relationship. But that being the last song I wonder if it would be like a hopeful song (if the tracklist progresses linearly when it comes to how she felt with time) and in that case I wonder if it will be how she doesn't want to make the same decisions as clara bow made? (Idk i don't really know a lot about her other than what I have read on tumblr) or do you think it could be a sad song like hoax? When it comes to closing the album

i think it could be a lament for all the women who were forced into boxes from which they could never break free, and who suffered the consequences if they didn't make themselves smaller or more palatable. the women who tried and tried and overcame so much adversity, but still couldn't do it "perfectly." who were gaslit and provoked endlessly until their downfall. and i think it will touch on how society, at large, does this to women... but the men in their intimate lives also take part.

reading about clara bow (and i am not an expert), it's obvious why taylor might relate:

clara was considered scandalous at the time due to her sex life and many relationships, but she had an intangible "it factor" that made her beloved and yet more widely criticized. she had some major disagreements/issues with studios, and her mental health was in decline, which led to her leaving the spotlight. that's when she met rex bell...

(also, reminds me of how taylor spoke about zelda fitzgerald's biography. obviously we have tlgad about rebekah harkness. she's spoken about liking sylvia plath. there's a theme here. even the main character in rebecca - fictional, but still.)

[aspiritdrawings]

What authors/books the Heathers characters would read

Starting off basic with stuff we know...

JD: Baudelaire, he literally quotes him in the musical. He also quotes Moby Dick at some point. He'd read 1984 by Orwell too in my opinion.

Heather Chandler: Sylvia Plath, the bell jar...no explanation needed.

Heather Duke: she canonically reads Moby Dick, or Catcher in the Rye...but she also seems like a Dostoevskij girl in my mind, specifically Brothers Karamazov.

Less obvious ones:

Veronica: Tom Sawyer (ahah yes pun intended her surname's sawyer, laugh) , or Mark Twain in general, maybe her 17 year old self wouldn't like it but i just KNOW her middle school self absolutely loved them.

Betty Finn: same as Veronica, but she would also read something like Jane Austen.

Martha (musical) : she reads pre-teen fantasy books from the kid section, i dont know which ones exactly but she would.

Kurt and Ram: bold of you to assume that they read at all. But if they did it'd be some football star's auto biography.

Heather McNamara: i dont know if she'd read at all, but if she did she would read something by Sylvia Plath like Chandler, or maybe even being the one suggesting it to Heather. Id also love to say Kafka, but canon her probably wouldn't like him, im just saying it out of projection😭

[derangedrhythms]

When you give your heart to somebody, you can’t take it back. If they don’t want it, it’s gone. 

Sylvia Plath, quoted by Elizabeth Compton in ‘Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness’ by Edward Butscher

[tarotenvelhecida]

pick a card– which book speaks to your soul?

You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important.

—Conversations with James Baldwin.

this is my love letter to all the bookworms in the tarot community— pick a pile & i'll give you a list of genres + book suggestions carrying important messages to you.

I. THE FIRST

To the daydreamers and the escapists; to the ones that need to rest before following what you need follow.

RELEVANT GENRES & CONCEPTS– fiction in general; romance; fantasy; fairytale; poetry; ‘happy ever after’ endings; hopeful endings; fantasy; magic; dreamy.

AUTHORS – Ursula K. Le Guin; Louise Gluck; Mary Oliver; Jane Austen.

BOOKS FOR YOU–

‘The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work at 72 – Molly Peacock'

‘Good Bones – Maggie Smith’

‘If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho – Translation by Anne Carson’

‘Owls and Other Fantasies – Mary Oliver’

‘Dog Songs – Mary Oliver’

‘Emma – Jane Austen’

‘Howl’s Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones’

‘The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’

‘Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather’

‘Sonnets from the Portuguese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning’

‘The Hawk and the Dove – Penelope Wilcock’

‘The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright’

‘The Ink Dark Moon – Ono no Komachi & Izumi Shikibu’

‘Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll’

‘The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf’

‘Little Women – Louisa May Alcott’

‘Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery’

‘Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins – Emma Donoghue’

II. THE SECOND

For the ones that carry the ache to learn and know everything; to the ones bored with life's commodities & seriousness. For the ones that question everything around them – as they should do.

You do not need to fit in. Don't change yourself for other people. If they want to see you this way, then become the proud witch in the edge of the woods.

RELEVANT GENRES & CONCEPTS– books on 'niche' knowledge; science; philosophy; true crime; drama; scandalous romances; adventure, magical realism; YA thriller & horror; comedy & sardonic comedy; ‘controversial’/'weird' books.

AUTHORS– Carmen Maria Machado, Kate Moore, Grady Hendrix.

BOOKS FOR YOU–

‘My Sister, The Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite'

‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales – Oliver Sacks'

‘St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves – Karen Russell'

‘Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife – Mary Roach’

‘The Hitchhiker Guide to Galaxy – Douglas Adams'

‘Inferno – Dante Alighieri'

'Magic for Beginners – Kelly Link'

‘Lace Bone Beast: Poems & Other Fairytales for Wicked Girls – N.L. Shompole'

‘Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found – Frances Larson’

'The Woman They Could Not Silence – Kate Moore'

‘The Dictionary of Lost Words – Pip Williams'

‘She Kills Me: The True Stories of History’s Deadliest Women – Jennifer Wright’

‘Anatomy: A Love Story – Dana Schwartz'

‘Pretty Dead Queens – Alexa Donne'

‘I’m Glad My Mom Died – Jennette McCurdy'

'Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus – Bill Wasik'

‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina – Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’

III. THE THIRD

You need to put your sadness somewhere. If you can't, remember that someone has done it before – and transformed it into a story. Let the words you'll read be the resting place for whatever you're feeling right now; let yourself remember that not even your pain is lonely in this world.

RELEVANT GENRES AND CONCEPTS— poetry; gothic horror; thrillers; murder mysteries; tragedies; cathartic stories; biographies.

AUTHORS– Shirley Jackson, Osamu Dazai, Clarice Lispector, Sylvia Plath.

BOOKS FOR YOU—

'The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion'

‘The Dead – James Joyce'

‘What The Living Do – Marie Howe'

‘The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector'

‘Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector’

‘Some of Us Did Not Die – June Jordan'

Somewhere Towards the End – Diana Athill'

‘We Have Always Lived in The Castle – Shirley Jackson'

'Heaven: A Novel – Mieko Kawakami'

'Journal of a Solitude – May Sarton'

'Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte'

'Grief is the Thing with Feathers – Max Porter'

‘Carrie – Stephen King'

'Of Dogs and Walls – Yuko Tsushima'

'Frankenstein – Mary Shelley'

'The Stepping Off Place – Cameron Kelly'

'Letters to Milena – Franz Kafka'

‘Beloved – Toni Morrison'

[lovingsylvia]

!NEW RELEASE!

Title: The Occult Sylvia Plath: The Hidden Spiritual Life of the Visionary Poet

Author: Julia Gordon-Bramer

Publication date: 7 May 2024

Publisher: Inner Traditions

Pages: 416

Image source (cover & description):

https://www.innertraditions.com/

About the book:

"Sharing her more than 15 years of compelling research—including analysis of Sylvia Plath’s unpublished calendars, notebooks, scrapbooks, book annotations, and underlinings as well as published memoirs, biographies, letters, journals, and interviews with Plath and her husband, friends, and family—Plath scholar Julia Gordon-Bramer reveals Sylvia Plath’s enduring interest and active practice in mysticism and the occult from childhood until her tragic death in 1963. She examines Plath’s early years growing up in a transcendentalist Unitarian church under a brilliant, if stern, Freemason father and a mother who wrote her master’s dissertation on the famous alchemist Paracelsus. She reveals Plath’s early knowledge of Hermeticism, how she devoured books on the occult throughout her life, and how, since adolescence, Plath regularly wrote of premonitory dreams. Examining Plath’s tumultuous marriage with poet Ted Hughes, she looks at their explorations in the supernatural and Hughes’s mentoring of Plath in meditation, crystal-gazing, astrology, Qabalah, tarot, automatic writing, magical workings, and use of the Ouija board.

Looking at Plath’s writing and her evolution as a person through mystical, political, personal, and historical lenses, Gordon-Bramer shows how Plath’s poems take on radically new, surprising, and universal meanings—explaining why Hughes perpetually denied that Plath was a “confessional poet.” Contrasting the versions in Letters Home with those held in the Plath archives at Indiana University, the author also shows how all occult influences have been rigorously excised from the letters approved for publication by the Plath and Hughes estates. Revealing previously undiscovered meanings deeply rooted in her mystical and occult endeavors, the author shows how Plath’s writings are much broader than the narrow lens of her tragic autobiography."

[sleepysera]

"A looming divorce, single motherhood, loneliness, illness, and a brutally cold winter fueled the final depression that would take her life. Plath had been a victim of psychiatric mismanagement and negligence at age twenty, and she was terrified of depression's 'cures,' as she wrote in her last letter to her psychiatrist--shock treatment, insulin injections, institutionalization, 'a mental hospital, lobotomies.' It is no accident that Plath killed herself on the day she was supposed to enter a British psychiatric ward."

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

[hairtusk]

can you pls explain what the ted hughes thing means? i’m late for the “gossip” or whatever😭

these articles will probably explain it better than i can, but in summary; ted hughes was definitely, concretely a bad husband, and cheated on plath (and other romantic partners) repeatedly. it is also very likely that he was emotionally abusive, and possible that he was physically abusive. however, as we have no evidence other than the anecdotal about the latter two points, it is still up to speculation.

as always, read these articles critically and with discretion, as they all have a slant one way or the other.