Sylvia Plath



"THE BLOOD JET IS POETRY AND THERE IS NO STOPPING IT"

Sylvia Plath killed herself in February, 1963. In the months previous, her writer's block had vanished with a ferocity that frightened her friends - Was this manic episode the precursor to some huge crash? In those last months before she died, she wrote sometimes 3 poems a day. And these weren't crappy poems, these were arresting terrifying works - works that made her name, works that are now taught in English classes across the land. Some are sheer genius. If you read them in order (the way Ted Hughes placed them in the original version of the book Ariel - published after her death) - you feel her marching towards that oven. You feel her, in poem after poem, dig deeper and deeper into her psychic despair. Plath, recently separated from Hughes, her husband, had their two children in her flat with her, and because of her maternal duties, the only time she had to write was at night, or in the hours before dawn. She would sit up, at 3 am, 4 am, and churn out such poems as "Daddy", "Lady Lazarus", "Ariel", "Contusion", "The Munich Mannequins" ... and many many more. These are great poems. Each poem went through multiple drafts, too - so the pace at which she worked must have been extraordinary.
　
Death

Plath took her own life after she completely sealed the rooms between herself and her sleeping children with "wet towels and cloths." Plath then placed her head in the oven while the gas was turned on. The next day an inquiry ruled that her death was a suicide. It has been suggested Plath's suicide attempt was too precise and coincidental, and she had not intended to succeed in killing herself. Apparently, she had previously asked Mr. Thomas, her downstairs neighbor, what time he would be leaving; and a note had been placed that read "Call Dr. Horder" and listed his phone number. Therefore, it is argued Plath must have turned the gas on at a time when Mr. Thomas should have been waking and beginning his day. This theory maintains that the gas, for several hours, seeped through the floor and reached Mr. Thomas and another resident of the floor below. Also, an au pair was to arrive at nine o'clock that morning to help Plath with the care of her children. Upon arrival, the au pair could not get into the flat, but was eventually let in by painters, who had a key to the front door.

"According to Mr. Goodchild—a police officer attached to the coroner's office . . . she had thrust her head far into the gas oven. 'She had really meant to die.'"

Plath's gravestone in Heptonstall churchyard bears the inscription "Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted."


　
Journals

Plath began keeping a diary at age 11, and kept journals until her suicide. Her adult diaries, starting from her freshman year at Smith College in 1950, were first published in 1980 as The Journals of Sylvia Plath, edited by Frances McCullough. In 1982, when Smith College acquired Plath's remaining journals, Hughes sealed two of them until February 11, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of Plath's death.

During the last years of his life, Hughes began working on a fuller publication of Plath's journals. In 1998, shortly before his death, he unsealed the two journals, and passed the project onto his children by Plath, Frieda and Nicholas, who passed it on to Karen V. Kukil. Kukil finished her editing in December 1999, and in 2000 Anchor Books published The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. According to the back cover, roughly two-thirds of the Unabridged Journals is newly released material. The American author Joyce Carol Oates hailed the publication as a "genuine literary event".

In 1961, poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath rented their flat in Chalcot Square, Primrose Hill, London to Assia and David Wevill, and took up residence at North Tawton, Devon. Hughes was immediately struck with Assia, as she was with him. He would later write:

We didn't find her - she found us.
She sniffed us out.
She sat there
Slightly filthy with erotic mystery.
I saw the dreamer in her
Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it.
That moment the dreamer in me
Fell in love with her, and I soon knew it.
　
Assia Wevill

Death

On March 23, 1969, 41 year old Assia Wevill murdered her 4 year old daughter Shura and took her own life in a manner that closely echoed Plath's suicide. Dragging a mattress into the kitchen, Assia sealed the door and window. She then laid her child down on the mattress and dissolved some sleeping pills for herself in a glass of whiskey. Taking the pills, she turned on the gas stove, and lay down next to her daughter.

*****

Ted Hughes' volume of poetry Crow (1970) was dedicated to the memory of Assia and Shura. His poem "Folktale" deals with his relation to Assia:
　
She wanted the silent heraldry
Of the purple beach by the noble wall.
He wanted Cabala the ghetto demon
With its polythene bag full of ashes.

Ted Hughes



Hughes and Plath had two children, Frieda Rebecca and Nicholas Farrar, but separated in the autumn of 1962. He continued to live at Court Green, North Tawton, Devon irregularly with his lover Assia Wevill after Plath's death on 11 February 1963. As Plath's widower, Hughes became the executor of Plath’s personal and literary estates. He oversaw the publication of her manuscripts, including Ariel (1966). He also claimed to have destroyed the final volume of Plath’s journal, detailing their last few months together. In his foreword to The Journals of Sylvia Plath, he defends his actions as a consideration for the couple's young children.
　
Death

Ted Hughes continued to live at the house in Devon, until his fatal heart attack on 28 October 1998, while undergoing treatment for colon cancer. His funeral was held at North Tawton church, and he was cremated at Exeter, with the ashes scattered on Dartmoor, near Cranmere Pool (by special Royal permission).

Frieda Rebecca Hughes (born 1 April 1960, London) is an English poet and painter. She has published seven children's books and four poetry collections and had many exhibitions.

Hughes was almost three years old when her mother committed suicide.

Nicholas Farrar Hughes was born in 1962, the same year that Ted Hughes left Sylvia Plath for Assia Gutmann Wevill. After her son was born, Plath wrote most of the poems that would comprise her most famous collection of poems Ariel and published her semi-autobiographical novel about mental illness The Bell Jar.

Plath addressed one of her last poems, "Nick and the Candlestick" to her son:

O love, how did you get here?
O embryo..
In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.
　
In the Poem "Life After Death" Hughes recounts how:

Your son's eyes.... would become
So perfectly your eyes,
Became wet jewels
The hardest substance of the purest pain
As I fed him in his high white chair.

Death

On March 16, 2009, Nicholas hanged himself in his home in Alaska at the age 47. According to his sister Frieda Hughes, Nicholas had been depressed for quite some time. His lifelong fascination with fish and fishing was a strong and shared bond with our father (many of whose poems were about the natural world). He was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence for the next project or plan.

Edge
By
Sylvia Plath




The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

　
Crows Fall
By
Ted Hughes




When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.
He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.
He laughed himself to the centre of himself
And attacked.
At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.
But the sun brightened—
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.
He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.
"Up there," he managed,
"Where white is black and black is white, I won."

If your interests in poetry and these great writers brought you this far. Please pay tribute to the wonderful sponsors of Google that made this blog possible. Every click you make on this page goes towards the making of my new book Sin Dog The Becoming. Below is a sample of my new book…

Sin Dog The Becoming

By

Richard Brennan

At the age of fourteen I was sitting at my desk. I was suppose to be doing my homework but instead I was writing on this white piece of paper. Lost in my own world with the door closed, in the back ground I could hear my parents arguing. “You don’t do shit; I pay most of the bills.” Why don’t you have a job with benefits? The front door slammed and then there was silence. Angered at these hateful words, I began to write. The pen moved so fast I didn’t have time to think. My eyes grew heavy and my world turned black. I could hear a hiss and a clank, like a pan hitting metal. I was sure I was in my room it was the sound of the old steam heater. Face wet from sweat, pen still in hand, my body numb. I forced myself back to sleep. My eyes warm, all I could see was red, until I decided to open them. My vision fuzzy yet focused to the sun high in the sky. There I was in the tallest tree, naked to the world, innocent and as happy as can be. Then I heard the sound of painful cries. I looked down to the greenest of grass and seen a checker board of stones, and there was my mother and sister kneeling and holding red roses. My smile turned upside down and I began to wonder why. I jumped and was suddenly turned into a black crow. A single feather fell from my wings. Gently spiraling downward reflecting colors, my vision turned black and I could feel something tightening around my chest. I looked into it’s red eyes and it hissed violently at me. Then I awoke to a gentle bluish light. It was the moon shinning through my bedroom window on the wet white piece of paper that I scribbled violently all over.

“Richie it’s time for dinner.” I wiped the drool from my face, my hand numb, I go and shake it and the pen falls to the floor. My hand still tingly, I crumple up the piece of paper and throw it in the trash. I open my bedroom door and the kitchen light burns my eyes. I put my hand up to cover the light and my vision slowly focuses to a pinkish tinge. The first thing I see is a bucket of KFC on the kitchen table. Then I smell the fried chicken. My stomach growls and my dad hits my sister’s hand. “Hey get your grubby paws out of the bucket of chicken.” Then my dad says what took you so long; your mother and I have been calling your name for the past five minutes. My mother pacing back and forth grabbing plates and silverware. “I fell asleep,” my mom says weren’t you suppose to be studying. My dad says come sit next to your farther and tell me what your teacher has you studying so hard for. I sit next to my dad and my mom sets a plate in front of me. My sister starts pointing and laughing at me. My mom asks my sister, what’s so funny; and my dad says look at me for a minute, then he starts laughing. I look at my mom and she says go in the bathroom and wash your face. Sulking the whole way to the bathroom because I didn’t even get to take a bite of my chicken. I get in the bathroom and look in the mirror, and there is a blue line of ink across my cheek. I turn the faucet knobs and they a make squeaking noise. I wait for the water to steam up, then I grab a washcloth and soap. I wipe off the mirror and start to wash my face. Then I hear a loud crash like thunder. I see a flash then everything turns black. I feel my body spinning around like a giant whirlpool of water. Then I’m dropped down the drain with a loud gargle. Everything is still as silent as can be. I’ am weightless and my vision is flickering like a TV when it looses reception. I hear a high pitch ringing in my ears. Then a still picture of a tree appears on the screen of a TV. The TV is in the ground facing the sky and I’ am above, drifting higher and higher until I reach the clouds. Then I fall so fast my whole life flashes before my eyes. I’ am in a tunnel of TVs, all of which are playing a certain part of my life, and then suddenly it stops and I’ am face to face with a black crow perched high on a church steeple. It starts screaming at me as if it knows I’m there. I enter it’s black eye… Knock! Knock! “Richie are you alright?”

To Be Continued…

Thank you again for reading this far, and remember every click you make on here to google and my sponsors, brings you closer to the unveiling of my new book Sin Dog The Becoming.

Sincerely yours,

Richard Brennan