<![CDATA[The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath]]>

false <![CDATA[The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166483125m/11623.jpg 11623 13 In the decades that have followed Sylvia Plath's suicide in February 1963, much has been written and speculated about her life, most particularly about her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes and her last months spent writing the stark, confessional poems that were to become Ariel. And the myths surrounding Plath have only been intensified by the strong grip her estate--managed by Hughes and his sister, Olwyn--had over the release of her work. Yet Plath kept journals from the age of 11 until her death at 30. Previously only available in a severely bowdlerized edition, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath have now been scrupulously transcribed (with every spelling mistake and grammatical error left intact) and annotated by Karen V. Kukil, supervisor of the Plath collection at Smith College. The journals show the breathless adolescent obsessed with her burgeoning sexuality, the serious university student competing for the highest grades while engaging in the human merry-go-round of 1950s dating, the graduate year spent at Cambridge University where Plath encountered Ted Hughes. Her version of their relationship (dating is definitely not the appropriate term) is a necessary, and deeply painful, complement to Birthday Letters. On March 10, 1956, Plath writes: <blockquote> Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun. </blockquote> Plath's documentation of the two years the couple spent in the U.S. teaching and writing explicitly highlights the dilemma of the late-1950s woman--still swaddled in expectations of domesticity, yet attempting to forge her own independent professional and personal life. This period also reveals in detail the therapy sessions in which Plath lets loose her antipathy for her mother and her grief at her father's death when she was 8--a contrast to the bright, all-American persona she presented to her mother in the correspondence that was published as Letters Home. The journals also feature some notable omissions. Plath understandably skirted over her breakdown and attempted suicide during the summer of 1953, though she was to anatomize the events minutely in her novel The Bell Jar. Fragments of diaries exist after 1959, which saw the couple's return to England and rural retreat in Devon, the birth of their two children, and their separation in late 1962. An extended piece on the illness and death of an elderly neighbor during this period is particularly affecting and was later turned into the poem "Berck-Plage." Much has been made of the "lost diaries" that Plath kept until her suicide--one simply appears to have vanished, the other Hughes burned after her death. It would seem rapacious to wish for more details of her despair in her final days, however. It is crystallized in the poems that became Ariel, and this is what the voice of her journals ultimately send the reader back to. Sylvia Plath's life has for too long been obfuscated by anecdote, distorting her major contribution to 20th-century literature. As she wrote in "Kindness": "The blood jet is poetry. There is no stopping it." --Catherine Taylor 3094683 1982 The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath total:1813|5:723|4:685|3:336|2:58|1:11| 1813 7490 3047 140 3 3 false false Fri Aug 10 10:12:48 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 10 10:12:48 -0700 2007
as always, ted had a say in what w...more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Fri Oct 12 14:32:44 -0700 2007 Fri Oct 12 14:36:52 -0700 2007
There are quotes from her journal that decribe in dark detail the feelings that I am sure many women feel as they are on their own for the first time, falling in l...more...]]> 4 2 false false Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Tue Mar 04 08:34:50 -0800 2008 Tue Jun 03 13:48:09 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 2 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 1997 Tue Jan 22 13:43:08 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 27 08:27:28 -0800 2008 5 2 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Sep 16 20:31:47 -0700 2008 Sat Dec 27 08:40:31 -0800 2008
In the academic world, it is difficult to bring her up without feeling sel...more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Feb 21 21:17:24 -0800 2009 Wed Apr 01 22:52:12 -0700 2009
More intimate than any of her poetry books, Plath's journals offer greater in...more...]]> 0 1 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Jan 07 14:51:54 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 07 14:52:28 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Tue Sep 01 08:48:39 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 04 06:43:27 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Tue Jul 10 12:01:57 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 29 11:06:49 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Dec 29 13:40:20 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 13:40:47 -0800 2008
Also disorganized, vast, incredibly rich. I enjoyed the early college years the most, when she's all casually fantastic writing and cycling ecstasy and alienation. The later stuff is heavier with self-consciousness and deeply frustr...more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Jul 08 12:16:50 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 12:20:22 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Sep 15 12:36:41 -0700 2008 Mon Sep 15 12:37:55 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Dec 23 08:10:10 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 23 08:13:54 -0800 2007 more...]]> 3 0 true false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 20 11:47:23 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 20 12:06:37 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Mar 13 18:13:44 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 09:09:56 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Apr 22 15:32:33 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 15:42:31 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Fri Aug 31 14:20:02 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 31 14:25:52 -0700 2007
i am a fan of all of plath's works except her novel, the bell jar. her best writing can be seen in ...more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Apr 01 18:49:07 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 01 19:32:55 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Jan 07 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 05 09:10:39 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 07 07:20:27 -0800 2009 0.25 Rough Magic recently and there was too much overlap, so I just skimmed it. She used very vivid imagery in her journals, though, which impressed me.]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jul 15 18:40:34 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 15 18:54:39 -0700 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=11623