Your Own, Sylvia
Page 2
on Donnie Russell, and the next week
Sylvia passes me a note from him
asking me to the Sock Hop.
She wizards her way
through woods and fences,
makes things happen.
Sylvia sees a door
where other people see a wall,
but where will it lead?
Sylvia first attended Annie F. Warren Grammar School in Winthrop, but her mother held her back a grade from sixth grade to fifth when they moved to Wellesley. Otherwise, Sylvia would have been two years younger than her classmates. In 1943 she attended Marshall Livingston Perrin School. Betsy was her neighborhood friend in Wellesley.
Boy Crazy
Ruth Freeman, one of Sylvia's best childhood friends 1945,
eighth grade
Between reading her novels
Sylvia dreams boys, drifts
down a river of crushes.
Each week she paddles
somewhere new.
First Perry Norton,
then Dick Mills,
followed briefly
by Dick Cunningham,
and now Wayne Sterling.
Betsy and I stagger to keep up
with her whirlwind of romance.
I'm simple, a one-crush-
at-a-time kinda girl,
but Sylvia's always more complex.
She juggles a few boyfriends,
then fixates on Philip McCurdy.
I beg her to write these loony boy-capades
down. She smiles crooked and says,
“Don't worry, Ruth,
these boys are fodder for my pen.”
At thirteen, Sylvia developed a keen interest in boys. Her adolescent fascination was divided between boys and writing. Always ahead of her class in academics and behind them in years, she didn't seem to fear or look forward to puberty. In her junior-high years, she often felt awkward.
Why She Writes
Imagining Sylvia Plath
In the style of “Never Try to Trick Me with a Kiss”
1946
There's nothing she can't do or think or say.
Inside a book, she captures all that's lost.
She journals so her words won't fly away.
She chases boys for nothing more than play.
She sailors them, she ties them up in knots.
There's nothing she won't do or think or say.
She's fearless like a man, she gets all A's.
She smiles like a girl. Her lips are glossed.
She journals so her mind won't fly away.
It's hard, this life that holds her gifts at bay.
A good girl, she feels trapped and even crossed.
There's so much she can't do or think or say.
Her mother she vows never to betray.
She knows just what her clothes and schooling cost.
She journals so her anger floats away.
She dreams of Daddy shooing her astray.
She dances, studies, paints until exhaust.
So many things to do and think and say.
She journals so her words will fly one day.
Sylvia's “Never Try to Trick Me with a Kiss” was published in her school literary magazine, the Phillipian, when she was thirteen. The poem, a rejection of the belief that love and happiness can be permanent, appears in her Pulitzer Prize-winning The Collected Poems.
Plath returned to this poem's form, called a villanelle, often in her early writings, most famously in “Mad Girl's Love Song.”
Crocketteer
Wilbury Crockett, Sylvia's high school English teacher
1947
Sylvia possesses
a “natural lyrical gift.”
She radiates, uranium strong,
when exposed to philosophy, literature.
Rarefied as a Rembrandt,
a student like this appears once
in a teacher's career.
After years of chalkboards
and textbooks, I can siphon
the butterfly from the moths.
Sylvia's wings are luminous
and large, her name will be known.
Multi-faceted—
a co-editor of the school paper,
a guard on the basketball court, she bows viola, earns ribbons
for her watercolors, pledges into
the sorority social scene.
Her masks diverse, I aim
to nudge Sylvia toward her genius.
Most of the population cannot
craft a proper sentence.
Sylvia Plath sculpts poems
out of air.
Wilbury Crockett taught English like a college seminar. The thirty students chosen to be part of his class remained with him as their English teacher for all three of their years in high school. Sylvia called Crockett “the teacher of a lifetime.” They corresponded with each other throughout her life. We know from letters they exchanged that Crockett expressed concerns about Sylvia when she attempted suicide and when she married Ted Hughes. Many of the letters to and from Mr. Crockett are housed in the Lilly Library at Indiana University.
Mr. Crockett, according to Paul Alexander's biography of Plath, Rough Magic, told his class in October 1947 after reading some of Sylvia's poems aloud that she possessed a “natural, lyrical gift.”
Demolition
Bruce Elwell, a boy Sylvia dated in high school
Summer 1949
I feed her bourbon
and ginger ale,
lounge her on the terrace,
so Sylvia feasts on
the black star-crowded sky.
It's not hard to make her lie down—
her back bends easily.
Dizzy in summer's heat,
Sylvia speeds, almost flames,
but then pushes hard on the brake.
At the stock car races
she wishes for a crash—
tango of metal and spark,
burnt tire fumes choking
her throat.
And as if on cue,
a car leaps into the stands.
Seven people mangled,
whirled away by ambulance swirl.
How Sylvia ignites after that.
Wildfire in the backseat,
we throttle, approach the finish line,
but she yanks the keys
from the ignition, hurls
them out the window.
Sylvia shrugs, an “I'm sorry”
tease in her eye,
she fastens the good-girl girdle
beneath her skirt.
I'll never ask her out again.
Sylvia struggled with issues of sexuality—how far should she go? It was imperative to her that she remain labeled a “good girl,” yet she desired to be sexually active. Sylvia was outraged by the prevailing gender-biased double standards of sexuality common in her day.
A Room of Her Own
Warren Plath
1949
As I wave goodbye,
scholarshipped to Exeter,
Sylvia peers from behind
the blue gingham curtain
of the bedroom that used to be mine.
After years of bunking
with Mother, Sylvia has a bed,
a desk, and a door all her own.
I wonder, as I drive away,
if she's really sad to see me go.
Sylvia and Warren were two and a half years apart. Warren attended Phillips Exeter Academy from 1949 to 1953 on a four-year scholarship. Exeter is a prep school that grooms students for entrance into the Ivy League.
Heartbreaker
John Hall, a college boy Sylvia dated in high school
Fall 1949, Sylvia's senior year
Without a wet eye of remorse,
Sylvia tells me that she's dating
two other boys, does not want to see me
anymore, after I fast-pedaled myself
from Williams straight to her door.
I replicate that smile of hers—
those painted lips without a twitch
or tic, without breath—
on my kisser,
but I am a terrible phony.
My watery eyes betray me,
shrink me into infancy.
I stagger to my car, hating her
as I slouch over the steering column
and my head shakes with sobs.
Another sad sack
in Syl's string of flings.
I thought I was special.
I don't really hate her,
but I boil at the way she's reduced me.
Taller and older than she is,
still, Sylvia pats me on the head
like I'm her kid brother.
“There, there, little Johnny,” she croons
as she pushes me out the door.
In her junior year of high school alone, Sylvia dated about twenty boys. It was customary to date boys who were a few years or grades older. She dated college boys she met through friends of friends and family introductions. Sylvia also lived in a college town, Wellesley, although most of the boys she dated attended other colleges, such as Williams College and Denison University. Many of Sylvia's dating escapades are chronicled in her diaries and journals.
Valedictorian
Bradford Principal Samuel Graves
June 7, 1950
Sylvia finishes first
in her class, to no one's
raised eyebrows.
A freight train
furying down the tracks,
I hope in college she'll find
some “fun,” not just
gold stars and blue ribbons.
She demands perfection
from herself,
the curl of her hair precise,
her argument against nuclear
disarmament exact.
Her shoulders rarely at ease—
it exhausts me to watch her.
I wonder why we create skyscraper
expectations in our youths today?
Do we fear it's too late to build our own?
Sylvia was seventeen when she graduated from high school in 1950. There were 158 students in her class. She knew at the time she was going to attend Smith and had won a couple of scholarships, one for $850 from Smith Student Aid and one from Wellesley's Smith Club for $450. These scholarships made it possible for Aurelia to afford to send Sylvia to Smith.
Smith was founded in 1871 to be a school for women that was academically equal to colleges for men. By 1950 Smith had become one of the premier undergraduate institutions in the country. Smith enrolled only 2,400 students, 600 per class, when Sylvia attended.
Lookout Farm
Cyrus Jeness, farm foreman at Sylvia's summer job
Summer 1950
Summer's frying-pan hot.
That beanpole blond girl
all the farmhands eyeball and drool over
wipes her brow backhanded.
She's stronger than you'd think,
pulls eight-hour days
same as the boys,
harvests beans and radishes
like a plow horse,
but then mans the roadside stand
like a shop lady,
handling customers with kidskin gloves.
That Sylvia's not all bronzed
angel, she does her share of devilin'
, walks rickety barn planks
up to that German boy's loft.
We catch her red-faced,
bruise-lipped, sheepish,
as she slinks down
among the hay bales.
I'm sure not much happened,
but Sylvia's face froze, blushed guilty,
like she was caught—
hand in the owner's purse.
Sylvia wrote about this episode in her journals. She started her job as a field hand on June 10, 1950. Lookout Farm was located in Natick, Massachusetts.
Paper Doll
Eddie Cohen, University of Chicago student
Summer 1950
I read her first story in national
circulation in my sister's Seventeen
magazine. The tiny photograph
reveals the author's blond curls
and slightly askew smile.
I had to write her, see if
the glimmer of more, of something
real and dangerous I feel beneath
her words, bears out.
She pen-pals me back.
Infatuated with her cursive,
I flip over this cutout cutie,
this girl about to enter Smith
to whom I fashion my letters.
She could be my paper doll
come to life.
Eddie Cohen read Sylvia's story “And Summer Will Not Come Again” in the August 1950 edition of Seventeen magazine. Eddie and Sylvia wrote each other letters. They did not meet in person until March 1951, when Eddie drove out to Smith as a surprise to meet her.
Dropout
Ann Davidow, Sylvia's roommate
first semester freshman year in Haven House
Fall 1950
Smith drains. I am not
like these girls.
I have met only one girl
who understands.
Sylvia Plath doesn't fit into the Smith uniform
or country-club chic, doesn't wear
the blue-blooded pearls either. While Sylvia
overcompensates for this,
I slump into the cafeteria,
oversleep for class.
I can't catch a wave in this place,
can't even wade into the Smith waters.
Sylvia dives into her studies,
reads ahead of the semester schedule
like someone's shooting
a gun at her heels.
She types her papers
a week before the due date
while I linger at the shoreline,
bury my toes in the sand.
The tides here are too rough.
I sink here, happy only when I hoard
my little blue sleeping pills,
stash the blades of my razor.
I accumulate a drawer
of drop-out devices,
so by December I can escape
to a Merry Christmas.
I wish I could be
more like Sylvia.
She calls me into her waves,
says she'll buoy me.
But I depart in the new year,
never to return to Smith.
Ann Davidow remained a close friend and correspondent of Sylvia's until Sylvia's death.
Money Well Spent
Olive Higgins Prouty, Sylvia's benefactor
Winter 1950
What pleasure to know
that my scholarship goes
to such a talented delight—
Sylvia Plath. I write and invite
her to my Brookline expanse,
the mansion financed
by bestsellers and radio play.
I intend to guide this protégée
into stories about her real life—
romance, desire, and family strife,
not make-believe thrillers with knives,
but tales of homemakers, trapped little wives.
I will mother Sylvia, foster her
and support her work. Posture for her
a woman writer's way.
In the hopes that someday
she'll find great renown.
Her words will resound,
ethereal, soaring,
and unbound.
Olive Higgins Prouty was the sponsor of Sylvia's scholarship at Smith. She remained a steadfast mentor and devoted friend to Sylvia. Mrs. Prouty was best known for her novel Now, Voyager, which was made into a Bette Davis movie, and for Stella Dallas, a novel that was adapted into both a Barbara Stanwyck movie and a popular radio serial.
Inconsiderate
&nbs
p; Eddie Cohen, University of Chicago student
March-April 1951
Dear Rude One,
who do you think you are?
I drove sleep-deprived
a day across country
to visit you and you played
stranger to me, awkward
after months of letters.
Disappointed with
my unshaven face,
you treated me like
a fledgling C student
unfit to commingle
among the A class.
Now you mute me out,
don't respond to my angry
letters. I guess you're just
another Smithie snob, the blond
gone all the way to your head.
Do you lie in all your letters
or just the ones you postmark to me?
I may have let you down
with my Christmas stocking
of apples and oranges,
but you have crushed me,
given me a sock of coal
when I expected a gold medal.
Eddie visited Sylvia of his own volition. She did not ask or encourage him to come. Their meeting was awkward, and it is chronicled in letters and in Sylvia's journal.
New Roommate, New Friend
Marcia Brown, Sylvia's second Smith roommate
and lifelong friend
Winter-spring 1951
Sylvia Plath, the writer
of bulletin-board fame,
ascends the stairs
to move in with me.
We fit like Lincoln Logs,
notch together at pleasant angles,
both of us scholarships, working hard
to maintain the high Smith standards.
My mother adores Sylvia,
lets me travel to Manhattan,
the lair of corruption,
with her.
No one knows that Sylvia
straightens her sock drawer
four times a day, her sleep light
and infrequent as an infant.
She writes more in a day
than most people compose
in a month. Her eccentricities,
even her nose-picking, enchant me.
And I ground her.
She is a blue balloon
tethered to my wrist
pulling me in the wind.
I line up babysitting jobs
for us. I want to keep us close
both summer and school year.