Your Own, Sylvia
Page 6
Sylvia did not appear particularly burdened or embarrassed by the public knowledge of her suicide attempt and hospitalization. Her incident allowed her certain privileges—a lightened school schedule, fewer chores, and a private room in her dorm, Lawrence House. Sylvia continued to be an exceptional student, and she was treated with awe and esteem. In some ways, Sylvia seemed to like the attention.
Recommendation
Estella Kelsey, Sylvia's senior-year housemother
at her dormitory, Lawrence House
Fall 1954
Clack-clack-clack-ding,
all hours of night and day,
Sylvia rings our ears
with her typewriting machine,
as though her words
are more vital than our sleep.
The vocational office informs me
that I am to write Sylvia
a letter of recommendation
so that she might be awarded
a Fulbright scholarship.
Well, tish, I clackety-click
out my statement of truth.
Talented as a well-bred
racehorse and just about as spoiled,
Sylvia runs around this place
as though she is a guest author in residence.
More seasoned than the other girls,
they best not block Sylvia's path
to the finish line. I select my words,
type the letter straight. I do understand
Sylvia needs money. But she also needs
to find some gratitude.
Smith was an all-women's college, and Lawrence House was a dormitory specifically for girls on scholarship, wherein house duties and chores helped to defray their room-and-board expenses. A housemother lived in the dormitory with the students and was charged with overseeing the girls and making sure that the dorm rules were upheld.
Darling, Darling
Richard Sassoon, one of Sylvia's great love affairs
1955
I chide you,
whisk you off to New York.
We feast on theater,
savor art like fine cabernet.
Gorge ourselves
on each other's lips
as though each kiss
were the necessary antidote
to our separation.
You turn
from everybody's good-time girl
into a butterfly
caught in my silver net,
content to light on my chest.
I become your sun,
your nectar.
You flap against my web,
yet are grateful to be confined.
I take you in hand
when you try to fly away
and amuse yourself
on another wind.
Sylvia, you must
land. You desire this,
to be held in place.
You need me
to fashion your cocoon.
Sylvia became disillusioned with Richard in 1955 as she completed her senior year at Smith. Part of her loss of interest was because Richard appeared to have fallen overly in love with her. Nevertheless, Richard is the one who ultimately broke the relationship off and left Sylvia heartbroken.
Bragging Rights
Aurelia Plath
June 1955
My little Sivvy graduates,
a briefcase of accolades
to bolster her into higher learning.
She surpasses me. Her reading
list above my skill set.
This has been my dream,
and yet my stomach flares
like a dynamite stick. It explodes,
requires repair, keeps me from my dear.
I open letter after letter.
Sylvia wins the Glascock Poetry
competition, publishes
in the Christian Science Monitor,
Mademoiselle, and
the Atlantic Monthly.
They award my daughter
the Christopher Prize,
the Alpha Phi Kappa Psi award,
the Alpha Creative Writing award,
the Elizabeth Babcock Poetry Prize.
Sivvy judges literary festivals.
She wins or places in almost
everything she enters. She sends
me her ribbons and placards,
they collect on my wall
like a montage of success.
I store the surplus in a cedar chest.
The prize money she retains.
The phone beside my hospital bed
buzzes and quivers, Sylvia's voice
trills higher than the Wellesley water tower.
She has been awarded a Fulbright
to study at Cambridge.
I elevate my bed, bubble up
out of my stomachache stupor,
tell her I am exceedingly proud of her.
Our toils paid off.
When I hang up the receiver
and lower myself back to horizontal,
my expression concaves.
Sylvia will live an ocean away—
move beyond my sight and reach.
I try to smile about this departure.
I will travel on a mattress
in the back of Marian's station wagon
to watch Sivvy accept her diploma.
And then I must wave her off across the Atlantic,
watch her ship slide quickly beyond my grasp.
Sylvia graduated on June 6, 1955, at the age of twenty-two. Aurelia was recovering from a subtotal gastrectomy.
Put Your Studies to Good Use
Adlai Stevenson, Smith 1955 commencement address
Impressive what you
girls accomplished at Smith, but now
you must pursue your
highest vocation—
achieve a creative marriage,
thrive beside a man.
Despite the sentiments expressed above, presidential candidate Stevenson was thought to be a progressive politician.
Farewell, Boys
Warren Plath
September 1955
Her boat departs for England
and Sylvia releases the sailor knot
that kept her safely docked in Boston Harbor.
She ends her affair
with Peter Davison, that young
editor at Harvard University Press
she seemed so enchanted with
just last week. It's as though Peter
were a summer head scarf
and as the season passes, he's
not worth packing. She seals
the envelope with Gordon too,
lipstick prints goodbyed
over the adhesive. She wants
no loose strings on her London-
worthy cloak. Richard Sassoon
puzzles her. As the Queen Elizabeth
steams away from shore,
Richard becomes smaller
and smaller, almost insignificant.
Almost as if he were never standing
on shore at all. And then
there is me, the one constant
male in her saltwater.
I drive her to the ship, witness
the men come and go
with her shifting winds.
I wave, blow her a kiss.
My sister, soon to be a Brit.
I want her to fare well.
In the fall of 1953 Warren was a junior at Harvard.
American Girl
Mrs. Milne, housemother at Whitstead, Sylvia's dormitory at
Cambridge/Newnham College
Fall 1955
She's a wee bit different
from the other girls,
cuts her eggs into squares.
She lets her male “friend”
use the ladies' loo. I saw him
tiptoe into a stall at dawn.
When I scold Sylvia,
tell her that this is not proper,
she eyes me with
those big browns
as though I'm the foolhardy.
“Why not?” She presses me
like a linen shirt.
I rap on the metal canister
where ladies deposit napkins.
“They don't have these
on the bottom floor
and we don't have men
on the top.”
The U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program, the U.S. government's flagship program in international educational exchange, was proposed to the U.S. Congress in 1945 by freshman senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. The Fulbright Program sends 800 scholars and professionals each year to more than 140 countries, where they lecture or conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields.
The University of Cambridge is one of the oldest universities in the world and one of the largest in the United Kingdom. Cambridge has a worldwide reputation for outstanding academic achievement by its students.
Duplicate
Jane Baltzell, another American student attending
Cambridge/Newnham and residing at Whitstead
Fall 1955
We bike into town to dine.
Sylvia sports her Mademoiselle
casual couture. She rah-rahs
her American accent like a pom-pom girl.
I flush embarrassed when she taps
a young man on the shoulder,
wonders if he might recommend
a very British, very picturesque place to eat.
We are students, not tourists.
Sylvia assimilates about as well
as a hog snorting through
a field of fillies.
They branded us the American twins,
both of us tall and blond.
We could trade skirts, though nothing
in my bureau suits Sylvia's taste,
and vice versa. “There may not be
enough room in this English program
for the two of us,” Sylvia laughs.
But we both know her jest contains truth.
Jane Baltzell Kopp was recorded at her Arkansas home in November 1973 responding to questions from Edward Butscher on these experiences.
Jane Baltzell Kopp went on to translate the Poetria nova into English. This has been done by only two other people. The Poetria nova is a thirteenth-century instructive treatise invented by Geoffrey of Vinsauf, which gives specific advice to future writers about the composition of poetry. The text itself serves as an illustration of the techniques it teaches.
My Notes on the Renowned Miss Plath's Submission
John Lehmann, editor at the London Magazine
1955
Unimpressed. I say
you're frightened to feel, create
mice where should be rats.
Two poems in the batch Sylvia submitted to the London Magazine were “Dance Macabre” and “Ice Age,” both of which can be found in The Collected Poems. Sylvia published many poems and stories in the London Magazine later in life, including “The Applicant,” one of the three Ariel poems accepted before she died.
Self-Centered
Mallory Wober, Sylvia's British boyfriend
her first semester at Cambridge
Fall 1955
Sylvia swishes
into King's College dining hall,
removes her exterior gloves,
and twenty heads twist
away from the orchestra,
aroused not by sound
or any of the regular five senses,
but drawn to her essence.
She's accustomed
to this sort of response,
a silent queen of the bees,
she understands her import
in the hive, produces well
to retain her status. Sylvia charms
us mortals with her poems
and her ball gowns.
I shake off my outer coat
and, like a happy drone,
guide the royal
to her seat.
Sylvia met Mallory at a Labour Party dance. A fellow student, Mallory was more exotic than other British men because he had lived in India. When Sylvia studied at Cambridge, men outnumbered women ten to one!
Love Affair
Richard Sassoon, one of Sylvia's great loves
December 1955
Paris whirls blue and
dark blue. Sylvia begins and
ends me, belongs here.
A beautiful account of Sylvia's travels with Richard during December 1955 and January 1956 can be found in the appendix of The Journals of Sylvia Plath: 1950-1962. On this vacation, Richard danced Sylvia around all the famous sights of Paris. They spent Christmas morning on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral. Sylvia grew to love Paris even more than London.
As she packed her bags to return to Cambridge, Richard told Sylvia he intended to see other women and they had a terrible fight. This visit would be the last significant time they spent together.
Overreaction
Jane Baltzell, another American student at Cambridge,
Sylvia's doppelg?er, with whom she traveled to Paris
December 1955
Sylvia raged, rain-drenched,
dagger eyes.
I'd locked her out,
poor culpable me.
Jane and Sylvia were more or less forced to travel together. Due to bad weather, all planes into Paris were grounded, so the girls instead took a ferry across stormy waters, bonding as they sipped brandy together under Jane's raincoat and attempted to avoid seasickness. As they arrived too late for Jane to check into a hotel, Sylvia let Jane stay in her room. Despite the late hour and bad weather, Sylvia wanted to go out that night and explore. But Jane was exhausted and collapsed into bed, sleeping so soundly she did not hear Sylvia banging on the door to be let in. Jane had also left the key in the lock after she locked the door from the inside, so even the concierge with his master key could not let Sylvia into her room. Sylvia and Jane's friendship was delicate, and Sylvia was furious beyond reason. The episode was peaceably resolved by Jane's agreement to be more responsible with the key. When Jane left Paris for Italy a few days later, she locked the key in the room a second time.
Paris in the Winter
Imagining Sylvia Plath
In the style of “Winter Landscape, with Rooks”
Winter 1956
She repeats his name like a lullaby,
the sonorous Sassoon. He sings
to her, then flaps his wings, a magpie
shaking his tail of her. Nothing
for her between his beak except lies.
She sketched this out in faded watercolor,
Richard not answering
her bell, fleeing her like a schoolboy. Where
did he run? She circles his building.
She taps her toes. Did he even open her letter?
She freezes this trip to Paris, the city of pigeons.
There are not enough scarves to warm her.
She stalks his door. She awaits his return,
ridiculous as a rook without its jacket of feathers.
She never once glimpses his silhouette against the curtain.
“Winter Landscape, with Rooks” is the second poem in The Collected Poems. Sylvia wrote about this poem in her journal, February 20, 1956: “Wrote one good poem: ‘Winter Landscape, with Rooks': it moves, and is athletic: a psychic landscape.”
St. Botolph 's Party: Meeting Sylvia Plath
Ted Hughes, poet, Sylvia's future husband
February 25, 1956
I may be black panther
but she draws blood,
swirls whiskey-headed
around the dance floor,
dizzy on my poetry.
Her mind traps my lines
with the proficiency
I quote Shakespeare's.
She adores my words,
whispers that I will be
part of the pantheon.
I yank this Sylvia Plath
into a room of desk
and books, out of range
of the girl-of-the-moment
I brought to the party.
Blond and tall as a magazine
swimsuit model. I nibble
at the whippet's neck.
Her lips fury-red, she bites
me—teeth tearing my cheek.
I retreat, imprinted, stunned.
The party for our little
lit mag rages, wine-soaked,
behind the mahogany door.
Sylvia jets from the room.
She has tasted me. Her mouth is full.
I touch the blood on my face.
Will I ever be the same?
At the time Sylvia met Ted Hughes, he was no longer attending Cambridge, just hanging around the university discussing poetry and politics and establishing the short-lived literary magazine St. Botolph's Review. Ted was renowned as one of the best poets within the university community, even though he had published very little—a few poems in Delta and Chequer. Although Ted wrote a lot of poetry during this period, including one of his most anthologized poems, “The Jaguar,” he simply did not vigorously pursue publication.
Germany
Gordon Lameyer, one of Sylvia's old boyfriends
April 1956
Last-ditch effort
to make fire of our
romantic embers, but we find
no phoenix in the ash.
We should spark flint
into friendship, but when Sylvia
rants that John Malcolm Brinnin
could have/should have saved
that old Welsh hero of hers,
Dylan Thomas, sad overrated
“dying of the light” poet that he is,
I will not concede to her.
Sylvia dials up the volume
of her argument, pounds
the alehouse table. I proffer
that Brinnin could never stop Thomas
from Thomas's inevitable,
predestined, predetermined
march toward self-destruction.
Sylvia eyes me, brimstone mad.
I almost hit below the belt
and argue that she of all people
should understand this,
for like her favorite poet
no one can stop Sylvia
when she holds a knife