Contributions: March
Just a note, flagged by this week's TLS-- the current Missouri Review has Knopf's rejection files--yes, forty years of rejecting as unsuitable for publication, for this reason or that, Borges, Joyce Carol Oates, Anais Nin, Philip K. Dick, James Baldwin, etc etc. And, four different rejections for the Bell Jar, the first from 11 Jan 63...Kenneth Jones
Berkeley CA, USA
Wednesday, March 28, 2001
I understand that you would like to hear my opinion, and so here I go: I believe that Sylvia Plath's poems are completely in depth to events in her life and her own personal feelings and emotional struggles. I have read hundreds of her letters and I'm not doing a specific poem, but a biography on the poet herself. I have read her books and many poems. I have 44 printed pages worth and have read every poem that I have printed. I've read Lady Lazarus to A Virgin In The Tree to Three Voices to By Candlelight. I can connect with a lot of her poems and I feel that her reason for suicide was because of her life's troubles. The miscarriage, the separation from her husband, how Warren would never visit her, how Ted got most of the support and attention and how Sylvia would constantly help him with his work and troubles rather than her own. It seems to me she ran the family and took more part in it than her husband. But I need info on her life that I can't seem to find in biography books.
They say she committed suicide, they say what day, month and year, and they say she left a loving family and two kids behind, but that I know already. I need to know how she died, and other people's opinion in general. I need to know tiny facts, like which poems DID reflect to a part of her life, because I don't know when certain poems were published. I would appreciate the help. Oh by the way, I've never seen her as a leader for cults or anything like that, but a woman who put emotions and thoughts into poems that other people could barely say because they knew not the right words. Wednesday, March 28, 2001Ashley
Acton , USA
Wednesday, March 28, 2001
I have been working on a research paper on Sylvia Plath and how her writing and poems went with her life.The only thing I can't find enough information about is Plath's life while she was at Smith College. Any information would help greatly thanks.Andy England
Henning, USA
Wednesday, March 28, 2001
I have been enjoying reading the responses to my rather pedantic question. And it occurs to me that I might be expected to answer it myself. Actually, a couple of things occur to me: 1) that it might be a tad perverse to think in terms of a "favorite" passage from someone else's private journal, and 2) that, on going back and reading through the Journals again, it's pretty impossible to settle on just one favorite passage. What a question!
I've already partly answered it in previous postings about the section (entry 126, July 7, 1952, pg. 109) where she develops the analogy between church and the movies, ending with "bigger and better marriages these days and more often please", with the parallelism of the characters' interior thoughts. And I like the self-reference in the line "she could let her hair fall over one eye a little"; read this and then look at the photo #8 "SP in her bathrobe at Haven House, 1952" This is, I think, my favorite picture of her, and perhaps #37 of "SP and Nicholas in Devonshire, December 1962" Many of the pictures of the "blonde bombshell" period are rather off-putting, and the later pictures such as on her American trip with Ted, where she looks so thin, are kind of sad.
And there's the long entry 142, Friday--August 22, 1952) about parting from someone named Bob: "And I, remembering your face in the dark, with the equal measured light from the lighthouse shining, wheeling, catching in sharp light and shadow the terrible beauty of your lean cheek and slender jaw, and relinquishing you to the dark, only to catch you up again--" and that paragraph I've quoted before about the taste of early apples "lyric lovely on the tongue" I wonder if she ever incorporated this section into anything she tried to publish.
But the two entries that, re-reading them, I am really touched by are the two that describe her interaction with young children. First, entry 17, pg.17, about the two children putting flowers in her hair, "And all my hurts were smoothed away." And then, the sequence (entry 86, pg. 70) where she gives baths to the three children she's babysitting. There is so much tenderness in these passages, so much honest sensual response to their "plump young bodies" that is really endearing to me, and that makes it that much sadder that the reality of the domestic situation later could reduce this to "the stink of crap and baby fat". But of course anyone burdened with young children, and domestic chores and trying to do crreative working and typing hubby's manuscripts as well, with Sylvia's tendency to depression, is bound to have ambivalent feelings once in a while.
Oops, I'm typing this at work, and have just run out of time. Thanks for the responses please keep them coming.Jim Long
Honolulu, HI, USA
Wednesday, March 28, 2001
Jim thanks for the question on the Journals.
The replies so far echo many thoughts I have about them.They are the first writings by Plath I had read. I was immediately swept along by them. Iam only up to 1952 but I am constantly amazed by her observations on life at such a young age.
She says at one point that," I dislike being a girl, because as such I must come to realize that I cannot be a man. In other words I must pour my energies through the direction and force of my mate. And yet, it is as I feared: Iam becoming accustomed and adjusted to that idea."
What a great comment on the way society , of any time tends to mold us to the accepted ways of the time. In our time we have the pressure of political correctness which right or wrong is an answer to other pressures from society as a whole. The way she articulates her thoughts is so interesting.
Her use of language is awesome, you can see the journals as kind of laboratory for her to perfect her craft. What comes through for me also is her zest for life, which I think someone has already mentioned.
As an aside, I live just north of Boston and I am down in Swampscott on business at least once a month, so if any one knows where the Mayo home is located please let me know through the forum or email me.
Gary Allen
Monday, March 26, 2001
I am trying to write a comparison between two of Sylvia Plath's poems, "Mad Girl's Love Song" and "Morning Song". In my paper I have written about Plath's subject matter maturing as she grew older. I wrote that in much of her early work Plath wrote about love, but in her later work she wrote more about her children and other life experiences. I was wondering if others thought this was accurate or had any other comparisons between the two poems. Any help that you can provide is greatly appreciated! Thanks!Emily
Burnt Hills, NY, USA
Monday, March 26, 2001
Two of the journal entries that really stood out for me were one from the July 1950 to July 1953 section (entry 63) and the "Benidorm: July 23" entry from 22 July 1956 - 26 August 1956. In the first, Plath writes that "There is a certain unique and strange delight about walking down an empty street alone," and then goes off into a wonderfully poetic description of the sensations she feels while engaged in this seemingly mundane activity. She is curious about the people who live in the houses she sees and expresses her desire to "crawl inside your guts and your cranium and live like a tapeworm for a while, draining your life substance into myself..."
In the other entry, apparently describing some hostile feelings for Ted, she writes of "the wrongness growing and filling he house like a man-eating plant...all the time the wrongness growing, creeping, choking the house, twining the tables and chairs and poisoning the knives and forks, clouding the drinking water with that lethal taint..."
And on and on. With a little polishing, either of these pieces could have been worked up into a stunning literary essay or even a prose poem, it seems to me, yet they were apparently filed away and forgotten. Amazing. The journals are also filled with chilling, off-hand comments like "I desire the very things that will destroy me," "If anything ever happened to Ted I would go mad or kill myself"--as if she knew all along how she would end up. They are very compelling reading, and I find myself identifying with many of her feelings and observations.Michael Gates
Jersey City, NJ, USA
Monday, March 26, 2001
I'm writing a report on the criticism of Sylvia Plath's works. I'm finding a lot of biographical info on Sylvia but not a lot of criticism. If anyone could help me out that would be swell :-) Criticism dealing with The Bell Jar,or her perspectives on female sexuality and love -hate relationships would be extra nice. Thanks a bunch!Emily
Endicott, USA
Monday, March 26, 2001
I have been reading the Forum for months and greatly enjoying it, but I've never contributed. But I am, like the previous poster, sparked by Jim Long's question, what is your favorite part of the Journals? For years (since the original publication) I've turned to SP's journals for the somehow deeply reassuring account of an intelligent, unstable woman trying consciously to marshal her strengths and defeat her demons. Her precocious articulateness is indeed stunning, as is the passion and energy of the early journals, but my favorite stuff is when she's struggling with what Elaine pointed out is the unglamourous material of adulthood. The domestic details of her life with Hughes are touching -- the greasy pot she scrubs after a dinner party, the food and cleaning they share. (I love the part when she escapes downtown to buy two shirts in between teaching classes.)
But my absolute favorite might be her 'Letter to a Demon,' which for some reason is placed in the Appendix in the Unabridged Journals. Since the demon in question is herself, it seems to me questionable to remove the letter from the body of the journal. At any rate, it's a memorable piece of self-reckoning, describing one of those fits of harrowing self-doubt that can destroy a night's sleep. "I lay feeling my nerves shaved to pain & the groaning inner voice: oh, you can't teach, can't do anything. Can't think, can't write."
Such absolute self-castigation is familiar to anyone with an exacting superego like Plath's. It strikes me that the extreme fatigue she describes throughout her year teaching at Smith was due to her inner pressure to excel and her equally strong need to rebel. At any rate, in 'Letter to a Demon' she, with Hughes' help, tries to dismantle the apparatus of her self-sabotaging inner voice. "I have a good self, that loves skies, hills, ideas, tasty meals, bright colors," she encourages. The entry ends "Le roi est mort. Vive le roi" which, though a bit self-dramatizing, emphasizes the seriousness of Plath's struggle to claim some positive ground for herself, to dignify her 'good' parts and scare her 'bad' ones into submission. I believe that we all struggle with a version of this, but she articulates it so vividly.
The photographs included in the Unabridged of Plath posing stiffly in various vacation settings for Hughes (presumably) camera are also rather touching. In Birthday Letters I think he says the camera was her enemy, and it certainly does not seem to have caught her intense aliveness.Kristina Eldredge
New York City, USA
Monday, March 26, 2001
I'm a producer at a public radio station in Boston and I'm working on a weekly poetry series I hope to run next month. This is kind of a strange question but I wonder if anyone might now how I could procure a song about Sylvia Plath that I heard once on someone else's mixed tape many years ago. I don't know the name of the song, or who sings it but the first few lines were "Sylvia Plath/was never too good at math/but I heard she graduated from the head of her class..." I thought this would make a good theme for the series, a kind of flag to let people know the segment had something to do with poetry. If you can help, and had a moment to e-mail me, I would appreciate it immensely.Sean Cole
Boston, MA, USA
Monday, March 26, 2001
Sydney, Remember that in July of 1962 (July 20, 1962 is the date given for this poem in the "Collected Poems") she was just discovering that her husband was having an affair. The poems seems to suggest her feeling of victimization (as in the "mouth just bloodied"). To her the blood-red blossoms suggest femaleness (if you hold the poppy flower upside down the petals suggest what used to be called an A-line skirt) "Little bloody skirts" Also, remember that to the British the word "bloody" has another meaning as a term of invective ("little hell-flames"; bloody hell). In any case, she feels assaulted and oppressed by their vividness and would like to "dull" them, render them "colorless". Notice also the poem "Poppies in October", which also mentions their skirts, and associates them with a woman's blood.Jim Long
Honolulu HI, USA
Monday, March 26, 2001
Sam, a number of writers have suggested that Plath owed a debt to the poetry of Theodore Roethke, for much of the sound of the poems in "Poem for a Birthday"as well as certain individual poems like "Mushrooms". If you're interested look at the 3rd and 4th parts of Roethke's book "The Lost Son and other poems". Also, as far as verbal techniques, notice her extensive use, in just about every stanza, of assonance (rhyming of vowel sounds) and alliteration (repetition of consonants) that tend to have the effect of isolating the lines in which they occur and lending weight to the very simple images. As for the meaning, I see it as addressing the apparent paradox between their so-called "meekness", their defencelessness (they suggest an unborn fetus "toeless and noseless", "earless and eyeless") as opposed to their strength in pushing aside the stones and earth in order to "take hold on the loam" and "inherit the earth".Jim Long
Honolulu, USA
Monday, March 26, 2001
Ellen,
The word "tor" refers to mountain peaks, usually seen from a distance, on the horizon, and thus appearing blue or purple. I see the visual image as depicting the horse and rider speeding along, with things in front and alongside them flowing, or "pouring" towards and past them, thus the "blue pour of tor and distances."Jim Long
Honolulu HI, USA
Monday, March 26, 2001
I am in the 7th grade at Cairo American College and I am doing a poem analysis on Mirror. I understand most of the poem but, I am a little confused about what the wall represents and how it is separated by faces and darkness. Please help me in figuring this one out. Thanks a lot.Cassie
Cairo, Egypt
Monday, March 26, 2001
Jim, I have been thinking for two days now about your very awesome question. Thank you for you spark. The Journal entry for 6 March 1956 written from Cambridge is just about one of my favorites. Preceeding this entry we have the tumultuous February entries where Plath documented her slide into depression and her revival in most smashing way at the end of the month. March, too, was a very very topsy-turvy, roller-coaster ride month. She had been dumped by Harry Houdini of ex-boyfriends Richard Sassoon, somewhat spontaneously, cold turkey (gizzards). On the side, within two days she notes she'd been spending much time with Gary Haupt and within four days of this 12 page entry she is stir crazy knowing that Ted Hughes is back, back, back in Cambridge, and recapitulates the metaphor for her poem "Pursuit."
But this entry for 6 March in particular is full of emotion. It is half letter to Sassoon and half Journal. The journal portion has less pride and is very believably the words of a hurt, confused and somewhat alone young woman; the letter is chock full of questions, theoris and pleas. I think this entire entry is comparable to the outburst of poems in October 1962 when her marriage crumbled and Ted was gone. In fact, Plath writes of Sassoon in 1956, "I have found that it is beyond your power ever ... to free me or give me back my soul." This is a very similar line, written in a similar state, to "Once you have given your heart, your whole heart to someone you cannot ever get it back" in late 1962 or early 1963. (That was not a direct quotation)
She also writes "it hurts, father, it hurts, oh father I have never known; a father, even, they took from me" which is one of the first instances where she pines away for her father.
This passage, and these first months of 1956, help shape Sylvia Plath into her future. There is no question that what is to come, from the marriage, the influence of Ted Hughes, the travel, teaching, writing, birth, etc all bleed straight from the heart of these months, these words. They are amongst my favorite entries because they seem to beat "I am, I am" straight from her heart into my heart and into my veins and bones. And as Karen Kukil said to me when I saw her in February, they show her "zest for life."Peter K Steinberg
Brighton, MA, USA
Saturday, March 24, 2001
Hi, I have to admit that this forum is amazing. I find it very helpful and it provides much insight due to the huge amount of participation by Plath's fans ... Anyway, could anybody help me with the interpretation of "Poppies in July"? I'm having a bit of trouble understanding the part about bloody skirts ... could this be some sexual image, regarding virginity? I'm not too sure. Also, in "Lady Lazarus", what happened to Plath when she was 10 years old? I have a biography, her unabridged journals, and every possible work about or by her, andI haven't got that yet. Maybe I'm just dense.Sydney Kim
Riverside, CA, USA
Saturday, March 24, 2001
I need to find out about the meaning of "pour of tor and distances" in Plath's Ariel. Does anyone know about references that might help me better understand this line or any other pertinent, interesting information on this audibly interesting yet cognitively difficult line?
Thanks so much for any thoughts.Ellen Miller
Chattanooga, USA
Friday, March 23, 2001
I'm pleased to see some of the contributions going off in the direction of SP's prose. I believe this area is largely unappreciated because of the larger body of work, the poetry.
It seems to me that the prose, as exemplified by the pieces in Johnny Panic, is extremely important because of the style and the time in which they were written.
The style resembles, is even comparable, to that of Salinger and Vonnegut. By this I mean the wry humor, the pointed jabs at the mores and values of the times. The arch use of language, the phraseology, the subjects addressed all add up to a sense of laughter through tears.
In regard to the time, I believe SP was a ground breaker in being a woman writing in this style during the 50s. (And I am not referencing her commercial efforts which were, frankly, devised to SELL.) Right now I can't think of another single woman who was able to capture some of the idiocy of the 50s with the pointed, serio-comic approach.
Bell Jar came close to Catcher in the Rye. I sometimes wish she'd devoted more of her intellectual energy in this direction instead of pursuing the poetic navel gazing which destroyed her.Miriam Korshak
Houston, Texas, USA
Friday, March 23, 2001
I'm in yr 12 and am hoping that anyone might be able to help with an analysis of "Mushrooms" or could point me in the direction of one possibly with language techniques. It would be a big help. Thanks.Sam
Gold Coast, Australia
Friday, March 23, 2001
I just read "Mushrooms" but I am having a difficulty time interpreting this poem, because English is my second language, if anyone could e-mail me any information about this poem I will appreciate it. I believe it deals with her sanity.Jose
USA
Friday, March 23, 2001
Steve, I was going to e-mail you directly, but the link didn't provide your e-mail address, so... I just wanted to suggest that you might be interested in looking back to my comments on the Journals of Dec. 27, 2000. I thought there might be more discussion of the Journals on the Forum, but there's been surprisingly little.Whenever I look into them I'm impressed all over again by her precocious command of descriptive language, and by how close she comes at a very early stage to the patterns and sounds and themes of her later work. But I also find them exasperating. Partly because she's so concerned with publishing in such undeserving venues as Mademoiselle and Seventeen, etc. I'd like to have seen her take, for example, that section of the journals where she equates going to the movies with going to church, and send THAT to Seventeen and or some more adventurous publication. But she was so quick to acquiesce to such conventional tastes in order to get published. But of course this was typical of what you had to do in the '50s to get published anywhere that "counted", in other words in anything with a readership. And partly because she often didn't seem to realize what her strengths were. She actually says at one point that she's never been one to notice details! This, after pages and pages of detailed descriptions of people and places and sense impressions. What was she thinking of?
Now, this is to everyone on the Forum: Can I ask an open question. Will everyone who's been reading the Journals tell me what is their favorite passage, scene, description, etc. and Why? The Why? is the important part. This is not a test; it's mainly to expand our own impressions, and to give me some new perspectives from a point of view that is not my own. It would be refreshing, and might get the discussion out into some new directions.
Jim Long
Honolulu, USA
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
I have been reading the Unabridged Journals for several months. They are very gripping and I feel a mental and emotional catharasis and cleansing reading them. For whatever reason, family background possibly, I identify with a lot of what SP wrote, and empathize with a lot of the suffering she went through. I have been reading the discussion on the board about the "expatriate" situation and don't know how much of this is in the context of criticism. I have recenlty spent a lot of time in France and also a week in London, and know that there is something that strikes a chord there that I will not find here (Idaho is an especially conservative and anti-intellectual state). Europe in general has much more of an intellectual element running through all of society and there is a much greater range of emotional/intellectual expression. Should Josephine Baker be reproached or considered a traitor for adopting France as her own country where she was loved and respected when she was being hounded as a communist here (incidentally during the same 1950s that Sylvia Plath grew up in and which I believe caused a lot of her own conflicts)?
Incidentally I believe that SP's journal is where she developed her style for the Bell Jar, and there is more of interest in it that is truly good writing than in many well-known novels of celebrated writers.Steve Lang
Boise, Idaho, USA
Monday, March 19, 2001
Darcey,
Remember, when Plath was speaking of being 50 years behind, it was 1962; 50 years would have placed her in 1912, very early Eliot/Pound/Stein, etc.
Obviously she wasn't talking about her taste in poetry. She certainly didn't adhere to Eliot's theory of 'impersonality', that the poet should remove himself from the work as much as possible. She also says she's excited by the work of Lowell, and Ann Sexton, her exact contemporaries. So, how behind the times could she have been?People like Pound, Eliot and the so-called "lost generation" between the Wars, went to Europe because they felt America was a kind of stagnant pond, artistically and creatively, and besides it was cheaper to live there. Plath went there to continue her education at the highest level available to her, at Cambridge. Having met and married Hughes it must have seemed natural to remain there, particularly since he preferred it and she could stay as far from her mother as she could get. And the academic community seemed more open to their talents than that in America. It also may have had something to do with the fact that it's easier to be a big fish in a small pond. She hadn't exported her talent to England, as if she wanted to deprive America of it, as Cressida seemed to imply. She still submitted her work mostly to American magazines. And still appreciates and is influenced by mainly American poets.
Although she claims that her manner of speaking was American, when I listen to the recording of her reading for the BBC, it is a curious blend of New England and Old. It's certainly not the voice I imagine when I read her journals, or even the late poetry.
Also, I want to modify some of my previous comments about Hughes' work. I have enormous respect for his talent, although that doesn't necessarily mean I appreciate his style. And it seems to me that much of his work is dark, dark, dark. Even Sylvia's work, as depressing as many people find it, is not so oppressively dark. Granted his experiences in the '60s, the deaths of two wives and a child, did much to color his work this way, naturally. Black rainbow, indeed. For anyone who wants an excellent explanation and analysis of Hughes' work, I highly recommend Ekbert Faas's book "Ted Hughes: the unaccommodated universe". He also has some interesting things to say about Plath.
Jim Long
Honolulu, USA
Monday, March 19, 2001
Cressida highlighted a part of Plath's response that confuses me:PLATH: I'm an old-fashioned American. THAT'S PROBABLY ONE OF THE REASONS WHY I'M IN ENGLAND NOW AND WHY I'LL ALWAYS STAY IN ENGLAND. I'm about fifty years behind as far as my preferences go and I must say that the poets who excite me most are the Americans.
Was this a huge trend 50 years back? I recall Pound, Hemingway (he wrote a little poetry too), Stein, and Eliot going abroad to France, England, etc. But then there were those like Frost and William Carlos Williams that were firmly American-based (although, okay, Frost did live in England for a couple of writing years). It also seems like THE American poets of Plath's time lived in America; for example she references Lowell & Sexton, who resided in Mass.
In the interview Plath views her poetry as American, i.e., inspired by the breakthroughs in American verse. But, seeing as she planned to live permanently in England, could her poetry have become "English"? Would it have made any difference?
Darcey
Berkeley, USA
Friday, March 16, 2001
It was nice of Darcey to post some transcription of the 30 October 1962 Peter Orr interview so that those who have not heard or read it can be better informed. Cressida raises two questions about Sylvia's responses to Peter Orr. When Sylvia says "I'm an American, I'm afraid,..." Cressida asks what Sylvia is afraid of. The answer is nothing. Instead, "I'm afraid" is an interjection equivalent to "I must say" or "to tell the truth" or "actually." Such interjections following a statement (as in this case) were and are more common in British than American speech.
Cressida raises another question about "a bit of a traitor," saying that it's obviously impossible to be a bit of traitor just as it's impossible to be a bit of an alcoholic. Again we have to observe a difference between British and American English. In British English there is a long tradition of stiff-upper-lip understatement in which "a bit of a" could even refer to a life-threatening crisis. So the famous line from the Apollo XIII near-disaster ("Houston, we have a problem") would have been "Houston, we have a bit of a problem" if the crew had been British. In Sylvia's response, the current example, "a bit of a traitor" is likely the kind of understatement that means "could be interpreted as such" or "one could say that." Evidently Cressida missed these nuances when she was at Oxford?Jack Folsom
Sharon, Vermont, USA
Thursday, March 15, 2001
The address in London where Sylvia took her own life is 23 Fitzroy Road.
I agree with Cressida, it's not really possible to be a bit of anything. For example, one cannot be "a bit of a poet" or "a bit of an ass." One is, or is not a poet. One is or is not an ass.Kim
Detroit, USA
Thursday, March 15, 2001
Noukou,
One place to start might be Leonard Scigaj' book on Hughes called "The Poetry of Ted Hughes: Form and Imagination". He gives about as good a definition of a shaman as you'll find in a hundred words or less:
The shaman is a religios expert in the art of psychic healing-- both for individual primitives and for society--who undergoes ecstatic psychic ascents to heaven and descents to hell, with all manner of related physiological pain, for the purpose of acquiring an elixir or healing power for patients. Eliade em- phasizes several times in "Shamanism" that what is really central to the shamanic experience is undergoing the concrete psychological process of death, dismemberment and resurrection. The process is similar to that of an initiation rite, except that the shaman experiences it repeatedly, whenever the psychic health of the individual or the society demands. (pg.90)
Hughes initially got his concept of shamanism from reading Mircea Eliade's book "Shamanism", which he reviewed in 1964, as well as from the Tibetan Book of the Dead the "Bardol Thodol" which is a record of such a psychic journey (actually post-mortem). Hughes writes in his review:
The results, when the shaman returns to the living, are some display of healing power, or a clairvoyant piece of information. The cathartic effect on the audience, and the refreshing of their religious feeling, must be profound. (Scigaj, pg. 91)
Elsewhere, Hughes has described Sylvia Plath's access to the realms of her unconscious in similar terms, as having access to psychic contents usually available only to the shaman, or users of hallucinogenic agents like peyote or LSD. I don't have that reference in front of me right now, but it is in the Charles Newman anthology "Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath: A Symposium" (Indiana Univ. Press, 1970)
I've mentioned before that I think Plath's work represents just such a cathartic process of harrowing hell and emerging reborn. That the process needs to be repeated periodically she makes clear in "Lady Lazarus": "like the cat I have nine times to die".
No, her poems are not "merely" emotions and ideas. Emotions and ideas are the very being of our psychic lives. Plath came to believe that the emotions are more important than the ideas, mostly because they derive from sources deeper in the psyche, more central to the source of who we are and who we can become.
This is the value of her work and her venture into her own psychic depths; they are the universal element, the depths and emotions that we all share, regardless of the ideas with which we clothe and armor them.Jim Long
Honolulu, USA
Thursday, March 15, 2001
Hi, I'm doing a project on Sylvia Plath, and I need some critisms on her poem "Morning Song", I've looked just about everywhere and can't seem to find anything on that particular poem. If anyone has any information where I can find some critisms on that poem, I would be deaply thankful if you would respond or e-mail me, thank you again.Stephanie
San Antonio, USA
I have been reading Sylvia Plath for years for pure pleasure and comfort. I keep a copy of her unabridged journals by my bed and her Ariel poems next to a stack of books, also by my bed.Why is there such comfort, reading Sylvia Plath?
Why return to someone so haunted for comfort? And what was she haunted by?
I have always noticed her stark, cold, yet healing relationship with nature, and it always kills me, her tenderness towards human beings.
Can someone explain more the Shamanic elements to her poetic journey? Or suggest criticism/books that highlights her poetic journey as that of a shaman woman? I don't understand and would like to inquire more.
Noukou Thao
St. Paul, USA
Wednesday, March 14, 2001
Judy, Sylvia and Ted lived in more than one place in London. If you look on the Forum's list of links, in the list of articles there is one about the "blue plaque" placed on the house at #3 Chalcot Square, where the Hughes and the children lived after Sylvia's death. As the article states, she killed herself in the house "around the corner on Fitzroy Road". It doen's give the number, but i imagine it wouldn't be too hard to find, since it's the one with the plaque that says W. B. Yeats used to live there.Jim Long
Honolulu, USA
Wednesday, March 14, 2001
Please help. I need the name of the Ted Hughes' poem that refers to a fly with crampons and says "...when he's clean he's like a gem". Thank you.Jeff Adams
Honolulu, HI, USA
Wednesday, March 14, 2001
I have read most of these essays, but my question is:is sylvias poetry meerly emotions and ideas, or does it have a universal meaning that everybody can relate to? What makes her poetry confessional?S.Harris
Montreal, Canada
Wednesday, March 14, 2001
Thank you Darcey for that copy of the dialogue between Sylvia Plath and Peter Orr.Here are some highlighted points:-
PLATH: Well I think that as far as language goes I'm an American, I'M AFRAID, my accent is American, my way of talk is an American way of talk.
What does "I'm afraid" mean? Are the punctuation marks in the correct place? Does she mean, I'm an American I'm afraid? or I'm afraid my accent is American? or is she afraid that both her nationality and her accent are American, and why is she afraid in the first place? She should be proudly American speaking the American language with an American accent!
PLATH:- .......I'm an old-fashioned American. That's probably why I'm in England now and WHY I'LL ALWAYS STAY IN ENGLAND.
I said "a bit of a traitor" the term was used loosely. (Anthony Hopkins is considered to be "a bit of a traitor" by some, he received a knighthood from the Queen then promptly became an American citizen). As you all should know, it is impossible to be a "bit of" a traitor just as it is impossible to be a bit of an alcoholic or a bit of a drug addict. You either are, or you are not.Traitor, comes from the Latin verb TRADERE, so does the word tradition. It means 'to deliver, give over' as in customs, knowledge etc. Traitor means giving over something to an enemy. (Sylvia took her talent abroad, "gave it over" to England)
I agree it was a poor choice of word. expatriot would have been a less emotive word to use, England is not now, nor has it been for a long time, our enemy.
Cressida Hope-Bunting
Alabama, USA
Wednesday, March 14, 2001
Re: Plath's Americanness: Here is a lengthy excerpt from Plath's interview with Peter Orr (Oct. 1962). I just want to add that while Plath was in England, she was identified and criticized as an American: Myers compared her to a demanding American housewife, Dido pouted about her American need for a new stove or cooking appliance, Alvarez said that she reminded him of a crisp, efficient wife in an American cookery ad. In BL, Plath is America, or Hughes's America.
PLATH: Perhaps this is an American thing: I've been very excited by what I feel is the new breakthrough that came with, say, Robert Lowell's Life Studies, this intense breakthrough into very serious, very personal, emotional experience which I feel has been partly taboo. Robert Lowell's poems about his experience in a mental hospital, for example, interested me very much. These peculiar, private and taboo subjects, I feel, have been explored in recent American poetry. I think particularly the poetess Ann Sexton, who writes about her experiences as a mother, as a mother who has had a nervous breakdown, is an extremely emotional and feeling young woman and her poems are wonderfully craftsmanlike poems and yet they have a kind of emotional and psychological depth which I think is something perhaps quite new, quite exciting.
ORR: Now you, as a poet, and as a person who straddles the Atlantic, if I can put it that way, being an American yourself...
PLATH: That's a rather awkward position, but I'll accept it!
ORR: ... on which side does your weight fall, if I can pursue the metaphor?
PLATH: Well, I think that as far as language goes I'm an American, I'm afraid, my accent is American, my way of talk is an American way of talk, I'm an old-fashioned American. That's probably one of the reasons why I'm in England now and why I'll always stay in England. I'm about fifty years behind as far as my preferences go and I must say that the poets who excite me most are the Americans. There are very few contemporary English poets that I admire.
ORR: Does this mean that you think contemporary English poetry is behind the times compared with American?
PLATH: No, I think it is in a bit of a strait-jacket, if I may say so. There was an essay by Alvarez, the British critic: his arguments about the dangers of gentility in England are very pertinent, very true. I must say that I am not very genteel and I feel that gentility has a stranglehold: the neatness, the wonderful tidiness, which is so evident everywhere in England is perhaps more dangerous than it would appear on the surface.
ORR: But don't you think, too, that there is this business of English poets who are labouring under the whole weight of something which in block capitals is called 'English Literature'?
PLATH: Yes, I couldn't agree more.... I think the whole emphasis in England, in universities, on practical criticism (but not that so much as on historical criticism, knowing what period a line comes from) this is almost paralysing....I think that for the young poet, the writing poet, it is not quite so frightening to go to university in America as it is in England, for these reasons.
ORR: You say, Sylvia, that you consider yourself an American, but when we listen to a poem like 'Daddy', which talks about Dachau and Auschwitz and Mein Kampf, I have the impression that this is the sort of poem that a real American could not have written, because it doesn't mean so much, these names do not mean so much, on the other side of the Atlantic, do they?
PLATH: Well now, you are talking to me as a general American. In particular, my background is, may I say, German and Austrian....
Darcey
Berkeley, USA
Tuesday, March 13, 2001
I was born in 1942 and was a student at Glasgow University in the early 60s.
I remember driving over Carter Bar to Scotland that cold winter and having my toes frozen off! What people don't realise is how much money Plath got from Ted Hughes. She was absolutely rolling in it, compared with me a poor student although I had an ancient car. So please don't have much sympathy for her poverty stricken life in London. Compared with the rest of us she was rich. Ted was always the fat cat from the grants he got. He did die a millionaire (although a chunk of that came from manuscript sales).Douglas Clark
Bath, UK
Tuesday, March 13, 2001
I want to respond to Melissa's recent statement that Plath's words "I am your opus, your valuable" are a kind of indictment. While I have said recently that I would prefer to discuss the work, rather than speculate about the circumstances of her marriage and assign blame for her death and its effecton the lives of others, I don't think that it's a crime to discuss them. In fact, I think that it's really necessary, for very specific reasons, to try to understand how the events of her life impacted on her work. And this also speaks in part to Siobhan's question. She was, after all, a poet whose work, during her life, was not particularly admired to any considerable degree, except by a few intimates. Although she had published in some quality magazines, like the New Yorker, her work was considered derivative of poets like Roethke, Auden, Lowell etc. and somewhat mannered, forced, bookish, formal. Few people had seen the extraordinary late poems, written after she found her own voice and let it speak unfettered by the conventions learned in school.
When the late poems were discovered by a wider public after her death the power of that voice and those poems was very exciting. She had broken away from the influences that held her back and, while still retaining the techniques of symbol and metaphor, had augmented and magnified her effects my means of intense emotion and a wild incantatory music of plain language.
It is natural, and even necessary to ask how this transformation came about. How did the events of her life, both early and late, make this evolution possible? and what can be learned from her example? She did, after all, by way of her lifelong attempts to publish her poems and storied, work very hard at putting herself out there, on display, for all to see. To paraphrase her own words, there was a charge to finger her scars, a very large charge.
And indeed, there may be a cost involved in examining the details of her life and her work, an emotion cost for some, who are seduced by the power of her invocation of the therapeutic need for catharsis and rebirth. because i really believe that what she sought was not death but rebirth.
The challenge is to accomplish that process within the world of the work, using the magic of language and symbol to accomplish the transformation, so as not to have to act it out in one's life. Unfortunately, this transformative power of the imagination doesn't pay the bills, or put food on the table or hot water in the pipes in the middle of winter. To overcome these kinds of circumstances, the mundane challenges of the everyday, one needs not only imagination but the will to endure and survive, in spite of difficulties, heartbreak and loneliness.
It was a tragic loss for poetry that her extraordinarily promising talent could not give her the will to endure. But, who are we to say? She apparently felt she had accomplished enough. "The woman is perfected. Her dead body wears a smile of accomplishment." Perhaps for her it was enough. For us, it seemed like just the beginning.Jim Long
Honolulu, USA
Tuesday, March 13, 2001
I was wondering if anyone knows the address at which Sylvia Plath lived while in london. I have been looking everywhere and can't find anything. Help! Thanks.Judy
UK
Tuesday, March 13, 2001
I just wanted to announce that my school--The Ohio State University at Mansfield-- will this Spring premiere a literary journal, "Immaculate Cauldron," with its title taken from lines 7 & 8 of Sylvia Plath's "The Couriers," an Aerial poem. I am the journal's Managing Editor and I welcome anyone's thoughts on this brief, powerful poem.Stephen Butterman
Mansfield Ohio, USA
Tuesday, March 13, 2001
Hi! I need some help on analysis of Plath's poem "Spinster". Can anyone help me?Samantha Myers
Syracuse, USA
Tuesday, March 13, 2001
I think having Plath's visage grace a stamp would be a great and well deserved honour for her (as well as serving as a neat collector piece) , though I have to admit Im in favour of giving Wallace Stevens first priority. I think his poetry has had a more profound effect on shaping modern day (or dare I use the term 'postmodern') poetry than Plath, even if it wasn't as immediately personable. Check out the poll on the web yourself and see how the top five fit your preference.Dil Farbs
Athens, USA
Tuesday, March 13, 2001
As she once said, Plath was in an "awkward position" when it came to being an American in England. She hardly had time to adjust to living there, knowing the ways, before she died; but she never stopped thinking of herself as an American. Their marriage was very much one where *he* was from England, and *she* was from America (he would become the Laureate, she the "poetess" of America) and as things turned out, he didn't like the US as much as she'd hoped - and so they moved to London. No doubt there were reasons she didn't just move back to Boston once this transatlantic marriage ended, but I don't think any idea of nationality came into it. Generally speaking, artists need somewhere good and affordable to live, where their work gets a reception, and the UK was more welcoming to Plath in this regard.
I agree with all the others here about being an expatriate. As an American living in Canada, I blend in fairly well; but there are always odd moments where I'm asked about my accent, or excepted when the US in general is being criticized. I have a passport, I vote, and while I could become a dual citizen, I don't *feel* like one, despite the many years I've lived here.
As for the poll, I noticed that the list of options the academy has include William Blake and Wilfred Owen; and Blake is doing well in the poll, last time I looked. It seems they care more about the quality of the writing, and not necessarily where it was written. They already have a T.S. Eliot stamp!
Lena Friesen
Toronto, Canada
Tuesday, March 13, 2001
It does still surprise me how fervent American opinion can be of those who, either through circumstance or choice, end up living outside of the US. How quickly they are called "traitor".I can understand something of the expatriate view, having always lived in Canada and now recently moved to Britain. Despite many trips to UK, it is quite a different thing to live here. Sylvia did not have the benefit of previous travels to help her acclimatize to Britain, but yet she made enormous efforts to blend aspects of both American and British differences into her life. I believe most expatriates do not feel they have abandoned their homeland or that they have committed a traitorous act by leaving; my feeling is that most people miss many aspects of their country but yet must commit to making their new country their home. For Sylvia, it was natural to want the best of American appliances and goods, as it would be for most people in her situation. By moving to Britain, she did not abandon America, so much as learned to embrace both cultures and aspects as part of her new life, and indeed her personality. It was necessary for her to accept British customs and manners so she could feel more at ease and feel accepted herself in her new country. This does mean she was a traitor, but that she was open to learning and understanding the differences and intregrating them into her life, just as she had intregrated American values and customs. I believe this American/British duality and conflicting desires to have the best of both affected her work in a positive manner and forced her to grow outwardly as a person more than she would have if she had remained in the States.
Sylvia was American; her country of residence did not change this as nor does it change the fact that I'm Canadian, but happen to live in Britain. Her stamp-worthiness should be determined by her contribution to American literature and its consequential affect on people around the world, and not by what country she was residing in at the time of her death.
I don't think most of us can imagine the severity of what Sylvia endured in that last winter in London. It is almost impossible now for us nearly forty years later to imagine what it would have been like, to not have the basics of telephone, water, or heat while trying to raise her children alone in a foreign city, through the most severe winter on record. The feeling of isolation must have been intense, coupled with the deep emotional wounds of her separation from Hughes, as well as the physical deprivations she suffered. The severity of the winter is like a metaphor for the terrible internal struggle she was going through. To not recognize the effect the winter would have had on Sylvia does seem harsh and indifferent, if not somewhat misguided.
Cheryl Black
Brecon, Wales
Monday, March 12, 2001
Come on! A "traitor" for being married to an Englishman and living abroad!!! I'm Swedish, married to a Bulgarian and I've lived the past 5 years here in the US (I am not a citizen) and if anyone called me a traitor I'd be bitterly disappointed, not to say outraged! I've lived in several other countries prior to the US and everywhere I've lived I've tried my best to "fit in", as, I'm sure, did Plath in England. That includes copying the natives accent, whatever that may be. Even if I never set foot in my country again I am and will always be a Swede, nothing will change that. And I am not hiding it, neither was Plath trying to hide she was an American. I also believe she was a US citizen at the time of her death, was she not?
I'm sure there are Americans living here in the US right now who deserve the title "traitor" more than Plath does. I think Plath would be perfect on a stamp, I just wish the link worked, Peter, so I could cast my vote. ( Apologies, it is now working. EC)Eva
Brooklyn, NY, USA
Monday, March 12, 2001
It's quite plausible that Plath knew that poetry is a form of communication and thus is protected by the first amendment of the US constitution (freedom of speech). Her style is parallel with many other 20th century avant-garde poets. They're all pushing the envelope to be "original". Granted, there no longer is any orthodox modus operandi for writing prose. Some books, retailing for $16.00, have only one line on the whole page. A good portion of the paper the book is printed on is wasted. Much of Plath's text suggests that she was out of touch with reality or was not a happy person. It's good to have an outward focus, because in many individuals, their happiness depends on the happiness of others. Plath needed some form of literary inspiration. Here is an examplary offering by Laura Lee Randall:
RESURGENCE
Out of the earth, the rose,
Out of the night, the dawn,
Out of my heart, with all its woes,
High courage to press on.
Daniel
Toledo, Ohio, USA
Monday, March 12, 2001
Looking at 'Stings', Plath writes 'Eight combs of yellow cups' and in the eight and ninth verses 'He is gone // In eight great bounds'. Her father died when she was eight but what other significance has the number eight with regards to Plath? I think the number is also a reference to her marriage with Hughes which lasted for seven years and a bit. Do you think this is close enough to 'the truth' for Plath to engage in a bit of poetic licence and fudge it?Ivy
Hobart,Tasmania, Australia
Monday, March 12, 2001
Elaine, thank you for summing up the issue so nicely. I am curious how you see the future of the Forum: what would you personally wish to see happen? Given the constant tension between Plath's biography and her work, is there a way for the Forum to accept that constraint and still continue to provide fresh and meaningful insight?
I would also like to hear from anyone on the Forum who has thoughts on this matter, particularly Melissa Dobson and Jack Folsom, whose expressed concerns first brought this question to my mind .Jen Zereski
Providence, RI , USA
Sunday, March 11, 2001
Sylvia Plath had a love/hate relationship with America & England. Plath would not return to America for one reason: her mother. In Letters Home, on 16 October 1962, she wrote to her mother, "Home is impossible. I can go nowhere with the children, and I am ill, and it would be psychologically the worst thing to see you or to go home. ...I have...a home I love and will want to return to in summer [Court Green, North Tawton, Devon] to get ready to leap to London. To make a new life. I am a writer..." and then a month later when she found Yeats' flat to let, on 7 November 1962, "I am writing from London, so happy I can hardly speak."Sylvia Plath had tried living in Boston and Northampton. She did not have any choice to live her early years in Jamaica Plain, Winthrop and Wellesley. When she was a student at Smith in Northampton her world was still undeveloped; and when she wrote to Olive Higgins Prouty to tell her how wonderful Smith was, and in her Journals about her first snow at Smith these are the writings of a still very idealistic young woman. Her fondness for the sea developed through her years in Winthrop. Some times her happiness, even, there can be under considerable question because of the circumstances regarding her father, his death and time spent at her grandparents.
Upon trying to teach at Smith and write she grew to dislike Northampton. The associations of being overworked and suspicious of faculty, students and her husband lead her to want something else. So, she went back to Boston to live a writer's life. Which proved to be financially ok, sometimes difficult. She took part time jobs, met other poets, practiced, worked but felt constricted by the closeness of her mother and memories of the summer of 1953 and ex boyfriends like Richard Norton, Phil McCurdy and Peter Davison. There was only one thing to do, leave. (There are so many other contributing factors like Ted's unhappiness in America. At this point though Ted and Sylvia's emotions were interchangeable. In Spain, on her honeymoon, she really wanted an American kitchen. An icebox too. America was so far ahead of the rest of the world in food storage. (Please read the book Cod to learn a little more about freezing food, etc.)
In she was exposed to the poetry hot spot of the 1950's. In London she was exposed an older crowd of poetry writers and customs. This is why her poetry and Ted's is particularly exciting. There was nothing like their style before. Sylvia adopted the mannerisms of an English person because she was there quite a while. If a person is only exposed to a certain culture, they naturally adopt aspects of their culture. It is seen everywhere in America today where, for example, predominantly Spanish speaking areas feel like, to an outside, like Mexico or Spain of Cuba, etc. If a southern were to leave the south and move to Maine and spend three years there, they would lose a bit of their accent and say words and phrases in the Maine accent.
Maybe back in the early 1960's London was more English. Today, though, it isn't. It has pubs and fish and chips and the Tower, but it's too much an international destination for business and tourists that it, too, has lost some of its flavor. Which is sad, but it's also just perfect to illustrate the point.
T.S. Eliot is more of an expatriate, 'traitor,' if that what you will call. He accepted the King & Queen for all they were worth. Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe like Sylvia Plath, and other international icons in their respective fields. But, unlike Presley and Monroe, Plath had an opportunity (as was her fate) to live abroad and marry an Englishman. Bringing Presley or Monroe in the argument, though, is shooting just a bit off the mark.
The Bell Jar was considered to be a 'pot-boiler' and she was terrified that is would hurt people back in Massachusetts. To suggest that she only favored having it published in England only because she was a traitor to America is shooting off the mark. To suggest that the winter their didn't hasten her demise shows a certain degree of insensitivity. Especially in America, and the American South, one does not need to worry about getting a phone, heat, etc. The conditions of that winter, Plath's last year of emotional heartbreak and terror, compounded with her earlier breakdown and the events in her life hastened her demise. When someone feels depressed during the short-light days of winter is called Seasonal Affective Disorder. This is something people did not know about, I suspect, in 1963.
She is buried in England because she died there. Jim Morrison is buried in Paris, as in Oscar Wilde, because they died in Paris. I do not think it is or was easy to bring a body back to the States. Such things occur in the military of course because the individuals died for their country.
If you would like to further discuss Sylvia Plath's patriotism and worthiness of being on a stamp (by the way, the stamp would celebrate her contribution to literature not her having died in England) please email me
Peter K Steinberg
Brighton, Ma, USA
Sunday, March 11, 2001
This site is great! It has helped me immensely, I had to do an English test on the poem "Mirror", I read the poem and there were bits I couldn't understand but after reading this site it has helped me to understand the poem a lot better!! Thank you so much for your help! :-)Stacey
Australia
Sunday, March 11, 2001
In reply to Jen Zereski, I started the Forum after the publication of Hughes' "Birthday Letters" because it seemed to me that the book shed a completely new perspective on Plath's life and work and I was very interested to hear what other people's opinions were.
Some contributors do seem to be preoccupied with Plath's marriage and death at the expense of her work. However, one cannot deny the fascination of her life story and what may be repetitious to those of us who have been reading Plath for years will be quite fresh for those new to her. Perhaps the autobiographical content and the confessional style of her poetry does invite more speculation about her personal life than the work of other poets.
What I never anticipated, however, was the very high quality of many of the participants' postings and the generally excellent debates which have taken place here over the past three years.
Elaine Connell
Hebden Bridge, UK
Saturday, March 10, 2001
I would like to hear more from original contributors to the Forum about what spurred them to participate in the site. The introduction to the site says it was formed "January 1998 following the surprise publication of Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters." There were a couple of complaints recently about the repetitive speculation surrounding Plath's marriage, separation, and suicide.Jen Zereski
Providence, RI , USA
Saturday, March 10, 2001
I have a paper due in a couple of months, and I have chosen to write on the American Poet Sylvia Plath. At the moment I am trying to gather as much information as possible. The topic is as follows "Give an account of the changing response to Plath's work since her death." I was wondering if anybody could give me any information on her almost 'cult' status after her suicide in 1963. Why did she become so popular, and why wasn't she as popular before she died? Thank-you, it is much appreciatedSiobhan
Australia
Saturday, March 10, 2001
Peter, I do not think it is appropriate to have Sylvia Plath on a US postage stamp. After all Sylvia Plath was a bit of a traitor. Unlike Elvis and Marilyn who remained faithful to the country of their birth, she deserted the US for England where she married an Englishman, set up home, and cultivated a British accent. She had no intention of returning back to the States and was working hard to blend into the upper middle class stratum of British life. Her first novel was published in England with her expressed desire (indeed, her fervent plea) that it should never be published in the United States. She loved England. I do not subscribe to the theory that the British winter hastened her demise. (Although, the British weather being what it is, with months on end of cold miserable stuff to contend with, it is a wonder that the British do not commit suicide en masse over a cliff like the lemmings). She is buried in England, her children were born there, why not ask the Queen of England to move over and let Sylvia's head grace the British stamps?Cressida Hope-Bunting
Alabama, USA
Saturday, March 10, 2001
Just a quick note to say that I am reading Lucas Myers' book, Crow Steered, Bergs Appeared - A Memoir of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and I highly recommend it. Readers may not agree with or like all of Myers' assessments or his "attitude", but what he has to say is interesting and informative. You can find info on ordering the book through the link "Ted Hughes Pages" on Elaine's list of links, above.Kim
Detroit, USA
Thursday, March 8, 2001
Ivy, Irreverent, yes. Funny, no.Jim Long
Honolulu, USA
Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Would you like to see Sylvia Plath on a United States postal stamp? Vote here Wallace Stevens is in the lead.....Peter K Steinberg
Brighton, Ma, USA
Wednesday, March 7, 2001
I know this is terribly irreverent but it's also a funny poem on SP.
Ivy
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Monday, March 5, 2001
Hi, does Sylvia Plath have any relatives alive today? (Or colleages, friends that knew her well) that I might be able to contact?Jenna Reasor
Ojai, USA
Monday, March 5, 2001
Earlier Messages - February 2001 And Before
Send us your thoughts/ideas/comments
This forum is administered by Elaine Connell, author of Sylvia Plath: Killing The Angel In The House. Elaine lives in Hebden Bridge, near where Sylvia Plath is buried and where Ted Hughes was born. Web Design by Pennine Pens. This forum is moderated - contributions which are inappropriate, anonymous or likely to offend may be edited or omitted.
The forum is intended as one where discussion and exchange of points of view/information about SP's work can take place. It is not really a site which promises to do students' thinking/essays for them. Before posting to the Forum students seeking help on theses, essays, presentations and analyses of particular poems are advised to look at the extensive bibliography provided, the FAQ section and the individual poem analyses present on the site. All the books mentioned in the bibliography are useful to Plath studies and can be easily obtained Amazon.com in the US or Amazon.co.uk in the UK, libraries and (in UK) the Inter Library Loan System. Reading the Forum contributions and archives thoroughly will also give any student a good idea of what the major questions are about Plath's work. Your work should be given far higher grades if you can work out your own answers.
