The SYLVIA PLATH Forum

Welcome to the Sylvia Plath Forum which began on 20th January 1998 following the surprise publication of Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters. The forum is moderated and maintained by Elaine Connell. Poem Analysis/Discussion

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    Melissa Dobson, thank you for your posting and your wonderful insight that "(t)o get to the prelapsarian in Plath you have to remove yourself from her poems and enter her influences - Dickinson, perhaps." I couldn't agree with you more! I would like to add my own two cents worth to that statement, something to spice up the pot, and perhaps this qualifies as post-lapsarian:

    I think in many of the Ariel poems, Plath is actually mocking poetry itself. Satirizing poets and the writing of poetry itself. The savagely ironic tone and dizzy use of parody throughout the Ariel poems reminds me of the wonderful sense of mischief and wicked glee one gets when lampooning teachers, parents, those in authority --- and certainly Plath's influences (Ted Hughes in particular but so many others like Dickinson, Auden, Eliot, Miss Moore, etc.) held great and crippling authority over her "voice." For instance, I have stated that I detect the influence of Hawthorne in "The Bee Meeting" (see poem discussion page) - well, if this is true and if Plath was conscious of this at all, I think she was cackling over it. I think that the use of Hawthorne to depict that friendly little village bee meeting with those friendly little neighbors was very "naughty" to Plath. Remember how she described "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" as "light verse?" This is her dark Scorpio sense of humor. I see this aspect of her work as one of the most essential elements in her strangeness - that she could mix her wit and skill as a satirist with such Plutonian power that her poems both devastate and delight.

    It is this element of wit and humor that so many of her critical supporters seem to deliberately eschew in their work. An exception is Sandra M. Gilbert, whose essay in the Modern Critical Views edition on Plath is quite excellent and eminently readable. Regarding Paul Snyder's posting, I too would welcome discussion of a wider range of criticism on the Forum. I for one greatly enjoy reading her detractors, since I think one learns a great deal about Plath's work by taking note of how it stirs up others - in much the same way, I enjoy Stevenson's controversial "Bitter Fame" above all other Plath biographies. By all means, bring on some more critical views!

    Stewart Clarke
     New York, USA
    Sunday, January 31, 1999


    In Thursday's edition of The New York Times Book Review, there is a writing dedicated to Hughes titled "Ted Hughes: A Reconciliation" witten by director of the creative writing program at Stanford University, Eavan Boland. In this piece Boland mentions a poem written by Hughes about Plath. Boland states that "Hughes published a beautiful, haunting poem on Plath called 'The City' and for some reason did not include it in the book". And she gives us the opening lines:



    Boland also comments on her admiration for Plath stating "From my early 20's, I have cherished and admired the work of Plath. I thought then, as I think now, that 'Ariel' is one of the benchmarks volumes of poetry in this century. Certainly it has flaws. Can you name any writers, let alone poets, who would want their achievements at 30? Yet 'Ariel' stands. But much as I admired Plath -- and despite the unease about Hughes's handling of her estate, including his stated decision to destroy her final journal in the weeks after her death -- I never once went to Hughes early, definite, splendid lyrics with anything but a sense of his gift and presence. My gratitude for these poems has been entirely seperate from my attitude to any of his other roles."

    Boland neatly completes her piece by uniting Plath and Hughes after death, and says, "Now that they are not, everything they acieved is unhurt. And there is no need anymore to divide between them".

    Karen
     USA
    Sunday, January 31, 1999


    Today (1/29/99) is the thirty-sixth anniversary of the death of another great poet out of New England, Robert Frost, and I'd like to take the occasion to respond to Peter Steinberg's fascinating posting about a pre- and postlapsarian reading of Plath. One of the things I've always found remarkable in Plath is her elucidation of a fallen state -- if innocence is in the poetry, early or late, it's there by default; its absence is incessantly alluded to, acknowledged by, commented on. But unlike in Blake, Plath's songs of experience are not preceded by songs of innocence -- even her juvenilia is corrupt: "There is a hex on the cradle," she writes. To get to the prelapsarian in Plath you have to remove yourself from her poems and enter her influences -- Dickenson, perhaps. Plath's poems have "fallen a long way." But of course there was a sea change, between "The Colossus" and "Ariel," as there is in all artists as they develop from imitators to originators. Ariel is an authentic poetic voice, infused with Canonizer Bloom's essential quality of "strangeness," though strangely invisible to Bloom. Writing "The Colossus," Plath was, as Frost wrote in "The Gift Outright," "Possessing what [she] still [was] unpossessed by,/Possessed by what [she] now no more possessed." The difference is not between pre- and postlapsarian, but between old world and new.

    Melissa Dobson
     Newport, RI, USA
    Friday, January 29, 1999


    Did Ted Hughes keep the "Birthday Letters" away from the public to punish himself? The relief he says their coming to light produced was enough to give him a "new inner life". True, his blocked inner life likely gave us "Crow" and other works, but the heart-rending point I find here is his ignorance as to how he could have been freed so many years before and been just as productive, even more so. Was the only escape for him death too? Is "Birthday Letters" his real self, and all other writing masks?

    Lena Friesen
     Toronto, Canada
    Thursday, January 28, 1999


    Let's get back to the poetry. I agree. But what is really gained by going back to Hugh Kenner's long ago article. Apparently, he took one look at Ariel in 1966 and concluded its author was a mental case. If only she stuck to the workmanlike Closseus poems he says, she would have stayed longer among the living. Not very helpful if you don't think her suicide was inevitable, or that it was because she wrote poetry. Also, his comment about 'bogus spirituality' is not very helpful if spirituality is not what most people expect to find in a Plath poem.

    I've enjoyed checking into the forum over the last year. However, I do find it curious that so much time has been spent discussing the views of people whose interest in Plath was either casual and fleeting, unsympathetic, or simply dismissive. These would include Joyce Carol Oates, Harold Bloom, and now Hugh Kenner. All brillant in their own way, but none spent much time with the forum's namesake, as far as I know.

    I only mention this because I recently finished rereading a number of critical books on Sylvia Plath. While no expert, I was impressed with the quality of the analysis. And the critics I responded to the most were those who down-played the 'death wish' aspect of their subject. These critics, and they include (among others) Linda Bundtzen (maybe wrong spelling), Steven Axelrod, and Jacqueline Rose, deal with the psychological aspects of Plath's struggle to create without resorting to the overheated rhetoric, and vast generalizations, which ultimately diminish her accomplishment. For example, I found Bundtzen's comparative analysis of 'Daddy' and 'Medusa', showing how the success of the former and the relative failure of the latter, provided evidence that Plath was more conscious of(and had further worked through) her tangled relationship with her father than with her mother (and what that meanth) one among many illuminating moments in my readings. I don't know what this adds up to. But I suppose I'm suggesting the forum look at a broader range of critics than it has to date.

    Paul Snyder
     New York City, USA
    Thursday, January 28, 1999


    Does anyone out there remember to which library Hughes' papers were sold? (I remember vaguely that it was somewhere in the South Eastern US -- Emory?) If so, were personal papers amoungst those purchased by the library, or does it consist of rough drafts of published works, along with professional correspondence?

    Christy
     Ann Arbor, MI, USA
    Thursday, January 28, 1999


    "Mad Girl's Love Song" can be found at http://home.ptd.net/~prospero/plath.html or at http://home.interlynx.net/~hecate/plath.html

    Jack Folsom
     Sharon, Vermont, USA
    Wednesday, January 27, 1999


    Elaine, thank you for sharing with us that very moving passage by Hughes. I dovetail it with his statements in the 1995 interview for The Paris Review (see the Links page) about confessional poetry and Plath in general. For instance:

    Hughes's lifelong aim was to tap into the "true voice" of creativity, and yet says here that he spent thirty years "evading" his most fundamental material. This is unbelievably poignant. Still, his half-lifetime of sublimation yielded a weird, exasperating, throat-grabbing body of work that was greatly at odds with the current of contemporary poetry, and that's not necessarily an unfortunate thing. In a 1974 review of Hughes' Selected Poems, Calvin Bedient offers a wonderful analysis:

    Stewart Clarke
     New York, USA
    Wednesday, January 27, 1999


    Three general questions to post today: First, does anyone have a transcription of, or can point me to (via a link) a copy of "Mad Girl's Love Song"? I seem to remember having read it somewhere awhile ago while doing a research project on Plath for a feminist poetry class and can't remember where. It seems to be absent from the list of juvenilia poems in Collected Poems; anyone know why?

    Secondly, I recently noticed that Plath re-used (or repeated) the "idiot-bird ... lunatic thirteens" construction in both "Doomsday" and at the end of "A Sonnet: To Eva." Does anyone know of a link between the two poems? I am short on biographies of Plath (most of what I own is her actual works), so there may be an obvious answer to this one (as well as my previous question) that I don't have access to at the moment.

    Lastly, I've been wondering if anyone has ever played a "mind experiment" as to what direction Plath may have gone post-Ariel, had she survived. Obviously, this is a loaded question, but I'm curious as to your opinions on this; either poetry or prose she might have produced, especially in a post-feminist-movement world.

    Gregg
     New Hope, PA, USA
    Wednesday, January 27, 1999


    "I think those letters do release the story that everything I've written since the early 1960s has been evading. It was a kind of desperation that I finally did publish them - I had always thought them unpublishably raw and unguarded, simply too vulnerable. But then I just could not endure being blocked any longer. How strange that we have to make these public declarations of our secrets. But we do. If only I had done the equivalent 30 years ago, I might have had a more fruitful career - certainly a freer, psychological life. Even now, the sensation of inner liberation - a huge, sudden possibility of new inner experience. Quite strange."


    Frieda Hughes Tuesday, January 26, 1999, reading a letter from her father to a close friend, on accepting the Whitbread Book of the Year award on behalf of her father for Birthday Letters.

    First off, let me say I've been reading y'all for some time, and it's good to be able to contribute!

    "I can't read any of those poems now" Plath once said, emphatically as usual, about The Colossus. Not because the subject matter didn't mean anything to her, but because she had to speak her poems, and the Colossus ones didn't sound right. Another fundamental difference between The Colossus & Ariel is the sound of the poems, the fact that while she was working on them, she said them to herself, and words suggested themselves to her, as opposed to the thesaurus. This went against her formal training (Smith, Cambridge) and pointed towards Hughes, who I think for a while made her memorize poems and could himself recite just about anything.

    Plath was also open to new influences and who knows, now, what she was reading during the Ariel period? Blake, Lawrence, who else? Did she read them aloud? I detect Hopkins in some of her bee poetry, I don't know why, I just do.

    Lena Friesen
     Toronto, Canada
    Tuesday, January 26, 1999


    I remember reading The Fading Smile in 1997. Ages ago. I think Peter Davison's the best person living to write on all those poets. He had a fling with Plath, and that pretty much connected him to all the others, let alone his HIGH editorship then and reigning demigod of Atlantic Monthly. I thought then that he was a little bitter at Plath. I believe she used him right before she went to Cambridge, and she had thought he'd be the easy way in to publishing in magazines...but he rejected some of her stuff. I think...maybe I am not remembering it right? Anyway, he seemed slightly bitter, but he's an excellent biographer.

    I am actually beginning to read Snodgrass's Hearts Needle. It was published originally in 1957 and he's usually mentioned in the "confessional" circle. The opening poem is great, I can't wait to finish it.

    My initial reaction to reading higher praise for The Colossus over Ariel was a careful re-reading. I still don't like to read negative Ariel reviews and opinions, but it's what really makes one better informed. It does not harm to view the negative aspects. I have the Bloom book on the way to my house, and it a triumphant Dead Poets Society tribute, I will rip out the introduction.

    Peter Steinberg
     Alexandria, Virginia, USA
    Tuesday, January 26, 1999


    Can anyone tell me where I can find a recording of Sylvia reading "Daddy," "Fever 103," "Ariel," and other poems from the Ariel period? I have only been able to find "Sylvia Plath Reads"...Thanks.

    dki
     Berkeley, USA
    Tuesday, January 26, 1999


    Hello, all! I've been away, vacationing in sunny climes, off-line and Plath-free in Key West - Hemingway country, Bishop country, Williams country, and Stevens country!



    In a rum-induced stupor in some little dive on Duval Street, I ran into Meg Ryan. She was annoyed, but after I helped her up from the sawdust-coated floor, we heatedly discussed the Senate impeachment hearings. (She is, as am I, against the calling in of witnesses and hopes for a quick dismissal.) It was just a brief chat, so imagine my delight when, watching last night's Golden Globe awards, sure enough, there she was, crinkling her nose and miming a great big "HI!" to her fans at the Plath Forum!

    Thank you, Jack Folsom, for reminding us of the higher ground to which we were once accustomed here on the Forum (although I wouldn't go so far as to recommend any keen perusal of the Archives, filled as they are with my frequently ill-considered ravings about those goshdurn literature-hating feminist literary critics, Elaine Connell not included). My own extended silence has been due not only to a weary "been there and done that" reaction to the items up for debate, but also to a sort of sad shock after the death of Ted Hughes. As Emily Dickinson wrote, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes." Or something like that.

    Peter, the Kenner essay can also be found in the excellent Harold Bloom-edited collection of Plath criticism mentioned by Maria of Crescent Springs on January 14th. I alluded to that essay myself in my own capsule review of that collection in an earlier posting. I found Kenner to be highly persuasive, and was surprised to find someone out there actually advocating her earlier work over the Ariel period. The debate over Plath's achievement fascinates me. I view both sides of the issue very sympathetically. I tend to agree with Kenner's unhealthy diagnosis of a great deal of Plath's work, as well as with Melissa Dobson's magnificent assessment of Plath's use of language: "This is language that impacts the brain like a meteor, forever altering the mind's atmosphere." I am currently reading Peter Davison's memoir "The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston from Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath." I can't comment on it fully at this point, but I can say that Davison makes very vivid the ! amazing convergence of poets in the Boston of the mid to late 1950's, just "at a time crucial to American poetry, when its dominant figures, its language, its subject-matter, and its scenery, were about to change . . . " Recommended reading!

    Stewart Clarke
     New York, USA
    Monday, January 25, 1999


    I'm a sophomore in high school and i have this assignment to analyze the poem "Words" by Sylvia Plath for the class. I'd like your opinion on what I've come up with so far. I have broken the poem down into stanzas.

    The first stanza brings to mind an image of a lady walking through the forest and hearing the sound of a tree being cut. She associates the sound with a painful memory, and this is how she begins her poem. The echoes are words (perhaps a rejection) that reverberate in her head.

    The second and third stanzas describe her pent up emotions that are being held captive inside of her. They have never been acknowledged, or dealt with, like the skull that is eaten by weedy greens. The last two lines in the third stanza, "Years later I encountered them on the road," supports the idea that the emotions have never been acknowledged until years later.

    The last stanza is when she comes to the conclusion that She no longer has passion and contains no substance any longer, just as her words have become. She is beginning to feel hopeless. However, she realizes that life must go on and there is a more powerful entity guiding her.

    So, am i on the dot, or am i a bit off course??? I would appreciate any comments and any additional input you can provide to me as soon as possible. Thank you so much for your time and patience.

    Kai
     Makati, Phillipines
    Monday, January 25, 1999


    What we find in The Colossus is what I'll call the baby. To quote Wordsworth, "I cannot paint what then I was." You have a budding poet on the verge of something grand, but not quite there. For the sake of reeling some comments in, I want to consider The Colossus as pre-lapsarian. (Stewart, my Romantic, come to me????) A perfectly natural set-up for the Fall & the recognition of separateness in the world. (Plath, at the time some of the Colossus poems were being written, has just gone to her father's grave for the first time.) We have tight neat stanzas and we have themes which are clever & dark. I am going to also say that Sylvia Plath was, in a manner of speaking, in over her head when she wrote these poems; writing them before she was ready, before she got to know her subject. Didn't she say somewhere along the way that she needed experience to write good stuff?

    Then you get to Ariel, the work of a mature poet, what I will call the adult, after the loss of her virginity! (Stewart, are you there yet?) What I find interesting, and what Hugh Kenner seems to ignore is that some poems of Ariel appeared in an immature form, in The Colossus. Isn't the title poem, The Colossus, an early Daddy?

    From The Colossus we are told,


    &



    She find's Daddy to be:



    The same hugeness and hurt in both poems, the same desolation? I will quote M.L. Rosenthal from an essay titled "Metamorphosis of a Book" reprinted in Linda Wagner-Martin's collection of Critical Essay's..."Ariel was not a completely new direction for its author, but the realisation and clarification of irresistible motives that were seeking their way to the surface from the start." He also thinks that with the publication of Ariel, The Colossus "has become more interesting than it was at first."

    As for Kenner's cleansing the soul of dark death poems, if some of the Ariel poems are too hot, don't jump in the water. Some readers have over-sympathized with the poems, but few of them race suicidally towards the red eye. When you start to jump into the damning vs redemptive viewpoint, by commenting, whether negatively or positively, on the poem, short story, or what have you, you are showing it has made some impression...and isn't that what matters?

    Peter Steinberg
     Alexandria, Virginia, USA
    Monday, January 25, 1999


    Has anyone one got any ideas about the use of female figures that Plath makes in the poems Elm, Munich Mannequins, Bee poems, Moon and Yew, Ariel? Or in fact any other poem from the Ariel collection? Cheers!

    Lucy
     Manchester, UK
    Sunday, January 24, 1999


    Now that the Sylvia Plath Forum is a year old I would like to express my thanks to everyone who's contributed. When we started, I could never have believed that it would stimulate such interest and become so popular. The excellent postings of the past year have confirmed my opinion that Plath invites repeated attempts to read and elucidate her work, and to account for her life and death. I feel I've gained many new insights and many new ideas for further research on Plath.

    The Forum is a fine example of how the Internet can be used for high quality debate and discussion, bringing together people with similar interests who might never have made contact except for its existence.

    There have been many students who've asked for help from the Forum. Perhaps they might tell us of their findings/opinions now that they've written the paper, thesis or passed the exam.

    I liked recent suggestions for an "art" film of Sylvia's life and work. Has anyone else noticed how so many of her poems contain dramas which could easily be developed into actual plays? There is certainly a cinematic quality to much of her work. I'm thinking in particular of "Lesbos", "Poem for a Birthday", "The Applicant", "Tulips" and "In Plaster". I'm sure people could think of others too. I would also like to see someone make a short film of her verse drama "Three Women" - I only wish I could be the director or literary consultant!

    Thanks again for all the contributions and messages of thanks.

    Elaine Connell
     Hebden Bridge, UK
    Sunday, January 24, 1999


    Thank you to Jack Folsom for reminding us of what the Forum has been and should be -- something tells me that Elaine Connell did not begin this endeavor with the Meg Ryan issue in mind. Regular dwellers like myself have benefited from the challenging questions that have been raised herein about Plath's art, the wide diversity of views expressed, and the sometimes luminous and often provocative insights of Plath readers. This site at its best is a testament to the extraordinary vitality of Plath's poetry.

    As we know, many critics of American verse, including the eminent Harold Bloom, have been dismissive of Plath -- citing her appeal to a political and social fringe readership, among other things, as evidence of her status as a minor poet, and of a more general cultural decline. There is unquestionably a social or political component in reading a poet such as Plath, but this, it seems to me, dissipates the more one reads her; people who look to Plath for a social platform will eventually abandon her or be abandoned by her. What's left is the language of Plath, which continues to replenish both itself and its admirers. This is language that impacts the brain like a meteor, forever altering the mind's atmosphere. In reading Peter Steinberg's posting about the Hugh Kenner essay, I was reminded of the grammatical innovator Gertrude Stein, who wrote that in order for language to be poetry, it had to replace words with "the thing in itself," it had to reenact "movement in space." Stein's imperative becomes Hugh Kenner's complaint against the mechanics of Ariel, but I would agree with him that the voice of Ariel, its blood-jet propulsion, speaks of "a lack of patience with the world's slow turning." And what of that? Isn't this the very impetus toward artistic creation? I am more interested in the concept of "bogus spirituality" that Kenner and others have attributed to Ariel. I hope that Elaine, Jack, Stewart, and others so inclined will comment on this criticism, at the calculated risk of taking us back to the redemptive v. damning effect of Plath's work on her readers.

    Melissa Dobson
     Newport, RI, USA
    Sunday, January 24, 1999


    Thank you, Peter Steinberg, for your interesting input. I wish I could get hold of that book. I do somehow think that Plath's development as a poet may have been a factor in her killing herself. I absolutely do NOT think Hughes should be blamed for it. No other person should ever be blamed for another person's suicide. The "death poems" in Ariel - how beautiful they may be - aren't really good for anyone's soul. After all, after one has written things like that - what's left to say? Plath may have felt (with those poems) that she had finally arrived as a poet, but of course one should never arrive in life. One should always be going, working, living, breathing and so on. Arrival in life means death. After arrival there's nothing. That was the sad news for Plath who had worked so hard in her life to push for a final, beautiful arrival.

    Even in "The Bell Jar" she writes of her wish to only have to do things once, like washing her hair etc, and then it would be done with. I think we all feel like that at certain times. We fool ourselves into thinking "if I only got THIS job..., "if I only passed THIS exam..." only to find out that life goes on after that and there are other problems and challenges, we don't ever want to arrive as persons or as artists. That's the beauty AND difficulty with life itself.

    I'm sorry if I haven't expressed myself clearly, English is not my first language and I sometimes make a lots of mistakes.

    Eva
     NY, USA
    Sunday, January 24, 1999


    There is an out-of-print book called, "Sylvia Plath: new views on the poetry," edited by Gary Lane. There is an essay in it by Hugh Kenner called 'Sincerity Kills.' Kenner calls on Plath's development as a poet, from the Colossus to Ariel, as the single factor for her death; there is never any mention of personal life, mental history, the separation from Hughes, etc. Kenner writes, "If we think of "The Colossus" not as the frigid precursor to "Ariel" but as the work of a very intelliegent girl in her mid twenties, it is an amazingly good collection."

    Kenner agrues that Ariel is seen as being utterly new & sincere & final and that it shouldn't be. He also says that we shouldn't be satisifed with the bogus spirituality of the "Ariel" poems and that we admirers who even seem pleased Plath did not survive He disagrees with Ted Hughes, who in his introduction to the Collected Poems, calls what follows 'The Stones' in "The Colossus" the work of a "highly-disciplined, highly intellectual style of education which had, up to this point, WORKED MAINLY AGAINST HER, but without which she could hardly have gone so coolly into the regions she now entered.(caps mine)"

    What "worked mainly against her," Kenner reads as her strict writing habits, the thesaurus on the knee, the studying of magazines for the proper sort of publishable poem, and the producing, is what kept Plath alive. He praises Plath's role playing (Letters Home to Mummy) and keen poetic mathematics which so wonderfully makes her first collection promising and enjoybale.

    In a review of "the more lurid parts of 'Ariel' ", Kenner slashes the book to bits, "Sparse rhymes come and go nearly at random, and the number of syllables in a line swings with the vertigo of her thought." He also calls the stanza breaks 'cracks in the sidewalk, on which she is careful never to step."

    Kenner concedes that the poems didn't, indeed kill Plath, but he cannot see that they do anything for anyone. He says a third of "Ariel" (the death poems) is bad for anyone's soul and that those third are no gain for poetry. He then says that Plath's careful habit of poemmaking is the true Plath and that the manic voice of "Ariel", and the eventual suicide, is merely a "lack of patience with the world's slow turning."

    What do the Minds of the Forum feel about this, and did Ariel somehow kill Plath?

    Peter Steinberg
     Alexandria, Virginia, USA
    Sunday, January 24, 1999


    First, Thank You, Jack Folsom, for a very objective yet passionate contribution to the Forum. I agree with you. Please, everyone, no more debate about Meg Ryan. Some things are immutable and unchangeable, and unless we, ourselves, have the considerable money it would take to produce a film and cast an actress as Sylvia, we are powerless. The film will be produced without our opinions, so we may as well keep them to ourselves.

    Second, as a student and reader of Plath for some twenty five years, I am constantly amazed at how much more there is to discover about her life and her works. Currently, I am working on my Masters thesis - the subject being Plath, of course. I am directing the focus toward Subjection/Domination and Rage at the Male, and am finding considerable evidence in her poetry, novel and short stories. (The Journals are somewhat helpful, and I entirely dismiss Letters Home due to their fantasy content to dear mummy, and the most unhelpful editing of the Plath estate.) I have also found some excellent assistance in Freud, Kristeva, Butler, Benjamin, et al. However, I am looking for some literary criticism about Plath specifically dealing with these topics. If you could suggest any articles or books, I would be very grateful.

    Meanwhile, thank you for this wonderful web page. Thank you for your excellent (and sometimes amusing) contributions. Thank you for keeping the work of Plath fresh and controversial. And finally, thank you in advance for your help.

    Carol Petrone
     Southfield, MI , USA
    Friday, January 22, 1999


    I thought I might take a few lines to review the past year of the Sylvia Plath Forum, then add a suggestion. First off, we must thank Elaine and Chris for keeping the forum going through some dry spells, and some waves of trivial blather such as that concerning Meg Ryan as Plath, supposedly scheduled to act in some allegedly godawful film that everyone rages against without knowing much about.

    Newcomers to the Forum should really consider digging into the archives of postings since January/February of 1998. There you will find debates and critical commentaries of the highest standard, even though most contributors are amateur rather than professional critics or scholars. To be sure, the archives also contain all manner of naive, at times semi-literate, but always enthusiastic postings from students and/or Sylvia-groupies. My point here is that a wealth of valuable information and perspective is to be found in the archive of the Sylvia Plath Forum, if one is willing to wade through the tall grass. That the same questions, repeatedly answered before, come up over and over again leads me to wonder what lack of energy or initiative afflicts some newcomers. The risk now is that contributors who have posted such great stuff in the past will be turned off and will turn away because good questions are not being asked, and informed comments are being withheld.

    My main suggestion now is that since Ted is dead and Meg all but beaten to death, let us once more return to the actual writing of Sylvia Plath and try to help each other to a better understanding and appreciation of her work. Even after more than 25 years of work on Sylvia's writing, I still feel I have much to learn from (I hate the word!) interaction with others who share my interest.

    Jack Folsom
     Sharon, Vermont, USA
    Thursday, January 21, 1999


    A note to those interested in the works and life of Ted Hughes; I work part time at a bookstore, and we get the New York Times Book Review early so that we can order books on the best seller list. I was flipping through it today and came upon an article in the "Bookend" section on the last page entitled "Ted Hughes: A Reconciliation" by Eavan Boland, a writer, and director of the creative writing program at Standford University. It's part critical essay, mostly personal in nature. Of course, Plath is mentioned in a few paragraphs, with a quote of the opening lines to "The City," a poem Hughes published about Plath but did not include in Birthday Letters. I am not familiar with the New York Times website, so I don't know if the article is (or will be) available online. However, it will be printed in this Sunday's New York Times Book Review (January 24th 1999) if anyone is interested. Personally, I was pleased that Boland opted for "a reconciliation" approach as the title suggests, rather than taking sides. Whatever may or may not have happened between Plath and Hughes, the fact is that all that's left now is their work.

    Gregg
     New Hope, PA, USA
    Thursday, January 21, 1999


    I think it would be interesting to have a movie written, if one need be written, following Plath's Collected Poems. That way, when you got to the end, the writer's most likely dead anyway. What I've found, and I am not a good movie-goer, is that American films have a hard time ending on a bad note (not a happy ending). The foreign films really tend to be more dramatic & dark; so maybe some UK film company could jump in the game.

    Peter Steinberg
     Alexandria, Virginia, USA
    Thursday, January 21, 1999


    I have to add my apprehension about, and ambivalence towards, the filming of a `biopic' about Sylvia, particularly if it is based on "Rough Magic". (Due to my uncertainty regarding libel laws I'll refrain from further comment about this book.) A remake of "The Bell Jar" would I'm sure be more acceptable and less controversial.

    We all have our own perceptions and opinions (which tell as much about ourselves as they do about Sylvia) of this engigmatic and mercurial woman. By its very nature a film is partisan and selective in what is portrayed (how many sides are there to the truth? As Pilate said in "Jesus Christ Superstar" - `What is truth? My truth, or yours?') - film-makers have their own agenda, which doesn't often pay too much attention to the truth.

    Janet Malcolm's summed up the caution with which one should approach biographies in "The Silent Woman", but at least a book, if it is to be of any value, would have references and sources that enable the reader to make up their own mind as to the veracity of the statements made, and the biographer should, even if it's not always the case, strive to be objective, and balance `truths'. There are few such restrictions and qualifications in the medium of a film, which even if well researched would, by the inclusion of dialogue, if not characterisation, be semi-fictional at best.

    Everyone, or at least most, who contributes to, or reads, this Forum are au fait with the events of Sylvia's life and would be critically aware of any shortcomings in the film, but how many others would accept what they see at face value. On the one hand a film may renew and increase interest in Sylvia, but as has been implied by others, if sensitivity is sacrificed for sensationalism what harm might be done. Or are we just being overzealous to protect our image of Sylvia (whatever that may be), as vulnerable in death as she was in life.

    There is sufficient interest in Sylvia to justify a wider exposure of her life and work (are we able to seperate the person from the poet?), but how much better this would be in the form of a filmed documentary. As I'm sure all readers in the U.K. will know there was an excellent documentary on BBC Television in December "Ted Hughes: Force of Nature", in which we heard extracts of Sylvia being interviewed and reciting some lines of her poetry (What a wonderful voice). I don't know if American television has the equivalent to the BBC, but something along these lines about Sylvia would be more appropriate.

    John Hopkins
     Bridgend, S.Wales, UK
    Thursday, January 21, 1999


    A thought or two on a Plath movie;

    Anything is possible. Given that, I can quite easily imagine a very good movie about Plath, made on the idea of a b&w European 50s film, like Hiroshima Mon Amour or Marienbad; it's just not possible to think of a good *Hollywood* movie about Plath, for the obvious reasons. But, when I read of Molly Ringwald's desire to do a movie--though Hughes nixed the idea--I thought; quite so. A good physical resemblance; just do it the obvious way; as a hallucination; for her audition, put Ringwald into 50s drag--because, after all, isn't Molly Ringwald what Plath, for most of her life, pretended to be?--get a set designer who has really researched the biographies, and furnish an actual landscape to move through--actual Primrose Hill, actual Boston, actual whatever--and have Ringwald and whomever *mime* to their heart's content; then add the narration later. No music, except for drones, ground-bass, the occasional clicking of sticks and wind-chimes, and whatever might be overheard on a prop radio. Have part of the screen, at the margins, in eerie counterpoint, occasionally decay into blackness, with appearing there--whatever works. At the end of editing, touch in bits of color in the negative--red for the rose, for example, that she holds when crying--red for the tulips seen through a thick and warping glass, red for the balloons in her child's fist-- and have the color ooze in and out of the frame, dissolve and blur, like Plath's poetry, like a vision--because part of the paranoia of the novel is the animistic angst, the way everything in Plath's universe threatens to transform into something else--to show, as she told her mother, how isolated someone feels, when they're having a breakdown--the way, as a poet, she was affrighted by visions; and edit in whispers of dialogue overlapping and negating on the soundtrack--make the movie, like her book, the echo chamber of her mind, commenting on itself. --If Ringwald--or anyone else who would do such a movie--really wants to do this, it would be simple, and cheap--any film school could throw it together. But the art--and the consequences--and the intelligence--ah, that is not so easily come by; but art is infinite, and infinitely possible. If you don't like the idea of a Hollywood Plath movie, do your own--after the order of the one about Shulamith Firestone. Art is always possible. It is only that it is up to the artist to do it.

    Having said all that, any movie that is as truly terrifying as Plath can be, would be banned and burned, and might, indeed, self-destruct in the lens, before ever being finished...who knows? What brave mime volunteers to enter the dragon's mouth? A thought for the day.

    PS. Kids! Don't try this at home!

    Kenneth Jones
     San Francisco, USA
    Thursday, January 21, 1999



    That's a good point, that the so-called Hollywood machine could ruin a screenplay with potential, and that the suicide issue is a sticking point for the public "at large." On the other hand, everyone knew how "Titanic" was going to end. Ditto with "JFK" and "The Doors." Even though I expressed concern over Meg Ryan playing Plath before, it's not *totally* out of the realm of possibility that she could turn out a great performance. Choosing Val Kilmer to play Jim Morrison in the aformentioned Oliver Stone film seems to be a bizzare choice, but I thought that he nailed it as good as it was going to get, and he looked the part as well.

    What really bothers me is the choice of director, and more importantly, the screenplay. Last I heard it was being based heavily on Rough Magic, which, to me, was overly focused on Plath's love life. Tragic love stories are fair game in Hollywood if they choose to persue that angle. It might make for a good story, but in my opinion, it's not the *right* story that should be told for Plath, or Ted Hughes for that matter. After all, there are thousands of such stories that could be told of ordinary people, the reason a movie is being made about Plath in particular is because she was a great writer, and a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. It seems to me that her romantic life, and her life in general, should be aspects to a movie that focuses on her writing, not the focus itself.

    Gregg
     New Hope, PA, USA
    Thursday, January 21, 1999


    Has anyone else been reading the NB column in the TLS lately?

    Kenneth Jones
     San Francisco, USA
    Thursday, January 21, 1999



    Hi! I am going through the phase again. Well, it is not really a phase...it is kind of an on-going need i guess....i just finished reading "The Bell Jar"...again and have been sitting around thinking about the life that this woman lead and i have been attempting to search around every corner and dig up every fact and ....everything that i know about her and well....i found you here. I am so glad that i am not alone!! Do you all know the feeling that i am trying to describe? That connection? That utter dire need to understand? I really am not sure what i am saying....but anyway, yeah....so...about the whole Meg Ryan thing.....she's cute and sweet and funny.....but hello!! I can not see her being anything close to a Sylvia Plath....and i certainly can not see Claire Danes as one either! I can't see any well known actress, that has a fixed image in the public eye portraying Sylvia...or maybe it is just that i don't want to see this movie happen! This is an important thing...this movie....it will introduce tons of people...young teenage girls especially...to the goddess of poetry and i just can not bare to think of even one girl thinking of Meg Ryan when ....ya know? I mean it just is not something that i want to see.(i know..calm down right?) I don't even think i want there to be a movie at all because i know that i, and probably you, will get so angry if even one thing is screwed up...the way it always gets screwed up when someone gets the idea to make a wonderful book into a movie....and i just don't know if i will be able to keep my rage under control...ok..but anyway...does anybody get where i am coming from? Thanks.

    Jennifer Durnall
     North Manchester, In, USA
    Wednesday, January 20, 1999


    I think a major point is being overlooked in the Meg Ryan debate. It is my understanding that nobody in Hollywood is interested in the screenplay that's now making the rounds. After all, a film whose story ends in suicide is hardly an easy sell in a town that shrinks from controversy. The only chance it has is because a major star is pushing it. Personally, I can't see Ryan in the role either. First of all, she's too old. But then I hope the film is never attempted. I don't think Hollywood can be trusted to do it right, and who plays Slyvia Plath is the least of my fears.

    Paul Snyder
     New York City, USA
    Wednesday, January 20, 1999


    I am going to visit Boston for the first time in February. I would love it if someone familiar with that area could give me some Sylvia Plath landmarks to visit.

    I am aware that she and Anne Sexton drank martinis at the Ritz bar, and that she grew up in Jamaica Plain. I am also interested in visiting Boston U. where she and Sexton studied under Lowell. Do you know of any other places that might be of interest.

    On the subject of Meg Ryan playing Sylvia Plath, that is about as believable as Andie MacDowell playing Janis Joplin. Please don't insult poor Sylvia when she isn't around to defend herself. I think Claire Danes might be the most obvious choice. She seems to have a darker side.

    Jen
     Nashville, USA
    Saturday, January 16, 1999


    Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has taken an interest in the lovely Sylvia, and is spreading the word. I found her poetry in '97 and have been addicted since. I stumbled upon this site today and am thrilled. I have recently been looking up tidbits on Freida and have been reading her work. I was discouraged to find out that she hasn't read much of her mother's work. After reading through a couple interviews, I also got the impression that she looks down on Plath fans. Has anyone gotten this impression also? Just wondering-thanks again to everyone!!!

    Alexis Klazura
     St. Louis, USA
    Friday, January 15, 1999


    I'm thrilled to have found this page! About 5 years ago I finished my English studies. I had always been fascinated by Sylvia Plath's work and therefore wrote my thesis on some of her poems ('Sylvia Plath's Colossal Father'). Since then, I'm afraid to say that I've been very busy with other things. This Internet page (and the Sylvia Plath homepage) revived my interest in her work again though! So lately, I've been reading her poetry again, and wondering how I could ever have done without...

    Recently I discoverd that Frieda Hughes ('the daughter of') had also published a book of poetry, called 'Wooroloo'. I've ordered it at www.amazon.com. Has anyone read it already? And does anyone know when the film (The Bell Jar)will come out?

    Chris
     Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    Friday, January 15, 1999


    I have been reading Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and in doing so I have come to ask a few questions about Plath. But first, to whom is she referring when she says "Johnny Panic"? Can someone answer this?

    Karen
     USA
    Friday, January 15, 1999


    To Joe in Sacramento- i say: step up to the plate on a Plath film! i personally dream of a remake of The Bell Jar, with lush '50s scenes of New York, red lipstick mouths,the girl on the beach foundering in high heels...the thought of Meg Ryan and her ego+cash splashing a cutesy Plath on the screen makes me gag. If she wants a career change, she should try her hand at playing Aurelia, to whom she is closer in age!

    Amy
     Pasadena, USA
    Friday, January 15, 1999


    Harold Bloom edited a book of critical essays about Sylvia Plath. It is in a series of critical books called Modern Critical Views, and then the title itself is Sylvia Plath. (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989). You should be able to find it in any decent library. The collection of essays is quite good, in my opinion. I found it particularly useful for a paper I wrote last semester about "Lady Lazarus." Susan Van Dyne's essay about the manuscripts of "Lady Lazarus" is fascinating. I believe you'll find Bloom's infamous quote about Sylvia Plath never writing a poem in her life in the his introduction.

    Maria
     Crescent Springs, KY, USA
    Thursday, January 14, 1999


    Some time ago someone wrote in the forum about an article by a man calle Harold Bloom. I havn't got the time now to look for it as I am at work, but tomorrow I intend to go through the old comments in the forum to find out exactly what was said. In the meantime, if anyone knows where I can get a hold of Harold Bloom's critisicm (I can't spell - forgive me!!!!) please let me know. I also remember something about Bloom saying "Plath never wrote a poem in her life." Was this from the same article? If you can help me find it I'd love you forever!!!!

    Cheers.

    Sarah
     London, England
    Wednesday, January 13, 1999


    Hello everybody: I'm just putting in a word to say I think this forum has yielded some truly interesting things. And also to say that Meg Ryan would be a terrible Sylvia Plath! Claire Danes (avec wig and lipstick) would be a dead ringer, and we are all convinced of the depths of her acting abilities, unlike Ms. "You've got mail". That movie made me retch in a most unpleasant manner. I'm also putting a word in because I am writing a proposal for a travel scholarship that will enable me to follow the Hughes' honeymoon trip 'round Spain; a long shot but worth the effort and a blast to research. However, there is one book I cannot find that a friend of mine has mentioned. It is a collection of essays by the people who knew her, and outlines Ted's alleged attempt on Sylvia's life in Benidorm. Are any of you aware of this book?

    Jaimie Levesque
     Saskatoon, Canada
    Tuesday, January 12, 1999


    Melissa Dobson, welcome home, and yes, maybe you're right; in fact, perky Scorpio (a contradiction in terms) Meg Ryan's deep desire to portray Scorpio Plath (and be taken seriously as an actress) reminds me of Plath's own deep desire to be taken seriously as a writer. God knows Plath was a perky, blonde young thing herself when she wasn't beating up little girls for picking azaleas and overdosing on sleeping pills . . . still, I have my doubts as to whether the project is even going to happen. I hope it doesn't. Leave it alone, leave it alone. There are enough people who think being a poet means you have to be suicidal. Camille! Lay off our Meg! What's so wrong with perky? Meg! Crinkle up your little nose and give us a smile! We love you!

    Stewart Clarke
     New York, USA
    Tuesday, January 12, 1999


    I never thought I would join the Ryan/Plath debate, but... Wouldn't we all want to see a talented actress as Sylvia Plath? (Please don't tell me airhead Meg Ryan has talent!) They made Willem Defoe (a great actor) look like T.S.Eliot, so I'm sure they could make any good actress look like Plath. How about Laura Dern or Nicole Kidman? Good actresses who also happen to be tall and thin like Plath.

    Marian
     Brooklyn, NY, USA
    Tuesday, January 12, 1999


    "It would appear blonde," Ted Hughes remarked of his first glimpse of his future wife, writing in "Fulbright Scholars" in Birthday Letters. He also noticed "your grin./Your exaggerated American/Grin for the cameras, the judges, the strangers, the frighteners." He described Plath's face, in "St. Botolph's" as "A rubbery ball of joy . . . your eyes/Squeezed in your face, a crush of diamonds" and commented in "18 Rugby Street," "You were slim and lithe and smooth as a fish./You were a new world. My new world./So this is America, I marvelled./Beautiful, beautiful America."

    If I were a sketch artist, I think I'd draw Meg Ryan. We all know that nobody can sufficiently CONTAIN Plath (she left her poems for that), but if you're seeking to REPRESENT her, I think you've got your girl.

    Melissa Dobson
     Newport, RI, USA
    Tuesday, January 12, 1999


    RE: Voices & Visions

    HI Stewart! I was in NYC this weekend and I went into the Strand, an amazing used bookshop. I found a book edited by Helen Vendler titled Voices and Visions...I am guessing it's an out of print book now as it was published in 1987. It is a compendium to the video series and the essays are DIFFERENT than that of the video/audio text. So it is an enlightening read...the book itself is a big paperback, textbook looking book. So they are out there!!!

    Peter Steinberg
     Alexandria, Virginia, USA
    Monday, January 11, 1999


    The question on Elizabeth and David: This would be Elizabeth Compton and her husband, David Compton. In one of the biographies, The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath, by Ronald Hayman, there's an account of the Comptons visiting Court Green, the Hughes's Devon home. When Sylvia was distressed about Ted Hughes's liaison with Assia Wevill, she drove to the Comptons's home, twenty-five miles away, and stayed there overnight. She apparently found Elizabeth Compton a sympathetic and trusted friend, and thus felt it appropriate to dedicate The Bell Jar to her.

    Maggie Mountford
     Wells, UK
    Saturday, January 9, 1999


    As a film maker myself (and someone who would love to take a crack at a Plath movie) I am honestly pretty dissapointed about Meg Ryan's involvment. She's proven (to me at least) that she fails at any and all serious attempts at acting and can apparently only thrive in films that also star Tom Hanks. Personally, I think that in some of Sylvia's photos (especially her modeling ones, on the beach) she is just about identical to Patricia Arquette. That's probably who I would cast... not that she's really proven to be a BETTER actress than Meg Ryan, but at least she thrives in psychological dramas rather than quirky cute little chick-flicks (probably a bad idea to use the word "chick" in a Sylvia Plath forum, but what can you do?)

    Them's just my two pennies.

    Joe
     Sacramento, USA
    Saturday, January 9, 1999


    Hi, you maniacs. More from Camille Paglia on Meg Ryan's perky magic:

    "When the London Times recently called me for comment about Meg Ryan having bought the rights to star in the Sylvia Plath story, I was naturally appalled. "The prospect is too horrible for words," I am quoted as saying in gossip columns from the New York Daily News to the San Jose Mercury-News, which picked up the Times article. I told the Times that part of my gripe against Ryan is that, although she didn't speak to her mother for years, she has never used the darker currents in her own psyche to help her acting, which I find gag-me-with-a-spoon saccharine. If Ryan is genuinely ready to confront her own demons, she might make a splendid Plath -- whose dragon-lady Boston mother, Aurelia, could sever a testicle at 20 paces." Salon Magazine, April 28, 1998

    Ouch.

    God, I don't believe I'm actually jumping back into this Meg Ryan debate, but here goes. I read an interview with Meg Ryan recently (although I can't remember where. There seemed to be a sort of gay wash over the whole interview as I recall - did she play a lesbian recently or something?) in which she expounded on Plath and I got the distinct impression that Meg's Plath project was definitely NOT a done deal and might even have fallen by the wayside. I'm sorry, folks -- I told myself I should make a note of this interview when I read it, but I just wasn't that interested and just dropped the ball. But anyway, I got the feeling that Meg as Plath might be a spectacle we will never get to see. Thankfully? I was rather getting used to the idea. We had Sally Field as "Sybil", after all. . . . .

    More entertainment news: Racine's "Phedre" is here in New York at BAM, a new translation by the late and lamented Ted Hughes, starring Diana Rigg and Toby Stephens (golden child of Maggie Smith). It doesn't look like I'm going to get to see it before it leaves in a few days, more's the pity. Did anyone catch it?

    Happy New Year, everybody. Melissa Dobson, come back to the five and dime.

    Stewart Clarke
     New York, USA
    Friday, January 8, 1999


    RE: The dedication at the beginning of The Bell Jar

    The dedication at the beginning of the Bell Jar is to David and Elizabeth Compton. I think they became friends with the Hugheses after their move to Devon. The Comptons are mentioned, along with Elizabeth's personal recollections about Sylvia, in Bitter Fame, and if my memory serves me correctly, in Rough Magic as well.

    Maria
     Crescent Springs, KY, USA
    Friday, January 8, 1999


    Annie, "Elizabeth and David" are no pseudonyms. Elizabeth and her husband David Compton were Sylvias friends. They lived in Devon and got to know Sylvia and Ted through the BBC radio program "Two of a kind". David was also a writer. Elizabeth became a close friend during Sylvia's last year. She may have published some kind of memoir of Sylvia. Anyway, if you read "The Silent Woman" by Janet Malcolm you'll find out more. The Comptons are mentioned in Paul Alexander's "Rough Magic" as well as in other books on Plath.

    Eva
     NY, USA
    Friday, January 8, 1999


    Regarding the posts about Meg Ryan and the film on Plath, I found this quote (Copyright Harpers Bazzar, December 1998. Article by Eve MacSweeney): "Among her new projects with her production company, Prufrock Pictures, is -- perhaps her biggest stretch to date -- a planned feature on the life of the poet Sylvia Plath, in which Ryan hopes to star ('The prospect is too horrible for words,' feminist critic Camille Paglia told a British newspaper. 'The cutesy role model who set American women back 20 years wants to play a real woman who helped us forward?'). Ryan looks into the middle distance when I ask her about this. 'I just do not care about Camille Paglia one way or the other,' she responds."

    Gregg
     New Hope, PA, USA
    Thursday, January 7, 1999


    I have a question about the dedication of Sylvia Plath's novel THE BELL JAR. The book is dedicated to Elizabeth and David, and I am wondering if these are psuedonyms (as was Victoria Lucas, the name Plath used for the first publicationof the book). if they are not pseudonyms, I wonder who they are (my research on Plath has so far no noteable mentions of an Elizabeth or David). Would anyone have any suggestions?

    Annie
     Illinois, USA
    Thursday, January 7, 1999


    I'm a massive Sylvia fan but because I live in humble old england i miss alot of her stuff.I would be gratefull if any one could fill me in on the movie and other things that i might miss.If anyone isninteressed in english newspaper articles and pictures of her grave and house I would be happy to help.Also do any Sylvia fans want to keep in touch? i get lonely no one reads poetry around here. Thanks

    Gemma
     Maidstone, England
    Tuesday, January 5, 1999,


    Does anyone know where I can find criticism on Plath's "Poppies in July" and/or "Poppies in October"? If not, does anyone have any insight as to what these poems are about? To read these poems, try:
    http://www.lm.com/~aion23/poems.html#poppies
    http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~ejr/poetry/Sylvia_Plath/Poppies_in_October.html

    Emily
     Richmond, USA
    Tuesday, January 5, 1999


    Regarding young women in white at the end of the Voices and Visions documentary on Sylvia Plath ... perhaps this refers to a tradition at Smith College (from which I graduated) called Ivy Day. Seniors dress in white dresses and hold a single red rose as alumnae parade past them. I believe that some of the Voices and Visions documentary was shot at Smith when I was there (1984-88), so it's entirely possible that the footage was gathered then. Significance? That's another story. Hope this helps.

    Diana
     Boston, USA
    Monday, January 4, 1999


    Does anyone know if and when Frieda Hughes will give poetry readings in the New England area?

    Rose
     Dedham, MA, USA
    Sunday, January 3, 1999


    The January issue of Octavo features some writing that may be of interest to Plath enthusiasts. Check out Winter Burn (23 Fitzroy Road, January, 1963) by Steve Harris and dark thoughts by Robert Johnston

    http://alsopreview.com/octavo

    Jamie
     Baltimore, USA
    Friday, January 1, 1999


    I'm a bit taken aback that Meg Ryan is to portray Plath, though I'm also a little confused as to what the movie is supposed to be... is it a bio-film or an adaption of The Bell Jar? Obviously, Bell Jar is semi-autobiography, but there's a big difference between adapting that novel and doing an acutal biography. I have nothing against Meg Ryan as an actress, but I think she'd have to do Oscar-level work to do the film justice. The choice of director could make or break the film as well. Personally, if I were doing a film on Sylvia, esp. a biography that started back in her teen/pre-Smith years, I'd pick Claire Danes, for physical resemblance as well as her offscreen personality. I don't know if she's a fan, but it seems as if she has the "mindset" to pull off that delicate balance that was characterisitc of Silvia's life.

    Gregg
     New Hope, PA, USA
    Friday, January 1, 1999


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    This forum is administered by Elaine Connell, author of Sylvia Plath: Killing The Angel In The House - second edition with new preface just out, December 1998. 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.