Today I finally finished reading Sylvia Plath's Letters Home, Correspondence 1950-1963. It wasn't always fascinating reading but seemed very important for me to read, die-hard fan of 'Sivvy' (as she was nicknamed) as I am. I need to get my hands on her journals now...Whenever I hear of a celebrity's journals being published post-mortem, it sends a brief shiver down my spine to think that if I was ever lucky/unlucky (delete as appropriate) enough to become a house-hold name, then die young, my journals would be left at the disposal of my closest kin. My suitcases full of dusty journals. Need to know: I am on the organ donor register, and whether I'm burnt or buried I'd like my journals to go in the same way on the same day. This is all very charming to think of, but I will swiftly move on anyway.

It was definitely satisfying to finally get an uninhibited insight into Plath's life, but far from what one gets from a detailed biography, one can really draw their own conclusions from literature like this...letters and journals...And it was interesting and often sad to read and form these conclusions - that Plath's letters to her mother were probably often very over-optimistic and didn't speak of a lot of the problems she was going through. Sylvia never confided in her mother about the turbulence in her marriage right up until the relationship was over, in the letters anyway. So it wasn't really up until that point that the book started to show a more real picture of Plath's life, and it was only then, very near the end of the book, that I fully started to...get something from it. To 'feel it', unpleasant as it was. Those very few letters that do actually speak of that dark time in Sylvia's life after Ted left her are so painful to read, her desperation is obvious in every word. And the way she wrote did undergo a noticeable change after Ted left her. Loathe as I am to say it, she genuinely seemed like a  broken woman after it. The poetry library can breathe a sigh of relief, they're finally getting this book back.

One of my biggest pet hates is when the light's on for no reason during the day. I think my annoyance is mostly on behalf of the environment, but aside from that it is just such an ugly effect. Why spoil the beauty of natural daylight with this garish orange electricity? It is rich for me to be talking about 'the beauty of natural daylight' since I tend to avoid it like the plague. Within reason. Kind of. But still. Apologies for how barren of poetry this blog has been lately, exams are keeping me busy...

Further Plathian Wisdom

"We are not dependant on the social arty world, but scorn it, for those who are drinking and calling themselves 'writers' at parties should be home writing and writing. Every day one has to earn the name of 'writer' over again, with much wrestling." - Sylvia Plath

I think I need to take note.

"Being utterly in love...frees our writing from being a merely egoistic mirror, but rather a powerful canvas on which other people live and move" - Sylvia Plath

The Man

Tango cans fall among the buds, among your feet,
We'd bend down to pick it up if you'd been from around here,
Sun shines even on this off day, deciding on or not to now
Flip you off, if to checkmate your eating eyes, and there's
One more life. Deciding, never could run away up, away,

Somehow, always more about the strength you saw
In summer, in the long and short of catcalls from the
Mount. It's all about the way youth blooms from the ether
In this weather. Shame the fall is too short, pedals
Holding notes from the high, quiet breaking into lunch break

Making. Take some instinct, take some will along. Plans
For weeks, lists, nucleosynthesis of the sun - but here air
Is dry and like anyone else the forest
Lies. Hot bake children sat in styro-glass shift dresses,
Sand podiums, all cracked in that cot, prism-like

As the little white house in the outskirts.
And that was while I'd found you out, haltingly dressed,
And strewn over acres of unowned land, shortly,
A fist nose-breaking, litter-raking, the man.