Oct. 12, 2012 at 11:20pm with 270 notes
Reblogged from theparisreview
theparisreview: “They were ‘dawn poems in blood,’ those lines stormed onto paper while the children slept; several of them were written through fevers, and the heat seared onto the pages, those old memorandum sheets marked Smith College, or the back of a manuscript marked The Calm. That had been a radio play, drafted by Ted Hughes in their flat in London early the previous year; now Sylvia Plath was in the Devon farmhouse they’d bought soon afterward, and Hughes was back in London, banished, their marriage over. It was late 1962, and in the space of eight weeks, it brought Plath forty of what would become her Ariel poems. They were, she wrote to the poet Ruth Fainlight, ‘free stuff I had locked in me for years,’ and now they were out. And they were astonishing. Only pain could have released them, only fury and outrage and jealousy and panic of the sort into which Plath’s daily universe had plunged. ‘I kept telling myself I was the sort that could only write when peaceful at heart,’ she told Fainright, ‘but that is not so, the muse has come to live here, now Ted is gone.’” Read more of Belinda McKeon on Sylvia Plath and her last letters before her suicide fifty years ago.

theparisreview:

“They were ‘dawn poems in blood,’ those lines stormed onto paper while the children slept; several of them were written through fevers, and the heat seared onto the pages, those old memorandum sheets marked Smith College, or the back of a manuscript marked The Calm. That had been a radio play, drafted by Ted Hughes in their flat in London early the previous year; now Sylvia Plath was in the Devon farmhouse they’d bought soon afterward, and Hughes was back in London, banished, their marriage over. It was late 1962, and in the space of eight weeks, it brought Plath forty of what would become her Ariel poems. They were, she wrote to the poet Ruth Fainlight, ‘free stuff I had locked in me for years,’ and now they were out. And they were astonishing. Only pain could have released them, only fury and outrage and jealousy and panic of the sort into which Plath’s daily universe had plunged. ‘I kept telling myself I was the sort that could only write when peaceful at heart,’ she told Fainright, ‘but that is not so, the muse has come to live here, now Ted is gone.’”

Read more of Belinda McKeon on Sylvia Plath and her last letters before her suicide fifty years ago.

  1. everyoneisanenabler reblogged this from brusquemagazine
  2. celiacyanide reblogged this from awritersruminations
  3. negativegestalt reblogged this from awritersruminations
  4. thelastdamnkid reblogged this from monica-vitti
  5. monica-vitti reblogged this from theparisreview
  6. janhanklcult reblogged this from angraheroismo
  7. angraheroismo reblogged this from awritersruminations
  8. someyes reblogged this from chesterstreet
  9. paradigmeraki reblogged this from awritersruminations
  10. grringirl reblogged this from awritersruminations
  11. scissorstoariadne reblogged this from awritersruminations
  12. iamalmosthappy reblogged this from buxombibliophile
  13. buxombibliophile reblogged this from awritersruminations and added:
    Today would have been her 80th birthday.
  14. saviorsatellite reblogged this from awritersruminations
  15. theseawasalright reblogged this from awritersruminations
  16. asymphonystirsinthedepths reblogged this from awritersruminations
  17. onlystreetlights reblogged this from bohemianarthouse
  18. milesabovethesea reblogged this from awritersruminations
  19. gracebello reblogged this from theparisreview
  20. lion-kiss reblogged this from awritersruminations
  21. certainlyambivalentt reblogged this from awritersruminations and added:
    I love herrrrrr
  22. brusquemagazine reblogged this from bohemianarthouse
  23. justateenagemaniac reblogged this from awritersruminations