“I Am the Arrow”: Sarah Ruden Tells Sylvia Plath’s Story

Can you tell a person’s story in six poems? 

I may be the ideal person to test that question. Before I read The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath in Six Poems by Sarah Ruden, I knew three or four things about Sylvia Plath (1932-1963): she’d been in a rather awful marriage with British poet Ted Hughes; she committed suicide; she’d published the autobiographical The Bell Jar under another name; and she had become a political icon for many people. 

 

I knew about the marriage because I had read Crow by Ted Hughes and some of his biographical information. I’m not sure how I learned about the icon business, but, rightly or wrongly, I tend to shy away from poets and writers who become an icon for a political cause. I don’t have a good, thoughtful reason for that; it just is. And I had read only three of her poems – “Morning Song,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Daddy.”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

“The Whitsun Weddings,” poem by Philip Larkin – Abdrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

T.S. Eliot and the Whitsun Fire – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

On Marianne Moore, Unexpected Celebrity Poet of Midcentury America – Susan Gubar at Literary Hub.

 

“Summer Song,” poem by William Carlos Williams – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“Your Story, My Story” by Connie Palmen

Dutch author Connie Palmen has told an unexpected story. 

I’ve read some of the poetry written by English poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and American poet Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). I had not read any biographies of either poet. I know the basic facts of their lives – their marriage in 1956, Plath’s death by suicide in 1963 – but my knowledge was woefully incomplete. I knew that Hughes had been the British Poet Laureate for a time, and I had seen his memorial stone in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

 

At some point over the years, I’d come to understand that Plath had become something of a feminist icon. Related to this, Hughes was seen as something of a villain regarding his marriage to Plath and often blamed for her suicide. Her death would dog him for 35 years, until his own death. And suicide became something of a tragic theme in Hughes’ life – the woman he left Plath for committed suicide as well, and his and Plath’s son Nicholas committed suicide. 

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Ted Hughes’ “Crow”

My introduction to Ted Hughes was, for better or worse, a rather bad one.

When I was in college, the poems of Sylvia Plath were all the rage. She was known as the poet who had killed herself (1962) by sticking her head in a gas oven, and it was that ghastly tragedy that seemed to provide the initial attraction. These years were also the first full rush of the feminist movement, and Plath became a symbol – the poet who had killed herself because her husband had left her for another woman.

The husband was the poet Ted Hughes, who had had an almost meteoric rise in the 1950s. He had left his marriage with Plath for another woman, the poet Assia Butmann Wevill. Four years later, in 1966, Wevill killed herself (and their daughter) in the same manner as Plath had died.

I’m not sure if this is the stuff of poetry or soap opera, but for years Hughes was called “murderer” at public readings.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Junior Libby via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.