by Sylvia Plath
Good news about the visa came today---due to our combined efforts & your wonderful slew of forms, they approved Ted’s application & (although he hasn’t got the actual visa yet) he will get it on reporting to London for a medical exam sometime in April. So that is one more albatross gone.
I do wish we could win the pools. Pan (our ouija imp) has been getting better & better about it & tells us more & more accurately. Last week we got 20 points out of a possible 24 (which would be a fortune of £75,000, given out every week). We keep telling Pan we want it so we can have leisure to write & have lots of children, both. Pan is very understanding & really works at it: one evening a week we perform our ritual of sitting by the fire, drinking port, & asking Pan, one by one, the 55 game results: he only has to say whether the teams will tie or not. If we won, we could deposit the money & live off the interest---write when & wherever we wanted & not get desperate about jobs. I feel I could write a good novel if I had a year off---I need time & space. Oh well, it’s a nice dream. Wish us luck, anyhow
xxx
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 8 February 1957*
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Friday morning
later
Dear mother . . .
Here is a copy of the poem I said I’d send. It is called The Lady & the Earthenware Head.
Fired in sanguine clay, the model head
Fit nowhere: thumbed out as a classroom exercise
By a casual friend, it stood
Obtrusive on the long bookshelf, stolidly propping
Thick volumes of prose---
Far too unlovely a conversation piece,
Her visitor claimed, for keeping.
And how unlike! In distaste he pointed at it:
Brickdust-complected, eyes under a dense lid
Half-blind, that derisive pout---
Rude image indeed, to ape with such sly treason
Her dear face: best rid
Hearthstone at once of the outrageous head.
With goodwill she heard his reason,
But she---whether from habit grown over-fond
Of the dented cariacature, or fearing some truth
In old wives’ tales of a bond
Knitting to each original its coarse copy
(Woe if enemies, in wrath,
Take to sticking pins through wax!)---felt loath
To junk it. Scared, unhappy,
She watched the grim head swell mammoth, demanding a home
Suited to its high station: from a spectral dais
It menaced her in a dream---
Cousin perhaps to that vast stellar head
Housed in stark heavens, whose laws
Ordained now bland, now barbarous influences
Upon her purse, her bed.
No place, it seemed, for the effigy to fare
Free from annoy: if dump-discarded, rough boys
Spying a pate to spare
Glowering sullen and pompous from an ash-heap
Might well seize this prize
And maltreat the hostage head in shocking wise
Afflicting the owner’s sleep---
At the mere thought her head ached. A murky tarn
She considered then, thick-silted, with weeds obscured,
To serve her exacting turn:
But out of the watery aspic, laurelled by fins
The simulacrum leered,
Lewdly beckoning. Her courage wavered:
She blenched, as one who drowns,
And resolved more ceremoniously to lodge
The mimic-head---in a crotched willow tree, green-
Vaulted by foliage:
Let bell-tongued birds descant in blackest feather
On the rendering, grain by grain,
Of that uncouth shaped to simple sod again
Through drear and dulcet weather.
Yet, shrined on her shelf, the grisly visage endured,
Despite her wrung hands, her tears, her praying: Vanish!
Steadfast and evil-starred,
It ogled through rock-fault, wind-flaw and fisted wave---
An antique hag-head, too tough for knife to finish,
Refusing to diminish
By one jot its basilisk-look of love.
------------
And that’s that. Excuse the rather patched appearance occasioned by run-on lines!
xx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 16 February 1957
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Saturday, Feb. 16, 1957
Dearest mother . . .
It is a lovely sunny clear frosty morning, which probably means it will pour buckets before afternoon. I so appreciated the 3cent stamps: they came just in the nick of time. Ted & I sent off two big manuscripts this week, which meant a lot of typing: Ted’s 2nd draft of his children’s animal fables, much improved with 3 newly-written ones substituted for 3 less successful ones---we have our fingers crossed that the Atlantic Press lady will be pleased about them & perhaps now think of publishing them: one thing, I am now sure they are salable, which neither of us could tell before we had an official outside opinion. I am also sending my present batch of poems to the Yale Series Of Younger Poets’ Contest today---a double-spaced book of about 55 pages of poetry (63 including contents, acknowledgements, etc.). Ted’s fables run to 48 pages. I have really been ripping through the corrasable bond!*
No new publishing news; a few rejections, & all else hangs fire. Somehow my projects always come to a discouraging standstill in mid-winter, but they usually flower in spring. Dear Dr. Krook has insisted on us borrowing her lovely Fyrside kerosene heater for the rest of the year as she has moved into a flat with central heating---I wouldn’t borrow it till she insisted. It means we can sell the old one we bought now while there is still a demand, cease using the filthy coal altogether (which had to be stoked every hour or so & was either too hot or too cold) & this heater can be regulated & is really lovely and even-temperatured warm.
Ted & I went to Mrs. Zeeman’s cocktail party & found it a dreadful bore---the gauche awkward students standing in stiff awkward little groups & only getting verbose when they’d drunk enough---and although the Zeemans were nice enough, they seemed so “easy”, so accessible. It must be a kind of tyranny to have to invite people to parties who are dull. Wendie Christie’s parties are much more fun--she is a perfect hostess: a friend of Dr. Krook’s, I may have mentioned, whose husband died tragically while she was over here, leaving her with two children. She loved her husband very dearly, & is very courageous. She sits in on my supervisions & tonight I am going over to her house while she teaches me how to make one of her famous stews, & Ted will come over later & help eat it.
We will probably postpone London, dentist, etc until my vacation & have Ted’s physical for his visa then, as they suggested: I am so relieved he is approved (probably being married to an American has a lot to do with it). I only hope subtly I can make him fall in love with America: show him that the “pressure” & public-affairs are non-existent, almost, if one leads one’s own life: show him the Cape & give him lots of time to write. Much as I would like to live at home all summer, I am afraid it would really curtail our work: I know that there will probably be a whirl of dinners & meeting people for a week or two---and look very forward to it. But Ted & I treasure our complete privacy & I feel it might be awkward to be in such a small neighborhood & not want to socialize at all after the first meeting. If we don’t write furiously all summer, we’ll not feel willing to accept the demanding responsibility of a first job. I do wish we could work out the cape: if only we could sort of be caretakers in a rich person’s cottage on the cape---ted mowing lawns & me helping cook or something---but of course the danger there is of indefinite demands & encroachments. I still hope, that if Ted or I get any advances of money for books or
writing that we can get a Cape cottage. I am very bad at having people saying: “Shh, they’re writing.” Writing is a strictly anti-social job, & we need to be away from phones & friends when we do it. Did you send Mrs. Prouty a Poetry with my poems? I hope not, because I’m going to send her one with a letter, & I think she prefers having me send things, because it means I’ve thought about her.
I have a rather jaundiced eye about Mary Ellen Chase. I feel she is just playing me off against this other girl, Jane Baltzell, who, as I said, would really be better at Smith as she is fresh & knows nobody there. If Jane decides she won’t get married to this guy in Japan, she would choose to teach there. Meanwhile, I send out no letters; and you send me no names & addresses: of Swarthmore, U. of Conn., Amherst, etc. I need them. I’ll want to write right away after letting Miss Chase have her play about. And I am helpless away from University catalogues: please send me the names of the heads of Eng. Depts. too. I really don’t want to be a waitress. Miss Chase’s peculiar dismissal of men in a woman’s life is manifest in her statement that Ted could get a job in Conn. if I taught in Mass. & we could “see each other on weekends.” That is not the kind of woman I want to fix up our jobs. If she doesn’t come through with one for me, so Ted can get something close by, well, too bad for the teaching profession. What is Warren doing this summer? I made a terrific lemon-meringue pie last night, my first, & the Flako crust is wonderful & it looks like a dream---with the oven thermometer I no longer scorch things & am very pleased. Hope to learn a whole lot of our old home-recipes when I come home in June. Do write & send addresses. If they send my poetry Mss. back to Wellesley (I addressed the return envelope to 26 Elmwood) be sure & let me know right away –
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 24 February 1957
TLS with envelope, Indiana University
Sunday afternoon
February 24, 1957
Dearest mother . . .
Hello, Hello! I realized only after I had put the call through that it must not yet be 6 a.m. in the hamlet of Wellesley, but I thought you wouldn’t mind being wakened up by such good news---and I simply couldn’t keep it another minute. They had secretly changed your phone number, so there was much delay & waiting, but finally you were roused & discovered.
We walked around in a trance all yesterday. Ted & I felt grumpy Saturday morning after a week of three letters-from-editors rejecting Ted’s poems for spurious reasons. They talk about having “room” for poetry as if they only had visas for a special secret aristocracy, & the visas were all taken: they are So Sorry. Well, the idiots should Make Room for fine poetry. & that’s Ted’s.
The big judges---W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, & Marianne Moore (all of whom I’ve met, interestingly enough)---are big enough to be safe to recognize new poetic genius & not be scared of it as small jealous poets & frightened poetry editors are.
The telegram* came at about 10:30 yesterday morning. We gawped at it. At first we both thought that Ted’s poem at the Atlantic had got some piddling prize. Then light dawned, and we both jumped about, yelling & roaring like mad seals. The telegram was from New York & said: Our congratulations that “Hawk In The Rain” judged winning volume Poetry Center First Publication. Award letter will follow!! Well, we await the letter in a fury of excitement to know details.
No money prize is offered---just publication---by Harper’s, I believe. But under the auspices of these three fine judges---the 3 best living & practicing poets in the world today, I’m sure Ted’s book will be a best seller!
We are dying to know when & how it will be published. I have written both to Mary Ellen Chase & Olive Higgins Prouty telling them the good news.
You know, it is, to the day, the anniversary of that fatal party where I met Ted! And I’d read his poems before & had a vision of how much I could do for him & with him! Genius will out. We are not letting it go to our heads but working twice as hard. I only hope he gets his book of children’s fables accepted somewhere. He has got a terrific idea for another children’s book, & we could demand a really good illustrator if this one were a published success: the 2nd one is about his demon-fairy, Snatchcraftington, taking a little boy, or boy and girl, on 26 adventures through the lands of each letter of the alphabet: from the Land of A to the Land of Z.
I am more happy than if it was my book published! I have worked so closely on these poems of Ted’s and typed them so many countless times through revision after revision that I feel ecstatic about it all. I am so happy his book is accepted first. It will make it so much easier for me when mine is accepted---if not by this Yale Series, then by some other place. I can rejoice then, much more, knowing Ted is ahead of me. There is no question of rivalry, but only mutual joy & a sense of us doubling our prize-winning & creative output.
You know how breathlessly I always waited for mail & prize telegrams. Well, imagine how marvelous it is to have Ted grown equally sensitive to the mailman’s miraculous potential footstep & wait as eagerly as I!
A whole pot of milk burned black out on the stove yesterday while we called you & danced about. We had to air the house---it was burnt down to a black crisp, the milk, I mean---and throw the pot away!
Then both of us wandered around town in the rain, shining with joy. We ate lunch at a lovely English bar, salad, bread & cheese, & ale, bought an armful of books, had tea opposite King’s, and a delicious supper of soups, stuffed tomatoes, turkey, lemon mousse & Chablis (a habit the dear Aldriches started with us last spring, which we don’t want to break) at a new posh restaurant. We didn’t have enough money for snails & venison, but are going back to eat them if I win any poetry money soon.
Do tell Betty that, lacking children of our own at present, we need to borrow some of hers so Ted can tell them fairy-stories & see what parts interest them & what sort of adventures they like.
We don’t care really, what reviews the book gets, as long as it’s bought & read. It’s magnificent---far superior to Richard Wilbur, who never treats the powerful central emotions & incidents of life. Wilbur writes with elegance, wit and grace, about autumn, falling icicles, potatoes, deaths of toads, ocean scenes, garden parties, & similes for ladies smiles. Ted writes with color, splendour & vigorous music about love, birth, war, death, animals, hags & vampires, martyrdom---and sophisticated intellectual problems, too. His book can’t be typed: it has rugged violent war poems like “Bayonet Charge” & “Griefs for Dead Soldiers”, delicate, exquisite nature poems about “October Dawn”, & “Horses”, powerful animal poems about Macaws, Jaguars, & the lovely Hawk one which appeared in the Atlantic & is the title poem of the book. He combines intellect & grace of complex form, with lyrical music, male vigor & vitality, & moral committment & love & awe of the world.
O, he has everything.
And I am so happy with him. This year is hard for both of us. I should not have 3 jobs---writing, cooking & housekeeping, & studying for tough exams. I would like, after a year, maybe two, of teaching to satisfy my self-respect, to give up work & combine writing & being a wife & mother. But have children only after I have a poetry book & a novel published, so my children fit into my work routine & don’t overthrow mine with theirs. We are such late-maturers---beginning our true lives at the average age of 25, that we don’t want children for at least several years yet. Until we’re well-off enough financially to afford a housekeeper like Mrs. Moore,* so I won’t be torn between domestic chores & my writing fulfillment, which is my deepest health---being articulate in print. We plan to stay in America probably two years, then apply for writing fellowships, both of us---Saxton & Guggenheim, & live for a year or two writing solidly in Italy, in a villa near Rome. And then, if there are children, perhaps you would come over in the summer, like Mrs. Wilbur did, to live next-door, & help babysit now and then!
As Doctor Krook---who is Doris to me now, the dear woman---said so sweetly yesterday at my fine supervision on D. H. Lawrence:* it seems to be nothing but delightful cho
ices & prospects for us two!
You see how honest talent & faith work out! Neither Ted nor I married for money, social position, or family heritage. Just love, & worshipping the gifts in each other & wanting to spend our lives fulfilling them in each other. & now we will have money, social position, & belong to the aristocracy of practicing artists, with our families, too!
Ted is particularly happy for the “social status” this news will give his dear parents for the rest of their days in Hebden Bridge. He says it will mean an increased income of several pounds a week for his father, who runs a tobacconist’s shop---curious, awed townspeople coming to hear the story first hand about how “Willy Hughes’ boy made good.” Writing is looked down upon as “arty”---until it brings publication & Money. Well, the money doesn’t matter to us. We both said we’d rather have this happen than win the Pools---the pools are a mere freak of luck, available to anybody. But this success radiates from the inside out, & is something unique.
I’m enclosing a check from the Nation for Ted’s winter poem which I’d forgotten about.. Do deposit it to our account. I’d appreciate it so much if you would consider going ahead with plans for a cottage on the Cape for the summer. It would be such a bother for me to challenge another unfamiliar community in the Maine or NH woods somewhere. I long to go somewhere I know the shops & the routine, & to write in the sun & sand by the sea. It is part of my long-range project of making Ted love America. The money will come. I am sure of it. What about us taking a little cottage in Mrs. What’s-her-name’s* woods---it seems so quiet there---none of the horrid gaudy commercialism. & if we could get bikes. Well, I suppose the market in Orleans is too far away for bikes. Do those grocers deliver?