The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2
Page 17
Good news for me today (Ted predicted last night that this was a fine day for Scorpios). Poetry (Chicago) has just bought 4 of my longest poems!* After buying 4 of Ted’s last week! We’re crossing our fingers that we may at last come out in the same issue. We won’t get our checks for months, till they’re published, but with the $62 for Ted’s and $89 (!) for mine, we should be better off in our bank-account, at least!
I am very pleased with the ones they took: “Sow”, the long one about the gigantic pig; “The Snowman On The Moor”, a 50 line one about a man & woman fighting in the winter & she running out onto the moors & having a vision (two of my best poems, I think) and dear silly “Ella Mason & Her 11 Cats”* and a philosophical one: “On the Difficulty of Conjuring Up A Dryad” about the death of the imagination. They bought “Bishop Farrar” & others of Ted’s best, too. Very fine. Of the 5 batches we’ve sent them between us, we’ve had acceptances every time. Now, of my book of 42 poems, I’ll have had 20 published, 10 of these in blessed Poetry.
Ted got a letter from a literary friend in London today saying that GS Fraser (one of the leading London critics) is cursing himself for not being the one to “discover” Ted, put him in his young poets anthology, etc. Well, a toady of his rejected Ted’s poems when the Great Man had a cold, and evidently threw out a personal letter from Ted with them. But we are both rather chuckling at the amazingly strategic way things are working out: Ted’s leaving just as London realizes (too late) that they’ve been ignoring a genius & their only true living poet (young) is perfect. Also arriving in America just as his book comes out. In Cambridge, at least, magazines no longer dare to come out without the editors asking us for things! Hope it gets that way in professional circles, too.
I have at last got both our poetry manuscripts retyped: the charges of agencys were ridiculous $1 for 1000 words! It was foolish to pay such a price. So I did it in about 3 days of dogged work. Am distressed Warren’s thesis is your job. This summer, I am going to see to it you have a complete rest & nothing but fun. You must be our agent & clip every review of Ted’s book that comes out: I’ll make a scrapbook.
Our radio ham upstairs got Stoughton, Mass. yesterday & is trying to get a ham in Wellesley for me: the usual thing is: you go to the ham’s station if he lives near-by, & talk through the microphone to me at this ham’s station: so don’t be surprised if we get through. It would be fun not to pay for a change. I also have ideas for a SatEvePost type story about a ham & a girlfriend, calling it “The YL And The Ham” tentatively & the boy has promised to OK the technical stuff when I get it finished. Both Ted & I keep each other going with dreams of this summer: we both need leisure & sun so much & will write and write, without worry of money for once, me with my job waiting, etc. Since I know the campus & town of Hamp so well, the strain of teaching at first should be really the only problem. We had a good supper at Wendy Christie’s Saturday night: Dr. Krook & her lovely young sister Anita* were there & we had a fine time. Ted & I are trying to sell the book to an English company (Harper’s gave us the rights to do that) & it is now at the one of our first choice, Faber & Faber, the place where TS Eliot works. I do hope they accept it, it will make things so much easier. Ted finally has got one handsome picture: his face did it, not the photographer, who was an idiot. Do ask Mrs. Cantor if she will take a series of her wonderful shots of us together. She is such a professional & so artistic. I want to start a scrapbook. Our life together.* We are very happy, in spite of work & often weariness. Wilbur’s success has impressed Ted very much & he is even willing “to think about” changing his citizenship (I mentioned the huge grants: Guggenheims, Saxtons, etc.) available to American citizens: he is looking very forward to coming, & I think the Cape summer will really persuade him: I’ll just let him write & do what he wants & he’ll love it. I hope you & dear Warren are weathering this tense time: are you almost done with the dentist???
Give yourself treats, remember – we’re counting the days until June 20th!!
xx
Sivvy
PS: believe it or not, we’re almost out of 3¢ stamps again! Would you mind sending one more sheet – promise it’s the last we’ll need –
xxx
Sivvy
TO Poetry Editor, Accent
c. Monday 1 April 1957*
TLS, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
55 Eltisley Avenue
Cambridge, England
Poetry Editor*
ACCENT
Box 102, University Station
Urbana, Illinois
U.S.A.
Dear Sir:
I am enclosing several poems* among which I hope you may find something suitable for publication in ACCENT.
Poems of mine have been published previously in The Antioch Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The Nation, Lyric, Mademoiselle, Poetry (Chicago) and other magazines.
Thanking you for your time and consideration, I am
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 8 April 1957
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Monday am: April 8, 1957
Dearest mother . . .
It was so lovely to get your last letter with the $25 check from Borestone: my meeting that Gertrude Claytor* at the poetry reading at Holyoke in spring 1955* has netted me $125 so far---that Lyric young poets prize last year, & now this. What a shocking letter! All those misprints & grammar flaws! and this man is the head of those administering $3000 per year to poets. The most money anyone gives: and such people dole it out. Ironically, I was much encouraged by this prize, but for an inverse reason. I dug up the poem, “April Aubade”, which I wrote in the spring of my senior year, and gaped: it seemed simply terrible to me now, coy, feminine, iambic pentameter sonnet, and it will be published between hard covers in their Borestone Annual book* brought out by the Stanford U. Press! I blushed, and then thought: it shows how incredibly far I’ve come in two years! Ironically too, I think I’m far too good now to win a Borestone prize! Ted & I chuckled over the whole thing. I think I’ll cash the check here: I want very badly to have at least one suit made for me for teaching (I have hardly anything suitable) before I leave England & Ted & I went Saturday & picked out a lovely black tweed with a kind of a pale white herringbone pattern, almost invisible. I feel I need a basic stylish suit which I can vary infinitely for day & cocktail use & this should be fine. If we can get some green corduroy from Ted’s uncle, I’ll have a green casual one made too: I’d never find just what I wanted in America, & here, for lots less, can have made up exactly what I want from my chosen material. I am very happy Poetry (Chicago) is publishing 4 each of Ted’s & my best poems. Much else out, no news. But I feel lots more good will come. Am at last coming out of a “ghastly stretch of sterility” put upon me by writing countless essays last term, taking all my writing energy. After writing one or two painful bad poems, I just yesterday finished one of my best, about 56 lines called “All The Dead Dears”. I so appreciated your apropos quotes from Auden & Cronin:* they help so much: just to know it is normal to have cycles of feeling barren as hell sustains one. I am now growing more & more accustomed to it: but both Ted & I realize the fatality is to stop writing: we would go on, daily, writing a few pages of drivel, until the juice came back, rather than stop, because the inertia built up is terrible to conquer. So, for our “health” we write at least two hours a day. I am plodding daily on my “novel” & have about 80 single-spaced pages ground out (actually 160 ms. pages): my aim is 300 single-spaced pages by the time I come home. Then the blessed summer to ram it into shape. I must say, I have the most peculiar feeling about my Book. I am grinding out a lot of tripe, having never written a novel, & as Ted says, won’t know what I’m saying till I’ve written the first draft: but it’s a place to put everything in: a kind of repository for my thoughts & feelings & freeing them, with this wonderful fluency: I ha
ve a feeling in flashes that I can make it a best-seller. But only with at least a year’s work: I’d love to dedicate it to Mrs. Prouty & hope I can get her to approve, when it’s done: she wrote me the loveliest letter* about my poems: and asked what she could give me for a wedding present: perhaps you could tell her: I don’t know. We don’t want furniture, as we’ll no doubt have to live in semi-furnished apts. for a while: but will choose our stainless steel pattern in London next week when we go down for Ted’s visa exams & interview: I’ll let you know: also I’d love pottery dishes (rough & rugged), pans & innumerable pots, salad bowls, sheets, blankets, kitchen gadgets, rough table linen: I like modern handweaves: aqua, red, brown, black, white, etc.
Will send along a guest list in a day or so. Had a delectable Saturday night dinner again with Wendy Christie & met a charming South African couple with 3 children (2, 4, 8): he’s teaching this coming year on an exchange grant at BU in the Economics dept. The wife is a lovely blonde, & the husband a courageous, interesting man, with one arm shot off in the war (he’d wanted to be a research chemist & had to change his whole career). I gave them our address & the name of the Nortons* & hope we can have them over in early fall when they come: they really are delightful. Got up at 4:30 am. this day, with Ted & went for a long walk to Granchester before settling down to writing. I never want to miss another sunrise. First the luminous blue light, with big stars hanging; then pinkness, spreading, translucent & the birds beginning to burble & twit from every bramble bush: owls flying home, & we saw over 15 rabbits feeding. I felt a peace & joy, being all alone in the most beautiful world with animals & birds: little shrews twitted from the tall grass, & we saw two lovely brown furred water-rats (remember the Wind in the Willows) feeding on the bank, then skipping in to the water & swimming. You’d laugh (I’m going to put this scene into my novel): we began mooing at a pasture of cows & they all looked up & as if hypnotized, began to follow us in a crowd of about twenty, across the pasture, to a wooden stile, staring, fascinated. I stood on the stile, & in a resonant voice, recited all I knew of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for about 20 minutes: I never had such an intelligent, fascinated audience: you should have seen their expressions, as they came flocking up around me: I’m sure they loved it! I think I’ll practice my Smith teaching lessons on them: they’re so receptive. Well, must be off to shop & laundry now. Am ripping through French translations of Baudelaire* & Stendhal* & feeling virtuous. What news of dear Warrie?
Love to you both,
sivvy
TO Elinor Friedman Klein
Tuesday 9 April 1957
TLS (aerogramme), Smith College
Tuesday: April 9
Dear Dear Elly . . .
It seems all I do these days is sit in bramble patches like Eyore, imagining the lovely decks of the Queen Elizabeth & the shiny little cottage at Hidden Acres with * shiny little icebox & shiny little stove towed away for 7 weeks on the Cape: because
The main difference, when you will see us (apart from my hair being 2 inches longer) is that Ted is very famous. Only a select few know how famous. It is like this.
We received a telegram (or rather Ted did, I am vicarious) recently to the effect that Ted’s first book of poems “The Hawk In The Rain” has won the Anglo-American contest sponsored by the New York City Poetry Society & judged (hold your hat) by W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, & Marianne Moore: Harper’s is publishing the book this August & the Poetry Center man (who sounds lovely---he just had a baby boy, or his wife did) says everyone who’s read the book is “raving”, hopes success won’t spoil Rock Hunter,* etc. Our First Publishing Party. The fusty headed British editors are just waking up to the fact that their only hope, the Light of future British poetry, is sailing away to greener pastures, if that is metaphorically possible.
And me: I am peculiarly happy with a job teaching freshman English at yes, Smith. I’ll have plenty of time to write & must admit that I’m really excited at the prospect: near Nyc, Boston, publishers, editors & I do love the English faculty. Ted will try to get a part-time job when we arrive, because People like interviews.
He is very ready to shake hands with Russ Morrow,* I think.
Some wealthy backer of Time & Life is flying a chartered planeful of debutantes over here for May Balls in June: could you stow away?
All the knots we were in last August, with the absurd & inhuman prospect of me living incognito at Newnham have melted. I am home. At home. Eating peanuts & making my own good coffee au creme. Pot au feu.
I wish you would be an actress. Full time. Saw a picture of actress in Camino Real which just opened in London* & wanted it to be you. you have Got It. I wish you would be one. Is it true, how lovely, charming, that one Jody B.* is engaged by Columbia pictures.
Poetry Chicago has just accepted 4 very long poems from each of us to come out about June or July: they’re very symmetrical: one for you, one for you, and one for Peter Geekie.*
Mother is throwing a little backyard reception Saturday afternoon, June 29th & you will be formally invited but both of us want very much for you to come. Please do. We want to see you soon, so write anyway until we can.
Much love from us both . . .
sylvia
TO Marcia B. Stern
Tuesday 9 April 1957
TLS (aerogramme), Smith College
tuesday morning: april 9
dearest marty . . .
I was so happy to get your letter. although I’ve supposedly been on vacation for 3 weeks it’s taken me this long to unwind from the last flurry of academic essays I ever hope to do & wind up for the coming seige of exams covering 2000years of tragedy, moralists, etc. ted & I dream & dream of the little cottage in the pine woods which mother has reserved for us for 7 weeks near orleans on the blessed cape (because of us not having white wedding, giant organs, etc.) we both have been gritting our teeth this year, most of our time taken up by jobs neither of us wish to repeat again: me studying (which eats up energy I want to use for writing) & ted “teaching” a gang of 40 teddy-boys, teen-age, who carry chains & razors to school & can’t remember their multiplication tables for 2 days running: a most moving, tragic & in many ways rewarding experience, but taking much too much out of ted, who finds the continual need to maintain physical & emotional discipline taxing (the cane is still used here!) I saw the boys in a series of little elizabethan plays ted produced & my heart bled for them: adorable, clever, huggable darlings they seemed & the deadly jobs that await them & their family backgrounds etc. is terrifying. you must know all about this: your work is, to me, an ideal of service & vital giving out that many people dream of but can’t do. I long to hear so much about your work: in person. I identify so stupidly with unfortunate people that I can’t give them practical help, but can only write about them: which is a creation in its way, but nothing so immediate & vivid as your work. I feel I’ve been a private sec. these last months: typing continually, endless letters & manuscripts---well over 1000 pages. ted’s & mine.
our best news is, we think, very exciting. ted just got a telegram last month saying his first book of poems, “the hawk in the rain”, won the recent anglo-american contest sponsored by the NYC poetry center & judged by w. h. auden, stephen spender, & marianne moore (no less!) harper & brothers will publish the book this august & already the very delightful poetry center man writes that everyone who has read the book is “raving” about it, even the “callous people at harper’s”, who are concerned that success might spoil rock hunter, etc. every now & then, this news re-takes us with a flood of j
oy: the First Book. we are really dying to see how the book’s received & learning all about the fascinating details of publishing. literature in england is dead, killed by the academics, & the editors are just waking up to the fact that their one hope (excuse the eulogies, but I can’t help it) is sailing for greener pastures, if that is metaphorically possible. I’ve told ted so much about you & mike, & we’re both hoping to see you very very soon after we get home on june 25th. mother is throwing a little backyard reception on sat. pm june 29th & please you & mike both come.
after a grim winter of worrying about jobs for us which would give us money, congenial work & lots of time to write, I’ve just been given, miraculously & rather terrifyingly for me, a position as freshman english instructor at smith. 9 teaching hours a week, I think. I’ll be scared to death the first day, but am really excited about it: if I had a million dollar fellowship to write in italy next year, I would refuse it: I’ve gotten sick of living on great grants & feel very much that need, which you mentioned in your letter, of “giving out” in some kind of work: my way, apart from writing, I know is teaching. I’ll probably learn a hell of a lot more from them than they from me, but 7 years age & reading difference between me & my pupils is enough to give me courage.
ironically, one of the most practical reasons for my longing to be back in america is what I formerly scorned: iceboxes, wash machines, hot water, stoves that do more than burn the top & leave the bottom soggy. I know now that if I want to keep on being a triple-threat woman: wife, writer & teacher (to be swapped later for motherhood, I hope) I can’t be a drudge, the way housewives are forced to be here. my whole range of cooking is very limited by the fact I have no icebox & my stove doesn’t cook deep things & the heat will be one minute 200, the next 500. and it is impossible to get these old furnished apts. anywhere near clean: walking on the rug sends up clouds of desert dust, even after furious beating, & so on. coal stoves silt everything up, & medical care is so bad, not to mention dental care, that everybody by the age of 20 has several front teeth out (it’s such a bother to fill them) or rotted away. no promising jobs, starvation wages. ah, me. I am become an american jingo.