by Sylvia Plath
Mr. Henry Rago
POETRY
60 West Walton Street
Chicago 10, Illinois
Dear Mr. Rago,
I’m sending along a group of recent poems*---the first poems after a year devoted almost completely to teaching. I hope you may like some of these well enough for publication in Poetry.
With all good wishes,
Sylvia Plath
TO Olive Higgins Prouty
Wednesday 25 June 1958
TLS on Department of English, Smith College letterhead, Indiana University
June 25, 1958
Dear Mrs. Prouty,
I’m writing a small note to say what a happy time Ted and I had with you last week! We count a visit with you one of our favorite treats when coming home and look forward to inviting you to mount the little elevator at 9 Willow Street in Boston, just off Louisberg Square, and come to sup with us in our small writer’s corner over-looking the rooftops and the river!
Today is just a year’s anniversary of our arrival in America, and I received some very good news: The New Yorker wrote me my first acceptance (after 10 years of rejections!) of two long poems---one, “Mussel-Hunter at Rock Harbor”, the one I sent you and read last week; the other, “Nocturne”, about a walk on the moor-tops in England. I am quite excited about these poems and the acceptance gives me great courage to go on working on my book of poems which I hope to complete in Boson this winter.
Ted is now working on a short story, “The Courting of Petty Quinnet”, a Yorkshire tale, and we’ll send along a copy of his fairytale in Jack and Jill as soon as it comes out next month: we hope you’ll have a good time reading it.
Both of us are plunged in work, relieved by long walks in our park and up the neighboring mountains, which give us needed perspectives & far vistas after much close writing. We live, as you have said yourself, for finding the right words, the one word, right for its place. We’ll write again soon.
Much love,
Sylvia Hughes
TO Warren Plath
Wednesday 25 June 1958
TLS (photocopy), Indiana University
Wednesday: June 25th
Dearest Warren . . .
It is pleasant to think that in just about two months from today you will be home. Today marks the anniversary of Ted’s & my landing in America, and I feel we have accomplished a great deal this year. The teaching has given us both confidence, a kind of intellectual discipline which, although it stopped us writing for the year, is bearing fruit now. We’ve just both been working on several poems which we think are quite an advance in our writing. We are extremely critical of each other, & won’t let poems pass without questioning every work, rhythm & image: it is this, I think, this mutual creative & strict criticism, which most writers don’t have who work alone. This way, the critics have less chance to point out weaknesses.
I got some very good news this morning: did I tell you in my last fat letter of about a week ago (I sent it airmail, have you got it yet?) about the fortune-telling card I got from the mechanical gypsy in the NYC subway that said soon I’d get a letter that changed my life? Well, maybe that’s still to come, but this morning my FIRST acceptance by the New Yorker arrived!
If you can understand what this means, you’ll see how pleased & encouraged I am. I’ve been sending poems to The New Yorker for 10 years & getting “please try us again” rejections. Well, this time it worked. And no tiny “filler” poems, either: they accepted two really long ones: “Mussel-Hunter At Rock Harbor” (didn’t I send you a copy of that in the last letter? read it over & hear the gold jingling in the lines!) and “Nocturne”, about a walk on the moor, the first poem 91 lines, the last 45! We quickly added up (the check’s still to come) and figured I should get about $350 for the two, which is 3 months of Boston-apartment rent, or well over a month’s teaching salary for about a week of work that was pure joy! This also gives me great courage for working on my poetry book this summer & will balance endless rejections. Instead of the usual New Yorker coolness I’d expect, Howard Moss, the poetry editor, opened his letter:
“MUSSEL-HUNTER AT ROCK HARBOR seems to me a marvelous poem, and I’m happy to say we’re taking it for The New Yorker, as well as NOCTURNE, which we also think extremely fine.”
Please don’t think me a braggart to quote this, but I’ve been working really hard with hardly any recognition for over a year & is is delightful to think that some part of the world I love & have written about with hard work & words I love will be shared & appreciated by other people. The money also is pleasant, because It confirms what we’ve already decided: to live for our writing: if we can do so much (we’ve earned about $1,800 in writing since last June) on giving less than a month’s total time to writing, what mightn’t we do if we devoted a year, another & another to it? Anyway, we have saved enough from our salaries to pay for this year, even if I don’t get the Saxton grant which I’m applying for, & then Ted will apply for a Guggenheim & marshal TS Eliot et. al. behind him. I’m hoping to spend a few hours a day this year studying & reading German, & perhaps you can loan me some of your books: can you bring home any Kafka* books in German? Id really appreciate that: also any other “literary” books you might get on your book-allowance. I’d like to read good works.
We just came from several days in Wellesley. We have an apartment in Boston on 9 Willow Street, Beacon Hill, & we love it & will move in September 1st. It has everything we planned to get except perhaps the two most practical things: low rent & a huge kitchen. The kitchen is pullman, pigmy facilities, against the living room wall, separated by a curtain, and the $115 a month rent, although it includes the utilities, seems also to include the view, which is magnificent: a 3-way view, two bay-windows facing over the river. The bedroom & livingroom are very small, but the bay-window in each offers two “writing corners” which have a fine view of river, roof & treetops. It is luminously light, on the 6th floor, and seems to be quiet & in walking distance of all stores. It’s just off Louisberg Square & we’ve signed up for a year. We hope you’ll come often to visit & to dinner: I look so forward to seeing you often. I feel we should get to know each other again, we’ve been abroad so much! And Ted & I hope to manage a year in Italy & Germany before we begin a family. Will you be looking for an apartment in Boston or Cambridge?
It has been a cold, wet rainy June, with hardly a day of sun, so very nice for working. We climbed Mount Holyoke for the fine view over all the Pioneer Valley & river & were outraged to find that the State charges 15¢ per person to walk up: we’d been planning to hike up every other day. I don’t know why I got so angry at this---I can see their charging a parking fee, but people who are energetic enough to sweat out the climb should get the state’s views for their taxes.
Our park nextdoor is all mountain laurel now, & I’ve written a few poems about it---the stones* & the rose garden. I’m reading through Shakespeares plays & a Penguin book on the Aztecs, anthropology,* very absorbing. Ted & I plan to educate ourselves in history, art, literature, language & philosophy this year, to begin a kind of Renaissance self-education.
Mother seems in good health, and was still tan & elated from her trip to Bermuda when we were home. She really must have something like that to treat herself with every year. And from what she says, Grampy had a magnificent time too.
Have you found any interesting German girls? Mother mentioned you’d been dating a law-studentess. Do write soon.
Much love,
Sivvy
TO Howard Moss
Thursday 26 June 1958
TLS, New York Public Library
Apartment 3 rear
337 Elm Street
Northampton, Mass.
June 26, 1958
Dear Mr. Moss:
I am pleased that you like MUSSEL-HUNTER AT ROCK HARBOR and NOCTURNE.
I have made arrangements to have the book of poems I am completing this summer at the publisher’s by fall. So although I am sure the book won’t come out before Summer 1959, it
may well come out then. Thus I would much appreciate it if you might manage to schedule MUSSEL-HUNTER this summer.
The last two lines of the poem are meant to be read “. . . this relic saved/face, to face the bald-faced sun.” The idiom is “to save face” here. The crabs in “mottled mail of browns and greens” are the fiddler-crabs. The dead crabs in the sea may be considered to represent all Crabdom.
I am willing to change the title of NOCTURNE. Would NIGHT WALK be all right? I like the conciseness of that.
With all good wishes, I am
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
Mr. Howard Moss
THE NEW YORKER
25 West 43rd Street
New York 36, New York
TO Olwyn Hughes
Monday 30 June 1958
ALS, Washington University (St Louis)
Monday, June 30
Dear Olwyn –
Ted and I are just back from climbing Mount Holyoke – one of our peaks of exercise, taking a good hour to get up, under a green network of leaves, but the view worth it from the porch of a hundred-year-old hotel which housed Abraham Lincoln once, and Jenny Lind* who named the view ‘The Paradise of America”, although I suspect Jenny was over-ecstatic. She named our Smith frog-pool ‘Paradise Pond.’ From the top we can see north along the back of the broad winding Connecticut river, all the green patchwork of asparagus, strawberry & potato farms below. We’re right in the middle of a great river-rich farming valley & so get vegetables & fruits fresh from the fields. I do like your sending those recipes of delectable things & will try this pepper & tomato & onion & sausage one soon. Try to get more such from the Hungarians – do any of them make a good borsch? Maybe Luke remembers the heavenly borsch the three of us had* at the restaurant with the bitchy old waitress whose daughter (probably chained to the stove) was a wonderful cook. Tell Luke for me to send ahead his favorite menus & I’ll cook them if he promises to visit us. We’d both love to see him this August & will be here till the end of the month.
Ted thrives, & so do I, with no jobs. Both of us are meant to be wealthy & have convinced our Boston landlord* (dubious about our future rent-paying) that we are hourly having money pour in from magazines. As soon as I stopped work & started writing I sold my two longest poems to The New Yorker (my first acceptance from them) & we figure the check should total 3 months rent at least. This is very encouraging & especially so since I want to get a full first book of poems to the publishers this winter – I’m ditching old work at an amazing rate. Ted’s second book is already magnificent – richness, depth, color & a mature force & volume. Slowly, slowly we hope to sell the poems. I know he is the great poet of our generation & feel that the most important thing is to somehow clear these next five years for a tough & continuous apprenticeship to writing – his children’s story has just come out – delightfully & sprightly illustrations with it. We will try for grants, too. Our work should begin to speak for itself then. Our Boston apartment is minute, but aesthetically fine with its light, air, quiet & superb view. The city is a delight to walk in.
Do send on the Scorpio book. I’m extremely interested in seeing it. Ted & I both love getting your letters, especially long ones like the last, so do write soon again. Tell us more about deGaulle.
With love,
Sylvia
TO Edith & William Hughes
Tuesday 1 July 1958
ALS with envelope, Family owned
Monday, – no Tuesday, July 1st
Dear Ted’s mother & dad . . .
Suddenly, with July, the heat of sultry summer has jumped on us & we go about the house barefoot, in bathing suits, drinking iced drinks. Now that we’re not teaching, we hardly know what day of the week it is, except that Sunday is the day the mailman doesn’t come. We are eating well & coolly – chicken salads, cold roast beef, banana teabread, lots of fresh fruit & vegetables from the nearby farms.
Ted & I both thrive while working at writing & nothing else. The checks keep coming in. I just got £7: 7: – for my two poems in the June issue of The London magazine and expect, as Ted has probably said, a check over $300 for the two poems The New Yorker just accepted. I am very happy cooking, writing, reading (Ted has given me a lot of those little penguin books about animals, the origin of man, the Aztecs & so on) & going for walks. A woman in our park who seems to do part-time gardening as a charity showed us a nest of tiny baby rabbits under a green bush that grew flattened to the ground & we’ve discovered several bird’s nests with babies in them. I am homesick for Wilfred’s farm & look so forward to seeing all his animals when we come back to visit. I’d especially like to see some little ones born, as I never have.
Ted is writing some more good poems – he has a fine one about a great black bull* and a very brilliant one about the outlawing of the cat o’nine tails in the British navy. His story came out this month in Jack & Jill, the children’s magazine & the best in the whole issue by far – it has some wonderful lively illustrations with it. I am hoping Ted will write more such stories.
Mother loves getting your letters & it pleases her so much to have you to write to. She would like to visit ‘The Beacon’ someday. I’ve told her so much about it.
Our apartment in Boston is tiny – very little to clean – but has two wonderful window-views which will be ideal for us to write in. I hope to finish my book of poems this winter & Ted should finish his this next year. We have saved enough to live & write on this year, but I am trying for a grant & Ted will try for a Guggenheim for 1959 to see if we can keep our savings.
Yesterday we climbed Mount Holyoke again – that high tree-covered mountain overlooking the broad silvery Connecticut river & on the way up saw a strange little animal we’d glimpsed in the road while driving a few days ago. It was greyish-brown furred, with a short fat body, stumpy legs & tail & a sweet gentle mousish face. We got this one cornered for a good look – it just clattered its sharp yellow teeth in a scared way, & decided it was a groundhog (alias wood chuck). I wanted to pet it, but Ted said it would bite my arm off. So we let it lie.
Both of us are in excellent health & working well. Write soon –
Love to you both –
Sylvia
TO Howard Moss
Wednesday 2 July 1958
TLS, New York Public Library
Apartment 3 rear
337 Elm Street
Northampton, Mass.
July 2, 1958
Mr. Howard Moss
THE NEW YORKER
25 West 43rd Street
New York 36, New York
Dear Mr. Moss:
Here are the corrected proofs. I have checked and agreed on all your corrections (additions of commas and omissions of hyphens) except the problematic “backtrack” which I’d like to be one word,“backtracking”, made from the verb “backtrack”. Is that all right?
I also have inserted a comma after “save face” to eliminate what I don’t consider a desirable ambiguity in the last two lines of “Mussel Hunter”.
I also substituted the title “Night Walk” for “A Walk In The Night”.
I do hope these corrections are satisfactory.
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 5 July 1958
TLS, Indiana University
Date July 5, 1958To YouFrom MeIn re bits & pieces.
Dear mother,
It was lovely to have you call the other day, & I look forward to living in Boston where more frequent telephone chats won’t be a luxury but a common occurrence.
The blessed fourth, very quiet here, brought cool air (from Canada?) and last night and today brought a drenching rain. The catalpas in the park are in full bloom, the water-lilies in the pond a radiant pink, as if incandescent, and great red & yellow toadstools of odd shapes sprung up under the pines. Ted & I discovered a baby-bird fallen out of its ne
st two days ago, apparently in its death-throes, on its back, with piteous shudderings. So we brought it home & made a facsimile nest for it out of soft rags & bits of paper. We tried gingerly to feed it bread soaked in milk & milk from an eyedropper, but it sneezed & didn’t respond. Then by inspiration I got some fresh ground-hamburg & by that time it had gotten used to the nest and almost swallowed my finger with the meat: I feed it with my fingers which I guess it thinks are like it’s mother’s head. I am fond of the plucky little thing---the ouija-board says its a jay, because of its “pied-feathers”, but I can’t tell yet, its so tiny. I read recently that pigeons kept in tubes so that they can’t use their wings fly when freed as well as ordinary pigeons, (this was an experiment to prove they fly by instinct, not just by teaching) so I hope my bird when freed will be able to take care of himself. Can you think of anything else suitable to feed it. I can’t bring myself to feed it fresh-killed flies.
I am becoming more & more desirous of being an amateur naturalist. Do you remember if we have any little books on recognizing wild flowers, birds or animals in Northern America? I am reading some Penguin books about “Man & the Vertebrates”* and “The Personality of Animals”* & also the delightful book “The Sea Around Us”* by Rachel Carson; Ted’s reading her “Under the Sea Wind”* which he says is also fine. Do read these if you haven’t already: they’re poetically written, but magnificently informative. I am going back to the ocean as my poetic heritage & hope to revisit all the places I remember in Winthrop* with Ted this summer: Johnson avenue, a certain meadow on it, our beach & grammy’s. Even run down as it is, the town has the exciting appeal of my childhood & I am writing some good poems about it, I think. I’ll enclose that poem “Night-Walk”,* the other one the New Yorker accepted, which I think you’ve read: haven’t got the check yet, because of that delay about Britishness, but should get it soon. The London Magazine envelope had 7 guineas in it---about $20 for my two poems in the June issue, quite pleasant. In two years of our marriage, writing only a total of a few weeks, Ted & I have made about $2,000 (not counting the New Yorker money which we are beginning our 3rd year with.