by Sylvia Plath
See you Wednesday night about 5 p.m. Till then,
Love to all,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 16 April 1955*
TLS, Indiana University
Saturday afternoon
Dearest mother . . .
Well, all things come to those who wait, and my waiting seems to be extended for two weeks until the judges decide, after reading our poems over in the quiet of their boudoirs which of the six of us* deserves the coveted prize (won in the last 32 years by an amazing number of now well-known poets).
Suffice it to say that I don’t know when I’ve had such a lovely time in my life. I took to Marianne Moore immediately, and was so glad to have bought her book* and read up about her, for I could honestly discuss my favorite poems. She must be in her late seventies and is as vital and humorous as someone’s fairy godmother incognito. Interestingly enough, she asked about you and said she hopes to meet you some day, and also said you should be proud of me, which I thought I’d tell you in case you didn’t already know!
Took the train to Holyoke Friday afternoon, was picked up at the station and taken to a palatial guest room in one of the dorms where I met attractive Lynn Lawner,* the contestant from Wellesley and a charming girl whom I enjoyed very much. We were interviewed by the Monitor,* had our pictures taken again and again clustered around Miss Moore, interviewed by the reporter from Mademoiselle,* a Smith graduate whom I am also very fond of, and went to dinner of lamb chops, very good, if a little stilted at first, with everybody very new, and still unacquainted.
Then came the reading: a magnificent audience (about 200) packed into a charming small room with dark walls, plush chairs, leaded windows, and a very literary atmosphere. The six of us sat facing the audience at a sort of seminar table, and the response was most rewarding.
All the contestants were amazingly attractive, charming people (from Holyoke, Smith, Columbia, Wellesley Wesleyan, and Dartmouth), and read very well. The girls, I felt, were much superior to the boys . . . the only one I felt was serious competition was the one from Dartmouth whom I would bet on for winning. The other two girls were often excellent, but very uneven. All of us got most vociferous applause, and it was a real pleasure to see such an enthusiastic group . . . there were all sorts of other events going on, too, and no attempt was made to drum up an audience.
The reading went excellently, and I loved doing my poems, because they all sounded pretty polished and the audience was immensely responsive, laughed in some of the witty places, even, which made me feel tremendously happy. I think I’d love being a humorous public speaker, it’s such fun to be able to make people laugh. After the reading we had a “party” to which selected Holyoke girls were invited, and I had a chance to talk to John Ciardi* and Wallace Fowlie,* the other two critics, poets and judges, both delightful, also teachers and translators, the former having translated Dante and the latter Rimbaud and the French poets. I loved them both, and they grew on me more and more as the time went on.
This morning Lynn and I were brought a sumptuous breakfast in bed, and had our voices recorded at the radio station. I hope they will send us records of them, as they said they might. Then we had a marvelous forum by the three judges on translations which I found delightful. The whole affair was culminated by a delightful luncheon at which everyone was very intimate and cosy, and Marianne Moore signed a dear autograph in my book of her poems . . . I really loved them all.
So back to a week of fantastic work: papers, reading, business . . . .
love to all,
sylvia
TO Joyce Horner*
Monday 18 April 1955*
TLS, Mount Holyoke College
Lawrence House
Monday morning
Dear Miss Horner,
I don’t know when I’ve looked back on a more delightful weekend! Really, when I think of the arranging that must have gone into that lovely poetry festival I can only admiringly tell you what a magnificent experience it was. It was such a pleasure to talk with the three judges. (I quite love Marianne Moore, she seems like somebody’s fairy godmother incognito!) Wallace Fowlie was a dear, and John Ciardi most fun . . . I was naively entranced by their warm humanity and friendliness, as I guess one always is by one’s favorite writers and critics.
Lynne Lawner and I enjoyed our luxurious guest room, complete with the unique delight of a lazy breakfast in bed, and I don’t know when I’ve met a group of more stimulating and pleasant people as I did at Holyoke the night of the poetry reading.
Saturday morning, Miss Shephardson* (I think that was her name) mentioned that it might be possible for Lynne and myself to obtain records of our taped reading, and I do hope that there is a chance of this . . . it would be so much fun to play and reminisce about a recording.
I’m still waiting eagerly to hear from the Fulbright committee, and must admit that I’m crossing my fingers for Oxford! So many British poets come from Oxford that it would be rather an inspiration to live on the same soil!
Once again, let me say how I appreciate your wonderful hospitality and how pleasant it was to see you again at the Poetry Reading.
Sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 21 April 1955*
TLS with envelope,
Indiana University
Thursday night
Dear mother . . .
Every now and then there comes a difficult spell where little discrepancies pile up and look enormous, or rather gray, and this week has been one of those. I just feel like writing you about it, although I usually am in a more cheerful mood, and I’ve been hoping that not hearing from you since Saturday doesn’t mean that anything is wrong at home. Did you see the spread in the Monitor? I don’t know what day it came out, but I would like to have you save a copy or two and send one to me if you could. I think they did a generally good job except for that out-of-context quote which had me making the prize moron remark: “I think reading is important.”
If I get through this week, I shall feel much better, but everything has piled up so that I know how a bank feels when all the people decide to go to the window the same day and withdraw their money just to be sure its been there all along. Two late house-meetings this week added to the tenseness. I did a ten-page paper for Kazin due today, a rather frantic outline for my correlation question for one of my three finals which I must work on intensely for this next week (dear Mr. Fisher reassured me greatly about the question today) and a German oral report on de Heldensage.* Add to all this the arranging of a take-in assembly Wednesday plus a two hour tea in the afternoon for the new members of Alpha, of which I am president, and the writing of three poems,* and perhaps you can see how tight things have been these last days.
I was very happy, however, to be given the Alpha award for creative writing (chosen by the English department) which is non-remunerative, just a gold A and an impressive note from the office of the President. I enclose the clipping.*
I think you would have been pleased to see how the tea came out. It was for the 50 members of Alpha in the very bright red-and-white Dutch room of the Alumnae House. I poured for the whole hour, a feat which I decided to learn in a dash of bravado, and there were sandwiches and a lot of good conversation. Nancy Hunter and Lynne Fisher were among the new members (Nan for her sonnets this semester) and I was most glad for them both. It went off very well, my first experience at presiding at anything, and I really had fun.
I have signed papers accepting the $1000 Smith scholarship which they will kindly let me renounce if I get the Fulbright. The next four weeks will be spent plunged in review for the 3 final comprehensives on May 21, 23 and 25, after which I shall be ready for a long long respite. I have reached my limit of “giving out” this year, and feel that my peace of mind is more important that bringing up my two high B’s in Shakespeare and German, and God knows what I’ll get on the Kazin paper, which is my whole mark for the
semester. I am just ready for three months of long liesurely living with no schedule to meet, plenty of sleep and sun, and time for absorbtion. I know I need more sleep and less pressure than most people, and that teaching is the one kind of job I can envision (in the far future) which would support me with these qualifications, and which I think I honestly might enjoy.
The most difficult choice I have ever had to make happened today. Editor Weeks* on the Atlantic sent me a letter* with a $25 check for your favorite “Circus in Three Rings” BUT with a really thorny string attached. They liked the 2nd stanza much better than the 1st and 3rd and challenged me to do a revision around the 2nd stanza with a new title (suggested by them) “Lion Tamer”. Well, I was a kaleidoscope of mixed emotions and had a long talk about it all with Mr. Fisher. The top of my head said excitedly: this is your chance to get through the golden doors (they mentioned wanting to have me represented in the young poets’ section of the August issue). Revise, revise. Quick. The inside part looked at the poem, which sprang out of a certain idea of a trilogy, admittedly poorer in the 3rd stanza than the others, frothy, not bad, but light. I thought of their paternalistic letter and felt a little sick and disillusioned. I just can’t tailor-make it over again. Another poem, yes, but the dangers of contrivance, of lack of spontaneity, are legion if I revise this. I’d have to live with it the year out and still I’m afraid a revision would sound artificial. I did resent this attempt at butchering to fit their idea of it. Prose, I wouldn’t mind, but a poem is a like rare little watch: alter the delicate juxtaposition of cogs, and it just may not tick.
So I think I’ll sleep on it the weekend out, and if a revision comes, I’ll send it, but I doubt it. If not, I think I’ll send four of my best latest poems which are “consistent” (a lack they felt in the batch I sent last September) and ask Mr. Weeks to please seriously consider these alternates. Of course I’ll have to send back the check too, which is a hard thing, and they certainly put me in a very awkward position. I battle between desperate Macchiavelian opportunism and uncompromising artistic ethics. The ethics seem to have won, but what a hell! They should have accepted it completely, with the 2nd stanza recommending the others, or not at all. This limbo is definitely difficult! So much dreaming, and then this problem!
Well, do send me an infusion of energy. It will do me more good than thyroid. I really miss hearing from you, and your letters always cheer me up.
Your almost-but-not-quite,-try-us-again daughter,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 23 April 1955
ALS in greeting card* with
envelope, Indiana University
April 23, 1955
Dear mother . . .
Along with love and best wishes for your birthday, I thought you’d like to know I tied for first prize at the Holyoke Contest with the boy William Whitman* from Wesleyan. That means a check of $50 for me, plus a pleasant glow. Best of all was a eulogistic letter from John Ciardi, my favorite of the judges, who called me “a real discovery,” saying “She’s a poet. I am sure that she will go on writing poems, & I would gamble on the fact that she will get better & better at it. She certainly has everything to do it with. Praise be . . . .” All of which made me so happy I could cry – he also wants to help my publishing & sent a list of quarterlies he wants me to send specific poems to with his recommendations – so it’s not a completely indifferent world after all!
Love,
Sivvy
you certainly do!
Love,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 24 April 1955*
TLS with envelope,
Indiana University
Sunday afternoon
Dearest mother . . .
All I can say is that I was glad to find you were recovering when I got your letter. Please, though, don’t ever think you are doing me a favor by not telling me when you are sick. While you may think it would worry me unnecessarily, I would like to feel that I could be of some help, even if it is only thinking of you and wishing you well. I am really concerned about the state of your health, which this year has shaken twice, and cannot advise you strongly enough to take the summer off and go to the Cape for two months, renting our house to tenants carefully screened. If you put an add in the Christian Science Monitor, I am sure your clients would be fine people to begin with.
It would be unrealistic to think that you need to work for money this summer: think about the future year. It would be tragic for you to work in the summer, and then miss out next year, and ambitious as we are, we need more than the couple of weeks at the beginning and end of the summer to relax in. When I come home at the end of May we can talk more concretely, as I will have some definite idea of my resources then, but I really insist that you take a sabbatical summer and worry not a whit about money. Depending on the family finances, I can always work as a waitress for the summer, and would like to think of you vacationing with grammy and grampy all summer. Your rent for our house would be sufficient from July and August to pay for your vacation, and health and present happy living is worth much more than saving for a perpetually postponed future.
Ironically enough, I felt something was wrong when you didn’t write, so you see, it concerns me more not to hear about you than it ever would to know specifically what is wrong. I am sorry that I sounded blue about my week at such a bad time, for two suppers out with Nan and Sue on successive evenings, plus the chance to cook a lamb chop dinner with all the fixings at my friend Elinor Friedman’s house in Longmeadow with my Saturday date from Yale made life look much better. Ten hours of sleep the other night helped immensely.
I have sent a revision and five poems as possible alternates off to Editor Weeks and am holding my breath, and the check, until his final verdict. Probably he will accept nothing now, but I did what he suggested and would really love it if he took one of my more serious and better poems which tied for first in the Glascock Contest.
Thank you for sending the clippings, I really appreciated them. The next four weeks are going to really be a concentrated grind, so wish me luck as I wish you health. I will go to Onteora High School in Boiceville, New York, on Wednesday evening, May 4th, and come back after the festival on May 5. It should be fun to be on the other side of the fence for a change.
Do give me an honest and frequent report of your progress and promise not to go back to school until you are blooming with health and resemble Winston Churchill instead of Mahatma Ghandi. Also, put an add in the papers for renting the house for the summer. You must assure yourself a 3 month build-up period, money aside.
Take care,
all my love,
Sivvy
TO Edward Weeks
Sunday 24 April 1955*
TLS (photocopy), Yale University
Lawrence House
Smith College
Northampton, Massachusetts
Editor Edward Weeks
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
8 Arlington Avenue
Boston 16, Massachusetts
Dear Editor Weeks:
I was pleased to receive your letter about my poems and glad that you liked the second stanza of “Circus in Three Rings.” As you suggested, I have taken this stanza and done a revision under the new title “Lion Tamer” which moves the lion and tamer into a stellar figure. However, I am still not confident that this will win you completely or prove more consistent than “Circus in Three Rings” which remains my favorite of the lighter poems. I am enclosing both poems for your convenience.
Since there are few places in the world I would rather appear than in your August issue of young poets, I should like to ask you the favor of seriously considering the five poems* enclosed as alternates to “Lion Tamer”.
Several of these poems were winners in the recent Irene Glascock Poetry Contest where Marianne Moore, John Ciardi and Wallace Fowlie
were the judges and I feel that they are not only better but also more consistent poems, especially the villanelle “Lament” and the poem “Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea.” I realize that the mood in these poems is hardly light and airy, but I would more than appreciate your appraisal of them as possible candidates for the August issue, since I consider them among my best recent work.
As I am uncertain about your final verdict on “Lion Tamer” and on the enclosed poems, I shall hold the check until I hear from you about your decision in this matter.
Thank you for your creative suggestions and consideration.
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
TO Warren Plath
Sunday 24 April 1955*
TLS in greeting card* (photocopy),
Indiana University
No need for mincing words / or quibbling / I’m awfully glad / that you’re my sibling / Happy Birthday
Much love on your approaching majority, / Sivvy / (over)
Dear Warren . . .
Many happy returns on your birthday, and I hope that when we next get together we can have a dinner of appropriate celebration. I was really concerned to hear of mother’s siege with the virus, which was much more serious than she would have us believe. Try to work on her to put an add in the Monitor advertising our house for rent for July and August so she could take the money and go down to the Cape for the summer. She needs at least a 3-month build-up period, or she just may not be able to teach at all, no matter what her arguments for earning summer-money.
The next four weeks before the dreaded Comprehensives will be one grim grind, and I wait as usual for the Fulbright. Perhaps mother told you I tied with the boy from Wesleyan for the Glascock Poetry Contest (which means $50 for each of us) and got eulogistic letter from judge John Ciardi who wants to help me get some things published. Am still fighting with Editor Weeks, who sent me check for poem he wants revised for Atlantic. Difficult assignment, and I’m hoping he’ll take an alternate. Cross your fingers. See you in May.