by Sylvia Plath
Much much love,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 25 April 1955*
TLS* with envelope,
Indiana University
Monday afternoon
Dear mother . . .
It was good to get your letter today: I am so sensitive to mail and really enjoy it. I hope that you are feeling better and rest until you have a reserve to go on. The weather here has been abominable the last two days, all great deluges of raw rain. Yesterday and today I spent getting off various letters and finishing typing up my manuscript for Mr. Fisher of poems: there are about 60 poems in the book* titled “Circus in Three Rings” (poof to the Atlantic) and it does look like a good bit of work to have produced in one semester. I included all my poems, some bad, some good, some still needing revision, and dedicated it to “My favorite Maestro, Alfred Young Fisher”. I also made a carbon of the manuscript so I can have it to work from this summer. I want to write at least ten good news poems to substitute for the inferior or slight ones and turn 30 in for Borestone Mountain book competition this July and then the Yale Series next year. Of course I really don’t think I have a chance, as most are in that limbo between experimental art of the poetry little magazines and the sophisticated wit of the New Yorker, too much of the other for either. But I shall try.
I have had a serious self-examination, and come to a decision to drop German for the rest of the year without credit. I have taken the full 15 hour program all year, in opposition to the kind advice of my professorial advisors, and now find that in this last month it is simply too much. My comprehensives need all my time and more, and I have reached a satiation point where I need to cut down all that is not absolutely necessary. The 6 extra hours of German class per week and long hours of preparation in addition to my 4-year review is just too much to maintain all at once, especially since I am just plain bushed from the academic year. I have plenty of extra credits, so there is no administrative problem whatsoever.
Needless to say, the next four weeks are rather crucial, and I should find out a good deal of concrete information: Fulbright, Atlantic, Vogue, Mlle, Christophers, and several Smith prizes to be announced in assembly May 18. Now I shall just read relentlessly away, reviewing four years of notes and books and creating a correlation question. I feel much better about the German, now, as I am in my cycle of ebbed energy and know that at these times I must pare my demands to a bare minimum. I feel this is more sensible than stubbornly trying to juggle too many balls at once. I look enormously forward to a summer of rest and slow-paced creative work and outdoor relaxation.
Don’t worry about me at all. You see that I can cope with my limitations, even though it would be much nicer if I didn’t have any. I do need at least 10 hours of sleep a night, a minimum of pressure (most of the time) and a life that allows for cycles of energy (I wrote my thesis in two months, in a great spurts of energy, much before any other senior finished) and corresponding complete relaxes. Teaching or marriage combined with free-lance writing would be ideal for this, I think. At any rate, be at ease about me these next weeks and wish me luck.
I hope your birthday finds you feeling much better and do give my love to all,
sivvy
TO Gordon Lameyer
Tuesday 26 April 1955*
TLS, Indiana University
Tuesday, 11:35
Dear Gordon . . .
I’m sure whatever went before your fall was fun, but I have drastic visions of your being wired together from your letter,* and all stuck through with wood splinters and tangled with bindings. Please get free and say it isn’t so. As long as youre having a comfortable convalescence, though, I am reassured. There is nothing more pleasant than that lovely interim when one is well enough to feel enjoyment and not well enough to bother with responsibilities. I actually envy you.
Ahead of me is the thorny slope of comprehensives, and I have had to drop German because too much was simply too much. It seems my life is a constant readjustment between my psychic demands and my physical supply. I need three long months of sun and sand and tennis and time (to read and write as I choose or do not choose) to recover from the academic trials of this year. Sue and I are projecting more schemes: the latest: to drive through Washington (so she can get an apartment) to Kentucky, borrow a car from her rich relatives there, and head for New Orleans, and, hopefully, Mexico City. Let’s hope this has a little more percentage of probability than Tangier. If so, we would go in late June and early July.
April is the cruellest month: it’s like winter here now, with sleet and clouds and raw winds. I’ve had a bout of papers, reports and extracurricular obligations which left me shot for the weekend, over which I recuperated when a friend in Longmeadow loaned me her very posh modern house so I could cook a lamp chop dinner beginning with cocktails and ending with strawberries and coffee. This relaxed me no end, and pleasantly recalled last summer. God, I love to cook! The chops were done, too. All I need is practice and an income that allows for cooking sherry and sour cream and cheese!
Contrary to your optimistic note, the Fulbright men maintain stolid silence. I am sure the fellow managing my affairs in England is having a few of his own and prolongs the time for this reason; or perhaps he has turned alcoholic and is embarrassed to write because his hand shakes too much. No news is supposedly good news, but I’m tired as hell of waiting. To ease my state of suspension, I accepted the $1000 fellowship from Smith (which I can use in England) and wait out the interim.
News here is all indefinite, with Fulbright, Vogue Prix, Mlle fiction, Christophers TV, and sundry Smith poetry contests to be announced at the end of May or so. Only really definite thing is the outcome of the Irene Glascock Poetry Contest at Holyoke the other weekend which was the warmest, most intelligent affair I’ve ever been to. Judges John Ciardi, Wallace Fowlie, and Marianne Moore were delightfully human and accessible and we had several dinners with them and much time for discussion during the two days. An enthusiastic audience of 200 or more packed the Elizabethan hall and applauded wonderfully after each of the 6 readings, and the three male and other two female contestants were attractive and charming. Verdict: I tied with boy from Wesleyan, $50 per each of us. Best of all, John Ciardi drank scotch with me for hours over the kitchen sink at someone’s party and sent enchanting and enthusiastic letter with names and addresses of places he wanted me to send my poems with his very special recommendations. His words I shall cherish for my as yet mythical grandchildren.
Perhaps the most tantalizing occurence of late was a sort of aesthetic rape by Editor Edward Weeks of the Atlantic Monthly. He sent me a check for “Circus of Three Rings” saying among other things that the 2nd verse was best of the 3, so would I take it and do a revision on a consistent metaphor of a lion tamer and if it “won them completely” he would like to have me represented in the young poets’ section of the August issue.
Well, my reaction was kaleidoscopic. First, golden with joy: La, at last the pearly gates open and let me babble in among Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, and Edith Sitwell! Then purple anger: what are they paying me for anyhow! What the hell makes them think they’ll like the revision any better, and meanwhile this check burns a slow hole on my desk! Finally blue disillusion: don’t they know the dangers of a paternal directive: and why the blazes don’t they publish one of my recent very good and consistent poems instead, although they are all about deathandgraves? To make a long story trim its tale, I quaffed two martinis, slept 12 hours, looked at the letter again, wrote a revision which I know they won’t like, but I got 2 good phrases out of it: a lion “shaggy with stars” that comes “roaring rare through my almanac.” Then I sent my five best poems with a plea to consider them as alternates. What more can a girl do? They’ll probably politely say “none will quite do”. So I wait, gnawing my pale green check down to the dollar sign.
Thanks for your poems: always like to see these visually, and here is one for you appropriately called: Sonnet for a Gr
een-eyed Sailor:
I look at you and the room begins running away:
dolphin tables ride off on turnabout tide;
curtains flap into sails while feathered books fly
beyond the gull-giddy horizon in my head.
I dive, no jonah in jeopardy, toward the dark gorge
where bric-a-brac tick of clocks is halted in wreck
of tall time’s intricate schooner, sunk under surge
that will swallow all in warm-as-whale-gut-black.
Down shell-whorl of my ear is poured the sound
of your hurricane heart until the moon
unleashes lunging waves to flood love’s land:
saltstruck worlk is sucked within whirlpool spin,
plummeting through the pupil of green sea
to drown in the absinthe eden of your eye.
Mend those metacarpals soon! Best wishes from the girl in the absinthe sombrero!
sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 28 April 1955
TLS, Indiana University
April 28, 1955
Dearest mother . . .
Just a note to tell you that my regime of final study has begun and I shall be disciplining ferociously for the next four weeks. It seems impossible now that I shall review in 3 weeks all the work in English for the past four years, brushing up in a day an author I have spent a year studying, but that is the way it looks. Dropping German was surely the only thing I could do, and they were all most nice about it.
By the way, amusingly enough, I just found out this morning that I won $100, one of the 34 prizes in the student contest for the Christophers! Of course I shall write Mrs. Freeman right away to tell her thanks, for it was her sending the notice that got me interested. There were 34 winners in all from the U.S. and Canada, and I was interested to note that I was the only winner from a big eastern college. All the rest were Catholic colleges or mid-west or western universities. I am probably the only Unitarian that won a prize! There were 3 prizes given from $500 to $150 and 31 prizes of $100. I really am pleased that I came through with one of them! As you see, my frugality prevents me from calling home for anything less than a definite Atlantic acceptance, a Fulbright, or $500 or more! As yet nothing from these last.
Also I am enclosing the latest and last copy of the Smith Review,* which I hope you will save for me, in which I have a story and a poem. I’ll be interested to know what you think of the story. I’m also sending Mrs. Prouty a copy with the news about the Alpha award, the Glascock Contest, and this latest one. Do tell Warrie about the Christophers and give him my best love. I miss him and will really miss him this summer. I’d give anything to be able to get him a job in Europe next summer and will try my best.
By the way, did I by chance leave Warren’s tennis racket in the car when I came up here? I could swear I brought it into the house here, and yet haven’t seen it since I got back. Do let me know if it’s at home. Also would you like me to make a super-special effort to get rooms for you all over Sunday night of Graduation? The ceremonies begin at 10 in the morning, which means you’d have to leave about 6:30 at least to get good seats. Of course rooms are terribly expensive and hard to get, but I’d try if you thought the early morning trip would be too much. I do hope Warren can come, it would mean so much to me to have him up here, and it would only be for the day of June 6, Monday. If you have your license by that time, perhaps I could get just you a room if you cared to drive up Sunday, and Warren could drive the grandparents up the next day. Do let me know your opinions about this, too.
Weather here has been abominable, cold, wet and raw since the last glimpse of sun which was on Saturday. Hope it clears up for the weekend. Sun makes such a difference.
Do keep getting well and strong, and give my love to all,
sivvy
TO Marion Freeman
Thursday 28 April 1955
TLS with envelope, Smith College
Thursday, April 28, 1955
Dear Aunt Marion . . .
Just a note to share some good news with you which is really your doing anyway! Remember that notice about the Christophers Contest which your neighbor, Mrs. Nalieri* so kindly gave you and which you sent me? Well, after writing two stories for it way back last winter, I just heard this morning from Father Keller* that I had won $100 which was one of the 34 prizes offered!
Naturally I’ve just been on top of the world today, as I was wondering how I’d get through the rest of the year with all my senior bills, and this happy news takes a load off my mind. I feel that you have something very special to do with my interest in the contest in the first place, and wanted you to be the first to know of the wonderful outcome. Do tell your neighbor how excited I am and thank her from the bottom of my heart for sending on her Christopher News Notes via you. I have a strong admiration for the Society and the work they are doing.
The next four weeks involve preparation for our senior Comprehensive exams which cover all the English courses taken in the last four years, and all of us are really plunging into work now, and will be most glad when they are over. I look so forward to Ruthie’s coming wedding in June . . . it sort of shines through the fog of exams ahead like a beacon. I thought her ring just beautiful and am very happy with the color and choice of dresses for the attendants. You must really be up to your ears in happy plans, now. It will be wonderful to see you all at such a marvelous occasion and I feel most honored to be taking part.
Once more, thank you again for your part in this piece of good fortune,
Much love,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 2 May 1955
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
monday, may 2
dearest mother . . .
only a little card to say how very much I hope you are surely getting well and that the convalescence isn’t too tedious for you. I do wish you’d write me bulletins of just how it’s going so I could keep track of you more closely. will you put an add in the paper to rent the house for july & august? I think that would be a great idea, for you to be down the cape! I hope now the weather is nice you’ll sun in the yard – the freshmen left us seniors maybaskets of daffodils this morning, a lovely custom. richard sassoon came up from yale again this sat., and we had a lovely time walking along the river – he gets along well with my dear sue, & is getting her a date next week which I hope will make up for that boy not coming during spring vacation. now the weather is all clear & blue & green in the sun, even comprehensives seem possible – do get well soon –
love,
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 6 May 1955
TLS in greeting card,*
Indiana University
It’s coals to Newcastle / It’s peat to Kerry / It’s gilding the lily / It’s reddening the berry / To say what a very very / WONDERFUL MOTHER YOU ARE
all my love, / Sylvia / (see inside)
Friday afternoon
May 6, 1955
Dearest mother . . .
The hunter being home from the Catskills, she will take up her porcupine quill to add a supplement to this card wishing you best luck and love on your day. After ten hours of sleep last night (got back to Smith at midnight) I feel much more human and scarcely able to believe that I lived so fantastically much in a mere 24 hours. Words can hardly convey the packed experience I’ve had.
Armed with my Writers’ Digest, I boarded the Greyhound bus for Albany on Wednesday morning, was driven through lovely green hills and apple orchard country, and took another bus to Kingston, New York, where I was met by a fat, well-tempered, hot, slovenly farmish woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Thornell.* At this point, I decided to be my country self and wondered what on earth Mr. Thornell would be like, the general chairman of the whole festival.* Well, I learned a lot in a few hours. On the drive to their home, Mrs. Thornell, obviously
deferent to my New York City appearance and “literary reputation”, told me that her youngest daughter of 3 had just had her tonsils out unexpectedly that morning, that her aunt had died the week before, and that the house was in the midst of being redecorated. At this point I expected Mr. Thornell would be tied up in the pasture cropping grass and that the school would be held in a barn. On the contrary.
Bob Thornell was home cooking steaks, a charming, virile, 34 year old chap, like a kind of woodland Mr. Crockett, a wonderful grin and easy-going disposition. I liked him immediately and wondered about his choice for a wife, she seemed so lethargic and uninterested in her appearance or in the work he was doing. Well, after dinner they left for the hospital to visit their little girl, and told me sternly to read or walk in the apple orchard and not touch the chaotic kitchen till they came back. I figured they would be worn out, what with all the confusion, and so spent an hour doing the enormous day’s stack of dishes with the bright, talkative help of the oldest girl, red-haired Colleen. We must have heated five kettle of water in the course of our work, but I felt really proud when everything was all straightened up, and went out to play baseball with Russell, the 8 year old boy.
When the Thornells came back, Bob asked me if I wanted to go up to the school with him as he supervised the students who were fixing up the displays and signs for the next day, so he could show me around. I was glad for the chance to talk to him alone about the program, and so we drove through more green hills as he told me about the country, the people, and their new 2 million dollar central school which was located beautifully high in the Catskills, 3 years old, and taking the place of the previous 23 one-room school houses. Never in my life have I seen such a beautiful building in such an exquisite setting. With a capacity for 1000 students from kindergarten to 12th grade, two big airy gyms, an auditorium with modern stage equipment, enormous light sunny rooms all looking out into the green mountains, all on one floor, spreading for a quarter of a mile in each direction, there was nothing more to be wished. After helping the attractive senior committee lay out the displays, Bob took me for a long drive up through Woodstock, the artist colony, and to the enormous reservoir, which was like an ocean of silver in the moonlight. I saw my first porcupine and countless rabbits, and got to know the life history of one of the most wonderful men in the world . . . what you would call a “self-made” man. Six years in the navy after highschool, war in the South Pacific, truck driving, marriage and children, and then this burst of interest in English and Art acquired in spare time in the Navy . . . then he started as a freshman at NYC in his late twenties on the G.I. Bill, with a homebody wife, two children, and nothing but opposition. He is one of the most tremendous men I’ve ever met: no sheltered, aesthetic Phd, but a creative man with ideas, moving alone, envied by those who don’t have his courage or originality, admired in ignorance by the rest. We talked till 3 in the morning, and I read part of a novel he’s working on, learned that he’s the only non-professional actor in the Woodstock summer theater, and all about his life, his students, and his ideas. We got along just tremendously as people in love with the same kind of life.