Your Own, Sylvia

by Stephanie Hemphill

her brow-sweat for medicine,

  but the baby is too far along.

  Mr. Hughes rubs her back

  and the baby arrives quickly,

  slides out of its mother

  without agony, with only a bitty cry.

  I tell Mrs. Hughes what fortune

  smiles in her home, only

  four and a half hours of labor.

  She must have birthed many children

  in a previous life. I scrub the baby

  in a Pyrex bowl, swaddle her

  in the cradle beside her parents' bed.

  I advise Mrs. Hughes to rest,

  keep her feet under cover, sleep

  like the deceased, but I see devil

  in her eye, she will disobey.

  This birth was too easy.

  Restless as a kitten, Mrs. Hughes must

  leap about, bat at her balls of string.

  Frieda Rebecca Hughes was born April 1, 1960, in London at home in the flat at Chalcot Square. In England in 1960, the National Health Service provided free prenatal care and midwife services for home delivery and the first fourteen days of a baby's life.

  Baby Girl

  Imagining Sylvia Plath

  In the style of “Morning Song”

  April 1960

  I have waited for you, your heartbeat

  Inside me like the clock's ticking

  Second hand. I still feel your pulse when I sleep.

  You are your father's daughter, just like I was.

  He loves you like a fine sentence.

  He feeds you and you feed him.

  I do not own you, my little one,

  But I hope to rent space in your heart, hold tight

  Your small hands that clench and mimic my own.

  I write between bottles and nappies

  And the breakfast table. I type while your daddy

  Wheels you through the first blooms of spring.

  Send me lines deeper than my tired, wrinkled brow.

  Teach me innocence and beginning

  And I will sing you my music, rhythm you to sleep.

  A little starling, you yawp for my drizzle of milk.

  I fill you, helium you into the sky like a pink balloon

  So that you soar, our family a trinity of heaven, sun, and song.

  “Morning Song” is the first poem in Ariel. Sylvia wanted to begin the collection with the word “love.” “Morning Song” opens “Love set you going like a fat gold watch.” Written on February 19, 1961, the poem is about her daughter, Frieda Rebecca. In a letter, Sylvia wrote that the “whole experience of birth and baby seem(s) much deeper, much closer to the bone, than love and marriage.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Ted Hughes

  A. Alvarez, poetry editor of the Observer,

  later became one of Ted's drinking buddies

  Summer 1960

  Two tall people and baby crammed

  into a flat so small you must maneuver it

  sideways. Yet the Hughes? home burbles

  with productivity, happiness.

  I so loved Ted Hughes' second book,

  Lupercal, that I determined to befriend the man.

  We walk our children through the zoo

  and plan to do a BBC program together.

  Mrs. Hughes seemed nice upon first meeting,

  offered me cherry torte and tea,

  a pinafored mother,

  her home clean and warm.

  When she shakes my hand and thanks me

  for publishing her poem, I nearly choke

  on my chamomile tea. She laughs awkwardly,

  “I'm Sylvia Plath.”

  A year before their meeting, Alvarez had accepted Sylvia's poem “Night Shift.” A lot of Sylvia's poems were being published in 1960. In June her poems appeared in the Critical Quarterly, the London Magazine, and the Partisan Review. In July her verses were published in Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly. In August the New Yorker printed her poem “The Net-Menders.” Ironically, she wasn't able to create any new poetry during this period.

  Alvarez is best known for his 1972 book The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, which gained added resonance from his friendship with Sylvia Plath and discusses her suicide.

  Appendectomy

  Ted Hughes

  February-March 1961

  Sylvia loses another part

  of herself, first the miscarriage

  and now an organ—two

  large holes in her center.

  Frieda cries, tosses her potatoes

  on the floor; and I can't manage

  to wash a single dish.

  How does Sylvia do this and write?

  The hospital is peace to her.

  She's free within the nurse-

  watched ward, white and cleaner

  white—shoes, hats, bedsheets.

  Sylvia stares at the tulips

  sent courtesy of her mentor,

  the renowned poet Ted Roethke.

  She writes reclined in bed.

  The quiet, still, germy air

  allows her to think.

  She breathes by tubes,

  but her mind is unbound.

  She writes and writes and writes and writes …

  Sylvia miscarried on February 2, 1961, the day after she and Ted had attended a party for Theodore Roethke, an acclaimed American poet. Sylvia was depressed, but turned out seven poems in the days following her miscarriage, including “Parliament Hill Fields,” “Morning Song,” “Face Lift,” and “Barren Woman.” Frieda Rebecca Hughes was ten months old at the time. You can feel the push and pull of Sylvia's joy over Frieda and sadness about the miscarriage in some of these poems. Because of the miscarriage, her appendectomy was performed earlier than scheduled. During her recovery Sylvia wrote the poems “Tulips” and “I Am Vertical,” among others. Sylvia's longer poem “Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices” was inspired by her hospital stay. All of the aforementioned poems can be found in The Collected Poems.

  Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book The Waking.

  BBC

  Lucas Myers, Ted's closest friend

  March 1961

  They talk—

  her chatterbox,

  his fierce tongue and low sonar,

  Britain's poet couple.

  I lost part of Ted

  when they married,

  could not see gold

  on Sylvia's page,

  but he assured me,

  she will become

  stardust,

  a voice remembered.

  I'm shocked to learn

  she included my work

  in that anthology

  of promising poets she edited.

  I hope this does not

  place me in her debt.

  I flip on my radio,

  hear the rebroadcast of Sylvia and Ted.

  The BBC show that Ted and Sylvia were on was called Two of a Kind, a program that featured interviews with married couples who worked in the same field. Sylvia and Ted's show was titled “Poets in Partnership” and was taped on January 18, 1961, and aired March 19, 1961.

  The Hughes' Plan to Buy a Home in Devon

  Aurelia Plath

  1961

  I cash another CD

  as though I have no future to save for,

  nothing at home to repair,

  to help them purchase a house,

  two acres in the country,

  a big thatched cottage,

  a storybook manse.

  Sylvia rhapsodizes, “Oh, the flowers,

  Mother, the daffodils.

  So bountiful we'll sell

  cartloads of them.

  We can grow carrots and cabbage,

  be self-sufficient out there

  and pay you back.

  Someday, we'll return to you

  all that we have borrowed.”

  I shake my head across the ocean.

  A mother doesn't

  lo
an. She gives.

  From Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963:

  In a letter to Warren dated July 30, 1961, Aurelia conveys excitement about Ted and Sylvia's new home, but admits:

  “Both Edith [Ted's mother] and I are each loaning 500 pounds so they won't be snowed under by the terrible interest rate. … I was willing to take the whole mortgage at 3 percent, but Ted would not listen to it, and I admire his determination to be as independent as possible.”

  Ted and Sylvia bought Court Green for 3,600 pounds, what was roughly the equivalent of $10,000 at the time.

  Christmas at Yorkshire, 1961

  Elizabeth Compton, Sylvia's friend and neighbor in Devon

  The other side of this

  I know nothing about, but Sylvia

  tensed as she unwove the tale,

  her hands rock-rigid and her tongue

  lashing rapid speed.

  Sylvia had asked Olwyn, Ted's sister,

  finally, why she hated her so.

  And Olwyn unleashed among

  the cranberries and fruitcake

  that Sylvia was a spoiled interloper,

  trying to usurp Olwyn's role

  in the Hughes family.

  Sylvia cried, banged her once-again-pregnant

  body up the stairs, believing they

  all hated her. She waited for Ted,

  who had witnessed the row,

  to ascend the stairs and comfort her.

  Ted remained in his armchair,

  read his book, played Switzerland,

  did not want to enter the catfight.

  Sylvia, eight months heavy with his child,

  felt betrayed. She dashed from the house

  in light overcoat, slippered feet,

  and waded into the foggy moor.

  She awaited her husband,

  but again his outline did not appear

  in the mist. Hours passed like weeks,

  the ground wet. Frigid air knocked

  her over. She laid down in the fern grass,

  drowsy as though drugged, clutched

  her belly, and shut her eyes.

  Ted, candlestick in hand,

  found her halfway up the moor,

  a Catherine turning blue as a ghost.

  He carried her home.

  Olwyn left

  the next morning for Paris

  before Sylvia woke,

  before the family

  finished their coffee.

  Ted and Sylvia and Frieda returned

  to their home at Court Green.

  Sylvia breathes over her tea,

  fills the pot, smells her leaves.

  She examines the bottom

  of her cup, says, “Things

  will never be the same,”

  as she crafts a thank-you

  letter to Ted's parents.

  I stir cream and honey

  into my cup, almost tell Sylvia

  that in-laws are boiling pots

  on everyone's stove

  and need to be handled carefully

  but I don't want to stick

  my two farthings in a bank

  I really know nothing about.

  Sylvia chronicled her difficulties with her husband in her journals and then later in letters she wrote to Aurelia and others.

  Son

  Ted Hughes

  January 1962

  Nick jumped into the world

  cold in Nurse Davies's hands,

  shriveled skull with a thatch

  of dark fuzz. He fusses little.

  Sylvia says he's quiet

  like his father. I guess we've

  become that station-wagon family

  they advertise on the American tube.

  Sylvia claims she feels poetry in childbirth.

  I love my daughter, but she and her brother

  are too little to hold my pen,

  let alone guide it into words.

  Nicholas Farrar Hughes was born January 17, 1962, at the Hughes' home, Court Green, in Devon.

  Woman of the House

  Sylvia Crawford, a Devon neighbor,

  mother of three daughters

  Winter 1962

  I don't know how she does it

  (except that she hires both a nanny and a maid,

  unusual for around here,

  very upper crust and city-folkish).

  I don't know how she manages

  that manor with needlepoint precision

  and writes her poems too

  (of course, her husband

  minds the children mornings

  so she can lock herself up in her study,

  a sign on her door that says

  “Leave Me Alone”).

  We talk about nappies and prams,

  what temperature to heat bottles,

  groan together over our exhaustion

  and our babies? teething tantrums.

  Sylvia strains to maintain interest

  in us and our baby talk.

  She's not like my other friends,

  an exiled queen on her little estate.

  I don't know how she gets by,

  she is so singular, so unusual, so alone.

  Court Green, the Hughes' home, was a large cottage located at the summit of the town of Croton. Croton was more cement-gray and plain than the lush and green Devon, but the church across the street dated from the twelfth century, and Sylvia loved living among the daily evidence of Croton's medieval history. Sylvia was considered a “lady of the house,” as the town still kept to class distinctions at that time. However, Sylvia's friendly American ways broke down those boundaries and she was well liked by most in the village. Still, she and Ted were artists first and therefore always considered outsiders.

  Routine

  Aurelia Plath

  Winter 1962

  Recovered from surgery,

  childbirth, and her usual

  winter maladies, Sylvia

  reinstates a schedule.

  Nick sleeps through the night,

  which allows her to write mornings.

  I call this dedication,

  my daughter claims it's survival.

  Without poetry she would crumble

  like a dried-out lemon cake,

  stale and inedible. She talks

  bright, but something in her has hardened.

  I think this life of two children,

  two literary careers, multiple gardens,

  and too many rooms to dust

  must exhaust her weak constitution.

  On the surface Sivvy looks the same,

  long, swept-up hair, red smile,

  poems published every month.

  She stands beside her husband,

  stalwart, like the day they married,

  but I know something

  in the photo she mailed me

  is off.

  Aurelia expressed some of her concerns about Sylvia's life directly to Sylvia in letters. In the introduction to Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963, Aurelia illuminates retrospectively her concerns about Sylvia's marriage in 1962.

  Elm

  Ruth Fainlight, poet, London friend of Sylvia and Ted's

  May 1962

  We drink it black,

  mud-thick, steam misting

  over our cups.

  I see something bitter

  as coffee in Sylvia's eyes,

  wish that London were not so far

  from Devon. Sylvia pines

  so for a friend who is her equal.

  We read each other our latest

  poems, and I can't breathe

  when she finishes “Elm.”

  I shiver. Her words like porcupine

  quills prick my skin. They haunt

  and possess me like a shadow.

  I touch her hand, so cold

  the coffee cup can't warm it.

  She unravels a bit, her hemline

  hangs low in back and I fear

  she might lose t
hat rhythm that kills, that kills.

  And that might kill her.

  Ruth Fainlight married Alan Sillitoe, the novelist best known for his book The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Sillitoe had won the Hawthornden Prize the year before it was awarded to Ted Hughes, and the couples met as a result. Sylvia and Ruth became close, and Sylvia expressed in letters how much she missed London and city life. In May 1962, Ruth and Sylvia had both recently given birth to sons, another link that brought them closer together.

  Ruth Fainlight is an award-winning author who has published thirteen collections of poems in England and the United States, as well as two volumes of short stories.

  Her Fan

  A. Alvarez, poetry editor of the Observer,

  one of Ted's drinking buddies

  May 1962

  I read her first collection, The Colossus.

  Unlike most critics, I like it.

  I find her work unfeminine.

  She, like her husband, writes good poetry.

  I do, however, wish she'd settle on her own style.

  She shies from her true voice. Her poetry withholds

  like she does—Sylvia presents as competent,

  kind, excellent with her children,

  a well-crafted housewife, but like a photo

  out of someone else's magazine.

  Her poetry too executes beautifully,

  flawless rhythms, but it smacks of others—

  Roethke, Wallace Stevens. And she stands

  in the shadow of her own Ted Hughes.

  There is more to her, bubbling quietly on the stove,

  ready to scream, if only she'll release it.

  Female poets of note who were Sylvia's contemporaries and whose work endures today include Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Stevie Smith, and Maxine Kumin.

  Sylvia

  Assia Wevill, a married woman who will become

  Ted's mistress

  May 1962

  She is poetry,

  that mother of language,

  and I am a Gypsy,

  wandering, thieving what I fancy.

  She is cunning

  like an old watchdog,

  she sees the scene

  without being present.

  I am experienced.

  I have thrown my nightgown

  over more than one man's head.

  She snarls,

  tries to make me squirm,

  and I pity her,