Book Read Free

Your Own, Sylvia

Page 10

by Stephanie Hemphill


  trapped in this life

  of two kids and a fading husband,

  clutching her notebooks

  as though they are friends.

  She bakes. She gardens.

  She follows her routine.

  I flit freely among her flower beds

  and he chases me, tired

  of Sylvia dragging

  him along like a can tied

  to a bumper.

  He cuts her fraying rope,

  rolls down the hill

  and into my bed.

  Assia and her husband, David, leased the Hughes' London flat. Ted and Assia began their extramarital relationship in the summer of 1962.

  Losing

  Imagining Sylvia Plath

  In the style of “Event”

  Summer 1962

  The night is indigo and she is gray.

  He cannot see her among the shadows.

  There was a time she was a rabbit he longed to snare.

  Now her simmering pot grows cold,

  Charcoal crusted. She lifts the lid, there's nothing inside.

  The babies waddle the floorboards blind.

  The temperature drops. She pulls the blanket over their

  heads.

  Oh, he is absent as November blossom.

  He tends nothing but his own words.

  He says it's her fault there's no harvest this year.

  He says it with his silent hand.

  He won't look at her face long enough to slap her.

  She waves the white flag of her soul, her shirt

  Damp on the line. She knows the woman of night

  And silk stockings bewitches with her musk perfume.

  She smells it on him, blood and London and cheer.

  All she cooks up is a pot of gloom.

  She has no arm to hold out anymore. Gangrene

  Settles in. She is without a limb.

  In her dreams she still runs after Daddy,

  That hair shirt ghost who never looks back.

  She screams without sound. She has been muted out.

  Plath's poem “Event,” about a relationship that has been dismembered, can be found in The Collected Poems.

  Sylvia's Book Doesn't Sell

  Knopf editorial assistant

  Summer 1962

  Predictions like weather reports,

  we thought the Plath collection

  would sell like summer sun,

  but the book languishes, sinks

  in a gray rain. I can't explain

  why. The buzz is that Sylvia

  has not the talent, has not

  the emotional depth. Pity

  that her language embraces

  one like a proud father. Pity

  that this father expects so much of her,

  is not a parent of love

  but of the balance sheet.

  Knopf published The Colossus and Other Poems in America on May 14, 1962.

  A Letter to the Successful Poet

  Mother of Keith Douglas, a little-known English poet

  who died in World War II at the age of twenty-four

  June 1962

  Dear Master Hughes,

  I wish to thank you

  heartily for my son,

  who cannot.

  I have read all your books,

  your selected works

  penned so young,

  you are only thirty-one,

  and I feel you've just become

  my hero.

  I want you to know

  that Keith is honored by you.

  I hope you continue

  to shine starlight

  on other little-known men,

  the work of their pens,

  because today success seems dependent

  on being recommended

  by great writers like you.

  So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

  From Paul Alexander's Rough Magic: “Hughes wielded so much power that on his recommendation alone, a whole career could be made—or resurrected. … [I]n late May [1962] [he] broadcast a radio show on Keith Douglas, a British poet killed at the age of twenty-four in Normandy in World War II. On the basis of Hughes's single broadcast, Faber decided, provided that Hughes would write an introduction, to issue a ‘selected’ edition of Douglas's poems, much to the delight of Douglas's impoverished mother, who wrote Hughes to thank him.”

  New Affiliates

  Charlie Pollard, Devon's best and foremost member

  of the Beekeepers' Society

  June 1962

  Sylvia tends the hive well.

  Her husband bumbles

  and his back's full of stingers.

  Sylvia transfers queens

  from one hive to the next

  so that a virgin bee ascends

  the throne. The old one's

  outgrown her little home

  and moves on.

  Sylvia's husband skips meetings,

  absent as summer snow.

  I marvel at how she grows

  her garden and home alone

  and still manages the bees,

  cares for their honeycomb.

  In a letter to her mother, Sylvia wrote that the local bee meeting was “attended by the rector, the midwife, and assorted beekeeping people from neighboring villages.” In her journal entry of June 7, 1962, Sylvia describes the constituents of the Beekeepers? Society as “a group of miscellaneous Devonians … an assortment of shapeless men in brown speckled bulgy tweeds … [and] two women, one very large, tall, stout, in a glistening aqua-blue raincoat, the other cadaverous as a librarian in a dun raincoat.”

  June 1962

  Aurelia Plath

  1. The Perfect Home

  I arrive at Court Green

  welcomed by a room

  of painted pink hearts and flowers

  and a granddaughter who blurts,

  “Hello, Granny,” without provocation.

  New Baby Nick bounces

  smiling into my arms like we are old

  friends. The manor, well kept

  and lovely, groomed gardens

  and flower beds, hand-painted furniture,

  a lemon cake cooling on the counter.

  But underneath the sweet scent

  something bitter simmers,

  trapped in the walls—

  a festering mold black enough

  to make one cough,

  an odor rotten enough to stop breath.

  Sivvy announces repeatedly

  that happiness dances around her bed.

  She has the perfect home, the perfect

  children, the perfect husband.

  But I believe she doth protest too heartily.

  Still, I button my lip, dare not contradict

  her, but the tension in the air's

  thick and deadly as smog.

  2. Loss of Faith

  When Sylvia's neighbor Percy dies

  of cancer, Sivvy crashes.

  The strain on my daughter's shoulders

  so great she cannot bear

  loss or disruption.

  Sivvy submits the final section

  of her first novel to the foundation

  supporting her work. She reveals

  that she's nearly finished her

  second novel, about a young American

  girl in England who falls for a heroic man

  and marries him. She intends to give

  a first draft of the new book to Ted

  as a birthday present.

  She frets that the writing

  on this novel stagnates lately.

  Sylvia can't bring her pen

  to the page. I fear she has lost faith

  in her male protagonist.

  Sylvia had never been to a funeral before she attended Percy Key's on June 29, 1962. An excerpt from her Journal 1962, Appendix 15 found in The Journals of Sylvia Plath: 1950-1962, illustrates some of her reactions:

  “… Rose [Percy's wife] rapt and beau
tiful and frozen, the Catholic dropping a handful of earth which clattered. A great impulse welled in me to cast earth also, but it seemed as if it might be indecent, hurrying Percy into oblivion. We left the open grave. An unfinished feeling. Is he to be left there uncovered, all alone?”

  As to Sylvia's novel:

  The central events of Sylvia's early life, particularly those of the summer and fall of 1953, when she was a guest editor for Mademoiselle, attempted suicide, and underwent hospitalization, form the basis of her only novel, The Bell Jar. Sometimes referred to as a confessional novel, The Bell Jar is a fictional autobiography that Sylvia often called her “pot-boiler,” as she did not consider it to be a “serious work.” The novel follows Esther Greenwood, a sensitive young artist, as she questions the world around her, searches for identity, and descends into madness. It has become a widely read and seminal work.

  Shopping in Exeter

  Aurelia Plath

  July 9, 1962

  Sylvia steers the Morris,

  chipper as a baby bluebird,

  proclaims that she has everything

  in life she has ever wanted.

  I nod and stare out the window,

  green hills roll like waves

  across the countryside.

  We tire of shopping early,

  decide to return to Court Green

  after lunch. Sylvia hears the phone

  blare when she enters her house.

  She rushes to grab the receiver.

  Ted tops the stairs, startled

  by our presence, stares at the phone,

  dashes toward it. He misses a step,

  falls backward, and bumps down

  each stair, a snowball gathering speed,

  until he crashes onto the floor.

  Sivvy picks up the phone

  with a calm “Hello.”

  A pause the length of an epic poem

  and she accuses the caller, “

  I know who this is, Assia,

  no need to disguise your voice.”

  Sylvia hands Ted the phone.

  He swiftly rids himself of his lady

  caller. Sivvy's anger inflates her

  ten feet tall. She yanks the telephone

  wire out of the wall. I back up,

  my arms around Frieda, covering

  her eyes from the scene in the hallway.

  The house is so quiet you hear only the wind.

  Sivvy bundles up Baby Nick,

  bolts from the house, leaving

  Frieda under my care.

  Ted stands ten seconds

  in the hallway watching Sylvia go

  and I am left without words.

  I want to exit, but my legs stick to the floor.

  I wish he would vanish,

  burst into oblivion

  like a soap bubble.

  Should I scold him like a child,

  should I pretend that nothing's awry?

  I fume that he has made me awkward

  in my daughter's house.

  I decide not to make him tea,

  clutch my grandbaby to my chest

  and back away from it all.

  Sylvia and Ted had bought their Morris station wagon the previous summer (1961). Aurelia visited Court Green from June 21 until August 4, 1962. After the incident in the above poem, Aurelia stayed with Winifred Davies, Sylvia's midwife and friend, for the last few weeks of her trip. This vacation was the last time Aurelia would see Sylvia alive. In the summer of 1962, Frieda was two and Nicholas was six months old.

  Sylvia Begins to Tell the Truth

  Elizabeth Compton,

  Sylvia's friend and neighbor in Devon

  July 1962

  Sylvia looks as though she's been hit

  by a hailstorm.

  Nick gurgles in his carry cot.

  She speaks fast

  and loud, no sun in her tone.

  She can't feed Nick, her milk

  has dried up, her milk

  is gone. Nick will starve. She drops

  the baby in the front hall,

  shakes off her outer garments, gloves,

  scarf, hat, overcoat

  as she marches into the parlor.

  She weeps, “Help me.” Her eyes never

  stop flowing tears.

  Ted loves another woman, Assia.

  Ted lies to her.

  I grab her hand, don't know what to say,

  don't know how to calm her.

  She flinches at my touch. I stick my finger

  in Nick's mouth

  so at least the baby soothes, becomes quiet and calm.

  I tell Sylvia she should stay the night

  with us, then haul out

  the guest linens, tuck Sylvia

  into bed like a child.

  She stares blankly, eyes swollen red,

  her nose drips.

  She says, “When you give someone

  your whole heart

  and he doesn't want it, you cannot

  take it back.

  It's gone forever.”

  Sylvia's quote at the end of this poem is from “Sylvia in Devon: 1962,” written by Elizabeth (Compton) Sigmund in Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work, edited by Edward Butscher.

  Burning: Summer of Bonfires

  Imagining Sylvia Plath

  In the style of “Poppies in July”

  1962

  She starts with the stack of wood he chopped,

  Logs and planks piled high. Adds in a bit of kindling.

  But the ingredient that makes the flames rise

  Is words. Her papers and letters crinkle and pop,

  Shrivel and ravel like withered blooms.

  Each week she shovels in something new.

  Slaughters the novel she etched of their love.

  Destroys the stationery she posted across an ocean—

  Her hope set sail, now ash. The fumes,

  The smoke catch in her throat.

  She burns his papers too, the typed manuscripts

  She secretaried. She dances Rumpelstiltskin

  Round the pyre of poetry, incants his name.

  Maybe a new phoenix will rise from the flames,

  From the cold, colorless char.

  “Poppies in July” can be found in Ariel and is included in The Collected Poems. It was the second poem Sylvia wrote after Assia's phone call. The poem questions whether poppies, the flower and the opiate, do harm when they numb and dull. It is a poem of anger and resignation.

  Pretense

  Ted Hughes

  August 15, 1962

  She burns my work

  so I leave no papers in the house,

  so I leave the house now,

  return to Court Green weekends only.

  See and tend the children weekends only

  as my “home” is an infirmary,

  a place of colds and flu.

  I am not running away, I am running to.

  Sylvia and I agree to play

  happy couple for her patron,

  Mrs. Prouty, force smiles

  through an evening of dinner and theater.

  But a night alone at the Connaught Hotel

  with Sylvia's dagger eyes

  and venom tongue pantomiming, “

  Bad father, bad husband, bad man,”

  no wonder I can't stand

  to be in her presence.

  She incinerates herself with anger,

  cannot write knee-deep in spite.

  When Sylvia asks for a legal separation

  I am relieved.

  Sylvia believed that Ted maintained a secret flat in London where he stayed during the week over the summer. However, most likely he stayed with his friend the renowned poet W. S. Merwin, and his wife, Dido, or on A. Alvarez's sofa. He confided in the Merwins, Alvarez, and obviously in Assia about the problems he had with Sylvia.

  Child Support

  Elizabeth Compton,

  Sylvia's friend and neighbor in Devon
r />   August 1962

  Nick needs male tending.

  Fatherless, he hides under

  her skirt.

  Sylvia rages hot as coal

  though the weather chills. She says

  she wishes Ted were dead.

  It's easier for a child

  to understand a father

  underground. Not a runaway.

  She scrubs his scent

  from the sheets,

  from the house.

  She cashes his little checks—

  the only thing

  he gives his children now.

  In August 1962 Ted was mostly living in London, though he spent weekends at Court Green, and when Sylvia fell ill with a terrible fever he returned to Devon to help with the children.

  On August 25, 1962, John Malcolm Brinnin, Dylan Thomas's biographer, courted Ted about replacing him at the University of Connecticut the following year, but Ted turned the offer down. The unsettled matters in his personal life likely contributed to his decision.

  Can a Vacation in Ireland Rescue Their Marriage?

  Richard Murphy, Irish poet whom Sylvia awarded

  first prize in the Guinness Awards

  September 1962

  A couple of warring cats—

  Sylvia hisses and claws. Ted silent, sneaky,

  lurks about the house.

  They sleep in separate twin beds,

  tell me, over pints,

  too much about their marriage.

  We ferry out to see Yeats's Coole Park.

  Sylvia insists Ted etch his initials

  next to Yeats's, but Ted's pants leg

  catches on the spiked fence. We huff up

  the tower's spiral staircase instead.

  Sylvia tosses coins, throws back her arms

  howling, sniffs up the spirit

  of the master. Ted doesn't react

  as though her behavior's abnormal.

  They each pull me aside,

  ask me to play marriage counselor.

  He's seeing another woman.

  She wants to separate.

  I have been stuck

  in the molasses of divorce before

  and advise her, as a friend,

  to make the break clean—

  but Sylvia talks to herself,

  desires me to simply play mirror,

  nod when she nods, laugh when she chortles,

  cry out the tears dried

  in the corner of her eyes.

 

‹ Prev