What an inspired idea—to tell the story of a brilliant poet's life through a series of brilliant poems!
Hemphill's poetry radiates with passion, taking us on a harrowing journey deep into the heart of Plath's darkness. This beautiful book leaves us uplifted, knowing that despite the tragedy that befell her, Plath's words will live on after her to “do some good … save someone lost.”
—Sonya Sones, author of What My Mother Doesn't Know and Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy
This book, although based on real events and real people,
is first and foremost a work of fiction. It consists largely of verse,
conversations, and descriptions that are fictional, although attributed
to real people as imagined and interpreted by the author.
for Cecile Goyette
and all those who love
or come to love Sylvia Plath
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Steve for having the vision to connect me to this project and for rekindling my love of Plath. Thanks to Adam for challenging me to expect more of myself and for his guidance with this book. Thanks to Jim for being my first reader and always my best advocate. Thanks to Jack Lienke, without whose help in acquiring photographs and digging up difficult details of research Your Own, Sylvia would be incomplete. I am also very grateful to Karen Kukil and the Smith Collection and to Professor Sylvia Vardell of Texas Women's University.
Owning Sylvia Plath
A Reader
Spring 2007
If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
—from “The Rival” by Sylvia Plath
Who are you, Sylvia Plath?
A cold comet locked in place by gravity?
A glint in the cracked ceiling above my bed?
Something shimmers out of your chasm.
Your language feels like words
trapped under my tongue
that I can't quite spit out on my own.
Readers tremble over your pages,
believe you spell out
letter by letter
the words of their hearts.
What's your secret, Sylvia?
Are you the moon?
Or have you become bigger than that?
Are you the sun?
And I wonder,
who can possess the stuff of the sky?
Can I?
Sylvia Plath signed many letters she wrote to her mother “Your own, Sivvy.”
“The Rival” appears in Plath's famous poetry collection, Ariel.
Dearest, Darling, First Born
Aurelia Plath, Sylvia's mother
October 27, 1932
Child of sea and sand,
your face is mine
but you will be tall
with the dark eyes of your father.
When you cry
I will rock you and rhyme you,
feed you milk of my breast,
give you my diligence, my contract of love.
Big beautiful Sivvy,
we are alone in this hospital.
Grow accustomed
to the antiseptic white.
My baby, my duty,
I will rear you right.
Give you everything, buttons off my shirt.
You will be what I cannot.
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston on October 27, 1932, the first child of Otto Emil Plath, a professor of German and biology at Boston University (age forty-six), and Aurelia Schober Plath (age twenty-five). Sylvia's lifelong family nickname was Sivvy.
Aurelia Schober Plath graduated valedictorian of the 1928 class of Boston University, College of Practical Arts and Letters. Aurelia wanted to be a writer but could not face her father's disapproval.
Beekeeper, Penny-Pincher, Professor, Master of the House
Otto Plath, Sylvia's father
Circa 1936
If I do things best
why invite others in
to clutter my desk?
Why waste my nights
of valuable book study
with idle dinner prattle
or tucking the children into bed?
My daughter understands this
better than my wife—
fills her brain
with insect species, bits of verse,
beach sand. She dances well
and I applaud, then shoo her
upstairs to her mother's care.
I expect Sylvia to grow tall,
fill her palms with the mud
and mystery of the world—
fireflies and sparrows
darting across her sky.
I will observe her, set her right,
but never coddle her.
My old arms
have the strength to carry
I am the long-reigning queen bee,
Aurelia, Sylvia, and Warren,
my workers, buzz as I dictate,
store my honey, keep the comb clean.
When I perish,
a new queen
will lead this little hive,
but until then
the house, wife, and children
conform to the direction
of my wings.
Warren Plath, Sylvia's brother, was born on April 27, 1935; in 1936 he would have been one year old.
Edward Butscher, in his book Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness, asserts, “For Sylvia Plath, even as the most casual reading of her poetry demonstrates, the central obsession from the beginning to the end of her life was her father, Otto Emil Plath. His life and, more importantly, his death, nine days after [Sylvia's] eighth birthday, left an imprint upon her imagination that time did not soften.”
Sylvia's journals often compare and contrast Ted Hughes, her husband, with her father. Her famous poem “Daddy” is a good example of this.
The Day She Learned to Swim
Marian Freeman, a neighbor, Aurelia's friend
Spring 1937
Sylvia's little footprints
crisscross the sand
like lines to a treasure map.
She leads David, Ruth, and Warren
hunting crabs and shells, filling
pails with green sea glass.
She's so much a part of the ocean,
Sylvia's skin tans brown as the beach sand,
her curled, fourteen-karat hair
blazes like the noon sky.
Four years old and clearly
the sun in her mother's eye,
giving light to the moon rock
Aurelia has become.
I love them both, ache like Sylvia
is my own when she wades beyond
the sand bar and slips
under the water's edge,
her hands flailing, frantic
above the surface.
Aurelia and I tear off
the beach blanket,
knees deep in the tides
when Sylvia bobs forward,
her arms paddling
like fins, her head
triumphant above water—
already a mermaiden,
a sea nymph
cresting the wave.
The Plaths lived in Winthrop, Massachusetts, at 92 Johnson Avenue at this time.
Hurricane
Aurelia Plath
September 21, 1938
I sing to Sivvy and Warren,
hide them under my breast
while winds roar and water
seeps into the house.
Telephone poles snap.
I whisper fairy stories,
light verse
into their ears
so that the memory of this
night will be melodic,
not nature's tantrum.
Sylvia clenches my hand.
She breathes my stories in,
her lips open like she's ready
to speak her own.
In September 1938 a major hurricane ripped through the Boston area. Winthrop, the city's easternmost suburb, was hit the hardest. Sylvia writes about this storm in her poem “The Disquieting Muses.”
Point Shirley
Grammy Schober, Sylvia's maternal grandmother
1939
The Atlantic licks our back porch.
Its frothy foam salts my tomato
and rhubarb plants.
Across the street Boston Harbor stills,
purrs quiet as a sleeping cat
until the wind stirs it.
Grampy mortared a seawall
around our modest summer castle,
held back last year's hurricane.
Sivvy, my little grandbaby,
collects broken starfish in my jam jars,
feeds the creatures until they sprout new legs,
then chucks them back to sea.
I tell her we must pack up,
the renters arrive tomorrow.
I fib that the beach down the road
“But, Grammy, I feel safe here,” she says.
I remove her hand from the ocean,
brush off her sandy feet,
and set floral stationery in front of her.
I point at the paper, tell her to write her mother a letter.
She must learn to love indoor activities too.
Sylvia picks up her pen.
Sylvia's grandparents still lived in the house Sylvia's mother, Aurelia, grew up in, 892 Shirley Street, a beach house on the southeasternmost tip of the peninsula Point Shirley in Massachusetts. They rented out the house in the summer and then permanently sold the house shortly after Sylvia's father died.
Losing a Limb
Specialist Dr. Harvey Loder
1940
Otto's leg vermilion,
toe enlarged and unhealed
after a simple bump,
Mrs. Plath looked shocked
at my diagnosis—
diabetes.
Could have been prevented,
all this suffering,
had the professor
ever
seen me.
I hate to tell a woman
she will likely be a widow at thirty-three.
Aurelia stares at me
with determined, red eyes,
too proud to cry.
for such a brilliant man
Otto was stupid about his health.
An expert in biology,
with a family history of diabetes
and an addict's sweet tooth,
Mr. Plath
should have read the signs.
I guess stubbornness
is also a dominant trait.
Those poor little kids.
Aurelia straightens her hat,
slips on gloves, leaves
my office with a polite,
tight-lipped “Thank you, Doctor,”
a ghost of the wife who entered.
Otto had never gone to a doctor until 1940, when he stubbed his toe and it turned purplish-black. He was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. Otto had been suffering from diabetes symptoms for ten years, and by the time his illness was diagnosed it was life-threatening. Gangrene set in and his leg was amputated in October 1940. In the end bronchopneumonia and an embolism killed him. Treatment for diabetes in 1940 consisted of dietary restrictions and insulin shots—both of which Otto rigorously applied, but too late to undo the damage.
Mother's Strength
Aurelia Plath
1940
A legless father
hobbled into bed is one thing.
My dears will not see
their father coffined, lowered
into the stiff November ground.
Marian holds their hands.
I wave to Sivvy and Warren,
suck in my tears until the hearse
door closes. What will we do?
How will we survive?
These questions stream
down my face. I can't pat them away
with his monogrammed hankie.
Sivvy raged,
“I'm never talking to God again,”
when I told her
that her daddy had died.
She's fatherless and faithless—
I must remain solid for her,
provide her the tools
she needs to believe.
Otto Plath died in the hospital at 9:35 p.m. on November 5, 1940. Sylvia was eight and Warren was five and a half. Prior to her marriage, Aurelia had worked in a public library and for an insurance company, and had taught English and German at Brookline High School. When they married on January 4, 1932, Otto insisted that Aurelia quit working and become a full-time housewife and mother.
First Publication
Editor of the Boston Herald
1941
“Hey, Mickey, this ‘Poem’
from an eight-year-old girl's pretty good,
starts out, ‘Hear the crickets chirping,’
and she chirps she has plenty more
where this one came from.”
Mickey scratches his bald spot,
“Nothing but stalled cars
and weather this edition.
What the heck, print her little poem.”
Joe nods,
“What's the byline, Mickey?”
“Says her name's Sylvia Plath,
thinks she's gonna be a star.”
“Poem,” a sweet rhyming verse about crickets and fireflies, appeared in the Sunday Boston Herald on August 11, 1941, on the “Good Sport Page” of the children's section.
Maître d'Hôtel
Grampy Schober, Sylvia's maternal grandfather
Summer 1942
I keep my hands in my jacket pockets,
poke a finger through the hole
Grammy will stitch.
No coins, no peppermint sticks
for my grandbabies. I magnify
the paper, search for work that doesn't exist.
But as the boys and bombs fall overseas, I polish
my shoes. Newly hired to be maître d'hôtel,
I live my weeks away
from my family, board
with the fancies and the frivolous
at the Brookline Country Club.
At least the Christmas tree
will bear boxes and chocolates this year.
The little ones' patched stockings full of loot.
I hold my tongue at work.
German accents are
like leper scars. I nod my head.
I am good at taking care of others.
Still, I hoped at this age someone
would take care of me,
that I would lounge seaside,
my feet cool on the sand, not crammed
for ten-hour shifts in pinching shoes.
For thirty years Frank Schober, Sylvia's “Grampy,” worked as an accountant at Dorothy Muriel Company. He lost his job just after Christmas in 1940, only a couple of months after Otto's death. Because money was tight for everyone, in early 1941 Aurelia asked her parents and brother to move into her home to help share expenses. Grampy was hired in the summer of 1942 to work at the Brookline Country Club, which was located in a wealthy Boston suburb.
Outpatient
Aunt Dorothy, Sylvia's maternal aunt
February 1943
My sister recovers
in my guest room
from a life that ulcerates her.
She swells acidic carrying
two children, a checkbook,
and a household on her shoulders.
Our parents help, but age
weighs them down.
Sylvia treads words to keep afloat,
all those library books, journals,
daily letters penned to her mother.
Sylvia writes more in a day
than I do in a month. My sister,
hand cradling her gut, pencil shaky
from sedation, scrawls on her stationery,
tries to keep pace with her daughter.
When Sylvia was ten, Aurelia suffered an acute gastric hemorrhage.
Aurelia kept Sylvia's letters in packets. She always intended to give them back to her someday.
Selfish
Warren Plath, Sylvia's brother
1942-1943
Mommy gave Sylvia
a blue cloth book
without words
where Sylvia puts words
each day.
I ask her what stories
are in there,
but Sivvy shakes her head,
locks the book under her bed,
says that the words are hers,
that the stories are her thoughts,
that the book is called a journal.
I tell Sivvy that I want one too.
I have lots to say.
She says, “No, you don't.
You're too little to say anything
important.”
Mean, mean, mean,
I think under my breath.
When Warren was born, Sylvia said, “I wanted an Evelyn, not a Warren.” According to Aurelia in her introduction to Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963, “Between Sylvia and Warren there were often arguments just for the sake of discussion.” Sylvia teased her brother and yet they were very close. Warren appreciated Sylvia's writing and artwork, and this led to an enduring friendship. Both children were excellent students, highly praised and highly competitive. Both left their marks.
Best Friend
Betsy Powley, Sylvia's best friend in grade school
1943
Camps, fern huts, Girl Scout cookies,
suntans on my driveway,
Sylvia and I never stop. We travel
the globe in our backyard.
She books away to foreign lands,
ancient times, and I
trot beside her—
Tonto to her Lone Ranger.
I whisper that I have a crush