“Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats”: Cat Houses In The News
Plath wrote “Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats” on June 2, 1956, per her pocket calendar. Plath spoke a bit of French, and the very near-homophone la maison translates to “the house.” This is less a poem about an animal hoarder, and more explicitly about a cat house, or a brothel. This subject was all […]
“Dialogue Between Ghost and Priest,” “Monologue at 3 a.m.,” “The Glutton,” and “November Graveyard”: The Emotional Weight of National Guilt
Pictured: The New Yorker’s celebrated editor, William Shawn Plath’s poem, “Dialogue Between Ghost and Priest” talks of the “black November” in the year of 1956 which severely escalated the Cold War. The character of “Father Shawn” may well be the editor of The New Yorker at the time, William Shawn. As an editor, Shawn seemed […]
“Resolve”: Battling the Invisible
Pictured: A double-decker bus in downtown London, December 1956 Scholar Nancy D. Hargrove dates Plath’s “Resolve” to be written in November or December of 1956. On December 19, 1956, a thick fog was the BBC News headline, causing death on the roads, railway, ship, air and postal delays (“unserviceable”) (CP, 52). The dirty fog (smog) […]
The Trip to Italy, via London
I am just back from two weeks in Italy. I took notes in my journal and thought I’d share with you here everything one might not hear everywhere else. That said, if you’re looking for landmarks and pictures of the Coliseum, look elsewhere (unless I have a picture of me with the Coliseum in the […]