The End of An Exciting Year; The Beginning of Even More
Hello and Happy New Year! On this first day of 2023, we have a symbolic blank page on which to write our hopes, fears, prayers, and creative energies. All of these create our experience of this new year. Today, I hope that you celebrate possibilities and empower yourself to attract them. This is that […]
New Book Coming! Tarot Life Lessons
Hi Everyone, Sorry I’ve been so bad about blogging. I’ve been finishing up two books for Inner Traditions publishers, and then I went right into my busy Octoberfest/Halloween season. I should have a little break between now and the Christmas party rush and will hopefully catch up a little. In the meantime, I’m sharing the […]
“Spider”: Caught in Willie’s Winning Web
Ted Hughes positioned “Spider” as a 1956 poem, but the evidence suggests it may have been written in 1958. In the poem, Plath references the African folklore tale of Anansi, the trickster spider. Hughes noted in The Collected Poems that by the end of the year 1956 she had become greatly interested in African folklore, […]
“Maudlin”: The Monthly Curse
Of all the work in the 1956 section of The Collected Poems, “Maudlin” may be the one closest to Plath’s autobiography. However, this poem was probably written in 1959. After all, Plath wrote in her journals on May 25, 1959, “My Maudlin poem is a prophetic little piece. I get the pleasure of a prayer […]
“The Beggars”: Neighboring Countries on Hard Times
“The Beggars” is one of Plath’s poems seemingly set in Benidorm, Spain. If Plath had been reading the newspapers from home, which Aurelia might have sent, she would have seen that a new version of Faust opened at the Theatre on the Green in Wellesley, running July through August. In an article entitled, “The Beggar’s Opera,” the […]
“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 […]
“Strumpet Song”: …And God Created Female Competition
Plath wrote in her journals that “Strumpet Song” was written shortly after meeting Hughes (UJ, 410). It is a literary treatment of time in the metaphor of a whore (CP, 33). Plath’s first encounter with Hughes, when he kissed her “bang smash on the mouth” at a party and she bit his cheek (UJ, 212), […]
“Dream with Clam-Diggers”: A Sinking Feeling
Over those first six months of marriage with Hughes, Plath told her mother that she was writing new “happy” poems glorifying her love with Ted. The poems she listed were “Two Sisters of Persephone,” “Metamorphosis,” “Wreath for a Bridal,” “Strumpet Song,” “Dream with Clam-Diggers,” and “Epitaph for Fire and Flower.” It is curious that Plath […]
“Spinster”: Unlovable Imperialism
Pictured: French police attack Algerian protesters in Paris, 1956 The image of the spinster was a popular one in the movies during the 1940s and ‘50s, and the character was often pictured pining over a dead soldier boyfriend whose picture was on the mantel. In 1942, Bette Davis had starred as spinster Charlotte Vale in the film […]
“Landowners” and “Departure”: There Goes The Neighborhood!
Hughes placed Plath’s poem, “Landowners,” in the year 1956 in the Collected Poems. Plath referenced in her journals writing a poem on the subject of landowners two years later, on July 4, 1958, (UJ, 399). It is of course possible that she had another poem on the same subject. If we agree with Ted Hughes’ […]