September has not been the month I wanted it to be. My feature writer this month was Sylvia Plath. Though it began well with a post about her biography and a second post about two of her most famous poems, my progress soon derailed. Why? On an emotional level, it derailed because, though I...
Last Sunday, I went to see It Chapter Two. This was my first movie outing in a month. I’m sure there have been some excellent movies released this summer, but I’ve been lukewarm about the choices at my local theater. Since the movies it’s been showing were movies I had decided to wait for...
In 1965, two years after Sylvia Plath’s death, Ted Hughes published Ariel. This was her second collection of poetry—her first was The Colossus (1960)—but it’s the collection that elevated her reputation and established her as a literary genius. In organizing Ariel for publication, Hughes dropped twelve poems that Plath intended to include, and he replaced them with twelve...
It is, no doubt, an irrational comparison, founded on loose if not unstable grounds, but I wish to compare Sylvia Plath to my mother. Both women were born in October 1932, only nine days apart. My mother was born on a kitchen table in Athol, Idaho. Plath came to life in Boston, Massachusetts. Both...
In honor of Labor Day, I’m having a Coffee Labor Day this week, instead of a Coffee Sunday. I finished reading Friday by Robert A. Heinlein. You might recall that it’s the novel I struggled with all through August. Published in 1982, it had failed to age. It explores the theme of what it...
