Sylvia Plath’s Resting Place

For Sylvia – 27^th October 1932 to 11^th February 1963

I’ve visited Sylvia Plath’s resting place on a number of occasions and often noticed pens and pencils placed on her headstone. Like offerings to the immortal spirit so that another life can continue beyond this one. 

I remember lying down on my side to get a photos of the headstone from a quirky angle and a voice behind me in a strong Yorkshire accent said, “If you lie there any longer they’ll shovel some soil on you!” We laughed and nodded then moved on. 

The poem below simply reflects my thoughts and feelings on my regular visits to Heptonstall.

Pen's Atop

Visitors cannot see your face, just an edifice

To feel your presence beneath our feet, the soil, the turf, a hilltop cemetery to rest in ‘peace’

To reach the wuthering height I have wandered the cobbled, banked streets

Passing time-capsuled houses and yesteryear shops

The monolith is a magnet for the searching ones, the reverential ones to pay obeisance

All pulled in and drawn in like a black hole swallowing light

We willingly trudge and traipse to the site and become our senses

To offer condolences and search for insight

And grow beyond what we are now, to turn into something new.

Heads swirl, dizziness not uncommon, silent photographs taken to relive the scene, revive the moment

Pens and pencils adorn the headstone top, as if in the hope you will rise and use them to set down new verse

And add to your canon, expand your oeuvre at night when no one is watching, silently writing

As the crows maintain a respectful distance, the hawks fly high, gliding, observing.

Sylvia Plath and the strange case of the grubby dishcloths.

Nicholas Hughes and the poem 'Child' by Sylvia Plath

Before she died, Sylvia wrote a poem dedicated to her son Nicholas called ‘Nick and the Candlestick’, which includes the line: “The pain you wake to is not yours.” Both absolving the baby from any feeling of future guilt about her marital breakdown, but also maybe ominously pointing to a darker intent about her own life.

Another poem written at this time in Fitzroy Road, ‘Child’ also covers the love and possibilities for her children, and in particular Nicholas who had just celebrated his first birthday on 17^th January. At the time, Sylvia, Nicholas and Frieda were living in a flat on the top floor of 23 Fitzroy Road in Primrose Hill, London. The poem would later feature in the Winter Trees collection, published in 1971, although the photos here are from my copy of the Rougemont Press limited edition pamphlet.

The poem was written on Monday 28^th January 1963, just 11 days after Nicholas’s birthday and 12 days before she herself died, on Monday 11^th February.

Looking at the facsimile of her handwritten notes, Sylvia had rattled off the first three stanzas reasonably quickly and with clear thought. However, the fourth stanza seems to have caused the most consternation, as her mind worked hard to conclude the poem with three lines that reflected her current state of mind, marriage and life, and again absolving the child of any blame or responsibility. In the end she got it just right but the journey to the fourth stanza includes many crossed out lines, indeed half of her notes are workings of the last stanza! Lines noted but omitted include:  

“Not this troublous wringing of dishcloths….not this grubby dishcloth…this sudden absence of planets….paralytic hands + dishcloths…this black paper without moon or planets…ceiling with no planets or constellations…”

The references to ‘dishcloths’ and ‘grubby dishcloths’ suggests the poem was written at the kitchen table as these references appear to be real time observations flashing through the poets quicksilver mind. Through this editing and what looks like quite a bit of effort and thought, the final version of the last stanza was finally arrived at:

Not this troublous   

Wringing of hands, this dark

Ceiling without a star.

Sadly, Nicholas Farrar Hughes committed suicide on March 16, 2009 aged just 47 in Alaska and had a successful career as a marine biologist.

Sylvia Plath - The Lady in the Vase

The Poet as Artist

Really? Wow! For a long time I hadn’t realised Sylvia was an accomplished artist. A chance internet search a good few years ago started to drop hints.

I already had books by singers and rock stars showing their artistic talent, but a poet was a pleasant surprise. 

The drawings add another dimension to understanding how Sylvia saw the world, what she imagined with her own eyes, giving further insights and understanding to her work.  They also show what an important element art was in her life, once saying in a letter to her mother Aurelia, that it was her deepest source of inspiration.

However, I believe only two poems were directly referenced through paintings - by Henri Rousseau and Paul Klee, indicating she was not a prolific ekphrastic poet but more taking inspiration and emotional feelings to help inspire her work.  

Sylvia’s artworks augment the library and the imagination, stir visions of people and places and add context to her travels and locations. 

Her art varies from quick, flick-of-the-wrist sketches to time-sapping drawings in exquisite detail, in a variety of locations and subjects from the Calder Valley, Paris, America and Spain among others.

Looking again through Crystal Gazer and the Mayor Gallery exhibition books, I gazed upon a drawing of a lady as part of an elaborate vase, a sweetcorn plant at her back, attached, entwined. It’s one of my favourites and is pictured above. I wrote a short poem about it below.

Sylvia clearly had an eye for the unusual, the everyday and the ornamental. Like her writing, her ‘art’ will continue to inspire.

The Lady in the Vase

A statuette jailed with pen and ink

Imprisoned in a fine impression

A lady trapped in porcelain

And wrapped in alabaster corn

Protected from the outside world

Woven paper her guardian

The page a life sentence

And the viewer, the jury

Spring the figurine free from her fate with every gaze.