Airel Restored

NEW YORK (AP) - British painter and writer Frieda Hughes was 35 before she was able to even glance at the poetry of her mother, Sylvia Plath, whose painfully sharp images and tumultuous life have captivated readers for decades.

But now, having flown from Wales for the occasion, Hughes sat calmly for more than two hours Tuesday evening as six authors read Ariel: The Restored Edition. It was the first time that the restored manuscript had ever been publicly read in its entirety.

The 40 ferocious poems were written around the time of the disintegration of Plath's marriage to British poet Ted Hughes, and not long before her suicide in London on Feb. 11, 1963.
Poets Frank Bidart, Jorie Graham, Kimiko Hahn, Richard Howard and Katha Pollitt, and literary critic Helen Vendler took turns reading the poems at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Hughes read the first and last poems, and Plath, restored to life in a recording, read the title poem.
The clipped consonants and drawn-out vowels of Plath's Massachusetts accent perfectly suited the stringent verse: "And I/Am the arrow,/The dew that flies/Suicidal, at one with the drive/Into the red/Eye, the cauldron of morning."

The cumulative thrust of her crystalline vision was overwhelming and hypnotic. Hughes occasionally swallowed hard or pressed a finger beneath her eyes during the reading. The more than 400 audience members in the sold-out Proshansky Auditorium sat with eyes closed, or followed along in their books; by intermission, organizers had sold out all 200 volumes.
The marathon and historic reading celebrated the new collection, which reinstates Plath's original selection and arrangement of the poems. In editing the book for the 1965 British and 1966 U.S. versions, Ted Hughes had removed more than 10 of Plath's poems and replaced them with some of the last poems Plath wrote before her death.

As Frieda Hughes explains in the introduction, her father did this both to shield neighbours and family from some of the more venomous works, and because he believed the later poems made for a stronger collection. Though he included the poems in Plath's The Collected Poems, in 1981, many vilified Hughes for his initial omissions.

"His choice was made with one kind of purpose in mind, but also to make it the best book he could, and my mother's was made with another purpose in mind, but also to make it the best book she could," Frieda Hughes told The Associated Press earlier on Tuesday.
Hughes said she was hesitant when asked to write the foreword by publisher HarperCollins. Though she had read her father's Birthday Letters at his request, shortly before he died in 1998, and later read his posthumous Collected Poems, Hughes had only skimmed a dozen of her mother's poems to satisfy herself that her own poetry was not like Plath's.
"Going anywhere near my mother's poetry just reminded me of the fact that she wasn't there," Hughes said, "and the fact that she wasn't there was constantly being brought up by the media, and it made it very emotionally difficult.

"I feel very acutely the loss of her. ... It was almost as if I was never allowed to grow out of it, because of this perpetual rehashing of her actual suicide. I had begun to feel that that was the only thing she was famous for - when in fact, although she lived a short life, she made her life count."

Despite any initial misgivings, Hughes's thoughts on her mother's life and writing offer a calm, tender account of a life that has too often been fodder for sensationalist coverage. The new book also contains such historical treasures as a facsimile of Plath's typed manuscript, her handwritten and typed versions of the title poem and the author's wonderfully dry introductions to poems she read for a BBC broadcast.

Different voices brought various aspects of Plath to Tuesday's reading, from Bidart's animated but conversational delivery to Pollitt's quiet humour to Graham's theatricality.
Afterward, Hahn and Howard spoke of being depleted, but also awed and enriched by the evening.

"It was a revelation," Howard said. "I just was astonished and loved being in it."

The reading was presented by the Academy of American Poets, HarperCollins and the Poetry Society of America.


Frieda Hughes was interviewed on NPR's Morning Addition. The interview can be heard here.
It includes a recording of both Sylvia herself reading as well as her daughter in a rare reading of her mother's work.

Weary

A nod-
Involuntary;
Coffee spoiled
The Page.
A reminder.

Between The Lines

"Sometimes my doctors tell me that I understand something in a poem that I haven't integrated into my life. In fact, I may be concealing it from myself,while revealing it to the readers." Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

If a person reads something into a poem that I have not intended to convey, who is the wiser? It seems to me more and more that static poetry might as well be prose. Not to say anything is wrong with prose, only that there is a reason for the differing literary art forms.

If twenty people read a poem I have written and and nineteen see and feel something close to what I was saying, then hooray for the one who saw something different. We've evidently had different life experiences. They see something I don't.

Puschart Nominations from VLQ

Check out the 2004 Puschart nominations from VLQ. Some truly outstanding material.

And This Is What Turkey Will DO To You

I spent some time this morning working on some cases from the office. Yes, on a day off. Blame it on the turkey.

I'm reading The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath by Ronald Hayman. Finding it quite interesting. Previously having read Rough Magic with I believe was a very balanced biographical book. In the early chapters of Hayman's book I am struck buy some of the material on Aurelia Schober, Sylvia's mother. So much is made of the relationship between Sylvia and her father and then the relationship between her and Ted Hughes, but there is no denying that Aurelia Plath had a significant impact on the formation of both positive and negative attributes where Sylvia was concerned.

In reading Letters Home (edited by Aurelia and published after Sylvia's death) there is a continual picture of an upbeat young woman who all but worshiped the ground that her mother walked upon. But there is some indication that several of Sylvia's poems were about feelings that reflected a different view of Aurelia. Hayman selects two "simplistic and misleading" ways in which this mother daughter relationship can be summed up:

"A virtuously unselfish mother has an ungrateful and vindictive daughter who not only commits suicide but leaves behind her poems and fiction which portray the mother in an unfavorable light and go on plaguing her for the rest of her life." Or, Sylvia can be seen as, "the helpless victim of a woman who makes important demands not only on herself but on everyone involved with her." But Hayman suggests that "[both] were victims, but neither was a helpless victim, and it's easy to understand why Sylvia had so much difficulty in holding a balance between positive and negative emotions towards Aurelia."

I will likely visit the Plath topic again. I am anxious to get my hands on a copy of Ariel: The Restored Edition.

It's here...

Winter came to my fair city in the wee hours of the morning. It dumped about six or seven inches of snow on us. The snow is wet - the kind that packs hard and it has taken over the trees, bending their branches in subordination the its will. They have a stark beauty to them. A quiet resolve.

Clearing his throat, he speaks....

Ah.... Ivy Alvarez has a wonderful contribution to MiPOesias. Ok, wonderful is such a blah word.... I don't know the word at the moment I'm looking for but I can tell you this poem speaks to me about hope where fear once lived. A mixture of joy and loss at the same time... and the ability to touch another human being and reaffirm life. Actually, the piece is itself - reaffirming. Oh, and how cool the people in Dublin hold poets in high regard. Suppose that is a genetic condition? Can we replicate it somehow around the rest of the world?

Eileen Tabios - the talented one know as "Moi" is correct when she noted I was speculating on her in Blogshares. But just to be fair - I have hoarded lots ofshares for poetry blog sites. I mean when you amass several billion on blogshares, what else you gonna do with your change? Besides... Just think if her Meritage Press had landed Britney Spears' poetry. We'd all be setting pretty. Ok, at least in a fantasy world.

Tonight I'll be at the WRITERS PLACE - 3607 Pennsylvania Kansas City MO 64111 for Open Mic at 8:00pm.

Forced myself to write a sonnet this weekend. Ok, it's not like I tied my hands behind my back or anything. After all, I usually have to wave them around in the air when doing something in a structured template. Sort of like wailing in anguish. It wasn't that bad. The experience anyway. I'm not discussing the poem itself.

There... I was about due for a post.