Back in the infancy of this blog, I posted on the Gordon Ames Lameyer mss  at the Lilly Library, Indiana University at Bloomington. Since that time in June 2007, I have made several trips back to the Lilly to re-work with the materials. Each archival visit brings a different focus, a different level of importance, and a different and changing meaning and understanding of the materials contained in each library, box, and folder. In March of 2015, I spent four days at the Lilly doing intense research on for the Letters of Sylvia Plath . As is usually, I called for the Lameyer mss to look at the original letters, and as well to look again at the amazingly vibrant slides and photographs held in the collection. That got me started thinking about the possibility of dating them, to better understand some of the times that Plath spent with Lameyer in various locations in Massachusetts, as well as Paris, Venice , and Rome. The finding aid indicates that there are 21 slides plus additiona...

In December 2015, I did some fairly extensive, intensive work with the photographs of Sylvia Plath and Gordon Lameyer from their time together as a couple and as friends. Lameyer took a series of full color images of Plath from circa spring 1953 to April 1956 which are now on slides and printed photographs held by the Lilly. Plath is depicted from Northampton to Ipswich, atop Mount Monadnock to the beaches at Cape Cod, from Newport, Rhode Island to Paris and Venice and Rome. And more. This work included studying the photographs carefully and establishing the date on which they were taken using a variety of sources to support the conclusions I was reaching and include her journals, letters, calendars, and more. Plath and Lameyer traveled from Paris, France to Munich, Germany on Friday 6 April 1956. Then from Munich, Germany, to Venice, Italy on Saturday 7 April 1956. They had just the one full day, Sunday, 8 April 1956, in the enchantingly aquatic city and it seems they made the most...

A while back ( 13 December 2009 ), I did a post that involved looking at statements or assertions made in Paul Alexander's biography of Sylvia Plath Rough Magic regarding a supposed abortion had by Plath circa September 1955. Since then I have looked some more at Plath's passports, trying to figure out her travel routes and the cities through which she passed - even if only fleetingly in the carriage of train. I started this post in February 2012 and feel like it is time to post it! There are two passports of Plath's. The first she used from 1955 through 1957 is now held by Indiana University; the second was in use from 1959 until 1963 (though the last stamp is from 1961 -- when Plath visited Wales and Ireland in 1962 she did not receive stamps). The second passport is now held by Emory University. As such, I have broken this post up into two parts: the first part (which is part two if you consider the post from 2009 to be part one) will examine Plath's first passp...

Sylvia Plath mentions the song " Big Rock Candy Mountain " in her short story "The Day Mr Prescott Died": As I helped Mama up the stone steps to the porch, I could hear a creaking and sure enough, there was Ben Prescott sitting and swinging on the porch hammock like it was any other day in the world but the one his Pop died. He just sat there, lanky and tall as life. What really surprised me was he had his favorite guitar in the hammock beside him. Like he'd just finished playing "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," or something. ( Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams , Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2008, p. 223) Plath wrote about the real life events that inspired this story in two letters to Gordon Lameyer written on 22 and 23 June 1954. Plath had recently visited Winthrop because her childhood friend Ruth Freeman's father passed away suddenly. Plath does not however, in either of the letters, make reference to the song. The original letters ar...

Sylvia Plath's story "The Shadow," written in 1959, recounts Sadie Shafer's leg biting incident from "the winter the war began" ( Johnny Panic , Harper & Row, 1979: 143). Plath's Unabridged Journals record that on 7 January 1959 she was "finished, almost" with the story (457). On 31 May she considered it - of the six most recent stories she had written - one of the top three (486). However, by 15 June 1959, Plath thought that "The Shadow" "reads might thin, mighty pale" (496). She failed to publish the story, sending it in on 1 September 1959, along with "The Wishing Box" and "The Daughters of Blossom Street" to London Magazine (which accepted only "The Daughters of Blossom Street" on 13 November 1959 and printed it in their May 1960 issue). There is little chance London Magazine was the only periodical to which Plath submitted this story. The Submissions List Plath maintained is now he...

Bleerb buhb Lilly gungdsr*#@ Plath a09jdnjh!!! Flidpo finger breaking slitherbeck! What a week! This morning I continued works through Box 7a, reading poems listed (or not) and uncollected in Collected Poems . Most of these works were written before 1955, some contain edit suggestions by professors, annotations by her mother, and so on. Her development from those poems in the 1940s to those written at Smith is so wonderful to see. As it stands if you read Collected Poems , you kind of just jump right into the middle - or even well past the middle. But, working through the poems alphabetically as one does in an archive, the years dissolve away and it's just Plath. Plath being Plath. A new collected poems that goes back to at least 1950 -to bring the poems more in line with the Journals, Stories, and Letters - would be great. However, as not all copies are dated sometimes it would be quite difficult to place some of them. But the right person or people I feel could ...

The Lilly Library at the Indiana University, Bloomington, holds the Gordon Ames Lameyer Papers, 1953-1956. They also hold a massive Plath archive, of which the finding aid is online here . Lameyer and Plath dated beginning around 1953, but he was not the only man Plath saw during their time together. Lameyer was eclipsed by fellows like Myron "Mike" Lotz and Richard Sassoon. There are 98 total items in this collection. On two research trips to Indiana in 2002 and 2003, I had the pleasure of looking through this collection. The photographs and slides are extremely well preserved; the color especially so. Used to seeing Plath reproduced only in black and white, seeing color photographs of her adds a very deep dimension to her likeness. Here is an abstract of the collection, "Consists mainly of cards and letters from poet Sylvia Plath to Gordon Ames Lameyer (1930-1991). Two poems by Plath are included in the letters: "Dirge in Three Parts" on page 4 of the Feb. 6,...