Published officially today by the Northeastern University Press is Kathleen Spivack's memoir With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz & Others . 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1555537883. Retail price: $19.95. Order from the publisher :  Or, buy through Amazon.com . Also published today is Analyzing Sylvia Plath (an academic mystery) by Alice Walsh. The book is available in paperback and as a Kindle ebook.

The following is a guest post review by Jaime Jost (the  Plath Profiles author of " To See What She Saw: The Influence of Sylvia Plath " in Volume 4 and " 'Panic' over Puddle Jumping in Plath's 'Mothers' " published TODAY in the Volume 5 Supplement). Jaime was kind enough to review two panels: Panel 1: Plath and Religion; and Panel 5: Plath's Influences: Lowell and Sexton, the Qabalah. Please thank Jaime (and Bridget in the post before) for their wonderful write-ups, for their fresh perspectives on the Symposium panels, and for providing us with possibly otherwise lost impressions due to concurrent nature of the conference structure. Your work, effort, and insight are all highly-valued, very much appreciated, and a valuable contribution to your fellow Plath-heads. Panel 1: Plath and Religion Emma Komlos-Hrobsky, editor of Pinhouse Magazine in New York, presented her paper “‘The Black Amnesias of Heaven’: The God-Obsessed Atheist and...

The following is a review of Panel 5: "Plath's Influences: Sexton and Lowell, the Qabalah" and was kindly attended by and written up by Bridget Anna Lowe, author of the Plath Profiles 5 essay " Burning Free: Sylvia Plath's Summer 1962 Bonfires and the Strange Case of the Surviving Christmas Card ". I had the pleasure this morning of attending the Sylvia Plath Symposium's Panel #5 on the topic of "Plath's influence on/from other poets." The panel, which was comprised of three speakers, presented their papers in the following order: Sarah-Jane Burton on "Literary Influence and the Boston Trio: Plath, Lowell and Sexton;" KatieRose Keenan on "Plath and Sexton's Mutual Influence;" and, finally, last but certainly not least, Julia Gordon-Bramer on "Plath's Ariel : The Feminine Arrow into the Apocalypse." * * * Speaking first on the panel was Sarah-Jane Burton; in the approximately twenty minutes she wa...

Last Friday I gave a brief paper entitled "A Perfectly Beautiful Time: Plath’s Nostalgia" in a panel organized by Steven Gould Axelrod called "Robert Lowell & His Circle" at the 22nd Annual American Literature Association conference in Boston. You will never guess the subject of my paper... True confession: I cheated a bit. For the main portion of the paper I used the introduction to my paper for Plath Profiles 4, which is titled "A Perfectly Beautiful Time: Sylvia Plath at Camp Helen Storrow," and wrote a brief introduction to connect it up a bit with Robert Lowell and his influence on Plath. And I thought maybe I could/should post that introduction here to maybe get a bit of conversation going on the subject of Plath and Lowell; and nostalgia as used in Plath's poetry (and other works, too), as learned from Lowell, particularly as I see it in his 1959 volume Life Studies .  Plath and Nostalgia is not a subject that has been explicitl...

This blog post kind of got away from me. If it's as nasty outside where you live as it is where I live, then maybe that's ok... Val Hennessey at the Daily Mail reviews Lesley McDowell's Between the Sheets in " Clever Girls with Terrible Taste in Men ." I read the book over the winter and found it lacking. Plath didn't belong in with the rest of the women for one reason: she didn't put up with Ted Hughes's infidelity. All the other relationships in the book were sadly portrayed and I kept screaming at the book "Leave the bastard!" These men, whether they or I knew it or not, taught me everything I need to know about relationships. The stories were repetitive and far too similar, and did not do much to make me interested in the lives or the writings of those featured. It was too the point that I dreaded reading the Plath chapter, which is the last chapter. But it read far better than I expected. This disappointment with the book in general ...

Two articles to bring to your attention today. The first is " Icons Among Us " by Caleb Daniloff in BU Today (or, yesterday, or 30th November 2009, depending on when you view). This is about Room 222 at Boston University, where Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, among others, attended Robert Lowell's poetry courses. Please note, I've found the link to be nomadic and slightly problematic. If it doesn't work please accept my apologies. The second is from today's Evening Standard . Geordie Greig gives us " Time to give Ted Hughes his rightful place in Poets' Corner, say laureates ." A third article appeared in the 2 December 2009 issue of The Times : Fiona Hamilton's " Put Ted Hughes in Poets' Corner, writers urge Westminster Abbey ."

The following post was submitted to Sylvia Plath Info Blog from Jim Long. I've just been reading the recently-published Words on Air: the complete correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) . I thought perhaps readers of this blog might be interested in a couple of comments between them on Plath, and on Richard Wilbur’s poem “Cottage Street, 1953”, in which he describes an early encounter with Sylvia and her mother, shortly after Sylvia’s breakdown and suicide attempt. In October 1963, the journal Encounter published posthumously a set of 10 of Plath's late poems: "Death & Co", "The Swarm", "The Other", "Getting There", " Lady Lazarus ", "Little Fugue", "Childless Woman", "The Jailor", "Thalidomide" and "Daddy". On October 27th 1963 (Sylvia's birthday!), Lowell wrote to Bishop: "Have you read the posthumous poe...

Faber will release the Letters of Ted Hughes , edited by Christopher Reid, on 1 November 2007. The Telegraph recently ran an article , announcing their intention to print extracts in the coming days. I do quite adore the Telegraphs honesty in pulling extracts, "We have, inevitably, concentrated on the relationship with Sylvia Plath, the subject of an enduringly prurient, non–literary fascination." The mammoth 800-page book will retail for £30.00, but if you buy it early - from amazon.co.uk for example, you could save as much as 50%. Since 2000, large volumes of letters of some of the twentieth centuries greatest poets such as Dylan Thomas and Robert Lowell have been published. These tomes add much to our understanding of the poets lives. A collected letters of Sylvia Plath would be a most welcome addition to this genre. Having read many unpublished letters in the archives held at Smith College, Indiana University, and King's College, Cambridge University, there is...

The Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University is has impressive holdings. Sylvia Plath audited Robert Lowell’s poetry course in the winter/spring semester of 1959 and it was there that she met Anne Sexton. Sexton, Plath and others spent time at the bar at the Ritz (pictured to the right and now called The Taj) on Arlington Street in Boston after class and discussed poetry, suicide, and other tantalizing subjects I am sure. One day in 2005, I had the occasion to visit the archives and looking for any information on this course. They produced for me the General Catalogue, 1958-1959, Volume XLVII, Number 23. On page 140, in the section on the College of Liberal Arts (at 725 Commonwealth Avenue), is the description for course EN 305,306 “Writing of Poetry” taught by Robert Lowell. The course description reads, “Versification. Analysis of contemporary poetic techniques. Manuscripts read and discussed in class.” The College of Liberal Arts had classrooms at 705 and 725 Co...