Thank you for sharing this; your dog is adorable ❤ I love all of Plath's work and feel her talent and more lighthearted poetry should be celebrated more.
Ha, many thanks Kate! He is a sweetheart and very photogenic, of course. And I agree about the wide range of Plath's poetry should be better known - I was grateful to Heather Clark for highlighting this in her biography Red Comet, and to Jeremy Noel-Tod for reminding me.
Your pieces are always such a treat to read. I hadn't read "Balloons", so this was a delightful discovery, nor this painting. Her drawings are remarkable too, in such wonderful descriptive, jagged ink.
Parallel Lives sounds great! Victorian marriages are so interesting - my new novel, Topsy & Co, is centred on the life of William Morris and narrated by Georgie Burne-Jones. As I got towards the end of it, I started to realise that it’s also a portrait of a set of interconnected marriages (William & Jane Morris, Georgie & Edward Burne-Jones, Lizzie Siddal and Rossetti etc). Something so fascinating about the way that Victorians’ marriages shaped their lives.
I loved this, Ann. I was thinking of Sylvia Plath all weekend. I didn't know that about her 'Balloons' poem - it's a lovely, charming poem. Really hit home for me as my 1 year old was still playing with her balloons from her birthday last month... I know the scenes she's describing so well.
And her art is so interesting - I came across this quote from an article on a DC exhibition I can't believe I missed a few years back -
“There’s this sense of a duality that she seemed to be playing with in her self-portraiture, that she later writes about,” Moss observes. “A lot of her writing draws on images of mirrors and eyes that look outward and inward, and that’s visible in her self-portraits, this almost-conflicted state of being that surfaces in her use of color and the emotions that her drawings and paintings evoke.” Themes from the writing appear in the art, but it’s also easy to glimpse elements of the art in the writing. As Moss puts it, “how the visual surfaces in her descriptions. She compares her daughter, Frieda, to a ‘fat gold watch’ when she’s born. You start realizing how much she must have been seeing in her mind before putting it into words.”
What a beautiful way to start my week. What a glorious painting. Thank you, Ann, for sharing the brightness of a poet who is so often overshadowed by her death. A triple-threat woman! And your photos bring me joy. So happy to be one of your paid subscribers, and thrilled that you are one of mine. Congratulations on the milestone of 800.
Triple threat women! I love this.
It’s very inspiring… and she really was.
Me too Nic
Thank you for sharing this; your dog is adorable ❤ I love all of Plath's work and feel her talent and more lighthearted poetry should be celebrated more.
Ha, many thanks Kate! He is a sweetheart and very photogenic, of course. And I agree about the wide range of Plath's poetry should be better known - I was grateful to Heather Clark for highlighting this in her biography Red Comet, and to Jeremy Noel-Tod for reminding me.
Australia had an interesting code breaker team similar to Bletchley Park: https://youtu.be/S9SfhvbloLE?feature=shared they decoded the location of a Japanese general.
Thank you - that sounds very interesting. Such brilliant women.
Your pieces are always such a treat to read. I hadn't read "Balloons", so this was a delightful discovery, nor this painting. Her drawings are remarkable too, in such wonderful descriptive, jagged ink.
Parallel Lives sounds great! Victorian marriages are so interesting - my new novel, Topsy & Co, is centred on the life of William Morris and narrated by Georgie Burne-Jones. As I got towards the end of it, I started to realise that it’s also a portrait of a set of interconnected marriages (William & Jane Morris, Georgie & Edward Burne-Jones, Lizzie Siddal and Rossetti etc). Something so fascinating about the way that Victorians’ marriages shaped their lives.
What a puddlicious photo ❤️
I loved this, Ann. I was thinking of Sylvia Plath all weekend. I didn't know that about her 'Balloons' poem - it's a lovely, charming poem. Really hit home for me as my 1 year old was still playing with her balloons from her birthday last month... I know the scenes she's describing so well.
And her art is so interesting - I came across this quote from an article on a DC exhibition I can't believe I missed a few years back -
“There’s this sense of a duality that she seemed to be playing with in her self-portraiture, that she later writes about,” Moss observes. “A lot of her writing draws on images of mirrors and eyes that look outward and inward, and that’s visible in her self-portraits, this almost-conflicted state of being that surfaces in her use of color and the emotions that her drawings and paintings evoke.” Themes from the writing appear in the art, but it’s also easy to glimpse elements of the art in the writing. As Moss puts it, “how the visual surfaces in her descriptions. She compares her daughter, Frieda, to a ‘fat gold watch’ when she’s born. You start realizing how much she must have been seeing in her mind before putting it into words.”
https://www.vogue.com/article/sylvia-plath-national-portrait-gallery-one-life
Loved this.
What a beautiful way to start my week. What a glorious painting. Thank you, Ann, for sharing the brightness of a poet who is so often overshadowed by her death. A triple-threat woman! And your photos bring me joy. So happy to be one of your paid subscribers, and thrilled that you are one of mine. Congratulations on the milestone of 800.
Now I have aa excuse to buy balloons.🎈
How have I never seen that gorgeous painting?! Thank you!
How have I never seen that gorgeous painting?! Thank you!