Idle Rambling: Starting to Read New Biography on Sylvia Plath

Updates

February 15, 2013: what a surprise. See below, the note regarding the new Sylvia Plath biography. I finished it. Would love to have someone to discuss it with. Last night, at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, I heard the author, Carl Rollyson, speak on his biography of Sylvia Plath. Absolutely fascinating. 

 

Original Post

The closest I can come to an English tea house in the Boston area is Starbucks. I visit our neighborhood Starbucks almost daily.

When I walked in today, overhead, Norah Jones, Come Away With Me:



I have just started Carl Rollyson's 2013 biography of Sylvia Plath.

Years ago I "ran" across Sylvia Plath, but do not recall "how." It was early in my aggressive reading program that I started while in Yorkshire, starting back in 2002. I enjoyed my Sylvia Plath stage, reading several biographies of her and her husband, and, of course, her book, The Bell Jar.  I left my Sylvia Plath phase a long time ago, but I think of her every so often.

So I was quite excited to see a new biography. The author is a professor of journalism at The City University of New York, so his writing might not be as good as that of an Irish, English, or Scottish writer, but be that as it may.

The introduction and first chapter are outstanding. The author assumes the reader is familiar with Sylvia Plath's life and will minimize going over "old ground." He will try to give the reader a feel for the intensity and passion this woman had with regard to writing.

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On a completely different note, reading the Plath biography quickly took me to Shakespeare: 

Ariel's Song

    Come unto these yellow sands,
              And then take hands:
    Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd
              The wild waves whist,               [whist: to be, or cause to be "quiet"]
    Foot it featly here and there;                [whist: card game; to be quiet]
    And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
              Hark, hark!
    Bow-wow.
              The watch-dogs bark.
    Bow-wow.
              Hark, hark! I hear
              The strain of strutting chanticleer   [chanticleer: a rooster]
              Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.

    Full fathom five thy father lies;
              Of his bones are coral made;
    Those are pearls that were his eyes:
              Nothing of him that doth fade,
    But doth suffer a sea-change        [here is where Shakespeare coined 
    Into something rich and strange.        ["sea change" for
    Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:       ["major transformation"]
                              Ding-dong.
    Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell.    [c. 1560; Shakespeare, again]

It is truly amazing: a) how "modern" Shakespeare sounds; and, b) how many phrases Shakespeare introduced that we still use. He really was incredible. The right man at the right place at the right time.

Also, note, the use of "yellow" again. Something I first noticed when reading James Joyce. Norah Jones also uses the color "yellow" in yellow grass.