sivvy
P.S. English men are great!
{Postcard}
MARCH 2, 1955
… Thursday and Friday is an enormous 3-session symposium on “The Mid-Century Novel‚” starring among others, Alfred Kazin, Saul Bellow, and Brendan Gill, chaired by Miss Chase. Cyrilly Abels just sent me a lovely telegram offering me $10–$50 (depending on fulness of material) to cover this thing, so must spend almost 3 solid days concentrating to do a good job on this.
… Cross your fingers for me during these crowded days!
x x S.
MARCH 13, 1955
Dearest Mother,
… I have written three or four little poems, partly humorous, about the sculpture and paintings I saw at the Whitney Museum in NYC when I went there for the 1955 American exhibit.
… In spite of the fact that this is my worst week of exams and papers, I am very happy, probably because Sue Weller and I spent the morning today playing tennis for the first time in the season … I never felt so lively as today for months, and I am determined to keep up this exercise and to go out for crew again this spring the way I did last fall. I am not bad if I practice, and I love the feeling of being up early in the morning and having my muscles tightening. Basically, I think, I am an “outdoor” girl, as well as a contemplative sedentary writer.
Mile just sent my lovely pink check, which will pay my book bill at least. Somehow, with the coming of the spring, nothing really bothers me, and I feel very happy and optimistic. I am turning out five poems a week, and they get better and better. I hope to write a lot this summer and try to get a little book of them into print in about a year: think I’ll try out for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Just for fun.
… Don’t want to get your hopes up, but I can’t help telling you that my fates seem to be brewing up something quite good. The Fulbright Adviser here just got a letter from the agent in Oxford, saying I’d been recommended for one, nothing more, and mentioning that if I could be sure of providing for the second year that Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford would admit me! Naturally, this is all very hush-hush, and I’m not even supposed to know, as my grant is apparently so indeterminate, but to know that Oxford also accepted me, without even the aid of a Mary Ellen Chase, on the testimony of my record, a long Chaucer paper done for Mr. Patch, and an interview with the wife of the President of Kenyon College, is a rather beautiful thing to contemplate. Especially after that smug obviously-Oxford professor at my Harvard interview told me it was impossible to get a Fulbright to either Oxford or Cambridge! Oh, even if I don’t get one, I know somehow that I will go! Imagine having a choice! Of course, if I get a Fulbright, they will probably assign me to a particular one, but I hardly can worry about that!
Cross all your fingers for me this coming crucial month.
Your puddle-jumping daughter,
Sylvia
MARCH 24, 1955
Dearest Mother,
… When I come back, I shall again be ready to do the fantastic reading and writing program I have over spring vacation. I really need a respite from the daily round of classes and waitressing, and stoic living. It will be good to read and write in peace at home.
There are only a few people I want to see: Mrs. Prouty, Mr. Crockett, Patsy [Patricia O’Neil], and Dr. B., of course. And I do hope Warren will be around. I miss him very much and am hungry for talking with him again, as I am for living with you all. There is nothing like an alternation of work and play to keep one fresh and spirited. Fortunately, I am building up a list of outlets and tonics for my periodic slackening times. In the summer, it will be tennis, swimming, sunning and sailing. In the winter, New York is a help, and I hope to add skiing in the Alps next year!
The Harcourt & Brace editor, a charming young man of 26 (!), graduate of Harvard and recent recipient of a Fulbright to Cambridge University, came up Wednesday on his quarterly trip to bookshops in our environs. We had a charming long lunch and talk at Rahar’s, after which we drove over to the bookshop at Holyoke and I browsed while he talked to the owner. The ride was a treat, and if he drops by in June on his visit to Hathaway House, I hope you have a chance to meet him: Peter Davison is his name; his father is an English teacher at Hunter College, a visiting British poet….
Lots of love to all,
Sivvy
Sylvia’s graduation photo from Smith
Sylvia typing in the backyard, Wellesley, 1954
APRIL 16, 1955
Dearest Mother,
Well, all things come to those who wait, and my waiting seems to be extended for two weeks until the judges decide, after reading our poems over in the quiet of their boudoirs, which of the six of us deserves the coveted prize (won in the last 32 years by an amazing number of now well-known poets). [She had entered the Glascock Poetry Contest, an intercollegiate competition held annually at Mt. Holyoke College.]
Suffice it to say that I don’t know when I’ve had such a lovely time in my life. I took to Marianne Moore immediately and was so glad to have bought her book and read up about her, for I could honestly discuss my favorite poems. She must be in her late seventies and is as vital and humorous as someone’s fairy godmother incognito. Interestingly enough, she asked about you and said she hopes to meet you some day, and also said you should be proud of me, which I thought I’d tell you in case you didn’t already know!
Took the train to Holyoke Friday afternoon, was picked up at the station and taken to a palatial guest room in one of the dorms where I met attractive Lynne Lawner, the contestant from Wellesley and a charming girl whom I enjoyed very much. We were interviewed by the Monitor, had our pictures taken again and again, clustered around Miss Moore, interviewed by the reporter from Mademoiselle, a Smith graduate whom I am also very fond of, and went to dinner of lamb chops, very good, if a little stilted at first, with everybody very new and still unacquainted.
Then came the reading: a magnificent audience (about 200) packed into a charming small room with dark walls, plush chairs, leaded windows, and a very literary atmosphere. The six of us sat facing the audience at a sort of seminar table, and the response was most rewarding.
All the contestants were amazingly attractive, charming people (from Holyoke, Smith, Columbia, Wellesley, Wesleyan, and Dartmouth), and read very well. The girls, I felt, were much superior to the boys—the only one I felt was serious competition was the one from Dartmouth whom I would bet on for winning. The other two girls were often excellent, but very uneven. All of us got most vociferous applause, and it was a real pleasure to see such an enthusiastic group—there were all sorts of other events going on, too, and no attempt was made to drum up an audience.
The reading went excellently, and I loved doing my poems, because they all sounded pretty polished and the audience was immensely responsive, laughed in some of the witty places, even, which made me feel tremendously happy. I think I’d love being a humorous public speaker. It’s such fun to be able to make people laugh.
After the reading, we had a “party” to which selected Holyoke girls were invited, and I had a chance to talk to John Ciardi and Wallace Fowlie, the other two critics, poets and judges, both delightful, also teachers and translators, the former having translated Dante and the latter, Rimbaud and the French poets. I loved them both, and they grew on me more and more as the time went on.
This morning Lynne and I were brought a sumptuous breakfast in bed and had our voices recorded at the radio station. I hope they will send us records of them, as they said they might. Then we had a marvelous forum by the three judges on translations which I found delightful. The whole affair was culminated by a delightful luncheon at which everyone was very intimate and cozy, and Marianne Moore signed a dear autograph in my book of her poems. I really loved them all …
Love to all,
Sylvia
APRIL 21, 1955
Dear Mother,
Every now and then there comes a difficult spell where little discrepancies pile up and look enormous, or rather gray, and
this week has been one of those. I just feel like writing you about it, although I usually am in a more cheerful mood, and I’ve been hoping that not hearing from you since Saturday doesn’t mean that anything is wrong at home [I had suffered another gastric hemorrhage]. Did you see the spread [of photos of the chief poets in the Glascock Contest] in the Monitor? I don’t know what day it came out, but I would like to have you save a copy or two and send one to me if you could. I think they did a generally good job except for that out-of-context quote which had me making the prize moron remark: “I think reading is important.”
If I get through this week, I shall feel much better, but everything has piled up so that I know how a bank feels when all the people decide to go to the window the same day and withdraw their money just to be sure it’s been there all along.
… I was very happy, however, to be given the Alpha award for creative writing (chosen by the English department), which is non-remunerative, just a gold A and an impressive note from the office of the President. I enclose the clipping. I think you would have been pleased to see how the tea came out. It was for the 50 members of Alpha in the very bright red-and-white Dutch room of the Alumnae House. I poured for the whole hour, a feat which I decided to learn in a dash of bravado, and there were sandwiches and a lot of good conversation. Nancy Hunter and Lynne Fisher were among the new members (Nan for her sonnets this semester) and I was most glad for them both. It went off very well, my first experience at presiding at anything, and I really had fun.
I have signed papers accepting the $1,000 Smith scholarship, which they will kindly let me renounce if I get the Fulbright. The next four weeks will be spent plunged in review for the 3 final comprehensives on May 21, 23, and 25, after which I shall be ready for a long, long respite. I have reached my limit of “giving out” this year and feel that my peace of mind is more important than bringing up my two high B’s in Shakespeare and German, and God knows what I’ll get on the Kazin paper, which is my whole mark for the semester. I am just ready for three months of long, leisurely living with no schedule to meet, plenty of sleep and less pressure than most people, and teaching is the one kind of job I can envision (in the near future) which would support me with these qualifications and which I think I honestly might enjoy.
The most difficult choice I have ever had to make happened today. Editor Weeks on the Atlantic sent me a letter with a $25 check for your favorite “Circus in Three Rings,” BUT with a really thorny string attached. They liked the second stanza much better than the first and third and challenged me to do a revision around the second stanza with a new title (suggested by them), “Lion Tamer.” Well, I was a kaleidoscope of mixed emotions and had a long talk about it all with Mr. Fisher. The top of my head said excitedly: this is your chance to get through the golden doors (they mentioned wanting to have me represented in the young poets’ section of the August issue). Review, revise. Quick. The inside part looked at the poem, which sprang out of a certain idea of a trilogy, admittedly poorer in the third stanza than the others, frothy, not bad but light. I thought of their paternalistic letter and felt a little sick and disillusioned. I just can’t tailor-make it over again. Another poem, yes, but the dangers of contrivance, of lack of spontaneity, are legion if I revise this. I’d have to live with it the year out and still I’m afraid a revision would sound artificial. I did resent this attempt at butchering to fit their idea of it. Prose, I wouldn’t mind, but a poem is like a rare little watch: alter the delicate juxtaposition of cogs, and it just may not tick.
So I think I’ll sleep on it the weekend out, and if a revision comes, I’ll send it, but I doubt it. If not, I think I’ll send four of my best latest poems which are “consistent” (a lack they felt in the batch I sent last September) and ask Mr. Weeks to please seriously consider these alternates. Of course, I’ll have to send back the check, too, which is a hard thing, and they certainly put me in a very awkward position. I battle between desperate Machiavellian opportunism and uncompromising artistic ethics. The ethics seem to have won, but what a hell! They should have accepted it completely, with the 2nd stanza recommending the others, or not at all. This limbo is definitely difficult! So much dreaming, and then this problem!
Well, do send me an infusion of energy. It will do me more good than thyroid. I really miss hearing from you, and your letters always cheer me up.
Your almost-but-not-quite, -try-us-again daughter,
Sylvia
APRIL 23, 1955
Dear Mother,
Along with love and best wishes for your birthday, I thought you’d like to know I tied for first prize at the Holyoke Contest with the boy, William Whitman, from Wesleyan. That means a check of $50 for me, plus a pleasant glow.
Best of all was a eulogistic letter from John Ciardi, my favorite of the judges, who called me “a real discovery,” saying: “She’s a poet. I am sure that she will go on writing poems, and I would gamble on the fact that she will get better and better at it. She certainly has everything to do it with. Praise be—” All of which made me so happy I could cry—He also wants to help my publishing and sent a list of quarterlies he wants me to send specific poems to with his recommendations—so it’s not a completely indifferent world, after all!
Love,
Sivvy
APRIL 25, 1955
Dear Mother,
It was good to get your letter today; I am so sensitive to mail and really enjoy it…. Yesterday and today I spent getting off various letters and finishing typing up my manuscript for Mr. Fisher of poems: there are about 60 poems in the book titled “Circus in Three Rings” (poof to the Atlantic), and it does look like a good bit of work to have produced in one semester. I included all my poems, some bad, some good, some still needing revision, and dedicated it to “My favorite Maestro, Alfred Young Fisher.” I also made a carbon of the manuscript so I can have it to work from this summer. I want to write at least ten good new poems to substitute for the inferior or slight ones and turn 30 in for a Borestone Mountain book competition this July and then the Yale Series next year. Of course, I really don’t think I have a chance, as most are in that limbo between experimental art of the poetry little magazines and the sophisticated wit of The New Yorker, too much of the other for either. But I shall try.
Needless to say, the next four weeks are rather crucial, and I should find out a good deal of concrete information: Fulbright, Atlantic, Vogue, Mile, Christophers, and several Smith prizes to be announced in assembly May 18. Now I shall just read relentlessly away, reviewing four years of notes and books and creating a correlation question. I feel much better about the German [she dropped that course] now, as I am in my cycle of ebbed energy and know that at these times I must pare my demands to a bare minimum. I feel this is more sensible than stubbornly trying to juggle too many balls at once. I look enormously forward to a summer of rest and slow-paced creative work and outdoor relaxation.
Don’t worry about me at all. You see that I can cope with my limitations, even though it would be much nicer if I didn’t have any. I do need at least 10 hours of sleep a night [a family characteristic], a minimum of pressure (most of the time) and a life that allows for cycles of energy (I wrote my thesis in two months, in great spurts of energy, much before any other senior finished) and corresponding complete relaxes. Teaching or marriage combined with free-lance writing would be ideal for this, I think. At any rate, be at ease about me these next weeks and wish me luck.
I hope your birthday finds you feeling much better and do give my love to all.
Sivvy
{Her phone call the next day, to wish me a happy birthday ended with “Thank you, Mother, for giving me life.”}
APRIL 28, 1955
Dearest Mother,
… By the way, amusingly enough, I just found out this morning that I won $100, one of the 34 prizes in the student contest for the Christophers! … I was interested to note that I was the only winner from a big Eastern college…. I am probably the only Unitarian that won a prize! ??
? As you see, my frugality prevents me from calling home for anything less than a definite Atlantic acceptance, a Fulbright, or $500 or more. As yet nothing from these last.
Also I am enclosing the latest and last copy of the Smith Review, which I hope you will save for me, in which I have a story and poem. I’ll be interested to know what you think of the story. I’m also sending Mrs. Prouty a copy with news about the Alpha award, the Glascock Contest, and this latest one.
… Do keep getting well and strong and give my love to all.
Sivvy
[Sylvia was invited to judge a high school literary contest held at a writers’ festival in the Catskill Mountains of New York.]
MAY 6, 1955
Dearest Mother,
The hunter being home from the Catskills, she will take up her porcupine quill to add a supplement to this card, wishing you best luck and love on your day. After ten hours of sleep last night (got back to Smith at midnight), I feel much more human and scarcely able to believe that I lived so fantastically much in a mere 24 hours. Words can hardly convey the packed experience I’ve had.
Armed with my Writer’s Digest, I boarded the Greyhound bus for Albany on Wednesday morning, was driven through lovely green hills and apple orchard country, and took another bus to Kingston, New York, where I was met by a fat, well-tempered, hot … farmish woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Thornell. At this point, I decided to be my country self and wondered what on earth Mr. Thornell would be like, the general chairman of the whole festival. Well, I learned a lot in a few hours. On the drive to their home, Mrs. Thornell, obviously deferent to my New York City appearance and “literary reputation,” told me that her youngest daughter of three had just had her tonsils out unexpectedly that morning, that her aunt had died the week before, and that the house was in the midst of being redecorated. At this point I expected Mr. Thornell would be tied up in the pasture, cropping grass, and that the school would be held in a barn. On the contrary.