Free from annoy: if dump-discarded, rough boys
Spying a pate to spare
Glowering sullen and pompous from an ash-heap
Might well seize this prize
And maltreat the hostage head in shocking wise
Afflicting the owner’s sleep—
At the mere thought her head ached. A murky tarn
She considered then, thick-silted, with weeds obscured,
To serve her exacting turn:
But out of the watery aspic, laurelled by fins
The simulacrum leered,
Lewdly beckoning. Her courage wavered:
She blenched, as one who drowns,
And resolved more ceremoniously to lodge
The mimic-head—in a crotched willow tree, green-
Vaulted by foliage:
Let bell-tongued birds descant in blackest feather
On the rendering, grain by grain,
Of that uncouth shape to simple sod again
Through drear and dulcet weather.
Yet, shrined on her shelf, the grisly visage endured,
Despite her wrung hands, her tears, her praying: Vanish!
Steadfast and evil-starred,
It ogled through rock-fault, wind-flaw and fisted wave—
An antique hag-head, too tough for knife to finish,
Refusing to diminish
By one jot its basilisk-look of love.
And that’s that …
x x x Sivvy
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
FEBRUARY 24, 1957
Dearest Mother,
Hello, Hello! I realized after I had put the call through that it must not yet be 6 a.m. in the hamlet of Wellesley, but I thought you wouldn’t mind being wakened up by such good news, and I simply couldn’t keep it another minute. They had changed your phone number, so there was much delay and waiting, but finally you were roused and discovered.
We walked around in a trance all yesterday. Ted and I felt grumpy Saturday morning after a week of three letters-from-editors rejecting Ted’s poems for spurious reasons. They talk about having “room” for poetry as if they only had visas for a special secret aristocracy and the visas were all taken. They are SO SORRY. Well, the idiots should Make Room for fine poetry, and that’s Ted’s.
The big judges—W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Marianne Moore (all of whom I’ve met, interestingly enough)—are big enough to recognize new poetic genius and not be scared of it as small jealous poets and frightened poetry editors are.
The telegram came at about 10:30 yesterday morning. We gawped at it. At first we both thought that Ted’s poem at the Atlantic had got some piddling prize. Then light dawned, and we both jumped about, yelling and roaring like mad seals. The telegram was from New York and said: “Our congratulations that Hawk in the Rain judged winning volume Poetry Center First Publication. Award letter will follow.” Well, we await the letter in a fury of excitement to know details.
No money prize is offered—just publication—by Harper’s, I believe. But under the auspices of these three fine judges, the three best living and practicing poets in the world today, I’m sure Ted’s book will be a best-seller.
You know, it is, to the day, the anniversary of that fatal party where I met Ted! And I’d read his poems before and had a vision of how much I could do for him and with him. Genius will out. We are not letting it go to our heads, but working twice as hard. I only hope he gets his book of children’s fables accepted somewhere. He has got a terrific idea for another children’s book, and we could demand a really good illustrator if this one were a published success. The second one is about his demon-fairy, Snatchcraftington, taking a little boy, or boy and girl, on 26 adventures through the lands of each letter of the alphabet: from the Land of A to the Land of Z.
I am more happy than if it was my book published! I have worked so closely on these poems of Ted’s and typed them so many countless times through revision after revision that I feel ecstatic about it all.
I am so happy his book is accepted first. It will make it so much easier for me when mine is accepted—if not by the Yale Series, then by some other place. I can rejoice then, much more, knowing Ted is ahead of me. There is no question of rivalry, but only mutual joy and a sense of us doubling our prize-winning and creative output.
You know how breathlessly I always waited for mail and prize telegrams. Well, imagine how marvelous it is to have Ted grown equally sensitive to the mailman’s miraculous, potential footstep and wait as eagerly as I.*
A whole pot of milk burned black on the stove yesterday while we called you and danced about. We had to air the house; it was burnt down to a black crisp, the milk, I mean, and throw the pot away.
Then both of us wandered around town in the rain, shining with joy. We ate lunch at a lovely English bar—salad, bread and cheese, and ale. Bought an armful of books, had tea opposite King’s and a delicious supper … We didn’t have enough money for snails and venison, but are going back to eat them if I win any poetry money soon….
We don’t care really what reviews the book gets as long as it’s bought and read. It’s magnificent—far superior to Richard Wilbur, who never treats the powerful central emotions and incidents of life. … Ted writes with color, splendor and vigorous music about love, birth, war, death, animals, hags and vampires, martyrdom, and sophisticated intellectual problems, too. His book can’t be typed. It has rugged, violent war poems like “Bayonet Charge” and “Griefs for Dead Soldiers,” delicate, exquisite nature poems about “October Dawn,” and “Horses”—powerful animal poems about Macaws, Jaguars, and the lovely Hawk one which appeared in the Atlantic and is the title poem of the book. He combines intellect and grace of complex form, with lyrical music, male vigor and vitality, and moral commitment and love and awe of the world.
O, he has everything.
And I am so happy with him. This year is hard for both of us. I should not have three jobs—writing, cooking and housekeeping, and studying for tough exams. I would like, after a year, maybe two, of teaching to satisfy my self-respect, to give up work and combine writing and being a wife and mother … but children only after I have a poetry book and a novel published, so my children fit into my work routine and don’t overthrow mine with theirs. We are such late maturers, beginning our true lives at the average age of 25, that we don’t want children for at least several years yet. Until we’re well-off enough financially to afford a housekeeper … so I won’t be torn between domestic chores and my writing fulfillment, which is my deepest health—being articulate in print.
We plan to stay in America probably two years, then apply for writing fellowships, both of us—Saxton and Guggenheim—and live for a year or two, writing solidly, in Italy in a villa near Rome. And then, if there are children, perhaps you would come over in the summer to live next door and help babysit now and then!
As Doctor Krook, who is “Doris” to me now, the dear woman, said so sweetly yesterday at my fine supervision on D. E. Lawrence: it seems to be nothing but delightful choices and prospects for us two! …
Write soon …
x x x Sivvy
MARCH 7, 1957
Dearest Mother,
The most blissful thing is your two letters about the Spauldings’ Cape cottage. You don’t know the change that’s come over Ted and me, just dreaming of it. For us, it’s the most magnificent present in the world: a Time and a Place to write! And the Cape is my favorite place in the world. Just the vision of that little spick-and-span kitchen with the refrigerator and stove and the sun streaming in sustains me through the grim plodding of studying masses for exams. And to have a place I know will be such a rest. It is really exhausting to have to “discover” a new town—shops, quiet nooks, etc., and I think the seven weeks on the Cape will be the best start on my campaign to make Ted fall in love with America. He is getting really excited and glad about it now; and I, vicariously, am more than doubly glad to go back and open up its treasure chests to him. He loves to fish, so maybe you and
I can accompany him and Warren deep-sea fishing some weekend.
We’d love a party on June 29 and should be marvelously rested from the boat trip. My exams finish about June 1, so I’ll have leisure to pack while Ted goes on teaching right up to the sailing date.
By dint of much typing, I manage to keep 20 manuscripts out continuously from both of us. There was a dead lull for a week after the telegram….
Miraculously, with the publication of a sumptuous new Cambridge-Oxford magazine (which contained two of my poems, right after an article by Stephen Spender, on request from the editor), our fame has spread around Cambridge among the students. Editors of Granta, the Cambridge “New Yorker,” have humbly asked both Ted and me for stuff. I came home after my classes late yesterday afternoon and found a very sweet boy talking to Ted—editor for one of the spring issues. I made coffee and gave them a piece of orange chiffon pie, and we had a good talk. Ted is much more modest than I about his work, so I act as his agent. The next issue of Gemini (the new magazine) in May will carry three poems by Ted and a story and book review by me, and I think Granta may well produce us both. We do love to appear together…. The undergraduate magazines are read in London by editors—there are so few university writers—whereas in America, undergrad publications are legion and ignored by higher-ups. I’ve convinced Ted that his book will sell better if people get to read and hear and like his poems first; he is difficult, strong, and overpowering and needs to be read much. So he should publish everywhere he can. I have another little editor coming tomorrow, really a nice fellow, very brilliant, who went to Moscow this year on a student-visit and who translates Russian short stories, etc. (Shall try another Apfelkuchen; I love giving hospitality to intelligent people.) …
x x x Sivvy
MARCH 12, 1957
Dearest Mother,
It is with the maximum of self-control that I don’t at this moment rush to call you up again over the phone and rouse you at what must be 4 a.m.! Hold on to your hat for some wonderful news:
I have just been offered a teaching job for next year!
AT SMITH!
I got the nicest little letter from blessed R. G. Davis this morning (I know dear, blessed Miss Chase is responsible for this and for my knowing so early). The salary sounds very fine to me: $4,200!!! …
Well! You can imagine how much indefinite, vague concern this sets at rest. I am just walking on air. Ted is so happy for me and is really excited. He will help me in every way. We are writing Amherst for him, and if there is nothing there, will try surrounding boys’ schools. But with my good salary, I’d rather have him working part-time at a radio station or on a newspaper than have a killing program such as he has had this year.
As I see it, this means nine hours of teaching a week (three classes [courses] of three hours each) … I know they are the last stronghold of liberalism at Smith. Harvard, et al., are producing Ph.D. businessmen.
Did you see in the Alumnae Quarterly where President Wright stood up against the project to lengthen Ph.D. term of work and advised against the absurd requirement to have the Ph.D. thesis “add to the sum of knowledge” (as it made people spend years on ridiculous, worthless subjects). He said these requirements might be all right for the “plodder,” the routine, stodgy type, but would discourage brilliant, young potential teachers with a creative gift. Imagine what pride I’ll feel working under a President with such fine ideas!
I’m writing dear Mrs. Prouty at the same time, so you can share the news with her, feeling I’ve already told her firsthand….
I know just what you mean about “winter doldrums.” I’ve started taking thyroid again and feel much better. It got so I couldn’t work after 2 p.m.; I felt so sleepy and uncaringly exhausted. But I feel suddenly as if I see light behind the grim advancing hydra of exams—beautiful light—writing furiously on the Cape, teaching and writing furiously at Smith in the lovely Pioneer Valley, among the people I admire most in the world. What an introduction for Ted!
We still wait for the letter about his book, but I imagine it will come out next fall, and then what fine publicity it will have in the center of these poetry-conscious university communities. So light your way through this gruelling run-down month with vision of a summer and an academic year within driving distance of us!
… Naturally, I’m humble and a little awed by this teaching job. I’ll want advice from you and courage this summer. I want to make them work devilishly hard and love every minute of it. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than teach at Smith. I know it; of course, not the higher-up “ins and outs” of the Department, but what they do. I remember the dull … teacher I had for Freshman English and will do my best to fascinate the little girls and keep them gaping at dangling carrots. (I am thinking of having a suit or two tailor-made here.) I’ll throw away my knee socks for good and be a grown woman. How wonderful not to be always receiving! If I’d been offered a writing fellowship, I’d have turned it down. I feel a deep need to develop my self-respect by teaching, by “giving out,” and Ted understands this so well.
… I’ve been bogged down on the second of two stories I’m working on for the Ladies’ Home Journal market (this last one based on the character of [a Smith classmate] and called “The Fabulous Roommate”). Well, he took me on a long evening walk, listened to me talk the whole plot out, showed me what I’d vaguely felt I should change about the end. Last night he read all 30 pages of it, word for word, unerringly pointing out awkwardness here or an unnecessary paragraph there. He is proud of the story, thinks it’s exciting and valid as a character study (not an “art” story), but the sort of thing that takes up where I left off in Seventeen….
Love to you and dear Warren,
Your happy Sivvy
MARCH 15, 1957
Dearest, darling Mother,
It is about 10, and I am slightly groggy with sitting up last night to type my last paper of the term. I have two supervisions today, the last day of term, praises be, and shall grit my teeth and endure. I feel if I had one more minute of pressure I should explode. Actually, I feel I should be doing much more than I do, but small things come up….
I got an interesting and rather pleasant letter from a London literary agency with offices in New York, saying they’d read my poems in Gemini (the new Oxford-Cambridge magazine) with admiration and would be interested in handling any stories or novels I wrote and would I care to come to lunch in London to talk this over. Ted and I may stop in; we keep planning this London trip to cover all our business … but I won’t bother with agents until we get home and I get advice from friends like Peter Davison.
Tomorrow I’ll feel wider awake and relaxed in the beginning of vacation. What bliss to study at random from a choice of 100 and more books and not to turn out any more blithery papers …
… My best love to you and Warren. I can’t wait to run up my beloved Nauset beach in the sun!
Love,
Sivvy
MARCH 18, 1957
Dearest Mother,
… Wendy Christie (that nice widow-friend of Doctor Krook’s) burst in yesterday, waving a London Sunday Times. To my amazement, Harold Hobson, well-known, theater critic, in his weekly column, devoted several lines to a very favorable review of “Spinster,” one of my two poems in the new Oxford-Cambridge Gemini! I was astounded and overjoyed. Tried to get copies today, but couldn’t, so I quote. (Look it up if you can. It’s really a terrific honor—a poem reviewed in a theater column!) Mr. Hobson starts the top of his third column review of As You Like It (a Cambridge undergrad production) with the following words:
The young ladies of Cambridge, it appears, know all about love. On my way from Liverpool Street, I read in the new university magazine, Gemini, a poem “Spinster” by Sylvia Plath, twelve times, no less. Here, sharp-edged, memorable, precise, is a statement of the refusal of love, a firm, alarmed withdrawal of the skirts from the dangerous dews.
… Isn’t that nice, though? Ted and I agreed the greatest joy a p
oet has is writing something a perfect stranger can want to read “twelve times”! Do share this with dear Mrs. Prouty. In THE LONDON SUNDAY TIMES! I still have to pinch myself.
I have just typed and sent off two stories to the Ladies’ Home Journal—about 43 pages in all—“The Laundromat Affair” and “The Fabulous Roommate.” Wish me luck … I still manage to keep 20 manuscripts between us out. Thanks for the cold pills, by the way. Hope they’ll be a good charm to ward off any symptoms.
… Well, to try to make a rhubarb pie before Ted gets back, I’m off. Much love to you and Warren—
Sivvy
MARCH 19, 1957
Dearest Mother,
Such nice mail today, and I feel so much brighter after a good night’s sleep that I thought I’d write a follow-up to my last letter written yesterday. I’m so glad you, too, are rejoicing about the Smith job. I will, no doubt, be scared blue the first few days, but from the keen way I enjoyed managing those round-table discussions on poetry at the English festival in New York State, I’m sure I’ll love my work. The schedule is surely the freest anywhere, the girls intelligent and willing (at least the larger proportion of them), and since they’re not lecture, but discussion, courses (every girl has to do an 8-page theme every two weeks), I should learn a lot, and where Ted and I are “young poets” and writers with strong integrity and critical views, I should have pride enough to feel that my viewpoint, growing as it is every day, may help them gain new insights at their stage of development. After all, they are seven years behind me!
The big, brown envelope came from Harper’s today. Very exciting. A huge blue contract to sign with hundreds of little bylaws. Ted gets the chance to negotiate with a British publisher himself, so I think we’ll write to Faber & Faber, T. S. Eliot’s place. They should, I hope, jump at the chance. As I said before, the book is scheduled for publication in mid-August. We are going to have a decent picture taken of Ted Saturday….