A Crown for Ted and Sylvia
Kim Bridgford
A Crown for Ted and Sylvia
Copyright © 2019 Kim Bridgford. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-7288-0
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-7289-7
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-7290-3
Manufactured in the U.S.A. September 6, 2019
Cover Image: Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath in Yorkshire, England, 1956.
Photograph by Harry Patrick Ogden.
Courtesy of Smith College Special Collections
Ruth Fainlight Letter: The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume II, pp. 658-59.
This book is for everyone who has ever been fascinated by the work of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Even now, over forty years after reading The Bell Jar, I am still in love—and so I offer up this crown.
Friday 6 October 1961
Dear Ruth (Fainlight),
A small note to say you are an angel for the terrific apple recipes & how I hope you are all right. It’s difficult & in a way impertinent to tell you how very much I am wishing things to go well for you, because noone can ever really identify deeply enough with someone else’s special predicament to make the words “I know how you feel” carry their full weight . . .
Lots of love,
Sylvia
Permissions
The American Journal of Poetry:“Nick Hughes”
“Potboiler”
The Christian Century:“Karma”
“Lazarus”
“Peter”
“You Can’t Go Back”
Crab Orchard Review:“Over the Hill”
“Why People in Their Fifties Read Mystery Books”
Crannog:“A Pentina for My Leopard Coat”
The Cresset:“Judas”
Light:“Martian Landing, Fishtown”
Lighten Up:“Fool’s Gold”
“Hillary Clinton”
“Jennifer Lawrence”
Literary Matters:“The Artist”
The Lyric:“What Fresh Hell Is This?”
The Moth:“Martian Intermarriage in Philadelphia”
Peacock Journal:“Spoils”
“Why Sisyphus Isn’t a Woman”
Plath Profiles:“Buying Sylvia Plath’s Typewriter”
“A Crown for Ted and Sylvia”
Raintown Review:“Brides of Christ”
The Rotary Dial:“Jesus Is God’s Selfie”
I am grateful to the following journal editors, who have brought my work to print: Melissa Balmain and Kevin Durkin; Dolores Mildred Batten, Julia Gordon Bramer, William Buckley, and Robert Eric Shoemaker; Jill Pelaez Baumgartner; Jerome Betts; Sarah Bunting, Tony O’Dwyer, Ger Burke, and Jarlath Fahy; Pino Coluccio and Alexandra Oliver; Anna Evans; Marci Johnson; Allison Joseph and Jon Tribble; Bill and Kate Lantry; Robert Nazarene; Rebecca O’Connor; and Ryan Wilson. I wish to thank them for the tireless work they do to support writers.
“J. R. R. Tolkien” and “Donald Trump” appeared in Higgledy Piggledy, edited by Daniel Groves and Greg Williamson (Waywiser Press).
“The Death of Sylvia Plath’s Father,” under the title “Loving Otto Plath,” appeared in Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, edited by Marilyn L. Taylor and James P. Roberts (Kelsay Books).
“A Pentina for My Leopard Coat” was included in the Crannog launch on Friday, June 29, 2018, in Galway, Ireland.
“Trump’s Seven Forbidden Words” appeared in the CDC Project, edited by Sarah Freligh and Amy Lemmon.
“Why Emily Dickinson Would March on Washington” appeared in Nasty Women Poets, edited by Grace Bauer and Julie Kane (Lost Horse Press).
I.
A Crown for Ted and Sylvia
1. The Reader
You never know the truth, but try to guess.
You dream a farm of moon-lit wolves and foxes.
The oven makes you pause: the inside boxes
Of a marriage. Hard to say who is most jealous,
Hungry for the clapping literati.
What do you have to give up? Put on offer?
What ancient spirit is the ruling cipher?
The profits from The Bell Jar make the party.
Now everyone is dead but Frieda,
But still there is the context, and the rope,
And Nicholas hanging down. Inside a
Family it is terrible; the soap
Of the concentration camp, the gas
That sickens you as it will come to pass.
2. Sylvia
What sickens you as it will come to pass?
Hindsight sifting the rubble, the relics.
Electro-shock. The other schizophrenics
Making lambs of paper plates. Your choice
Was to write.
I want to be a god.
It is not that I want to be dead. I want perfection.
Assia’s kiss something I saw, the kitchen
Dirty now. I backed away from Ted.
And there were more, and there had always been.
I wanted to will the world into my own.
I didn’t like it, terrified or cold.
It was ruined. You can’t go back, then.
Betrayal nibbled there, along my bone.
It was inside that kiss that I grew old.
3. Ted
It was inside that kiss that I grew bold.
Sometimes there is relief. No one to see
(Except, it seems, my wife). Sometimes, a beauty
Is inevitable. Maude Gonne. Yeats failed,
But his poetry would make his singing name.
I