Emily, I love everything about this. I, too, learned not to say that my favorite poets were Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton. People acted like I was an embarrassment or a cliche. It's entirely dismissive of their genius & it carries forward the "thou shalt not" write confessional poetry warnings that seem only to apply to female writers. I'm so excited for your book & this newsletter. You. Kick. Ass.
i love Sylvia, but am currently trying to figure out how to come to terms with her racism, especially in The Bell Jar. for context, i'm a white person, and also a poet. Sylvia's collected works was my first book of poems I ever owned. I've written so many poems for her, about her, after her... I'm even making a zine all about her. but people on twitter recently are really coming for her racism, and i don't want to be the kind of person who dismisses such things. Have you come into contact with this problem? If so how do you deal with it in your own love for Sylvia?
So sorry to just reply to this. It's something I think about all the time, and have begun writing about in the last two years (I have a piece about the "n-word" in "Ariel" in American Poetry Review, but it's just print-- don't know if you subscribe). I don't dismiss it at all. I engage with it-- research it, read more about it, talk with scholars and fans of color about it, problematize it. I gave a talk about this in Greece in April, I'd be happy to send you the text if you give me your email. I mean, people should "come" for it, because it's not ok. But you can't make it go away, and we learn nothing from it by ignoring it.
Emily, I love everything about this. I, too, learned not to say that my favorite poets were Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton. People acted like I was an embarrassment or a cliche. It's entirely dismissive of their genius & it carries forward the "thou shalt not" write confessional poetry warnings that seem only to apply to female writers. I'm so excited for your book & this newsletter. You. Kick. Ass.
Great fire here professor smarty.
i love Sylvia, but am currently trying to figure out how to come to terms with her racism, especially in The Bell Jar. for context, i'm a white person, and also a poet. Sylvia's collected works was my first book of poems I ever owned. I've written so many poems for her, about her, after her... I'm even making a zine all about her. but people on twitter recently are really coming for her racism, and i don't want to be the kind of person who dismisses such things. Have you come into contact with this problem? If so how do you deal with it in your own love for Sylvia?
So sorry to just reply to this. It's something I think about all the time, and have begun writing about in the last two years (I have a piece about the "n-word" in "Ariel" in American Poetry Review, but it's just print-- don't know if you subscribe). I don't dismiss it at all. I engage with it-- research it, read more about it, talk with scholars and fans of color about it, problematize it. I gave a talk about this in Greece in April, I'd be happy to send you the text if you give me your email. I mean, people should "come" for it, because it's not ok. But you can't make it go away, and we learn nothing from it by ignoring it.