Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea

Last updated

Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea
by Sylvia Plath
CountryUnited States
Language English
Rhyme scheme ABAB (slant rhyme)
Publication date1955 (1955)
Lines24

"Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea" is a poem written by Sylvia Plath that was first published in 1955, the year she graduated from Smith College summa cum laude. [1] An abstract poem about an absent lover, it uses clear, vivid language to describe seaside scenery, with "a grim insistence" on reality rather than romance and imagination. [2] [3] [4] [5]

Contents

The poem was awarded a 1955 Glascock Prize [1] and appeared in Mademoiselle in August 1955, accompanying an article about the prize. [6] : 163 

Plath used "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea" as the title poem of a collection she submitted unsuccessfully to the Yale Series of Younger Poets , [2] [6] [7] and as a working title for the collection that was eventually published as The Colossus . [2] But Plath later came to be critical of the poem; in 1958 she mentioned it as an example of the "old crystal-brittle and sugar-faceted voice" that she wanted to move past. [8] [9] [10]

Text and analysis

The poem has six stanzas of four lines each, featuring slant rhyme. [2] The regularity of the four-line stanzas, according to Linda Wagner-Martin, serves to suggest "a grim insistence". [2] The poem's literary allusions include references to Herman Melville's Moby Dick , William Shakespeare's The Tempest , and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land . [3] Jon Rosenblatt draws a connection to the modernist poet Wallace Stevens's work about imagination, as reflected in Plath's lines "The imagination / shuts down its fabled summer house", [3] while Philip Gardner says that the poem's title is also reminiscent of Stevens. [11]

Plath's professor Alfred Young Fisher drew a parallel between the poem and James Joyce's Ulysses . In a manuscript held in the Sylvia Plath Collection at Smith College, his margin notes appear to compare the poem's last line "And that is that, is that, is that" with Joyce's repetition in the line "showed me her next year in drawers return next in her next her next". [12]

As "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber" was written during Plath's college years, it can be considered part of her juvenilia, but it is not characteristic of this period of her work. [2] Plath's husband Ted Hughes wrote that the poem was an example of Plath "anticipat[ing] herself" and "seems to belong quite a bit later". [13] The Plath scholar Linda Wagner-Martin mentions this poem as an example of why more attention should be given to Plath's "juvenilia", saying that "Plath was a serious writer throughout her college years, beginning in 1950" and "her poetry should be considered 'mature' long before 1956". [2]

The scholar Keith M. Sagar called it one of Plath's finest poems. [9]

Wagner-Martin writes that the poem is typical of Plath's pre-Cambridge period and is "more about the poetic imagination than the two lovers of the title". [2] Wagner-Martin praises the work's formal qualities but says that it is "wordy and convoluted", [2] has an "aura of starched neatness", [14] does not display any distinctive voice, and is typical of 1950s poems like those of Richard Eberhart, Louis Simpson, and Richard Wilbur. According to Wagner-Martin, "nothing about the poem ... reflects that its author is young, female, or American." [2] She contrasts these characteristics with Plath's later poems such as "Lady Lazarus". [14]

According to Jon Rosenblatt, the poem's reference to "fractured Venus" and its tension between "the desire to reclaim a lost, dead love and the simultaneous recognition that the dead cannot be recovered" hint at themes that are explored more fully in Plath's later poetry collection The Colossus . [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Plath</span> American poet and writer (1932–1963)

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honour posthumously.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ted Hughes</span> English poet and childrens writer (1930–1998)

Edward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Sexton</span> American poet (1928–1974)

Anne Sexton was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Her poetry details her long battle with bipolar disorder, suicidal tendencies, and intimate details from her private life, including relationships with her husband and children, whom it was later alleged she physically and sexually assaulted.

Confessional poetry or "Confessionalism" is a style of poetry that emerged in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is sometimes classified as a form of Postmodernism. It has been described as poetry of the personal or "I", focusing on extreme moments of individual experience, the psyche, and personal trauma, including previously and occasionally still taboo matters such as mental illness, sexuality, and suicide, often set in relation to broader social themes.

<i>Sylvia</i> (2003 film) 2003 British film

Sylvia is a 2003 British biographical drama film directed by Christine Jeffs and starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, and Michael Gambon. It tells a story based on the real-life romance between prominent poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The film begins with their meeting at Cambridge in 1956 and ends with Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ariel (poetry collection)</span> Poetry book by Sylvia Plath

Ariel was the second book of Sylvia Plath's poetry to be published. It was originally published in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. The poems in the 1965 edition of Ariel, with their free-flowing images and characteristically menacing psychic landscapes, marked a dramatic turn from Plath's earlier Colossus poems.

Assia Esther Wevill was a German Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and emigrated to Palestine, via Italy, then later the United Kingdom, where she had an affair with the English poet Ted Hughes. While she was a successful advertising copywriter and a talented translator of poetry, she is mainly remembered in the context of her relationships with Sylvia Plath and Hughes.

<i>Birthday Letters</i> 1998 poetry collection by Ted Hughes

Birthday Letters is a 1998 poetry collection by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes' death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 1999. This collection of eighty-eight poems is widely considered to be Hughes's most explicit response to the suicide of his estranged wife Sylvia Plath in 1963, and to their widely discussed, politicized, and "explosive" marriage. Prior to Birthday Letters, Hughes had only explicitly mentioned Plath once before, in a poem titled 'Heptonstall Cemetary' from his 1979 collection Remains of Elmet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daddy (poem)</span> Poem written by American poet Sylvia Plath

"Daddy" is a poem written by American confessional poet Sylvia Plath. The poem was written on October 12, 1962, four months before her death and one month after her separation from Ted Hughes. It was published posthumously in Ariel during 1965 alongside many other of her poems leading up to her death such as "Tulips” and "Lady Lazarus."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erica Wagner</span> American author and critic

Erica Wagner is an American author and critic, living in London, England. She is former literary editor of The Times.

"Lady Lazarus" is a poem written by Sylvia Plath, originally included in Ariel, which was published in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. This poem is commonly used as an example of her writing style. It is considered one of Plath's best poems and has been subject to a plethora of literary criticism since its publication. It is commonly interpreted as an expression of Plath's suicidal attempts and thoughts.

Nicholas Farrar Hughes was an English-American fisheries biologist known as an expert in stream salmonid ecology. Hughes was the son of the American poet Sylvia Plath and English poet Ted Hughes, and the younger brother of artist and poet Frieda Hughes. He and his sister were public figures as small children due to the circumstances of their mother's widely publicized suicide. Hughes held dual British/American citizenship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Plath bibliography</span> Bibliography

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) was an American author and poet. Plath is primarily known for her poetry, but earned her greatest reputation for her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, published pseudonymously weeks before her death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ariel (poem)</span> Poem

"Ariel" is a poem written by the American poet Sylvia Plath. It was written on her thirtieth birthday, October 27, 1962, and published posthumously in the collection Ariel in 1965. Despite the poem's ambiguity, it is understood to describe an early morning horse-ride towards the rising sun. Scholars and literary critics have applied various methods of interpretation to "Ariel".

<i>The Colossus and Other Poems</i> Book by Sylvia Plath

The Colossus and Other Poems is a poetry collection by American poet Sylvia Plath, first published by Heinemann, in 1960. It is the only volume of poetry by Plath that was published before her death in 1963.

"The Blue Flannel Suit" is a poem by Ted Hughes published in 1998 in his book Birthday Letters. The 30th of 88 poems in the collection, "The Blue Flannel Suit" is one of several in the series explicitly about his wife Sylvia Plath. Prior to the series, Hughes had rarely discussed their relationship or Plath's death or responded to claims by some critics that he bore some responsibility for her state of mind and death.

<i>Winter Trees</i> Poetry collection

Winter Trees is a 1971 posthumous collection of poetry by Sylvia Plath, published by her husband Ted Hughes. Along with Crossing the Water it provides the remainder of the poems that Plath had written prior to her death in 1963.

"Sylvia’s Death" is a poem by American writer and poet Anne Sexton (1928–1974) written in 1963. "Sylvia's Death" was first seen within Sexton's short memoir “The Barfly Ought to Sing” for TriQuarterly magazine. The poem was also then included in her 1966 Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poems Live or Die. The poem is highly confessional in tone, focusing on the suicide of friend and fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1963, as well as Sexton’s own yearning for death. Due to the fact that Sexton wrote the poem only days after Plath’s passing within February of 1963, "Sylvia’s Death" is often seen as an elegy for Plath. The poem is also thought to have underlying themes of female suppression, suffering, and death due to the confines of domesticity subsequent of the patriarchy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Applicant (poem)</span>

"The Applicant" is a poem written by American confessional poet Sylvia Plath on October 11, 1962. It was first published on January 17, 1963 in The London Magazine and was later republished in 1965 in Ariel alongside poems such as "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" two years after her death.

Owen Leeming is a New Zealand poet, playwright, radio presenter and television producer. While working in broadcasting in London and New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s, he had short stories and poems published in various magazines and journals, and wrote stage and radio plays. In 1970 he was the first recipient of one of New Zealand's foremost literary awards, the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, after which he published his first collection of poetry. Later in life he settled in France and became a translator. His second collection of poetry was published in 2018, over four decades after his first collection, followed by a collection of selected works in 2021.

References

  1. 1 2 "Sylvia Plath". www.u-s-history.com.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Wagner-Martin, Linda (2003). "The Journey Toward Ariel". Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 83–94, 152–154. doi:10.1057/9780230505926_8. ISBN   978-0-230-50592-6 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Rosenblatt, Jon (June 15, 2018). Sylvia Plath: The Poetry of Initiation. UNC Press Books. ISBN   978-1-4696-4814-9 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  4. ↑ Roudeau, Cecile (2004–2005). "Crossing the Voice, Crisscrossing the Text: Writing at the Intersection of Prose and Poetry in Sylvia Plath's "Sunday at the Mintons'"" (PDF). RSA. 15–16. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  5. ↑ "Sylvia Plath's Days of Hope". Newspapers.com. The Sydney Morning Herald. May 28, 1988. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  6. 1 2 Alexander, Paul (March 17, 2009). Rough Magic: A Biography Of Sylvia Path. Hachette Books. ISBN   978-0-7867-3025-4 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  7. ↑ Pollak, Vivian R. (2005). "Moore, Plath, Hughes, and "The Literary Life"". American Literary History. 17 (1): 95–117. doi:10.1093/alh/aji004. ISSN   0896-7148. JSTOR   3567994 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  8. ↑ Hammer, Langdon (2001). "Plath's Lives". Representations. 75 (1): 61–88. doi:10.1525/rep.2001.75.1.61. ISSN   0734-6018. JSTOR   10.1525/rep.2001.75.1.61 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  9. 1 2 Sagar, Keith M. (January 1, 2006). The Laughter of Foxes: A Study of Ted Hughes. Liverpool University Press. p. 55. ISBN   978-1-84631-011-9 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  10. ↑ Plath, Sylvia (January 16, 2013). The Journals of Sylvia Plath. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 194. ISBN   978-0-307-83039-5 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  11. ↑ Gardner, Philip (1980). "'The Bland Granta': Sylvia Plath at Cambridge". The Dalhousie Review.
  12. ↑ Golden, Amanda (May 4, 2020). Annotating Modernism: Marginalia and Pedagogy from Virginia Woolf to the Confessional Poets. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-317-18063-0 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  13. ↑ Plath, Sylvia (March 12, 2015). "Introduction". Collected Poems. Faber & Faber. ISBN   978-0-571-26417-9 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  14. 1 2 Wagner-Martin, Linda (1999). "Plath's Triumphant Women Poems". Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 106–118. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-27527-4_10. ISBN   978-1-349-27527-4 . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.