Blackbird February 9, 2007
Posted by amanda in : Uncategorized , trackbackYesterday was really interesting! I got to meet Dr. Donovan the editor for Blackbird the online literary journal at VCU, which recently published a newly discovered Plath sonnet. He told me the story of how they found the poem and were able to get the publishing rights:
apparently one of the MFA graduate students was writing a paper on F. Scott Fitzgerald but what she really wanted to do was study Sylvia Plath, so she asked around to see if there were any links between the two authors. She found a library that had a huge amount of data on Fitzgerald, including Plath’s undergraduate copy of The Great Gatsby. So, then she went and found an article about this particular book of Plath’s and how on a certain page (which you can see by going to blackbird’s website) there is a note “L’Ennui” which corresponds to a poem. Having never heard of this poem, the student contacted the Lilly library which has all of Plath’s manuscripts and asked for the poem which (for a fee) they sent her. They sent her two typed pages: one with Plath’s name and address at the top and another without. The student inquired as to where this poem was published and the library responded that it was not published because the copy that didn’t have her name indicated that Plath maybe didn’t want to publish it. Blackbird worked for two years to get the rights to this sonnet, contacting Faber and faber (Plath’s publishers) and both of Plath’s children who now have the rights to her work (they never succeeded in reaching her children) and finally after paying on two-hundred dollars they recieved publishing rights! News of the new poem spread around the world (including a weird amount of interest from Turkey….which is weird) and gave a great deal of acclaim to the Blackbird journal.
I also learned that there are many pieces of Plath’s Juvenelia in this same library that have still never been published. I think it is really interesting that they would publish her journals and letters and all kinds of documents that she couldn’t have possibly envisioned being publish(able) and yet they don’t publish these early poems that are so helpful in understanding the origins of her creative process, claiming that she didn’t intend them to be published!
Another great thing about this Blackbird publication is the way in which it introduces the poem and has links to the origional scanned documents. Dr. Donovan agreed with me that it is a shame that she is not given credit for her poetic skill and rather her death is treated like a masterpiece. In his effort to curb this belief, he displayed the poem as a kind of momento to her early self-discipline and practice as a poet. Because it is true, from a very young age Plath worked extremely hard, read as much as she could and wrote at legnth each and every day, and amongst her writing she created a lot of poetry, that while nowhere near as skillfully beautiful as her Ariel poems, are incredibly valuable stepping stones on the way.
so, visit Blackbird and check out “Ennui” by Sylvia Plath!
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Thanks for the great post..