Whitney Roberts Is My Hero! May 9, 2007
Posted by amanda in : Uncategorized , trackbackhi long-lost readers!
I have a friend (whitney, obviously) studying abroad in London this summer and she went on a secret mission to take photos of Plath’s house on Chalcot Square….so…for an exciting pre-graduation/pre-summer treat! Here are some photos:
The Sign For Chalcot Square
The Blue Plaque
Sylvia Plath’s House from 1960-61
The Stairs to the Basement
The View From Her Front Porch
Wow…she was thorough, she even rang the bell 
So, there you have it. I haven’t completely abandoned the blog…and I’m still urging our friend in London to allow me to publish the poem. I’ll check back when I visit Indiana!
Thanks again Whitney :)
Comments»
I am glad you haven’t stopped, and just wanted to tell you that this has been been the most exciting blog to read this semester by far. Congratulations on finishing, and I hope to keep tabs on your journey via the blogosphere.
Thanks! I am definetly going to continue updating the blog. I can’t thank YOU enough for all of your help this semester
hello amanda i would like to say that the photos aren’t showing beacause of an error in syntax in the url :
http://www.http.it//photos-484.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v81/95/51/26001268/n26001268_30851484_9060.jpg
should be:
http://photos-484.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v81/95/51/26001268/n26001268_30851484_9060.jpg
try to change it and we will see it.Bye!
OMG….thank you so much for the photo help! I’ve been unable to use this computer for a little while so that’s why it’s taken me so long to fix the problem…but now everything seems up and running great!
I am ever-gripped by a sudden impulse at the station on my way home to toddle on to Chalk Farm and humbly stand outside the house of Sylvia Plath – Where she gassed herself in 1963.
Something drives me to that place
Something dark and serious
Isn’t it mysterious?
On one such occasion as I was outside, I had with me a copy of the Twickenham edition of Pope’s poems, (Pope, incidentally, is my second most favourite poet after Auden, Plath my third - Though she would’ve always wanted to be second or first and in that order too)!!! I dropped the book right outside her home and damaged it, it was ironic as Sylvia had done that to Ted Hughes’s copy of the works of Shakespeare
Guide me through the pathways Bridget for you’ve been
there take me to the ‘Musee de beaux arts’ again
did you know who tore my Pope my mother-moon-muse?
Do you know I squirm in self-subjected pain?
Would you were a toff what then? Oh my, oh my - Now
silence beckons the completion of a rite
life’s an exception only death’s perfection is it any
wonder that I wake at night?
Never let me go to dos where sullen sots be wool-gathering
‘D & G’ but where I seek
home wherein your shadow (private to the artist) offers me
protection 7 days a week
Another time I hopped along out of respect to Chalk Farm on the tube. The train paused for ages one stop before as if bracing itself for the ordeal of Chalk Farm’s burgundy brick-tiles and its faint embraces where anything that comes is sacred. Then was the room where Hope was abandoned and Given Up to life’s rising guise - And another wife. As I was boarding the train back a buxom bride was with me all the way. I thought she thought I was following her. As she boarded the train she was in front and one of her shoes fell off in the act a-la-Cinderella - She cried at the doors not to close “Oh don’t close.” I picked up the shoe - Gave it to her and she said “It has happened to me before.” It had happened to me before too. O Muse! Had I lived at your feet I could’ve written poetry as fast as school-kids once yo-yoed. Hark a world of freebies - Pope comes somewhere, living unacknowledged of money. At night I went to TESCO which is the only place that sells Craven A. Even they are now being discontinued there.
Sylvia’s my muse & needs to be conjured up!
The dream started that was no dream.
I stared and you ignored me.
Your part in the dream was to ignore me.
Mine was to be invisible — helplessly
Unable to manifest myself.
Simply a blank, bodiless gaze — I rested
The whole weight of my unbelieving stare
On your face, impossibly real and there.
Not much changed, unchanging under my pressure.
You only shuddered slightly as the carriage
Bored through the earth Northward.
You seemed older — death had aged you a little.
As if the unspooling track and shudder of the journey
Were the film of your life that occupied you.
Just as in the dream that insists
On the plainly impossible, and lasts
Second after second after second,
Growing more and more incredible —-
I would follow you home. I would speak.
I would make some effort to seize
This offer, this saddened substitute
Returned to me by death, revealed to me
There in the Underground — surely as if
For my examination and approval.
Chalk Farm came. I got up. You stayed.
It was the testing moment.
But instead of staying on the train – This time you actually got up and out onto a separate lift, disappearing for a bit but then reappearing, I followed and turned right outside Chalk Farm station, you turned left as I resisted the temptation to follow you to your new home.
I walked back from Gloucester Road. There were 2 people who had parted from the group chatting by the junction of the square so I walked down Fitzroy Road and back up – They were still there. I walked down again right up to Gloucester Road and down to Edis Street (the place most appropriately named Utopia Village with its houses for the super rich) – They were still there. So I walked to the square, up Berkley Road and back – They were still there. So I sat in the square on the benches and waited for them to go. I didn’t want to cause any trouble. My defense would’ve been that people living in the vicinity ought to be aware of the burden they bear! Since they must pay (or have had to) their landlords that bit extra for having the privilege to bear it! So back down Fitzroy Road and back up Chalcot Square and back home.
Thank you Amanda.
Hello - My new theatre company is currently doing a remount of an original piece of theatre about Sylvia Plath for the FringeNYC in August. If anyone is around, and interested, the show is great.
Its called “Ariel View” and its a physicalization of a collage of relevant texts. Email us for more info.
here were 2 people who had parted from the group chatting by the junction of the square so I walked down Fitzroy Road and back up
Thank you Amanda!