“Recantation” is an undated poem, but considering Britain’s stance regarding 1956’s crisis in the Suez, the French in Algeria, and the Hungarian Revolution, Sylvia Plath was angry at the United Kingdom too. In “Recantation,” she recants her new-found allegiance to her husband’s country in disgust over the Cold War politics, playing upon the idea of an occult incantation. Plath’s symbols in the poem are distinctly English: tea leaves, the queen, crystal, and her ravens at the Tower of London. She has given them up. It was a “black pilgrimage” from America to England, and the bombings and bullets across the globe has made the world a “moon-pocked crystal ball” in which she does not foresee, nor does it bother, to help bring peace.
Plath’s poem here states that her earlier image of Britain proved to be an illusion, “tricks of sight.” The “flower” in her blood may be a Mayflower reference, uniting her with the pilgrims who settled in her American home state of Massachusetts. She feels called to return home: “Go to your greenhorn youth.” Plath pledges that her “white hands” are both innocent, and part of the race that gets the benefits of a good life. She would strive to simply “do good.”
COLD WAR, COLD WAR POLITICS, EARLY POEM, FRENCH IN ALGERIA, HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION, MASSACHUSETTS, MAYFLOWER, PILGRIMAGE, PLATH POEM, POLITICAL DISGUST, RECANTATION, SUEZ CRISIS, SYLVIA PLATH, UNITED KINGDOM, UNITED STATES

Plath’s poem “Wreath for a Bridal” was written on May 17, 1956 and is often read strictly discussing marriage and physical union. That is of course a small part of Plath’s meaning, but as with so many of her poems, it is more substantial than simply her own autobiography.
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It should not be overlooked that on January 21, 1956, Plath read August Strindberg’s 1902 play, The Bridal Crown, aka, The Crown Bride. Strindberg’s tale is a dark one, incorporating Swedish folklore, where a young girl kills her baby from her premarital affair with a man of high society in order to wear a virginal crown at her wedding. She confesses while walking to the church, and falls through the ice and dies.

Strindberg’s story most certainly had bearing on at least the title of Plath’s “Wreath for a Bridal.”  When looking at the political events of the time, Plath used this title also as a metaphor for the marriage of nations: the Warsaw Pact, which had been signed almost exactly a year earlier. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, the Czechoslovak Republic, and the German Democratic Republic were under Soviet Union control. Trouble began when Hungary wanted out of the Pact.

Plath also plays with definitions of the bridal symbol in her “Wreath for a Bridal” poem. The homophone of bridal is bridle, to steer and control a horse’s head; and the wreath is the metaphoric territory that has become the Soviet’s prize under this guise of protection. The word “pact” is evident in the poem, as are Soviet stars and Chinese dragon teeth, and the conditions that went from a lovely pastoral to “stinging nettle” in Plath’s second stanza, as it might feel to fall through Strindberg’s ice.

ALBANIA, AUGUST STRINDBERG, BULGARIA, COMMUNISM, CZECHOSLOVAK REPUBLIC, EARLY POEM, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC, HUNGARY, PLATH POEM, POLAND, ROMANIA, SOVIET UNION, STRINDBERG PLAYS, SYLVIA PLATH, THE BRIDAL CROWN, THE CROWN BRIDE, WARSAW PACT, WREATH FOR A BRIDAL

Of all the work in the 1956 section of The Collected Poems, “Maudlin” may be the one closest to Plath’s autobiography. However, this poem was probably written in 1959. After all, Plath wrote in her journals on May 25, 1959, “My Maudlin poem is a prophetic little piece. I get the pleasure of a prayer in saying it: Gibbets with her curse the moon’s man” (UJ, 485).  The question is, what is the poem’s prophesy?

Plath had always been a slave to her menstrual period, which was irregular, heavy, and caused severe cramping. On the day this poem was written, Plath suffered from menstrual cramps, cancelled appointments, and dreamed of drops of blood and tiny white rabbits, seeming to be her subconscious echoing the old adage for a positive pregnancy test, the rabbit died.

“Maudlin” addresses the narrator waking up in blood, seeing herself as both a virgin and a hag, a woman without children and getting older. She is “sleep-talking” because she is ruled by her subconscious and hormonal urges. The menstrual cycle is parallel to the moon’s 28-day phases, and this explains “Faggot-bearing Jack,” the man on the moon who carries his load of sticks within the moon-shaped egg that does not crack. This expression “does not crack” might also symbolize a strong man. A gibbet is an upright post with a projecting arm, used to hang men for execution. Plath turns this instrument of death into a verb here, seeing it as a woman pointing and cursing. She curses the man on the moon for causing her this pain every twenty-eight days. He is no good to her without a pregnancy, just as Plath saw menstrual cramps as “ridiculous” (UJ, 486). Plath’s “crackless egg” is one that does not hatch and bring life. She may have also had fun with the slang (and now politically-incorrect) meaning of faggot as a gay man, who is just as likely not to make a woman pregnant as the man on the moon.
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In “Maudlin,” first entitled, “Mad Maudlin,” Plath is jealous of men, who are seen with disgust. This “Jack,” an everyman’s name, is macho (“He kings it”), with ugly descriptive words such as “hogshead” instead of a prettier cask. He is “hatched” from these eggs and he swigs, not sips or drinks, his claret-wine, a symbol of blood. Plath’s journal entry from May 20, 1959, around the time this poem was probably written, revealed a fight and tedious silences between herself and Hughes (UJ, 484). Everyman Jack, her Hughes, and all men, are “navel-knit to no groan” from the pain of menstrual cramps. Yet Plath believes that any woman would give up being the perfect dream of a mermaid to purchase two separate legs in order to bear a child. Her “at the price of a pin-stitched skin,” sounds painful, and it is. She knows that the maternal body is sometimes torn to give birth, and a body after a baby is never the same.

28-DAY CYCLE, EARLY POEM, JEALOUSY OF MEN, MAUDLIN, MENSTRUAL CRAMPS, MENSTRUATION, PLATH POEM, SYLVIA PLATH, TED HUGHES, THE MOON​

Plath loved Hollywood. Hollywood in 1956 was full of pin-up girls: Liz Taylor was the star of the moment with her movie, Giant. Marilyn Monroe starred in Bus Stop. Deborah Kerr was back with The King and I, and Jayne Mansfield became famous with The Girl Can’t Help It. Carroll Baker, Anita Ekberg, Sheree North, and Mamie Van Doren also followed in Monroe’s platinum-blonde bombshell sex-goddess tradition that year with Baby Doll, Zarak, The Best Things in Life are Free and Star in the Dust, respectively. Terry Moore held out as the darker-haired pin-up girl, starring in Between Heaven and Hell. 1956 was the year of celebrating bosomy curves, and Plath’s “Fiesta Melons” is having a bit of fun with so many breasts.
Since her 1951 journal entries, Plath wrote often of other women’s figures, especially noting large breasts. She believed that most American males worshipped women with rounded big breasts (UJ, 36), and that hers were small and inadequate (UJ, 38, 98). Plath also wrote about Hollywood’s female images: “The liquid, gleaming lips of movie actresses quiver in kiss after scintillating kiss; full breasts lift under lace, satin, low scallops: sex incarnate” (UJ,110). In one journal entry, focusing in great detail on a peer’s breasts, Plath uses her word “thumpable” from the poem, but this time it was about the girl’s nose. Still, the connection between “thumpable” and “breasts” has been made as she calls the melons “thumpable” in her poem.  Plath wrote, “I am part man, and I notice women’s breasts and thighs with the calculation of a man choosing a mistress … but that is the artist and the analytical attitude toward the female body … for I am more a woman; even as I long for full breasts and a beautiful body, so do I abhor the sensuousness which they bring …” (UJ, 55). Plath occasionally referred to youth as a “green age,” and these melons of her third stanza are “Bright green and thumpable,” meaning firm young bodies. It is not surprising then that Benidorm would be the inspiration for “Fiesta Melons.” With its three nude beaches and many others in the Alicante region, Plath and Hughes had plenty of time to notice “innumerable melons.” Plath’s notebook on the Benidorm vacation also included observations of a “full-figured” girl in a white bathing suit, as well as breast-like description of a cylindrical beach bag with “watermelon-red” lining (UJ, 577).
ALICANTE SPAIN, ANITA EKBERG, BENIDORM, BREASTS, CARROLL BAKER, DEBORAH KERR, EARLY POEM, ELIZABETH TAYLOR, FEMALE SEXUALITY, FIESTA MELONS, HOLLYWOOD, JAYNE MANSFIELD, LIZ TAYLOR, MAMIE VAN DOREN, MARILYN MONROE, NUDE BEACHES, PIN-UP GIRLS, PLATH POEM, SEX GODDESS, SHEREE NORTH, SYLVIA PLATH, WOMEN'S BREASTS

Pictured: Marilyn Monroe, before and after plastic surgery, mid-1950s
The shallowness of plastic surgery, in Hollywood and otherwise, seems to have also bothered Plath, as we see in poems such as “Tinker Jack and the Tidy Wives,” written June 7, 1956, with the assumption that one “hag” can be either restored with a face lift, or traded in for a younger model (CP, 34). By 1950, plastic surgery was fully integrated into medicine and the public conscience, with board certification in place and a medical journal exclusively for this field. Plath’s poem was first entitled, “Tinker Jack Traffics with Tidy Wives,” implying a sort of criminal exploitation and pimping on the tinkering doctor’s part. The sylph-like Sylvia Plath, beautiful and brainy in that fifties world of Jane Russell bullet bras, had her own inner struggles with wanting to be both sexualized and smart. Plath did not like her own nose, and at least once contemplated getting her nose done (UJ, 66, 181).
“Tinker” is an Irish/Scotch word for a traveling man who fixes things that are broken, and like a plastic surgeon might, he sometimes scams to fix things that aren’t. The Tinker is usually a Romani (Plath would have said the now politically-incorrect slur, “Gypsy”) or Irish Traveler, and not well-respected. In February 1956, Plath was reading Yeats and work by his Irish contemporary, John “Jack” Synge.[1] Synge’s “The Tinker’s Wedding” is a play about the antics of Irish Tinkers making off with the loot from a wedding that never quite takes place. Synge’s The Well of the Saints features two blind beggar-women who believe that they are beautiful, when they are actually old and ugly.  Tinkers, beggars and tramps out to exploit beauty, steal money, and run off with the dowries of “Tidy Wives” are the core of Synge’s work, and were therefore surely on Plath’s mind.
The old nursery rhyme Tinker tailor soldier sailor is also a part of Virginia Woolf’s last novel, Between the Acts, as a woman playfully divines her future by reciting the rhyme and counting cherry stones. Between the Acts is full of allusion and uses rhyme to suggest hidden meanings, and Woolf was one of Plath’s favorite writers.[2] Early in 1957, Plath wrote that her arms were full of a “battery” of Woolf novels at Bowes & Bowes bookstore in Cambridge (UJ, 269). By July of 1957, Plath said that Woolf’s novels made hers possible (UJ, 289).
Plath’s “Tinker Jack and the Tidy Wives” never approaches the ease of a nursery rhyme, and yet its careful rhythm and meter feel like it is just that. Woolf’s Between the Acts is called a play within a play, casting the history of England in a negative light. Likewise, Plath’s “Tinker Jack and the Tidy Wives” is a poem within a poem, casting the present day world, England and beyond, as superficial and false. As Woolf’s pageant introduces each character, Plath’s poem introduces each wife.  A key character in Woolf’s work is Miss La Trobe, who believed “vanity made all human beings malleable.”
[1] Plath’s calendar notes for February 13, 1956. This calendar is held in the Sylvia Plath Archives of the Lilly Library, at Indiana University-Bloomington.
[2] Plath’s calendar shows that Plath read Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway on January 30, 1956. This calendar is held in the Sylvia Plath Archives of the Lilly Library, at Indiana University-Bloomington.
BETWEEN THE ACTS, EARLY POEM, FACE LIFT, FACE LIFTS, GYPSIES, GYPSY, IRISH TRAVELLERS, JOHN SYNGE, MISS LATROBE, PLASTIC SURGEON, PLASTIC SURGERY, PLATH POEM, ROMANI, SEXUALIZED WOMEN, SYLVIA PLATH, THE TINKER'S WEDDING, THE WELL OF THE SAINTS, TINKER JACK AND THE TIDY WIVES, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SAILOR, VANITY, VIRGINIA WOOLF, YEATS

Pictured: French police attack Algerian protesters in Paris, 1956
The image of the spinster was a popular one in the movies during the 1940s and ‘50s, and the character was often pictured pining over a dead soldier boyfriend whose picture was on the mantel. In 1942, Bette Davis had starred as spinster Charlotte Vale in the film adaptation of Olive Higgins Prouty’s Now, Voyager, a book Plath owned, and a popular movie she surely saw, as Prouty was her benefactor at Smith College. By this year, the famous Hollywood star Katherine Hepburn had played a spinster in three starring roles: The African Queen (1951); Summertime, released as “Summer Madness” in the UK (1955); and The Rainmaker (1956). 
Plath’s language in her poem “Spinster” reveals there is more to this work than just a story of a particular woman (CP, 49). With words such as “mutinous,” “treason,” “vulgar motley” and “bedlam,” alongside the month of “April” and Cold War-ish wintery images has Plath casting the country of France as the unloving and unlovable spinster during the Algerian war. 
In April 1956, Plath was in Paris. There, she mourned over Richard Sassoon, reeled from Ted Hughes, and passed the time with her old boyfriend Gordon Lameyer and two other gentlemen, one being a political journalist. In her confusion and seeming inability to find love and settle down, Plath may have likened herself to be a spinster. Meanwhile, as she was in the capitol of France, she surely was aware that the Algerian protests against France were increasing (“April walk”). The National Liberation Front (FLA) sought Soviet support (“longed for winter”) during this Cold War era, but the Soviets were ambivalent. The French public relations’ campaign denied that this was war and pitched their actions as bringing enlightenment and values to a backward culture. In truth this was a dirty war of village burnings, torture and executions that was all in the news that “bedlam spring.” A group of priests had published letters by French reservists revealing the truth and the reservists began a rebellion (“vulgar motley”), refusing to fight for their country (“a treason not to be borne”).  It was a messy, simultaneous and escalating fight (“burgeoning”) of French reservists against their own country; and a civil war of loyal French Algerian settlers against the FLA; and of course, France against the FLA. 
The “barricade of barb and check” references the Berber languages of North Africa, and “check” is a homophone for “Czech.” Unlike the Czechs in 1938, the Algerian settlers were not going to be manipulated by the FLN. Many tens of thousands of Muslim civilians were killed, abducted, and/or presumed killed by the FLN during the Algerian war. A new administrative structure was proposed that would give Algeria some autonomy while still being governed by France, by dividing Algeria into five districts (“her five queenly wits”). In 1956, after a series of highly publicized massacres, the French abolished the idea of reform (“She withdrew neatly”).
ALGERIA, ALGERIAN PROTESTS, ALGERIAN WAR, COLD WAR, EARLY POEM, FRANCE, GORDON LAMEYER, IMPERIALISM, KATHERINE HEPBURN, MASSACRES, NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT, NOW, OLIVE HIGGINS PROUTY, PLATH POEM, PROTESTS, REFORM, RICHARD SASSOON, SOVIET, SPINSTER, SUMMER MADNESS, SUMMERTIME, SYLVIA PLATH, TED HUGHES, THE AFRICAN QUEEN, THE RAINMAKER, VOYAGER

Life Magazine photo of Britain’s Prime Minister, Anthony Eden
In 1956, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s career had taken a dive over the Suez Crisis and his underestimation of opposition to attack by the United States. Eden was one of the least liked and least successful leaders in British politics, and Plath likened him to the fraudster meaning of “rook” in her poem, “Black Rook in Rainy Weather,” although, as Prime Minister, the castle chess piece meaning wasn’t far off either (CP, 56). Plath got in her digs with “On the stiff twig,” as he primped and preened his feathers, known always for his fashion style even in the rain of controversy. In a November 6, 1956 letter to her mother, Plath said that Eden was more or less helping to murder the Hungarians (LH, 284). Plath was thinking about the black rook image as early as January 15, 1956, when she noted “black as rooks” in the top margin of her calendar.[1]
Plath’s repeating idea of waiting for the angel in this poem is a nod to Greek poet and diplomat George Seferis (who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963). Seferis was minister to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq in this year when Plath wrote “Black Rook in Rainy Weather.” For a number of years he lived in London. Seferis’ position was comparable to Eden’s, only on a more humble scale.
In his long prose poem, Mythistorema (1935), Seferis interweaves ancient myths connecting failure of the epic journey with hubris. Seferis’ poem begins: “The angel– / three years we waited for him,” and Mythistorema’s last stanza contains these lines which echo Plath’s last stanza of “Black Rook in Rainy Weather”: “On the stone of patience we wait for the miracle /  that opens the heavens and makes all things possible / we wait for the angel as in the age-old drama…”
Plath clearly saw hubris as Anthony Eden’s greatest problem and a miraculous angel as the only solution.
[1] Plath’s calendar notes for January 15, 1956. This calendar is held in the Sylvia Plath Archives of the Lilly Library, at the Indiana University-Bloomington.
ANTHONY EDEN, BLACK ROOK IN RAINY WEATHER, BRITISH POLITICS, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY EDEN, EARLY POEM, GEORGE SEFERIS, GREAT BRITAIN, HUNGARIAN REFUGEES, HUNGARY, MYTHISTOREMA, PLATH POEM, SUEZ CRISIS, SYLVIA PLATH

Over her infamous Mademoiselle summer, in her single years, and later with Hughes, Plath made occasional trips to New York City night clubs, and certainly knew of, if not attended, the famous Copacabana night club. While Hughes and Plath were on their Spanish honeymoon, the most popular act in America in the 1950s, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, had their last performance at the Copacabana on July 25, 1956. Plath’s second line “Bumblingly” describes Jerry Lewis, the clumsy goof to Dean Martin’s straight man (CP, 43). Originally located at 10 East 60th Street, the Copa’s Upper East Side Manhattan neighborhood at this time was full of Italian “yellow-paella eateries” and “back alley balconies,” just as they were experiencing in Alicante, Spain. The “cocks and hens / In the roofgardens” is the audience, which were sometimes royalty and other celebrities (“repose with crowns”) seated in their balconies and laughing (“cackles”).
The serving trolleys of the Copacabana are described as they “trundle” up and down the aisles under the dark theater’s “indigo fizzle” and the swanky “neon-lit palm” trees. Music at the Copacabana was predominantly orchestra, jazz, Latin and Caribbean. The club was known for performers such as Carmen Miranda, Harry Belafonte, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Xavier Cugat, Sam Cooke, Nat King Cole, and Billie Holiday, “goddess of jazz and of quarrels, / Crack-throated mistress” for whom it seems the last stanza of “Alicante Lullaby” was written. While Plath and Hughes were on their holiday, Billie Holiday was at the pinnacle of her career. Billie Holiday notably covered the old Al Jolson song, “Back in Your Own Backyard,” and includes the repeating line, You’ll see your castles in Spain. Plath’s first line in “Alicante Lullaby” suggests not only the famous World War II song, “Beer Barrel Polka,” undoubtedly sung there many times, and famously recorded by Holiday. Plath liked jazz music enough to note in her pocket calendar that she enjoyed it on March 2, 1956.
That year of 1956 was also when Holiday’s popular autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, was released, along with a record of the same title. Like Billie Holiday’s voice, Plath’s final stanza of “Alicante Lullaby” wrestles with vigorous, fast-connoting words (“con brios,” “prestos,” “prestissimos”), words that are free and impulsive (“capricciosos,” “cadenzas”) and the quiet murmuring sounds of the infamous Lady Day herself, as Holiday was called (“pianissimo,” “susurrous”).
Hughes positioned “Alicante Lullaby” as a 1956 poem, yet Plath’s day planners reveal this was more likely to have been written in 1959, as Plath scholar Nancy Hargrove concurs. Billie Holiday died July 17, 1959, and this may have been Plath’s tribute to her, while also weaving in the history of the venue and her memories of it and Holiday over the years. Assuming Hughes knew the poem’s inspiration, he may have placed the poem in the 1956 grouping to match with the height of Holiday’s career and the release of her autobiography. Plath may have also built into this poem the famous Copacabana brawl on May 16, 1957, which made news headlines after their Benidorm holiday, when famous players from the Yankees took in a show at the club and got into a fight with a group of drunken bowlers (“bowl the barrels”) who heckled Sammy Davis Jr. with racial slurs.
ALICANTE LULLABY, BENIDORM, BILLIE HOLLIDAY, COPACABANA, COPACABANA BRAWL, DEAN MARTIN, EARLY POEM, JAZZ, JERRY LEWIS, JR., LADY DAY, LADY SINGS THE BLUES, NANCY HARGROVE, NEW YORK CITY, PLATH POEM, SAMMY DAVIS, SPAIN, SPANISH HONEYMOON, SYLVIA PLATH, TED HUGHES

Plath’s “Letter to a Purist” has been dated November 19, 1956 by scholar Nancy D. Hargrove. In the poem, Plath references the giant statue, Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (CP, 36). The “Cloud-cuckoo” is a reference to Aristophanes, and this phrase is also seen in her 1958 poem, “The Ghost’s Leavetaking.”  The Ancient Greek poet Aristophanes used this same expression in his play, The Birds, to mock the politics of Athens. Plath’s use of “Cloud-cuckoo” both references the original and takes on the modern meaning of unrealistic perfection.
On July 9, 1956, Greece experienced a 7.8 magnitude earthquake causing severe damage, 53 deaths, and triggering the most damaging tsunami in a century, affecting the entire Aegean Sea. Plath would have known about Greece’s land, politics, and more from a June 1955 cover story in The Atlantic called “Greece Today.” We know that she read this issue, as it was one in which her friend Nat LaMar[1] published his “Creole Love Song,” a story that Plath raved over in a letter to her mother (LH, 192).
 The Colossus of Rhodes statue is thought to have been placed straddling the harbor of the Greek island Rhodes, until it came tumbling down in an earthquake in 226 BC. The “Purist” in Plath’s title is Katharevousa, meaning, “Purist language,” a movement increasingly adopted by Greece for official and formal purposes in the 20th century, and especially popular in the mid-1950s. Plath probably compared Greece’s linguistic efforts to the close-mindedness of Germany’s national volkgeist, a conservative pride and protection of the German language and culture. Katharevousa is a conservative form of Modern Greek, viewed as a compromise between Ancient Greek and the modern vernacular of the time. It conceived of the Greek language as it might have been, evolving untainted by external influences. Plath mocked this improbable notion in her poem.
[1] Plath’s “dearest friend in Cambridge” (LH, 211), Nathaniel LaMar was an African-American student and also friendly with Plath’s brother Warren. A talented fiction writer, in 1957 he awarded an Atlantic Grant in Fiction to assist him in completion of his first novel.

ANCIENT GREEK, ARISTOPHANES, CLOUD-CUCKOO, COLOSSUS OF RHODES, CREOLE LOVE SONG, EARLY POEMS, EARTHQUAKE, EVOLUTION OF GREEK LANGUAGE, GREECE, GREEK, GREEK ISLAND RHODES, KATHAREVOUSA, LANGUAGE, LETTER TO A PURIST, MODERN GREEK, NAT LAMAR, NATHANIEL LAMAR, PLATH POEM, PURIST, PURIST LANGUAGE, SYLVIA PLATH, THE ATLANTIC, THE BIRDS, VERNACULAR