“Dream with Clam-Diggers”: A Sinking Feeling

Over those first six months of marriage with Hughes, Plath told her mother that she was writing new “happy” poems glorifying her love with Ted. The poems she listed were “Two Sisters of Persephone,” “Metamorphosis,” “Wreath for a Bridal,” “Strumpet Song,” “Dream with Clam-Diggers,” and “Epitaph for Fire and Flower.” It is curious that Plath labeled these works as “happy,” as no matter how one reads them, each is loaded with ominous portents, a clear dark side, and impending doom. The dream which inspired “Dream with Clam-Diggers” occurred March 11, 1956, when she had only just had her brief fling with Ted Hughes. At that time, Plath was not sure what may become of it. Interestingly, several months later, another dream was recorded in a Benidorm journal entry of notes observing “bait diggers” (UJ, 576).
Most consider “Dream with Clam-Diggers” to be a Benidorm poem. On the most obvious, surface level, this poem portrays Plath’s sleeping subconscious, its buried memories, thoughts, and feelings (CP, 43). The poem begins with an idyllic early childhood at the beach. Next, evil, dark clam diggers rise from the muck of the bottom with the intent to kill her. “Dream with Clam-Diggers” captures some of the images in Plath’s August 13, 1956 notebook entry (UJ, 576), however, her calendar shows that she had begun at least the first line of this poem on June 1, 1956, calling it “the dream budded bright.”
Plath’s March 11, 1956 journals suggest that this poem was partly rooted in memories of a night when a drunken Ted Hughes and his friend threw clots of dirt at a window to wake her. Her dream that night was of returning to Winthrop, and in her journal she wrote:
“…But last night they came, at two in the morning, Phillipa said. Throwing mud on her window, saying my name, the two mixed: mud and my name; my name is mud. She came to look for me, but I was sleeping. Dreaming of being home in Winthrop on a lovely new spring day, walking in pajamas down the streets of melting tar to the sea, the salt freshness, and squatting in the sea in a tangle of green weeds were clam-diggers with osier baskets, rising, one after the other, to look at me in my pajamas, and I hid in spring shame in the trellised arbors of Day’s home.
“Mail came through the sewer, and I got only bills. Mail and rice came through the sewer, that bubbling green mucky sewer we played in by the sea, transmuting what corruption, what slime-gilded periwinkles, into what radiant magic. They laughed and said they trusted the mail and rice coming through the sewer.
“And all this while, those three boys in the dark were treating me like what whore, coming like the soldiers to Blanche DuBois and rolling in the gardens, drunk, and mixing her name with mud” (UJ, 235).
It is easy to see elements of Plath’s dream in “Dream with Clam-Diggers,” however this poem may also be one of the best examples of Sylvia Plath’s premonitory dreams. We must keep in mind the date that Plath started writing, if not completed “Dream with Clam-Diggers” before she and Hughes were even married, much less on their honeymoon in Benidorm, Spain. It is generally assumed that the beach in this poem is the one at Plath’s familiar Winthrop, Massachusetts.[1] Nowhere in “Dream with Clam-Diggers” is the beach specifically named. Details such as “pilgrimages” do suggest Massachusetts. Her images of “air winnowed by angels” and “sea-town” suggest ships, as does the more obvious fifth stanza “schooner” and “ship sank.” However, Plath has also perfectly described the old seaport town of Nantucket, Massachusetts.
On July 25, 1956, at 10:15 a.m. (“on that hot morning”) almost two months after Plath had begun “Dream with Clam-Diggers,” the Andrea Doria luxury cruise ship would become one of the first televised tragedies. From Italy, the Andrea Doria was known as the most beautiful and luxurious ship in the world, its pretty flag pennants strung like Plath’s “cockle-shells” (originally “slime-gilded periwinkles” in her dream). The ship, on its hundredth crossing across the Atlantic, was returning to New York City (“she was come / Back to her early sea-town”) through the waters of Nantucket. The Andrea Doria had serious trouble with listing (“wayward girl”), and it had encountered this problem near Nantucket before, also fitting Plath’s poem’s sense of returning. Meanwhile, the nearby Stockholm, fitting Plath’s neighbor image, and “squatting at sea’s border,” a sturdy Swedish workhorse ship (“She, in her shabby travel garb began”), had just left its dock in New York’s busy harbor (“eager toward water”).  A thick fog surrounded the Andrea Doria, fitting Plath’s angelic air. When the ships finally spotted each other in the waters off of Nantucket, it was too late to avoid a collision (“wrack of wave”). Plath’s last line in the poem shows the ships advancing, their front windows like squinting eyes, “fixed on murder.” The Stockholm slammed into the Andrea Doria’s side. The Andrea Doria continued looking beautiful, despite the huge hole in her side which filled with water, and took the boat down, fitting Plath’s entire third stanza. As the ship “Sloped seaward to plunge in blue,” Plath has described the “white fire” of steam and fog. Ships all around rushed to help with rescuing its more than a thousand passengers and crew, fitting Plath’s last line of that third stanza. Fifty-two people were killed. This accident remains one of the worst maritime disasters to occur in United States waters.
As Plath traveled by ocean liners to cross the ocean for “her first move of love” to the U.K., this news event, which took place while she and Hughes were on their honeymoon, certainly must have shocked her. We can’t know for sure if she followed this seemingly inescapable event on the news and in the papers, but we can know that her poem foretold the disaster in perfect detail.
[1] Sylvia Plath enjoyed childhood summers at the beaches in Winthrop, Massachusetts, and also occasionally visited Nauset Beach in Cape Cod.
ANDREA DORIA, ATLANTIC OCEAN, BENIDORM, COLLISION, CRUISE LINER, CRUISE SHIP, DREAM WITH CLAM-DIGGERS, EARLY POEM, MARITIME DISASTER, MASSACHUSETTS, NANTUCKET, NANTUCKET MASSACHUSETTS, NEW YORK CITY, PLATH POEM, PREMONITION, PREMONITORY DREAM, PROPHESY, PROPHETIC DREAM, SHIP WRECK, SPAIN, STOCKHOLM, SWEDISH SHIP, SYLVIA PLATH, TED HUGHES, WINTHROP, WINTHROP MASSACHUSETTS