Very exciting news for Plath and Hughes fans - the British Library has recently published a cd of all Plath's recordings including interviews with Plath and Hughes not publicly available since the original broadcasts, a live recording of Plath reading 'Tulips', Plath describing her experiences of being an American woman in England as well as Plath and Hughes talking about how they met.
The Spoken Word CD is 73 minutes long and includes a booklet containing an introduction by the Plath scholar Peter Steinberg of the excellent Sylvia Plath info blog where you can read a review of the cd
here. The cd can be purchased
here.
A nearly eight minute podcast taster from the cd can be heard
here.
10 comments:
There was a little taster of it in the TLS the other week. I liked this bit in relation to the interview:
"Ted is in the background throughout, but when Leeming [the interviewer] asks about their respective attitudes to animals, he gets a word in. Their approaches to pigs are different, he says. 'Sylvia's pig is a legendary, gargantuan pig, a sort of assembly of all piggishness and excessive piggeriness...' Sylvia's laughing response - 'Oh come now' - is worth the £9.95 itself."
:)
brilliant! can't wait to get the cd, there're plenty links to articles on it at the sylvia plath info blog.
Thanks, Sorlil. How lovely to hear Sylvia Plath in person. It's true as the broadcaster suggests, she does not sound as the image left to posterity suggests, a deeply depressed woman. She could be alive today, the way she speaks.
I absolutely agree. with the release of these recordings I'm sure there will be a re-thinking of plath as a person and therefore of her work also.
I'd love to get this.Her voice is so mesmerising in a clipped almost english tone yet with the contrasting american dawl and Ted is a conundrum.
'Ted is a conundrum' - lol! she has a very refined voice doesn't she? and his was a lot more refined than I imagined it would be!
Thanks for the pointer!
enjoy!!
I've read one or two comments by Americans at the Sylvia Plath blog (not recently), comments referring to her "English tones"-but I am English, have lived in various places in England, met with many shapes, sizes and classes of English person. . .and am yet to meet someone who sounds like SP. And haven't heard any American speak like this , either. Henry Higgins (aka Rex Harrison) in MY FAIR LADY would have a field-day with her !
it's interesting to listen to her talk naturally in conversation, I thought her voice would sound quite different from her reading voice but it doesn't really. I love how talks with such emphasis, I bet she was great at telling jokes!
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