This interview was conducted by Peter Orr October 30 1962. Sylvia passed 3 months later February 11 1963. Shocking to hear the eloquence & life force in her voice knowing it would be silenced so soon after. Peace To All!
Sylvia Plath is a creative idol of mine - her depth of emotion, insight, but also humor (the first half of The Bell Jar is hilarious!) are mindboggling.
+Ellie Newman I found a connection with her work instantly which remains the strongest of any strangers work. I found the more i delved into her life and her relationship with Ted Hughes, the more I felt a deep almost kinship with her. I too have had suicide in my life and depression and anger and love. All things that I think are released through her. As she became more personal, it became more personal. I too think there was lashings of humour in her work. She is a creative idol of mine also, sometimes an overbearing one but never unwelcome.
She was talking about preference. As in she was 50 years behind in common the American disposition not 50 years behind in any means of for sight or literary capabilities. So basically I'm informing you that she didn't mean 50 years behind In a negative but rather a positive way.
+noBRILOpadheads nobrilopadheads That may be too harsh. There are millions who feel far too little. Modern society tends to be a wee bit on the heartless side!
WE poets see the world for what it is. severe isolation reveals high art act of the pen is out of remembrance, either unrequited things or the dead from our childhood. we drive the places of murder
It's shocking to know that she took her own life a few months after this interview. Her voice sounds so vibrant and confident. Depression is insidious.
Is it weird that I love her? Like seriously love her. Her intelligence, the way her mind worked, and of course her beauty. Those intense eyes and that powerful voice of hers. I wish I had the chance to talk with her, I think I could go hours upon hours talking, no, just listening to her. What a remarkable woman.
No, or at least it doesn't seem weird to me, because I feel the same way. Within the first 5 minutes of reading her quotes I was smitten and blown over. Now I am reading The Bell Jar and it's like having the first *real* conversation I have ever had in my life. I've spent my days desperately trying to get to this kind of honesty with people and, while I have gotten closer with some than with others, nothing compares to her work. This is what I always imagined love was like, and gave up on until now. I have to learn to do what she did, in order to show the right people they can do the same with me. When I die I hope she is the first person I meet so I can thank her and cry and tell her how wonderful we all see she really is. And all of these words just don't even begin to get it across, do they?
I also love her, I`m sure the people she got to know better often had that experience. I never will understand how come any man could leave her, specially with two little children. I wish she had married a more "normal" and decent man, I mean not such a brilliant and selfish poet like Ted Hughes. I`m sure she deserved better than him.
No. As a straight female I love her. To me I just want to go back in time and help her. Help her with the children and to run off all the home wreckers while she finds herself.
I agree, that isn't weird. I have felt that way about people too. I also think it's rather sweet for you to admit it and say such nice things about her so candidly. That's refreshing to me.
Her story is so tragic, she lived such a difficult short life, yet her poetry was truly inspirational. She influenced female poets in particular for in her time, woman were so stuck in a patriarchal society. Amazing. Her daughter, Frieda still gives talks discussing her mothers work today. SO GOOD.
I grew up in Wellesley, and when I was at Wellesley High, I worked at the local market. Mrs. Plath often had her groceries delivered to her house. I was often the one who delivered food to her. Sylvia sounds very, very much like her mother. Mrs. Plath was very gracious and had a good sense of humor.
Shaun Kelly Hi again, Shaun, would you mind sharing a time frame for this? It is just so amazing to me! Were you aware of Sylvia's work at the time? Ever been approached for interviews or info? Maybe write your story! I would buy it. All things Plathian, Always
Wow, given her tragic story I had no idea she would sound like this. I was expecting some really fragmented voice struggling to string sentences together and much more monotoned in a lack of energy kind of way. She sounds so bright, cheery, intelligent, charismatic, colorful and melodic. Such a shame she went early. But then again so many great artists do. Who know what she’d have achieved had she stuck around. But glad to have these recordings. Something keeps drawing me back to her. She had something divine about her.
This is the first time Ive heard her speak and I was like WOW... I DID NOT expect her to talk so posh. I mean I knew she was highly intelligent and went to universities and everything but I imagined her to have a regular, maybe even sarcastic voice. Come to think of it... her poshness probably explains why Esther Greenwood in The Bekl Jar is a bit snobby sometimes and looks down on certain people, like Buddy Wilard.
With all due respect, I think you've entirely misunderstood Sylviia's manner of speaking. I wouldn't, for example, call a British accent "posh", because it's an accent. That's what it is. Such is the case with Sylvia...she had a typical New England accent, just a rather pronounced one. She used irony, but certainly not sarcasm.
It's called "Boston Brahman." Very similar to Katherine Hepburn from the same area, or Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island. She has some British inflection which is common to people who have lived there a while.
I beg to differ. It is just as natural an accent as any other. One might as well say that all accents are affected! It is perfectly natural for local variations to occur. Plath's accent has its origins in Lancashire, UK, which is where a lot of early Boston area settlers came from. There are similar isolated pockets of Mid-Atlantic speech scattered throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Appalachians.
Morgaine Bergman I didn't say "affected," I said INFLECTED. She has a British inflection from having lived there, coupled with her Boston Brahman, which is her base accent. If you're not familiar with the term, that's not my mistake. Her accent is decidedly not Mid-Atlantic. robertspage.com/dialects.html If you refer to the map, everything in purple is Mid-Atlantic. Her accent is called Boston Brahman, as I stated earlier.
KARI166: Actually, the Mid-Atlantic accent does occur naturally. It's called that because it's based on some coastal areas in VA and NC where the accent originates. Hollywood just standardized it.
"Mid-Atlantic Accent" doesn't refer to the geography of the United States - it's a popular term suggesting "half-way across the ocean" between Britain and America, and is used to describe the British-inflected American speech and American-flattened British speech that occurs when people from one place spend a lot of time in the other. Sylvia Plath's speech in this clip is definitely not simply Boston Brahmin - she has taken on a great deal of British intonation.
@Jake Matthews Thanks Jake I'll check that out. She is so fascinating. She had such great expectations but then decided it wasn't worth it. An individual choice surely.
I completely agree. I enjoy reading literature and poetry and I enjoy thought provoking conversations but nowadays people perceive that as arrogance. It's disappointing that our generation isn't intrigued by knowledge
JULIAslt Yes, because "our generation" haven't built particle accelerators, they haven't built interstellar probes. They definitely haven't solved mathematical problems such as the poincaré conjunction.
Now youre seen as pretensious or being affected, which, yes is definitley a thing, but in most cases its idiotic to condemn someone for being intelligent
She actually has the voice of a very educated Bostonian and she was a graduate of Smith. She also went to Cambridge. She was a very educated young lady and she learned to speak well because of it.
Very well-said and summed-up. I live in a university town (Bloomington, Indiana) and there is a wide spectrum of education, wealth, and speaking styles and often all in one place. In a "Fresh Air radio" interview I heard British actor Michael Caine say that America has a class system that isn't based on money "...but on how you talk" and I have found that to be true. Well-educated people do speak differently from those who are not well-educated. Maybe it's a mix of talking like the people around oneself and of learning to love and respect language and communication and of acquiring mastery of the language.
Andrew Brendan wow now that I think about it I suppose.....maybe we have a few different class systems going. but it's true no matter where you are here the less of an (regional) accent you have generally the more educated.....
True. There was a conjecture on another thread where someone said they believed the accent was an invention of Hollywood, and overblown, bad acting. I was happy to be able to link this to that thread, with an actual example of the accent from that period, and regional prime of culture. It's interesting that, now we have the commonality of bland, Californian accent, pervasive even here in Florida, where the Southern dialects are only discernible to Northerners, and not that we simply cannot hear the Southern accents because we are predominately Southern, but that among us, even the differences in Southern accents (Charlestonian as to Georgian, for instance having different vowel drawls), are becoming flattened, and more similar. You only really have true accents in deep places such as LA, (Louisiana, not California) and Tennessee, in the mountains, places further removed, and it's going to become moreso as the reach of technology and, therefore media is pervasive in that way. It seems a cherished thing to hear the regional dialects and those that carry connotation of culture.
Captain Sunday Although, Andrew Brendan, she sounds to me rather shrill, strident,and unfortunately haughty. I do not find that to be typical of the well educated. Her voice is unique.
Yes, very passionate! Sometimes it sounds like she gets so excited that she has run out of air, like an excitable child! Very contagious to me. Can you imagine having her as a Professor/Lecturer? I'm not sure what her proper title was.
As someone who suffers from Depression (it is genetic) I can say that she could have been putting on a more enthusiastic tone when speaking. That does not mean she feels happy or is mentally ''okay.'' It could be a mask for the public to see, not necessarily something that is real. You smile, you laugh and come off as perfectly fine. I do that when dealing with people and society. In reality, I'm miserable.
snowcherryleopard That's the cruelty of depression; you drag yourself up from the pit by tooth and nail, feeling renewed, hopeful and enthusiastic about life and the world, only to fall that much harder when it inevitably comes crashing down again.
On the contrary, I think if you listen carefully you can tell how exhausted her voice sounds : especially the part where she talks about manipulating terrific experiences (which obviously should've remind some of them). By the time this interview was made, she already broke up with Hughes and was certainly into that highly creative yet exhausting and self-destructive period of her last months. She obviously wore herself out writing her best works, and you can tell by reading her Journals how intransigent she was.
Her voice is so opposed to her inner turmoil. You would expect, well I certainly did (having had a very similar life to her in terms of suicide attempts and hospitalisation for deep depression) a lilting, quiet voice but she has a very low, forthright voice, very commanding and strong.
Nancy - I was born in January, 1955 and graduated from Wellesley High School in 1973. I was extraordinarily lucky to have Mr. Crockett, who was Sylvia's beloved English teacher as well, as a high school junior. From January to May, 1955, Sylvia and I were literally neighbors - we lived across Weston Road (Elmwood, where she lived) on Mayo Road - a five minute's walk from her Wellesley residence. When then moved to Radcliffe Road across town, but interestingly, our house was right behind Woodlawn Cemetary, where her grandparents, and later on, Mrs. Plath, was buried. Wellesley was much changed in the 1960's; the local Howard Johnson's Restuarant where Sylvia used to hold forth was still there as well as Bailey's Ice Cream across the street where Wellesleyites relished their indescribable frappes (my mother used to have a frappe with a Harvard freshman who was dating her first cousin there back in 1938, a certain young man she always called Jack - John F. Kennedy). Next to Bailey's was the Hathaway Bookstore, Sylvia's favorite hangout (and mine as well) when we were growing up, which, for fifty years, served as the official bookstore for Wellesley College and the unofficial favorite bookshop for the town's residents. Sylvia and I both loved such places as the Wellesley Comunity Playhouse, a great old movie theatre a mile down from Wellesley High, which opened in the late 1920's and closed in 1987 (yes, I went to the last picture show there!). Sylvia and I both at a local diner called Sunshine Dairy. Finally, we even went to the same pharmacy, Fells! While we were 22 year+ apart, the town was still very much as it had been - and so was Wellesley High. Like Sylvia, I published stories in The Phillipian and The Bradford, wrote featured pieces for The Wellesley Townsman, and even had our lockers along the same row outside Mr. Crockett's Room 206 (according to him). In the small world department, we also summered in the same community on Cape Cod, Eastham. We loved the same beach, Nauset, and every time I go there these days I always think of her there. Our house is situated on a road that Sylvia and Ted sed to bike on there to Rock Harbor in nearby Orleans. Warren Plath lives right down the road from us in Eastham these days. While I still teach outside of NYC, I spend three months of the year on the Cape and will permanently retire there in a few years.
Shaun Kelly Shaun, All I can say is WOW, WOW, WOW!!!! What an amazing post. As I said before, I could talk to you all day! You are so interesting. Thank you for the personal info. I did not mean to pry. I'm just a very curious person by nature. As for myself, I was born July 1951! So, we are close in age. Thank you for the tid bit on Warren. I often wonder about him. I have tried to research him, but haven't been able to find very much. Again, I am so very grateful to you for sharing your information and your life! I don't have anyone to share my love of Sivvy with, so you are a blessing! Happy reading, listening and sharing.
Nancy - will be returning home to Wellesley next weekend for a 60th birthday bash for my Wellesley High classmates. Will take a walk on Elmwood Road while I am there and visit Sivvie's house. slkelly@gcds.net
Shaun, When you say "visit" Sivvie's house, what do you mean? To just walk past it, or can a person actually go inside the house? Is it occupied? What do you mean about the birthday bash? Isn't your b.d. in January? Please don't think I'm daft with all the questions! Thanks for writing back.
Plath’s voice has an authority and command of speech that partly derives from her skill with the sound of language as a poet...but also appears to signify strength of purpose and deep belief in what she is doing. This is not the voice of a woman walking a tightrope, but of one centred with the full assurance of self-belief, or at the very least, strong ambition. I can only imagine her mind - highly intelligent and imposingly powerful - eventually turned against her and she could not fight its dominion.
As both a poet and Scorpio myself, Sylvia is a huge inspiration for me. She is intensely herself and her voice is unmistakable. I hope she rests well now
She has such a lovely laugh! Shame the interviewer doesn't seem to reciprocate too often, except at 02:09. Thanks for uploading, this was a great interview!
As a postscript, the "televization" of American English has been so pronounced in the past fifty years that regional accents are dying out. We all sound the same these days. Frankly, my mother, who lived her entire life in Massachusetts, and who was twelve years older than Sylvia, spoke exactly like her - all the way to the phrasing and clipped pronunciations. I had a handful of conversations with Mrs. Aurelia Plath growing up in Wellesley - she spoke the same way. Notice that the Kennedy children and grandchildren don't speak with a regional accent, unlike, say, Jack Kennedy (an old friend of my parents - they knew him from 1935 on).
Shaun Kelly Wow, Shaun! Sounds like you've had a very interesting childhood and life. Must say I'm quite envious, having grown up myself in the mountains of East Tennessee with no phone or inside bath!! I've always loved New England and dreamed of visiting there. Thank you for the posts. Very interesting. Keep writing.
Thank you, Nancy. Very lucky to have grown up and been educated in New England. Except for three years in which I taught and lived in London, I have spent my entire life here. By the way, you live in a beautiful part of the country.....
Shaun Kelly Thank you, Shaun, for all your knowledge, information, and kindness. I actually had to leave my beautiful mountains at age 15 due to family problems. I now live in California! I have been very fortunate to experience both east coast and west coast cultures and styles of education. I could discuss this with you for hours, Shaun, but then, it's not about me, but our beloved Sivvy....I do adore her! Until we speak.
Sylvia Plath found her voice unlike no other. Completely unique , and was a trailblazer as well as being firmly rooted in the evolution of what we have come to call 'poetry' in the Western tradition. as Shakespeare asked, 'who is Sylvia?', ....
Despite the time in which this interview took place, 1962, her words and intellectual persona resonates even today. As a student, I aspire to reach her level of grace and poise when speaking. Gone too soon.
Long before I discovered Plath I had been drawn to a complicated woman; both loving and selfless with a wicked wit and a struggle somedays to exist in this world. That woman I am lucky to still be with many years later and as I write this. The Bell Jar provided an instant familiarity in Esther: I felt like I was reading upon the diary of a friend I didn't know. It made the ending painfully raw - not the ending on the paper but the true end not long after publishing. RIP Sylvia, I wish this life had been easier for you.
I was the same way, Susan! I had read her journals, letters, poetry, bios, etc. Then, I ordered her Spoken Word cd. I couldn't listen to it for months, but when I did, WOW! Many emotions! I cried because I love her and miss her. Kinda weird, huh?
This is back when interviews were about finding depth and perspective and trying to understand the person. Nowadays, interviews are purely about who is dating who and if they cheated and what makeup they recommend (only when sponsored)
She doesn’t sound like a tortured soul but we all know differently. She is in the gut of the poet & she’s nothing like the polite sounding lady we’re listening to and I mean that as the highest praise.
Goddess of poetry psssed away so painfully ever known in the history of literature.Sylvia is stranger than fiction.Will continue to miss her words and existence!
I just can't believe I listened to her voice ! This is like a dream come true. To hear one of my most favourite poets is a life time experience. By her voice you can delve deep into her mind and heart how she thought and viewed this world. Just Amazing.
She sounds so self assured while at the same time I feel like she is hiding behind her intellectual dexterity. Just consider what a 30 ish year old intellectual sound like today.....
She is one of the greatest poets and short story and book writers in the 20th Century. She was already gaining a strong reputation by the academics. She is considered the greatest poet of the mid 20th Century. She was a genius. She had no idea of her success "The Bell Jar" was turned down during her lifetime. She never knew she would win a Pulitzer.
Does anyone know if there is any video footage of Sylvia? It just occurred to me that we have some audio clips and many photos but no moving imagery of her. There is a very interesting video interview of Anne Sexton, and I find it interesting that they were contemporaries but I can't find any video of Sylvia. It would be cool to see her in motion. It's almost like Nick Drake where there isn't any confirmed video of him (though there's that, like, five second video of a guy walking with his back to the camera at a festival and people have been debating for years whether it's actually him)
I wonder if she put this accent on. I'm so surprised by her voice. I'm expecting her to say "oh daaaling" at any point, lol. No disrespect; I've read so much about her. I sense she must have been a peculiar woman for her time ❤
Please elaborate on your statement, caitlindougherty8. She received ECT and was then placed on Parnate, which is an analog of amphetamine. She had insomnia, and that drug causes insomnia. How would I know? I was placed on it. And, it's the most widely known side effect. The psychiatric profession rarely even prescribes the drug anymore, because it is one of the most dangerous drugs in the medical profession, causing physical problems that can lead to death and not to mention, mania, psychosis, and delirium. Dr. Peter Breggins and other researchers have thoroughly overviewed the memory, cognition, and emotional issues that stem from ECT. And you know what? Plath also outed ECT and the psychiatric profession in Bell Jar. How can you possibly deeply understand the works of an artist when you willfully choose to ignore their experience?
This is sensational - and so strangely soothing and familiar to hear her voice for the first time with this here interview, which I am listening to on Halloween morning. Rereading "The Bell Jar" this year moved me profoundly as an adult revisiting the work I first started to read as a teen in high school. Thank you again! Cheers, Britt
Yes, that is Sylvia. As someone who is from Wellesley, she sounds very much like most of the English teachers I had growing up there. Yes, she is an intellectual, but her hard A's (very Winthrop, where she came from originally come through). I also knew Mrs. Plath, her mother - Sylvia sounds very much like Aurelia Plath.
Thank you for the explanation of her accent. I thought her accent was because of her time spent in England but it struck me as unlikely she would pick up an English accent so quickly since she wasn't there terribly long.
Her voice is harsh does not match up to her beautiful verses.She must have been difficult to live with especially when her mental health issues began to surface.
It's really fascinating, in a trainwreck sort of way, to listen to her go on and on. I've never quite heard anyone as self consciously pretentious. She obviously is "on", and doesn't have to work too hard at it.
Sylvia developed this Mid Atlantic Accent. In the book "Red Comet" people who knew her in the US could not believe how she sounded when she spoke. Her diction was more like Anne Sexton. And she was more intelligent and a better poet and writer than Ted Hughes. She worked hard to get his work out because he was lazy.
@@michelletegerdine5318 Yes. Her accent was more like Anne Sexton's (they were from the same place) were acquainted with one another . She admired Sexton. Anyway Syllvia felt inferior when she first arrived to Cambridge and developed this wonderful accent. In the last weeks of her life the man who lived under her said she would at times slip back into the American accent . Other close friends noticesd the same thing. Also she said things about God' and she was Athiest. .She unraveled. This interview was done in October and she died in February. I love her voice, I would have loved to have taken a class or hear a lecture under her. That book "Red Comet" by Heather Clark is the best researehced biography. It is highly readable. There is not a boring part in the book. Her last poem Edge was her suicide not. Lord, she sould write!
That voice of he's was TransAtlantic and rapidly losing her American accent despite her saying otherwise. But she sounded pretentious if not narcissistic herself, as an artistic. Her voice was certainly old fashioned and elitist like Buckley's or. Plimpton's. A very East Coast, elitist, boarding school/finishing school accent.
OK, enough with the "narcissistic" and "elitist" BS. I think she sounds pretentious, but what I can't stand more are your "narcissistic" and "elitist" repeats of current sociological labels. You're a bore.
I've lately become interested in Plath and am planning to start reading her work soon, and i must say that i am already so fascinated by her and can already feel a connection with her. I didn't want this interview to end, i could listen to her speaking for the rest of my life, but how lucky we are to have even 14 minutes of this wonderful woman expressing herself outside of her poetry. One of my favorite things she talked about during this interview is her respect for other professions, her desire of learning the practical, and her nostalgia of being a medical practitioner. As a medical student myself who is very passionate about my field, the only field of profession im nostalgic for is the field of arts, this contrast opens up such a warm spot of my heart for her. I feel so drawn to her. I will buy every book of her that i can find as soon as possible.
She is such an expressive speaker. Really impressionable and you can feel the echoes of the 20th century as speaks and the intensity of her speech is so breathy and absolutely feminine.
mckavitt13 i was actually surprise by hearing how bold and condident her sound sounds , I expected she'd have a shy clumsy voice i don't know why exactly, she's not what I expected i love her so much
Thank you for uploading the interview. I share some emotions, recollections, visions, ways of life and the talking style of Sylvia. Yes, I must agree... I have learnt a lesson from Her. Great visionary, poignant, insightful, metarhorical poetry of grief, sadness, love and death... all rolled into one- unexplained life...by Sylvia inspired me to write my own verses. I translated some of Her monumental poems into Polish, well at least I tried... There are just a handful of poets so much truthful, intelligent, well-educated and brilliant like Sylvia; Shakespeare, Yeats. Elliot, Dickinson including...
It really breaks my heart to hear her talk so excitedly about poetry becoming more open to emotional and psychological themes. This was a woman who was experiencing crippling mental illness in a time when there were hardly any really helpful supports or resources for people like her. Shes not just talking about the poetry. She was looking forward to a time when it would be truly safe to talk about internal struggle and mental health issues. I wish she'd made it, so she could have seen how far we've come.
is it just me or does her accent shift a bit toward the end of the interview? I mean, she sounds kinda "British" in the beginning and slips into something I'd call "Transatlantic" at the end. It might be just me though ^^
She was born and raised in the United States and attended university there as well, but married an Englishmen and lived there for seven years, I'd say by the time she died. Her accent probably is of the Transatlantic variety because of her upbringing and experiences in adult life. She is from Boston, I believe though, and a posh Bostonian accent resembles an English accent.
Because the people that still have that manner of speech are all in their old age now, and we associate that with old people. Just like powdery perfume and waxy lipstick, people in their early 20s wore that in the 1930s, but our parents associate that with the OLD people they knew as kids.
Nancy, we are celebrating our "big birthday" collectively - the vast majority of us will hit 60 this year (yes, I turned 60 in January). When I am there, I will walk down Sylvia's street - it is easily accessible; Elmwood Road is only three miles from my own street. I can't wait to visit my hometown once again!
Shaun Kelly Shaun, I have been so excited for your visit home and, of course, your birthday bash! I'm sure it was great fun to see all your friends. That's a "neat" idea to celebrate collectively!! You guys are pretty clever. To walk down Sylvia's street and see her house would probably be more than my brain could handle!!
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This interview was conducted by Peter Orr October 30 1962. Sylvia passed 3 months later February 11 1963. Shocking to hear the eloquence & life force in her voice knowing it would be silenced so soon after. Peace To All!
This broke my heart... May she rest in peace.
She wanted to stop the pain in her soul
I wish she was still alive.
@@yonathanasefaw9001 me too. Im reading her book yet. :(
So sad, but can relate. Bipolar 2 and suicidal ideation. Poet and former teacher.
Can't believe I actually had the opportunity to hear this. Thanks.
I also can't believe that... standing on the year of 2019 we can hear the voice of her, who left us in the year of 1963....
Sylvia Plath is a creative idol of mine - her depth of emotion, insight, but also humor (the first half of The Bell Jar is hilarious!) are mindboggling.
+Ellie Newman I found a connection with her work instantly which remains the strongest of any strangers work. I found the more i delved into her life and her relationship with Ted Hughes, the more I felt a deep almost kinship with her. I too have had suicide in my life and depression and anger and love. All things that I think are released through her. As she became more personal, it became more personal. I too think there was lashings of humour in her work. She is a creative idol of mine also, sometimes an overbearing one but never unwelcome.
+Ellie Newman Mine too. I usually don't relate to what she's felling in her poems, but her mastery is so rare and deep.
slapping myself for not having read it and I'm a ridiculous blahblahblah years old. Silly. Just stupid.
Her early letters are so full of humour an d love and joy. I love her air the words she breaths eternal. Yes. bell jar has great humour bye
Ellie Newman the cherry blossom bit lol
She wasn't 50 years behind. She was 50 years in advance.
Eva Szekely b79
She was talking about preference. As in she was 50 years behind in common the American disposition not 50 years behind in any means of for sight or literary capabilities. So basically I'm informing you that she didn't mean 50 years behind In a negative but rather a positive way.
A know your comment meant well it's just misguided is all. However I still give a thumbs up for the positive intentions.
Àw@@sytskegoossens8390 w2àwaà
clearly
Pure poet, feeling too much of life to bear living it.
Vince B. addicted to feeling
+noBRILOpadheads nobrilopadheads That may be too harsh. There are millions who feel far too little. Modern society tends to be a wee bit on the heartless side!
WE poets see the world for what it is. severe isolation reveals high art act of the pen is out of remembrance, either unrequited things or the dead from our childhood. we drive the places of murder
perfectly put.
@@i_t_f_e___proems Nice attempt at compelling aimless verse; just put in a little more effort and grammar and it may become interesting...
This may seem a bit odd but I find her voice to be very calming.
How come?
i absolutely adore her voice
She sounds kind of northern English, I think she picked up a bit of teds accent
I do too.
She sounds uppity.
It's shocking to know that she took her own life a few months after this interview. Her voice sounds so vibrant and confident. Depression is insidious.
Is it weird that I love her? Like seriously love her. Her intelligence, the way her mind worked, and of course her beauty. Those intense eyes and that powerful voice of hers. I wish I had the chance to talk with her, I think I could go hours upon hours talking, no, just listening to her. What a remarkable woman.
No, or at least it doesn't seem weird to me, because I feel the same way. Within the first 5 minutes of reading her quotes I was smitten and blown over. Now I am reading The Bell Jar and it's like having the first *real* conversation I have ever had in my life. I've spent my days desperately trying to get to this kind of honesty with people and, while I have gotten closer with some than with others, nothing compares to her work. This is what I always imagined love was like, and gave up on until now. I have to learn to do what she did, in order to show the right people they can do the same with me. When I die I hope she is the first person I meet so I can thank her and cry and tell her how wonderful we all see she really is. And all of these words just don't even begin to get it across, do they?
I also love her, I`m sure the people she got to know better often had that experience. I never will understand how come any man could leave her, specially with two little children. I wish she had married a more "normal" and decent man, I mean not such a brilliant and selfish poet like Ted Hughes. I`m sure she deserved better than him.
Not at all weird. Extreme intelligence is so attractive.
No. As a straight female I love her. To me I just want to go back in time and help her. Help her with the children and to run off all the home wreckers while she finds herself.
I agree, that isn't weird. I have felt that way about people too. I also think it's rather sweet for you to admit it and say such nice things about her so candidly. That's refreshing to me.
Her story is so tragic, she lived such a difficult short life, yet her poetry was truly inspirational. She influenced female poets in particular for in her time, woman were so stuck in a patriarchal society. Amazing. Her daughter, Frieda still gives talks discussing her mothers work today. SO GOOD.
I grew up in Wellesley, and when I was at Wellesley High, I worked at the local market. Mrs. Plath often had her groceries delivered to her house. I was often the one who delivered food to her. Sylvia sounds very, very much like her mother. Mrs. Plath was very gracious and had a good sense of humor.
Shaun Kelly Hi again, Shaun, would you mind sharing a time frame for this? It is just so amazing to me! Were you aware of Sylvia's work at the time? Ever been approached for interviews or info? Maybe write your story! I would buy it. All things Plathian, Always
Tell me all about her.
Wow🥺👍💗💗💗
Haha I live in Natick! Just the town over
Wow, given her tragic story I had no idea she would sound like this. I was expecting some really fragmented voice struggling to string sentences together and much more monotoned in a lack of energy kind of way. She sounds so bright, cheery, intelligent, charismatic, colorful and melodic. Such a shame she went early. But then again so many great artists do. Who know what she’d have achieved had she stuck around. But glad to have these recordings. Something keeps drawing me back to her. She had something divine about her.
“It is presumptuous to say that one is influenced by someone like Shakespeare; one reads Shakespeare, and that is that.”
I love this woman
I wish I could have met her.
+Wally Kaspars Me too!
Ugh.
Not I. Brrrrhhhh!
lol
I respect her very much, but from all accounts she wasn't very pleasant irl.
i somehow don't match her voice with her face ? Amazing poet though - so haunting, beautiful
Don't match her voice with her face...why?
This is the first time Ive heard her speak and I was like WOW... I DID NOT expect her to talk so posh. I mean I knew she was highly intelligent and went to universities and everything but I imagined her to have a regular, maybe even sarcastic voice. Come to think of it... her poshness probably explains why Esther Greenwood in The Bekl Jar is a bit snobby sometimes and looks down on certain people, like Buddy Wilard.
With all due respect, I think you've entirely misunderstood Sylviia's manner of speaking. I wouldn't, for example, call a British accent "posh", because it's an accent. That's what it is. Such is the case with Sylvia...she had a typical New England accent, just a rather pronounced one. She used irony, but certainly not sarcasm.
What your hearing is her New England accent. 😉
@@joshuatrees797 she sounds a lot like Jackie Kennedy's accent
I feel so delighted that there are so many interviews and readings from her available. I love hearing her voice, her accent.
She has a mid-atlantic accent, which doesn't naturally occur. It's sort of a mix of American-British accents, but not entirely of either.
It's called "Boston Brahman." Very similar to Katherine Hepburn from the same area, or Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island. She has some British inflection which is common to people who have lived there a while.
I beg to differ. It is just as natural an accent as any other. One might as well say that all accents are affected! It is perfectly natural for local variations to occur. Plath's accent has its origins in Lancashire, UK, which is where a lot of early Boston area settlers came from. There are similar isolated pockets of Mid-Atlantic speech scattered throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Appalachians.
Morgaine Bergman
I didn't say "affected," I said INFLECTED. She has a British inflection from having lived there, coupled with her Boston Brahman, which is her base accent. If you're not familiar with the term, that's not my mistake. Her accent is decidedly not Mid-Atlantic. robertspage.com/dialects.html If you refer to the map, everything in purple is Mid-Atlantic. Her accent is called Boston Brahman, as I stated earlier.
KARI166: Actually, the Mid-Atlantic accent does occur naturally. It's called that because it's based on some coastal areas in VA and NC where the accent originates. Hollywood just standardized it.
"Mid-Atlantic Accent" doesn't refer to the geography of the United States - it's a popular term suggesting "half-way across the ocean" between Britain and America, and is used to describe the British-inflected American speech and American-flattened British speech that occurs when people from one place spend a lot of time in the other. Sylvia Plath's speech in this clip is definitely not simply Boston Brahmin - she has taken on a great deal of British intonation.
I think the Bell Jar is a masterpiece of prose. I don't go for poetry so much but prefer prose and that book is an example of great writing.
@Jake Matthews Thanks Jake I'll check that out. She is so fascinating. She had such great expectations but then decided it wasn't worth it. An individual choice surely.
The Bell Jar is a work of genius.
Being intellectual is not such value anymore as it used be. Nowadays everything is about corporation - sale target.
I completely agree. I enjoy reading literature and poetry and I enjoy thought provoking conversations but nowadays people perceive that as arrogance. It's disappointing that our generation isn't intrigued by knowledge
JULIAslt Yes, because "our generation" haven't built particle accelerators, they haven't built interstellar probes. They definitely haven't solved mathematical problems such as the poincaré conjunction.
Now youre seen as pretensious or being affected, which, yes is definitley a thing, but in most cases its idiotic to condemn someone for being intelligent
Agree..
@@Landauh STEM and Humanities forms of knowledge are not the same
She actually has the voice of a very educated Bostonian and she was a graduate of Smith. She also went to Cambridge. She was a very educated young lady and she learned to speak well because of it.
Very well-said and summed-up. I live in a university town (Bloomington, Indiana) and there is a wide spectrum of education, wealth, and speaking styles and often all in one place. In a "Fresh Air radio" interview I heard British actor Michael Caine say that America has a class system that isn't based on money "...but on how you talk" and I have found that to be true. Well-educated people do speak differently from those who are not well-educated. Maybe it's a mix of talking like the people around oneself and of learning to love and respect language and communication and of acquiring mastery of the language.
Andrew Brendan wow now that I think about it I suppose.....maybe we have a few different class systems going. but it's true no matter where you are here the less of an (regional) accent you have generally the more educated.....
True. There was a conjecture on another thread where someone said they believed the accent was an invention of Hollywood, and overblown, bad acting. I was happy to be able to link this to that thread, with an actual example of the accent from that period, and regional prime of culture. It's interesting that, now we have the commonality of bland, Californian accent, pervasive even here in Florida, where the Southern dialects are only discernible to Northerners, and not that we simply cannot hear the Southern accents because we are predominately Southern, but that among us, even the differences in Southern accents (Charlestonian as to Georgian, for instance having different vowel drawls), are becoming flattened, and more similar. You only really have true accents in deep places such as LA, (Louisiana, not California) and Tennessee, in the mountains, places further removed, and it's going to become moreso as the reach of technology and, therefore media is pervasive in that way. It seems a cherished thing to hear the regional dialects and those that carry connotation of culture.
Huge phony accent , yeah.
Captain Sunday Although, Andrew Brendan, she sounds to me rather shrill, strident,and unfortunately haughty. I do not find that to be typical of the well educated. Her voice is unique.
I loved when she talked about Anne Sexton, another great poet!!
"I can't write poems about toothbrushes"
Bukowski could. That would have been a hell of a conversation!
@@michaelbradley6004 He sucks at poetry
The intensity of her voice exalts me some how. Such a brilliant woman! I love all of her writings and poets. RIP
Yes, very passionate! Sometimes it sounds like she gets so excited that she has run out of air, like an excitable child! Very contagious to me. Can you imagine having her as a Professor/Lecturer? I'm not sure what her proper title was.
I find it really sad that after this, she is going to take her own life in a couple of months. She sounds so happy here.
***** Which is why it's even more sad and shocking when the ones that do keep it all in do commit suicide.
+snowcherryleopard I hardly believe she was truly happy.
As someone who suffers from Depression (it is genetic) I can say that she could have been putting on a more enthusiastic tone when speaking. That does not mean she feels happy or is mentally ''okay.'' It could be a mask for the public to see, not necessarily something that is real.
You smile, you laugh and come off as perfectly fine. I do that when dealing with people and society. In reality, I'm miserable.
snowcherryleopard That's the cruelty of depression; you drag yourself up from the pit by tooth and nail, feeling renewed, hopeful and enthusiastic about life and the world, only to fall that much harder when it inevitably comes crashing down again.
On the contrary, I think if you listen carefully you can tell how exhausted her voice sounds : especially the part where she talks about manipulating terrific experiences (which obviously should've remind some of them). By the time this interview was made, she already broke up with Hughes and was certainly into that highly creative yet exhausting and self-destructive period of her last months. She obviously wore herself out writing her best works, and you can tell by reading her Journals how intransigent she was.
Her voice is so opposed to her inner turmoil. You would expect, well I certainly did (having had a very similar life to her in terms of suicide attempts and hospitalisation for deep depression) a lilting, quiet voice but she has a very low, forthright voice, very commanding and strong.
Nancy - I was born in January, 1955 and graduated from Wellesley High School in 1973. I was extraordinarily lucky to have Mr. Crockett, who was Sylvia's beloved English teacher as well, as a high school junior. From January to May, 1955, Sylvia and I were literally neighbors - we lived across Weston Road (Elmwood, where she lived) on Mayo Road - a five minute's walk from her Wellesley residence. When then moved to Radcliffe Road across town, but interestingly, our house was right behind Woodlawn Cemetary, where her grandparents, and later on, Mrs. Plath, was buried. Wellesley was much changed in the 1960's; the local Howard Johnson's Restuarant where Sylvia used to hold forth was still there as well as Bailey's Ice Cream across the street where Wellesleyites relished their indescribable frappes (my mother used to have a frappe with a Harvard freshman who was dating her first cousin there back in 1938, a certain young man she always called Jack - John F. Kennedy). Next to Bailey's was the Hathaway Bookstore, Sylvia's favorite hangout (and mine as well) when we were growing up, which, for fifty years, served as the official bookstore for Wellesley College and the unofficial favorite bookshop for the town's residents. Sylvia and I both loved such places as the Wellesley Comunity Playhouse, a great old movie theatre a mile down from Wellesley High, which opened in the late 1920's and closed in 1987 (yes, I went to the last picture show there!). Sylvia and I both at a local diner called Sunshine Dairy. Finally, we even went to the same pharmacy, Fells!
While we were 22 year+ apart, the town was still very much as it had been - and so was Wellesley High. Like Sylvia, I published stories in The Phillipian and The Bradford, wrote featured pieces for The Wellesley Townsman, and even had our lockers along the same row outside Mr. Crockett's Room 206 (according to him). In the small world department, we also summered in the same community on Cape Cod, Eastham. We loved the same beach, Nauset, and every time I go there these days I always think of her there. Our house is situated on a road that Sylvia and Ted sed to bike on there to Rock Harbor in nearby Orleans. Warren Plath lives right down the road from us in Eastham these days. While I still teach outside of NYC, I spend three months of the year on the Cape and will permanently retire there in a few years.
Shaun Kelly Shaun, All I can say is WOW, WOW, WOW!!!! What an amazing post. As I said before, I could talk to you all day! You are so interesting. Thank you for the personal info. I did not mean to pry. I'm just a very curious person by nature. As for myself, I was born July 1951! So, we are close in age. Thank you for the tid bit on Warren. I often wonder about him. I have tried to research him, but haven't been able to find very much. Again, I am so very grateful to you for sharing your information and your life! I don't have anyone to share my love of Sivvy with, so you are a blessing! Happy reading, listening and sharing.
Nancy - will be returning home to Wellesley next weekend for a 60th birthday bash for my Wellesley High classmates. Will take a walk on Elmwood Road while I am there and visit Sivvie's house. slkelly@gcds.net
Shaun, When you say "visit" Sivvie's house, what do you mean? To just walk past it, or can a person actually go inside the house? Is it occupied? What do you mean about the birthday bash? Isn't your b.d. in January? Please don't think I'm daft with all the questions! Thanks for writing back.
Shaun Kelly Warren Plath is still alive? Also, when did Mr. Crockett die?
June 2021. I hope you all are doing well. The magic of TH-cam. One can add sometimes a lot, like here, to what is seen. Thank you.
A strong voice. Full of beauty and wisdom.
Plath’s voice has an authority and command of speech that partly derives from her skill with the sound of language as a poet...but also appears to signify strength of purpose and deep belief in what she is doing. This is not the voice of a woman walking a tightrope, but of one centred with the full assurance of self-belief, or at the very least, strong ambition. I can only imagine her mind - highly intelligent and imposingly powerful - eventually turned against her and she could not fight its dominion.
Yes, a soul with a final beyond boss signature of all things pinned n written!
Love the authority
Her accent is one of my favorites. :D
It's weird how quickly that American accent dissolved. Where and who speaks that way now?
Love her voice and her way of expressing herself. Such a sad loss to the creative world.
The interviewer is fabulous.
***** Thank you.
immortalized by her work and intellect
I was surprised by her rarspish voice i always read her poems with a mellifluous sounding voice in mind
As both a poet and Scorpio myself, Sylvia is a huge inspiration for me. She is intensely herself and her voice is unmistakable. I hope she rests well now
I love your poems, amazing! Thank you! inspiring, fellow scorpio here💛🦋
may she rest in peace, such a great soul
She's so deep! Matches her sign. (I'm also a Scorpio, and I have the Cancer ascendant.)
@@pereiramwgd Oh how lovely! I'm sure that's intense too, haha. I have Scorpio Sun, Leo Rising💫
Same here, I loved Sylvia's poetry ever since I've started reading it! I am a Scorpio as well and I write poems 🧡
Scorpio poet here also X
this was right before she died, practically... she sounds so....confident.
She has such a lovely laugh! Shame the interviewer doesn't seem to reciprocate too often, except at 02:09. Thanks for uploading, this was a great interview!
As a postscript, the "televization" of American English has been so pronounced in the past fifty years that regional accents are dying out. We all sound the same these days. Frankly, my mother, who lived her entire life in Massachusetts, and who was twelve years older than Sylvia, spoke exactly like her - all the way to the phrasing and clipped pronunciations. I had a handful of conversations with Mrs. Aurelia Plath growing up in Wellesley - she spoke the same way. Notice that the Kennedy children and grandchildren don't speak with a regional accent, unlike, say, Jack Kennedy (an old friend of my parents - they knew him from 1935 on).
Shaun Kelly Wow, Shaun! Sounds like you've had a very interesting childhood and life. Must say I'm quite envious, having grown up myself in the mountains of East Tennessee with no phone or inside bath!! I've always loved New England and dreamed of visiting there. Thank you for the posts. Very interesting. Keep writing.
Thank you, Nancy. Very lucky to have grown up and been educated in New England. Except for three years in which I taught and lived in London, I have spent my entire life here. By the way, you live in a beautiful part of the country.....
Shaun Kelly Thank you, Shaun, for all your knowledge, information, and kindness. I actually had to leave my beautiful mountains at age 15 due to family problems. I now live in California! I have been very fortunate to experience both east coast and west coast cultures and styles of education. I could discuss this with you for hours, Shaun, but then, it's not about me, but our beloved Sivvy....I do adore her! Until we speak.
Sylvia Plath found her voice unlike no other.
Completely unique , and was a trailblazer as well as being firmly rooted in the evolution of what we have come to call 'poetry' in the Western tradition.
as Shakespeare asked,
'who is Sylvia?', ....
Despite the time in which this interview took place, 1962, her words and intellectual persona resonates even today. As a student, I aspire to reach her level of grace and poise when speaking. Gone too soon.
Long before I discovered Plath I had been drawn to a complicated woman; both loving and selfless with a wicked wit and a struggle somedays to exist in this world. That woman I am lucky to still be with many years later and as I write this. The Bell Jar provided an instant familiarity in Esther: I felt like I was reading upon the diary of a friend I didn't know. It made the ending painfully raw - not the ending on the paper but the true end not long after publishing. RIP Sylvia, I wish this life had been easier for you.
I love the way her personality was. It seemed so wonderful. (:
Her voice sounds like my grandma...She sounds much older than she looks/actually is/how I expected her to sound.
she's putting this on. Listen to her interview with ted hughes together. She sounds normal there.
I wasn't ready to hear her speak. Oh dear
I was the same way, Susan! I had read her journals, letters, poetry, bios, etc. Then, I ordered her Spoken Word cd. I couldn't listen to it for months, but when I did, WOW! Many emotions! I cried because I love her and miss her. Kinda weird, huh?
+Susan Kohistany lol me too. It does not sound like the Sylvia Plath/Esther Greenwood of my imagination AT ALL.
She speaks beautifully. It's wonderful to put a voice to a face.
This is back when interviews were about finding depth and perspective and trying to understand the person. Nowadays, interviews are purely about who is dating who and if they cheated and what makeup they recommend (only when sponsored)
She doesn’t sound like a tortured soul but we all know differently. She is in the gut of the poet & she’s nothing like the polite sounding lady we’re listening to and I mean that as the highest praise.
Yeah tortured by Ted Hughes. I lived with a Ted type for 25 years until I realised he was a narcissist.
I think she had rapidly cycling bipolar disorder. Modern psychiatry and medications could have kept her alive for a very long time.
After seeing her face many times, I would have never thought her voice would sound like this.
Goddess of poetry psssed away so painfully ever known in the history of literature.Sylvia is stranger than fiction.Will continue to miss her words and existence!
I just can't believe I listened to her voice ! This is like a dream come true. To hear one of my most favourite poets is a life time experience. By her voice you can delve deep into her mind and heart how she thought and viewed this world. Just Amazing.
I agree🥹💗💗💗
Same
I feel the same! I'm just speechless.
Edit: the way she pronounced "teen-AGEr" was so compelling❤
Incomparable talent and soul
That voice. That voice.
She sounds so self assured while at the same time I feel like she is hiding behind her intellectual dexterity. Just consider what a 30 ish year old intellectual sound like today.....
what do they sound like?
I guess it was discovered that high IQ may cause mental disturbances... what it seems and what it is, sometimes is different
She's so underrated. . . amazing, smart woman. . . RIP Sylvia Plath. . . we love you.
Underrated?! She is in every anthology of American poetry and won a Pulitzer. Underrated? No. She is quite venerated
She is one of the greatest poets and short story and book writers in the 20th Century. She was already gaining a strong reputation by the academics. She is considered the greatest poet of the mid 20th Century. She was a genius. She had no idea of her success "The Bell Jar" was turned down during her lifetime. She never knew she would win a Pulitzer.
People don't talk like this anymore...
And certainly don't think as such.
good thing we don't
This interview is such a blessing, to listen to Plath it's so precious
Does anyone know if there is any video footage of Sylvia? It just occurred to me that we have some audio clips and many photos but no moving imagery of her. There is a very interesting video interview of Anne Sexton, and I find it interesting that they were contemporaries but I can't find any video of Sylvia. It would be cool to see her in motion. It's almost like Nick Drake where there isn't any confirmed video of him (though there's that, like, five second video of a guy walking with his back to the camera at a festival and people have been debating for years whether it's actually him)
my heart hurts
what a marvellous woman
I love when she speaks on being a active poet and being a poet at rest.
To think this is the voice of a 30 yr old, is baffling.
I wonder if she put this accent on. I'm so surprised by her voice. I'm expecting her to say "oh daaaling" at any point, lol. No disrespect; I've read so much about her. I sense she must have been a peculiar woman for her time ❤
What an incredible woman!❤
She sounds like someone 40 years of age. But she died at 30.
she was over worked and under
loved.
if only she had a good friends....
And didn't receive ECT and was drugged to death.
+Nikki A what a negligent remark.
Why negligent? It's true; the treatments for depression in that era were terribly primitive, and often very damaging.
Please elaborate on your statement, caitlindougherty8.
She received ECT and was then placed on Parnate, which is an analog of amphetamine. She had insomnia, and that drug causes insomnia. How would I know? I was placed on it. And, it's the most widely known side effect. The psychiatric profession rarely even prescribes the drug anymore, because it is one of the most dangerous drugs in the medical profession, causing physical problems that can lead to death and not to mention, mania, psychosis, and delirium.
Dr. Peter Breggins and other researchers have thoroughly overviewed the memory, cognition, and emotional issues that stem from ECT. And you know what? Plath also outed ECT and the psychiatric profession in Bell Jar. How can you possibly deeply understand the works of an artist when you willfully choose to ignore their experience?
she sounds exactly like " gwyneth paltrow" in her movie " sylvia" :)
I thought that Ms. Paltrow did a wonderful job in her portrayal of Sylvia Plath. I think that she is a damn good actor, as a matter of fact.
she DID ! :)
really beautiful movie indeed. :)
She is one of my favorite writer. It is delightful to hear from her. She is well read and obviously well experienced!
The writer Doris Lessing upon meeting Plath described her demeanor as “incandescent” slow burn. I hear that in her voice.
British interviewers almost always seem to ask better questions and treat artists more respectfully.
This is sensational - and so strangely soothing and familiar to hear her voice for the first time with this here interview, which I am listening to on Halloween morning. Rereading "The Bell Jar" this year moved me profoundly as an adult revisiting the work I first started to read as a teen in high school. Thank you again! Cheers, Britt
she seems so full of life and energy. loved listening to her!
She sounds like she's 80 years old, and maybe at this point in her life she was.
never heard her voice before, great upload.
Her son Nicholas hanged himself.
Her voice and way of speaking sounds like a 50 year old school teacher. Not at all that I expected...
the brightest of stars fade away faster than the mundane.
Her voice is spellbinding
Love her poetry--but that accent? Surprisingly affected.
I know----When I hear "Lady Lazarus," for instance, in my head, I hear/see a much less uptight writer.
a Scorpio legend...
She was probably an INFP𑁍beautiful
Affected voice, but that is part of her whole persona. Baked, you might say....
Strange how she seemed to have adopted a British accent, even though she's born-and-bred American.
Yes, that is Sylvia. As someone who is from Wellesley, she sounds very much like most of the English teachers I had growing up there. Yes, she is an intellectual, but her hard A's (very Winthrop, where she came from originally come through). I also knew Mrs. Plath, her mother - Sylvia sounds very much like Aurelia Plath.
Thank you for the explanation of her accent. I thought her accent was because of her time spent in England but it struck me as unlikely she would pick up an English accent so quickly since she wasn't there terribly long.
Sylvia reads her poetry better than any poet I've ever heard...
Wow! How did you know Aurelia? That is so interesting.
Ella Plitt any doubt?
Her voice is harsh does not match up to her beautiful verses.She must have been difficult to live with especially when her mental health issues began to surface.
Genius......
It's really fascinating, in a trainwreck sort of way, to listen to her go on and on. I've never quite heard anyone as self consciously pretentious. She obviously is "on", and doesn't have to work too hard at it.
well she was mature beyond her years, which you would know if you had read anything about her.
Sylvia developed this Mid Atlantic Accent. In the book "Red Comet" people who knew her in the US could not believe how she sounded when she spoke. Her diction was more like Anne Sexton. And she was more intelligent and a better poet and writer than Ted Hughes. She worked hard to get his work out because he was lazy.
She sounds like the female characters in old movies...a patrician accent. She sounded different after she moved to England, is that what you mean?
@@michelletegerdine5318 Yes. Her accent was more like Anne Sexton's (they were from the same place) were acquainted with one another . She admired Sexton. Anyway Syllvia felt inferior when she first arrived to Cambridge and developed this wonderful accent. In the last weeks of her life the man who lived under her said she would at times slip back into the American accent . Other close friends noticesd the same thing. Also she said things about God' and she was Athiest. .She unraveled. This interview was done in October and she died in February. I love her voice, I would have loved to have taken a class or hear a lecture under her. That book "Red Comet" by Heather Clark is the best researehced biography. It is highly readable. There is not a boring part in the book. Her last poem Edge was her suicide not. Lord, she sould write!
@@eliseziegler8856 I ordered Red Comet based on your recommendation. thanks for your reply. fascinating woman, she was.....!
@@michelletegerdine5318 You will love it. It was one of New York TImes' best books for 2021. If you can get the audiobook too!
That voice of he's was TransAtlantic and rapidly losing her American accent despite her saying otherwise. But she sounded pretentious if not narcissistic herself, as an artistic. Her voice was certainly old fashioned and elitist like Buckley's or. Plimpton's. A very East Coast, elitist, boarding school/finishing school accent.
OK, enough with the "narcissistic" and "elitist" BS. I think she sounds pretentious, but what I can't stand more are your "narcissistic" and "elitist" repeats of current sociological labels. You're a bore.
I've lately become interested in Plath and am planning to start reading her work soon, and i must say that i am already so fascinated by her and can already feel a connection with her. I didn't want this interview to end, i could listen to her speaking for the rest of my life, but how lucky we are to have even 14 minutes of this wonderful woman expressing herself outside of her poetry.
One of my favorite things she talked about during this interview is her respect for other professions, her desire of learning the practical, and her nostalgia of being a medical practitioner. As a medical student myself who is very passionate about my field, the only field of profession im nostalgic for is the field of arts, this contrast opens up such a warm spot of my heart for her. I feel so drawn to her. I will buy every book of her that i can find as soon as possible.
She is such an expressive speaker. Really impressionable and you can feel the echoes of the 20th century as speaks and the intensity of her speech is so breathy and absolutely feminine.
thank you so much for this,she has a very commanding voice one of my favorite poets by far
Her voice is frigid, paralyzing... as good as she is, as good as her poetry is.
mckavitt13 i was actually surprise by hearing how bold and condident her sound sounds , I expected she'd have a shy clumsy voice i don't know why exactly, she's not what I expected i love her so much
i thought that of her novel the bell jar , her insecurity is showing there and i thout that it would show in her personality
I could feel the awkwardness of being separated from Ted also I could tell the journalist already knew it.
Dear Sylvia
You were an intense poem about life as a novel. Burning away all the peripherals and paraphernalia to forge a collosal truth.
Thank you for uploading the interview.
I share some emotions, recollections, visions, ways of life and the talking style of Sylvia.
Yes, I must agree... I have learnt a lesson from Her.
Great visionary, poignant, insightful, metarhorical poetry of grief, sadness, love and death... all rolled into one- unexplained life...by Sylvia inspired me to write my own verses.
I translated some of Her monumental poems into Polish, well at least I tried...
There are just a handful of poets so much truthful, intelligent, well-educated and brilliant like Sylvia; Shakespeare, Yeats. Elliot, Dickinson including...
She had such a beautiful voice.
It really breaks my heart to hear her talk so excitedly about poetry becoming more open to emotional and psychological themes. This was a woman who was experiencing crippling mental illness in a time when there were hardly any really helpful supports or resources for people like her. Shes not just talking about the poetry. She was looking forward to a time when it would be truly safe to talk about internal struggle and mental health issues. I wish she'd made it, so she could have seen how far we've come.
is it just me or does her accent shift a bit toward the end of the interview? I mean, she sounds kinda "British" in the beginning and slips into something I'd call "Transatlantic" at the end. It might be just me though ^^
She was born and raised in the United States and attended university there as well, but married an Englishmen and lived there for seven years, I'd say by the time she died. Her accent probably is of the Transatlantic variety because of her upbringing and experiences in adult life. She is from Boston, I believe though, and a posh Bostonian accent resembles an English accent.
Susanna Powers alrighty then, thx for the answer :)
Wow she seems so alive and energetic
Why does she sound like she is sixty years old ?
Because she, like many writers, went out of her way to sound as intelligent as possible. And apparently intelligence sounds old...
Perhaps we should ask why the rest of us sound so adolescent?
So you agree she sounds older than she looks?
Because the people that still have that manner of speech are all in their old age now, and we associate that with old people. Just like powdery perfume and waxy lipstick, people in their early 20s wore that in the 1930s, but our parents associate that with the OLD people they knew as kids.
Beautifully articulate in real life. Articulately beautiful in poetry.
Nancy, we are celebrating our "big birthday" collectively - the vast majority of us will hit 60 this year (yes, I turned 60 in January). When I am there, I will walk down Sylvia's street - it is easily accessible; Elmwood Road is only three miles from my own street. I can't wait to visit my hometown once again!
Shaun Kelly Shaun, I have been so excited for your visit home and, of course, your birthday bash! I'm sure it was great fun to see all your friends. That's a "neat" idea to celebrate collectively!! You guys are pretty clever. To walk down Sylvia's street and see her house would probably be more than my brain could handle!!