Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) in conversation with Stan Rogal
Dying
Is an
art, like everything else.
I do it
exceptionally well.
I do it so it
feels like hell.
I do it so it
feels real.
I guess you could
say I’ve got a call.
— from: Lady Lazarus
Having not been inside the Park Hyatt Hotel lobby in several years, I was somewhat taken aback by the changes. In fact, the entire building had undergone a total makeover so as to be totally unrecognizable to my already failing memory. Posh came to mind; lavish, opulent, extravagant. Also (of course), ostentatious, even pretentious, speaking as one firmly situated in the cheap seats. I feigned a smile toward the front desk staff, made my way to the elevators, and hit the button for the rooftop Writers Room Bar — where the Writers Guild of Canada was purportedly born on the back of a napkin — wondering how much it had altered since I’d last visited.
Swish, I thought as I entered. The walls still held framed collections of antique ink bottles and writing quills, as well as photos and Andy Donato drawn caricatures of famous writers, alongside three kitschy collage prints that looked like they’d been recommended by someone other than an art specialist and connoisseur, say, a bean counter and frequenter of IKEA showrooms, maybe, online, whereas everything else had been done up to the nuts, with furnishings that seemed so austere as to make one slightly afraid to use them for the purpose they were obviously meant for: to sit, relax, and enjoy a drink or a bite to eat — how had Sartre described upholstered theatre seats in his novel, Nausea? Like dead upturned bloated donkeys, or something to that effect. Hm, a pleasant thought. I mean, even with that image in mind, I figured that one chair probably cost more than the three collages combined, and likely no artist receiving any sort of monetary compensation. Though, I could be wrong in this, I’ve been wrong before. What did someone once tell me: SUSPECT ART, and one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. I also (quickly) imagined that the menu prices as well, had swollen, to the point where most writers (the ones I knew, at any rate) couldn’t afford to imbibe here even if they wanted to. A fleeting flashback returned me to the days of the now-defunct Beverly Tavern on Queen street west, where I once shot pool with fellow poets George Bowering, Patrick Lane and Lorna Crozier over pitchers of cheap draft. But, I digress, ah, well.
The big draw at the Park Hyatt, still, was the fabulous balcony that overlooked the city and out over the lake.
Besides myself, there was only one other patron in the place. Planned or happenstance, I had no idea. That said, even if the room was crowded, the woman would have been easy to recognize from photos I’d studied. She sat on a stool at the bar, the stool shifted forty-five degrees to the left, her body twisted at the waist, her chin tilted upward, her eyes gazing dreamily toward the glass doors that led to the balcony, the rim of a martini glass poised near her lips. I sauntered over. She was wearing an ankle-length navy-blue cotton skirt, white bobby socks, a wide black belt with gold buckles, and a sleeveless white blouse. Her legs were crossed and a black and white saddle shoe rocked lazily in the air. She had long thick chestnut brown hair that fell in luxurious curls to her shoulders. She wore little or no make-up, except for a lush crimson lipstick. She held the stem of the martini glass daintily between two fingers and a thumb, a pair of speared plump olives leaned to one side. A midnight-blue clutch purse rested on the bar beside her, as well as a small bowl of Asian snacks. A thought struck me that was as dumb as it was unavoidable: she didn’t look like someone who was prone to suicide. Then again, who does?
She seemed to sense my presence, turned her head, smiled at me, invited me to sit, said she was told to expect me. She placed her drink on the bar and checked her watch. I asked if this was a good time and she said, yes, no problem, her next appointment wasn’t for an hour. She clenched her lips and said that would be the tough one; one she wasn’t looking forward to. I scaled the bar stool, sat, slid my recorder between us. The bartender, dapper, silent as a ghost, insinuated himself across from us. A drink, he asked, and spread a menu in front of me. I ordered a glass of the Chianti, the least expensive wine on the menu, and still exorbitant. Not that price mattered in this instance as I was told everything had been taken care of, still, I was of a class that knew its place, and was unwilling to take advantage of my more (albeit, temporary) privileged position.
She placed her free hand over my recorder. Before we begin, she said, formally, may I ask you something? She sipped her drink, set it on the bar and placed both hands on her knee. I nodded. Did you conjure me, or else were you a part of a group that conjured me? I mean, Ted and I, were, at one point, interested in matters of astrology and the supernatural, attending seances and such. We even consulted a Ouija board in an attempt to communicate with the dead. Ted felt that it might do me good, especially if we were able to contact the spirit of Dylan Thomas. Ted knew, you see, that I’d been furious at not being invited to a meeting that the editor, Cyrilly Abels — she hissed the woman’s name, and added, under her breath, “the cow” — of Mademoiselle magazine… where I had been a guest editor, you understand, and so, a co-worker... I mean, I would’ve thought not only collegial but deserving… She placed an open hand on her chest and leaned forward slightly, demonstrating, I thought, her feeling of having been highly ignored and/or disrespected… had arranged a meeting with Dylan Thomas, whose work I loved… according to one of my previous boyfriends, sharply, jealously… "more than life itself". She smiled and laughed and made air quotes with her fingers. Which was absolutely true, she added for emphasis; I did. I loitered around the White Horse Tavern and the Chelsea Hotel for two days, hoping to meet him, but he was already on his way home. A few weeks later, I slashed my legs to see if I had enough courage to kill myself. Well, Ted thought that some sort of communication might provide closure. He even went so far as to manipulate the wooden planchette to spell out a message, a ploy that was as clumsy as it was obvious, the words often rude, even crude, the beginning of a saucy limerick, say: There was a young girl from Nantucket… so on and so forth. Hardly the stuff of Dylan Thomas. It was a sweet thought, though, and the two of us had a good laugh. It was still fun back then, married to Ted. She plucked the olives from her glass, sank her teeth into one, subtracted it from the plastic spear, chewed methodically, and dropped the second olive back into the glass. Well? Did you? Conjure me, I mean. She stared at me. I told her that I was in the dark as much as she was as to the machinations, the particulars of the process, and that I was merely the interviewer, summoned by various, though hardly nefarious, means. She swallowed. Then not by Ouija, I’m guessing. Not so far, I volunteered. She shrugged her shoulders and retrieved her drink. I hit the record button.
SR: You mentioned that you had another appointment scheduled that you weren’t looking forward to. Can you elaborate?
SP: Yes. I’m to meet with the head of the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Toronto as part of a series of motivational lectures by women. I’m under the impression they want me to be the poster child for talented women who have suicided due to constraints put upon them by an oppressive and abusive patriarchal society. (She gritted her teeth and stretched her lips into a grimace). Heavy, yes? My concern is that after years of romanticizing and theorizing my life and work, I won’t be able to live up to either the ideal that’s been created — the myth, that is — or the hype.
SR: But you don’t disagree with the premise that you lived in an oppressive and abusive patriarchal society?
SP: Oh, God, no. (She knocked back the remains of her martini, wrapped her mouth around the second olive, withdrew the plastic spear, dropped it and the glass onto the bar top, and motioned for another with a finger twirl). Any woman with any sense at all would realize that. I even remember writing a letter to my mother while I was still young and full of myself saying that I strongly believed in women's abilities to be writers and editors while society forced them to fulfill secretarial roles. (The waiter placed a fresh martini on a coaster in front of her. She regarded it almost fondly and sighed). This takes me back to those carefree afternoons at the Ritz-Carlton Boston lounge with Anne Sexton where we’d meet after Robert Lowell’s poetry workshop and drink martinis and eat bowls of the free potato chips that were provided and talk about poetry, husbands, sex, and suicide. All the wonderfully juicy subjects. (She reached for a handful of snacks and dropped a few into her mouth). The snacks are more exotic these days. Gone are the potato chips, and no peanuts, I was told, as certain people have allergies that can outright kill them. How’d that happen, huh?
SR: (I shrugged and shook my head). Jury’s still out on that, I’m afraid. And not just peanuts.
SP: Must offer many more possibilities for murder-mystery stories. (She widened her eyes and raised her eyebrows). Always a bright side.
SR: Yes. I guess that’s true. (I smiled back at her, enjoying her dark sense of humour, her candor, while at the same time struck by her resemblance to those innocent young women seen featured on the covers of Debutante magazine and its ilk). Um, in 2021, a book by Gail Crowther, titled Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton, recounted some of those meetings between the two of you.
SP: Was George Starbuck mentioned at all? (She slit her eyes and shot me a look).
SR: Not sure. I only just learned about the book. Haven’t had a chance to get my hands on it.
SP: Ha! (She ripped an olive from the spear, chewed, and swirled the second olive in her drink). Anne was fucking George. I didn’t approve. Peter Davison described George as all knees and elbows, tall as a crane with great shadows under his eyes, and a slow melancholy, throw-away manner of speaking. He was a hanger-on, someone who spent years in various colleges without obtaining a degree, who wrote silly punning double dactyl higgledy piggledy poetry which somehow won awards and got him a publisher. (She rolled a hand in the air and made a face). Personally, I didn’t get the attraction. But, Anne was a bit of a poetry slut. She’d be the first to admit — in fact, she’d be proud — so.
SR: You’ve mentioned suicide a couple of times now. Anne is quoted as saying, “We talked death with burned up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric lightbulb, sucking on it.” She said that you told the story of your first suicide attempt in sweet and loving detail, and your description in your novel, The Bell Jar, was just the same story.
SP: Yes, I remember. I hadn’t been accepted into a Harvard University writing seminar with Frank O’Connor. I was already undergoing electroconvulsive shock therapy and insulin shock therapy for depression, and I made my first medically documented suicide attempt on August 24, 1953 — yay! — by crawling under the front porch and taking my mother's sleeping pills. I was discovered, and had my stomach pumped. I told Anne that I had blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I believed was eternal oblivion. (She popped her lips and took a deep breath through her nose). Sounds a bit school-girlish now, doesn’t it? The words. Yet, that’s the way I felt. (She devoured the second olive). I spent the next six months under the psychiatric care of Ruth Beuscher, receiving “the talking cure” as well as more electric and insulin shock treatments. (She dropped her jaw, lolled her tongue out of her mouth, rolled her eyes in their sockets, and acted out her body shaking in spasms, zombie-like). Please. (She dropped the routine). Just shoot me. Or give me another one of these. (She raised her glass. I followed suit and we toasted).
SR: Seems to me you had more than a passing interest in the darker side of life.
SP: That’s an understatement. Look at my poems. Chock full of images like the moon, blood, hospitals, fetuses, skulls. Themes of death, redemption, resurrection. Feelings of rage, despair, love, and vengeance. I had a gift for turning everything into a nightmare, everyone into a monster. I had a fascination with the macabre; an attraction; an affection, even.
SR: And yet, in your poem “Elm,” you wrote: “I am terrified by this dark thing / That sleeps in me; / All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”
SP: Aren’t we all both repelled and seduced by what frightens us? Especially when it lives inside us. And wouldn’t it be so much simpler to blame outside forces for one’s problems? A patriarchal society, a philandering husband. (She crinkled her face and rocked her head impishly). A philandering husband who also happened to be devastatingly handsome and terrific in bed… until he wasn’t, that is. Ah, well, c’est dommage. Love, as the old song goes, is a many splintered thing. Or maybe that was just me. Anyway. (She grinned and went on). A poet, singer, story teller, literary lion and world wanderer with a voice like the thunder of God — terrified? Sure! Fatally attracted? You betcha! — whereas I knew that the source of my mental anguish lay within me, that I was born with it, that it was part of my genetic make-up, like eye colour or the shape of the nose or cancer. I mean, I was depressed and suicidal most of my life without any help from anyone. Did it make things worse that I was living in a man’s world and that my husband was screwing a married tenant of ours? The strikingly beautiful Assia. I suppose it didn’t help, but? Yet, where would society be if everyone suicided because their partner was unfaithful, hm? (She tipped her glass toward me). Are you married? Or ever been?
SR: Once.
SP: What happened?
SR: She decided to move up in the world. Left me for her boss. A lawyer.
SP: And did you kill yourself? No. Did you want to kill yourself? (I shook my head in the negative. She raised her glass). I rest my case. No, the world didn’t affect me, I affected it. Or, the malignant dark thing growing within me affected it, and it wasn’t a matter of if I suicided, but when. And it made no difference that I graduated from Smith summa cum laude, or that I was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honour society, or that I had an IQ of 160, placing me in the genius category, apparently — I mean, I was no dumb broad — or that I taught at Smith, or that I received a summer editor position at the young women's magazine Mademoiselle, or that Ted and I were accepted at the Yaddo artist colony, or that my first collection of poems, The Colossus, was published — you see, I was seemingly making it, by all outward appearances, though none of these achievements and no amount of therapy or kind words, or having children, even, would ever be enough to change my fate. You’re familiar with Poe’s poem, “The Conqueror Worm,” yes?
SR: It’s been a while, but, yes, somewhat. The poem implies that human life is mad folly ending in hideous death, the universe is controlled by dark forces man cannot understand, and the only supernatural forces that might help are powerless spectators who can merely affirm the tragedy of the scene.
SP: The blood-red thing, the conqueror worm. Now, can you imagine me giving a motivational speech in front of a roomful of starry-eyed acolytes? Why, if I began to talk about such things, in less than two minutes, I’d have them fleeing the building ready to poison themselves or jump off the nearest bridge.
SR: Yes. I suppose they’d rather hear “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.”
SP: I shouldn’t doubt it. Brave sentiment. Or wishful thinking. I don’t remember which.
SR: You wrote a suite of poems about bees near the end of your life.
SP: That’s true. Ted and I were living in Devon, England, and we’d taken up beekeeping.
SR: Plato records Socrates teaching that poetry emanates from honey springs.
SP: Did he now? Well, la-di-dah! It’s a lovely thought, but certainly not my experience.
SR: The poems have some scholars branding you an Ecofeminist.
SP: Really? How fascinating. I mean, yes, I used the theme of beekeeping and bee behaviour as I normally did, as metaphors wherein I entertained thoughts of my own death and explored contributing factors, such as an increasingly unsupportive community and an unfulfilling role as a domestic housewife and mother. Of course, I also related, personally, to the queen bee in terms of her power over the sexual act. The drone impregnates the queen and the moment he does so his abdomen splits open, losing the entrails, which the queen then totes behind her as proof that she has guaranteed the future of the hive. I found that image very compelling. Much like the male, I suppose, in some cultures who waves the bloodied sheet out the window on the wedding night for all to witness, to prove that he’s broken the virgin bride’s hymen. Quite comical, hilarious, really, if it weren’t so utterly violent and vile, I mean. The crass display. (She stretched her lips into a thin smile, picked up a nearby cloth napkin, danced it in the air a moment, then dropped it back on the bar). So, yes, feminist, in that sense, maybe, but hardly worthy of being pronounced an ecofeminist. I mean, the setting was Edenic, but the conqueror worm was ever present.
SR: Uh-huh. In the final poem, “Wintering,” written the ninth of October, 1962, you close with “Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas / Succeed in banking their fires / To enter another year? / What will they taste of, the Christmas roses? / The bees are flying. They taste the spring.” It seems so optimistic.
SP: (She laughed, scooped another handful of snacks into her mouth and washed them down with her martini). Just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you read. I’d already attempted suicide that spring by driving my car off the road, whoopsie! Ted was in the midst of his torrid affair with Assia, who was also likely carrying his love child, God help me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I left him and took the children with me to London. I did believe — foolishly, momentarily — that I may have made a correct decision when I found I’d rented a flat in a house where W.B. Yeats had once resided: 23 Fitzroy Road. I considered this a good omen. Ha! Next thing I knew I was in the middle of the coldest winter London had seen in 100 years; the pipes froze, there was no telephone, the children were down with the flu, my usual depressive state became more severe, anti-depressants providing no relief whatsoever, I was taking sleeping pills due to my suffering from insomnia, drinking more, I was receiving numerous rejections from publishers for my poetry, and my novel, The Bell Jar, was being met with critical indifference, if not outright disparagement. No wonder that during that time I probably wrote some of my most disturbing poems. Add it all up, and one day I decided, okay, fine, you win, I can take a hint, I give up. I taped off the children’s room to keep them safe, I taped off the kitchen — I was very meticulous in my method. In fact, I’ve always been very meticulous, give me that. I mean, I even left a note to one of the other tenants, in terms of what to do with the children in the event of… so on and so forth… — I turned off the pilot flame to the stove, turned on the gas, and stuck my head and shoulders into the oven. All of which might sound vaguely theatrical in some sense, but was, in fact, merely a scene of humdrum practicability, if you’ll permit me the use of a twenty-dollar word for a two-bit stunt. Cheers! (She raised her glass and took a sip. I did the same. We shared a small laugh).
SR: Yeah, sure, no problem. (I took a breath and re-focused). Um, so, death by carbon monoxide poisoning.
SP: Exactly. The only glitch was, I expected the process would be relatively quick and painless. Inhale, go quietly to sleep, die. Wrong! Symptoms include headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, convulsions, and chest pain, lots of chest pain, which I experienced, and your body is too paralyzed at this point to do anything about it, even if you wanted to. Frankly — and no matter the popularity of this method at the time — I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
SR: Uh-huh. Ted’s lover — Assia, that is — chose exactly the same method as you, head in the oven, ending her life a few years later.
SP: Shut the front door, you don’t say! (She had to place a clenched hand to her face to stop herself from laughing). Well, Assia was never the sharpest knife in the drawer. (She sniffed and coughed, her eyes slightly damp with tears of laughter. She pinched them dry with her fingers). If you’ll excuse the obvious in-bad-taste metaphorical joke.
SR: (The joke was a bit of a head-scratcher for me, though perhaps suggesting Assia wasn’t “sharp” enough to slash her wrists, so settled for the banal, I don’t know. Sylvia found it hilarious. I moved on). One critic has stated that your collection, Ariel, published after your death, contains your most fervent, emotional, and troubling poetry yet. That poems such as “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” appall readers with their frank references to death, suicide, mental instability, and the slow, agonizing erosion of the self. On January 16, 2004, The Independent in London published an article which ranked Ariel as the third best book of modern poetry among its “10 Best Modern Poetry Books”. Some in the feminist movement saw you as speaking for their experience, as a "symbol of blighted female genius". Writer Honor Moore describes Ariel as marking the beginning of a movement, Sylvia Plath suddenly visible as "a woman on paper", certain and audacious. Moore says: "When Sylvia Plath's Ariel was published in the United States in 1966, American women noticed. Not only women who ordinarily read poems, but housewives and mothers whose ambitions had awakened. Here was a woman, superbly trained in her craft, whose final poems uncompromisingly charted female rage, ambivalence, and grief, in a voice with which many women identified".
SP: Huh! Really? (She took a large swig). Big shoes to fill. Enormous shoes. So, what are you saying?
SR: That maybe this is exactly what the motivational lecture series wants to hear from you; that they’re now prepared and ready to hear from you.
SP: You think?
SR: Why not? They asked for you, specifically, and it wasn’t merely to type or take shorthand.
SP: That’s true. (She checked her watch).
SR: I know. It’s time. I’ll take my leave from you.
I finished my wine, got down from the stool and thanked her for her time. I wandered over to the collages to check out the placard tacked to the wall. The piece was titled Distant Early Warning by Douglas Coupland. The description read: “The iconic rooftop bar at Park Hyatt, and the literary legends who spent time in the space, inspired Coupland’s works that pay homage to Canadian history. The overriding message of the piece is Distant Early Warning. Canada's prophetic media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, saw the Cold War's DEW Line as a geopolitical reality and a metaphor for Canada's role as a canary in the Western ontological coal mine. Said Coupland: ‘Canada is surprisingly good at finding things first, yet it's too modest ever to say that out loud. I think the writers in Donato's caricatures, and the writers who appear in my triptych pieces, can all be seen as thinkers who saw signals coming from far in the distance and who put out some warning signal in response.’ Seventy-five paperbacks and hardcovers from the caricatured writers were used to create this piece, most of them from the 1970s. CanLit covers from that period were quite strange, using muddy colours and typography that challenged the reader to read the book despite its cover. Coupland rehabilitated old book covers by formatting them inside the same era's typographical reality of jazz album covers. The 1970s were a happy, doctrinaire moment in Canadian writing history.”
Well, whaddya know, I thought — Suspect Art — an original work of art by a well-known and well-respected Canadian artist. Sorry I was so ignorant earlier on, Doug, and derogatory. A thousand apologies. Goes to show, my taste for art is all in my mouth. I shuffled toward the exit and passed a professorial-type woman who beamed as she caught sight of Sylvia at the bar. I wondered if she’d arrive in time to have her interview, or if Sylvia would take the opportunity to glide across the room and toss herself over the famous balcony. I figured it was a coin flip at this juncture, and maybe dependent on whether or not she ordered that third martini. Well, not my problem. I strode down the hall, entered the elevator, and made my exit.
Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner Jacquie Jacobs and their pet jackabee. His work has appeared almost magically in numerous magazines and anthologies. The author of several books, plus a handful of chapbooks. Currently seeking a new publisher: anyone??? Co-founder of Bald Ego Theatre and former coordinator of the popular Idler Pub Reading Series.