'Parliament Hill Fields' is such a moving poem, and impressive that Sylvia Plath read it out on BBC radio in 1961. As her biographer Heather Clark writes, 'There was no female elegiac tradition mourning the unborn— an astonishing omission from the literary canon given that a quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Plath was writing in uncharted territory, giving voice to an experience shared secretly by millions of women.'
I had a lovely old secondhand Penguin of The Saint and Other Stories from the mid-60s, which I regrettably gave to Oxfam when I got the huge Collected Stories. I must have read The Sailor about 40 years ago; all I remember is a line where you have a sudden aerial view of men leaving pubs at closing time all over England.
'Parliament Hill Fields' is such a moving poem, and impressive that Sylvia Plath read it out on BBC radio in 1961. As her biographer Heather Clark writes, 'There was no female elegiac tradition mourning the unborn— an astonishing omission from the literary canon given that a quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Plath was writing in uncharted territory, giving voice to an experience shared secretly by millions of women.'
I had a lovely old secondhand Penguin of The Saint and Other Stories from the mid-60s, which I regrettably gave to Oxfam when I got the huge Collected Stories. I must have read The Sailor about 40 years ago; all I remember is a line where you have a sudden aerial view of men leaving pubs at closing time all over England.
I think you linked to a piece (also about doubt) from almost a year ago.
Oh God ...... need a sub editor
Loosely linked to both Johnson and Boswell, you might enjoy this link between them, booze, and the American national anthem
https://open.substack.com/pub/joefattorini/p/whose-national-anthem-was-once-a?r=92o7j&utm_medium=ios