An old notebook belonging to Sylvia Plath has been discovered to be holding a secret for the past five decades.
Plath had used carbon paper with her typewriter, as was often the way, while writing her poetry and recording her thoughts. Some of these scraps of carbon paper were discovered in the back of an old notebook, her words still etched on the dark ink.
Two academic writers, Gail Crowther and Peter K Steinberg, were researching Plath for their upcoming book when the poems were discovered. Steinberg noticed the carbon paper hidden in the notebook had been used, and made an attempt to decipher the words upon it.
According to The Guardian newspaper, Steinberg felt “a jolt” when he read “a convoluted strangle of typewritten words”. “I thought, ‘I might be the first person in 40 years to work with this document’.”
Other insights into Plath and Hughes were found with the poems, including works by Hughes, typed by Plath and previously unseen photos.
The Plath poems are titled ‘To a Refractory Santa Claus’ and ‘Megrims’, the former ponders on the warm climate of Spain, written after her honeymoon to Benidorm. The latter is written from the point of view of a paranoid patient speaking to a doctor about a series of ‘irregular incidents’.
The academics who discovered the poetry described the imagery as “spectacular”, particularly with the description of the fog of breath as a “white disguise”, akin to the vapour which escapes an open freezer door.
Excitingly, the poems will be able to be read by us when the book is released in October- and is available to pre-order now (find out where below).
Author Steinberg remarked that he had a feeling that there was much more to be discovered about Plath and Hughes, including Plath’s final journals apparently destroyed by Hughes when Plath committed suicide.
Although he admitted: “This requires hope and faith, possibly delusion. But I do feel there are caches of papers still to find the light of day.”
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