I Hoped This Was Aurelia Plath's Poem

Before she married Otto Plath, Aurelia Schober wrote poetry and fiction. Two published poems survive: one from her high-school days and one from college. This poem was in the folder with her first diary, 1924-28, in the Plath Family Papers at Yale University.

I'd gone to see those papers hoping to find Aurelia kept notebooks full of her poems. We could compare with Edna St. Vincent Millay's or Sara Teasdale's -- the top female poets of the time, and Aurelia owned their books. And maybe consider how Aurelia's poems might relate to her daughter Sylvia's poems. Oh, I hoped this poem was Aurelia's, until I read it.

I thought if Aurelia preserved this poem it was hers, but "A.C.M." is credited and her initials then were "A.F.S." Today most poets want credit for their poems but for some reason A.C.M. lay low. Maybe the reason was modesty. Aurelia attended a women's college and its yearbooks 1926 through 1928 each devote pages to creative writings, all unsigned. Much later, Aurelia identified her own poem "A Child's Wish" in the 1928 yearbook [1], but the typeface here matches that of Winthrop High School's yearbook and Aurelia graduated from there in '24. 

This rough-hewn poem lacks the formal polish of Aurelia's "Forbidden Fruit" (1923; she was seventeen), which she had credited to her and it is reproduced here. Call it "banal" but I like it and it's better than "Bits of Gold." The issue then is why Aurelia kept this clipping. Possibly it was a student's very early work, like, "Ode on an Ag'd Vase."

Aurelia had no classmates with the initials A.C.M. Whoever the author was I hope that like Sylvia they kept writing poems until they got the knack.

[1] Aurelia photocopied "A Child's Wish" for researcher Harriet Rosenstein c. 1970 but it seems Rosenstein did not receive it and it is with other materials in Aurelia Plath's papers at Smith College Libraries.

Pleased With Everything: Plath Family Papers at Yale

The Plath family has gifted Aurelia and Warren Plath's literary estates to Yale University's Beinecke Library. This donation ended my seven years of being bound by a non-disclosure agreement. 

I saw and photographed Aurelia Plath's estate materials, then privately owned, back in 2018, and despite temptation have kept quiet all this time, praying that the letters, postcards, photo albums, artwork, realia, and Aurelia's journals -- ranged across 22 different notebooks, entries dated 1924 to 1990 -- might not rot in boxes or be auctioned off piece by piece, that the archive would stay whole, a gift to all Plath scholars. I am grateful.

Aurelia's journals for 1963, photographed in 2018. I used the ruler for scale in case these notebooks were never seen again.

In 2018 I spent only two days with the 20-plus boxes of Aurelia's estate so couldn't see every bit, but it included treasures I hope haven't been sold or withheld. We will at last see what Aurelia did not sell to Indiana University or donate to Smith but kept until she died. I plan to be there and report to you.* I don't expect a mob. This is the stuff Aurelia valued and you know how she has been valued. My impression was that Aurelia was a very critical and love-hungry adult (so was Sylvia) and she could keep a secret.

Remember this is once again Aurelia-curated material. It might or might not alter the narratives we are used to.

Such a thrill, of the sort researchers get! And what a relief. For two days after I learned about this gift to Yale I quivered all over and couldn't sleep or eat. Call me a geek, but I'm a happy one.

*A sample from one of my reports from Yale: https://theyalediaries.substack.com/p/aurelia-plaths-songs-of-experience