The IU-Sylvia Plath connection expands with a new online journal
Writer and artist William Buckley, an IU Northwest professor of English, is an expert on 20th-century British literature. But his heart belongs to a gifted, troubled American poetess: Sylvia Plath.
"She is the best American female poet since Emily Dickinson," said Buckley, who teaches Plath and who has also written poems inspired by her work. "She has worldwide appeal. She's been translated into probably 20 languages at this point."
Buckley is the founding editor of Plath Profiles, the first journal dedicated to the study of Plath's poems, prose, artwork and life. It went online in August 2008 at http://www.iun.edu/~plath/.
"Her appeal is interdisciplinary and widespread, and the journal reflects that," Buckley said. "It's 400 pages of essays, book reviews, art, photography, college essays and even high school contributions. We have a youth forum. Autobiographical sketches. And there are notes and responses. So it's not just your usual academic journal."
Plath was the dynamic, eloquent, often angry writer of such works as Ariel, her signature poetry collection that was published after her death by suicide in 1963, and The Bell Jar, her lone novel. Plath was the only American writer ever to receive the Pulitzer Prize posthumously. But her struggles with mental illness, her tumultuous marriage to British poet Ted Hughes and the sorrowful details of her death have become as much a part of Plath's cultural legacy as her writings.
Yet 45 years after her passing, Buckley said Plath's words still resonate with readers worldwide. In particular, Plath's poem regarding her father has struck a chord with generations of women.
"It's all because of that book Ariel, and especially her two poems, 'Daddy' and 'Lady Lazarus,'" he said. "That book appeals to so many people. Plath appeals to women all over the world."
Buckley, who earned his Ph.D. from Miami University of Ohio, has taught literature and creative writing at IU Northwest since 1983. Like Plath, Buckley is a multi-faceted artist, and his evocative poems and prose, as well as his photography, paintings and sketches, have earned the Crown Point, Ind., resident critical acclaim for his ability to create a tangible sense of mood and place for his audience.
Buckley has been called the "poet laureate" of northwest Indiana for his verses -- found in such collections as Athene in Steeltown and others -- detailing the unique character of a region dominated by steel and industry, yet anchored by such distinctive natural features as Lake Michigan and the Indiana Dunes. More recently, Buckley, a California native, has turned his creative gaze toward America's Southwest as another focus for his writings and artwork.
Plath Profiles is but the latest literary initiative backed by Buckley at IU Northwest, where he previously served as faculty adviser to the campus literary magazine Spirits, and where, in 2006, he helped to organize "Poeticize," a juried, region-wide poetry contest for middle school, high school and college students. Buckley also presented his poetry at IU Northwest's 2006 conference "Drawing the Lines: International Perspectives on Urban Renewal Through the Arts."
Although he had long taught Plath to his literature students, her work had not been a specialty for Buckley, whose academic areas of focus include 20th-century British literature, and particularly D.H. Lawrence, as well as the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, about whom he has published several articles and a textbook chapter. But his students' powerful reaction to Plath's verses compelled Buckley to study her work more closely, he said.
Buckley first conceived Plath Profiles after giving a presentation at the writer's Massachusetts alma mater, Smith College.
"I was invited to give a speech on Virginia Woolf, and I had read in Sylvia Plath's journals that she loved Virginia Woolf's novels," he recalled. "So, instead of giving the usual academic paper, I wrote these poems, or I tried to write them, in the voice of Sylvia Plath.
"It was a pretty pretentious thing to do," Buckley admitted. "But I thought I'd do it anyway, just to see if I could talk about Plath in relation to her love for Virginia Woolf. I read these poems in front of an all-female audience at Smith College, and it got a big reception."
Impressed by the wealth of interest in Plath, Buckley searched for existing journals devoted to her life and work, and found none. But the Lilly Library at IU Bloomington possesses the world's largest collection of Sylvia Plath papers, providing Buckley an expansive foundation of research and support materials.
Kathleen Connors, Plath specialist and visiting scholar at the Department of English at IU Bloomington, invited Buckley to attend the Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium at Oxford University in October 2007. There, Buckley pitched his idea to other "Plathites," who enthusiastically agreed to take part in Plath Profiles.
The journal, co-sponsored by IU, Oxford University and Smith College, features many of the papers and presentations given at the Plath symposium, which convenes every five years. The diversity of works and viewpoints presented at Oxford demonstrated that Plath's relevance and appeal extend across borders, cultures and languages, Buckley said.
"We've noticed interest from all over the world, especially from the Eastern countries," he said. "She's being taught in Japan now. So the journal is an attempt to try and understand why. If we can read what people are saying about her, then we'll know why this American female poet has such an appeal to people in countries that you'd never think would be interested in her."
The Plath Profiles editorial board attests to the cross-cultural impact of Plath's work. Its members hail from a broad spectrum of American universities -- Harvard University (where Plath Profiles Web master Peter Steinberg works at the Houghton Library), Trinity College, Oregon State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among notable others -- but the board also includes representatives from schools in Turkey, Romania, England, India, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Iran.
Just as Plath speaks to people from across the social and cultural spectrum, Buckley said, Plath Profiles is meant to provide a forum where academics, Plath devotees, writers and artists, casual readers, and students may all communicate their thoughts, reactions and insights related to her work.
"We really want to be a different kind of journal, where everybody from all walks of life is involved," he explained. "A practicing clinical psychologist came to the (Oxford) conference and delivered a paper. A surgeon came to the conference and delivered a paper. A female truck driver from Australia came to the conference and gave a paper. A young woman who works at a gas station here in the United States, who reads Sylvia Plath in between checking out her customers, came to the conference to listen to what was being said about Plath.
"I met a woman from Hong Kong in the Lilly Library, an independently wealthy Chinese woman, who is spending her money to travel around the world to visit Plath sites and write about Plath," Buckley recounted. During that same visit, he met a retired Australian gentleman, an artist, who was there to study Plath's paintings.
And so, 45 years after her death, the works of Sylvia Plath continue to inspire, fascinate and resonate with readers across cultures, borders and generations. As conceived by Buckley and his coterie of fellow academics and Plath admirers, Plath Profiles serves not merely as a reflection of the author and poet herself, but as a living, vital portrait of the people whose lives Plath's words continue to touch and transform.
"She was a shooting star," Buckley said. "Her star shot up very fast and very hot, for a very brief time."
