Catherine Rankovic

<Sylvia Plath’s mother is Plath studies’ “final frontier.” While thoroughly researching poet Sylvia’s father Dr. Otto Plath, Plath scholars and readers have tacitly agreed with Sylvia that her mother Aurelia Schober Plath (1906-1994) tried to live vicariously through her writer daughter, who learned to hate her, and that Aurelia Plath’s life as a single working mother was not worth looking into. Author Catherine Rankovic began independent research in Plath archives in 2013, transcribing Aurelia Plath’s Gregg shorthand notes on Plath papers, and now posts ongoing, wide-ranging research about mother and daughter at AureliaPlath.info. Author’s essay “Medusa’s Metadata” appears in The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath (2022). Notes to this essay are appended.>

As "witch" became a popular counter-culture identity in the US and UK around 1970, reinforced a generation later by mass-media portrayals of cute and independent young witches in "Harry Potter" and "Buffy" and other fictions, readers of Sylvia Plath's remarkable creative writings began wondering: Had Sylvia Plath been a witch? Or a mystic? Or psychic? Is that how she wrote her great poems? Learn here what those terms really mean and what she really was.

Poet Sylvia Plath for her first eight years witnessed her strict father Otto Plath controlling their whole household, issuing orders, yelling, and forcing his wife Aurelia Plath to be his servant. It is not surprising that Sylvia Plath herself, as an adult, participated in domestic abuse that included violence. She wrote about her parents' marriage in her poem "Daddy" and acted it out in her own marriage to Ted Hughes.

Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), despite pressure from home and the job market, resisted learning Gregg shorthand or any form of rapid writing until 1959 when a desired clerical job required it. She then chose to learn Speedwriting, a modified longhand invented by shorthand instructor Emma Dearborn (1874-1937). Introduced in 1924, Speedwriting for the next 50 years was promoted in now-iconic ad campaigns as an alternative to symbolic shorthand systems such as Gregg. References to shorthand and dictation pervade Plath's novel The Bell Jar (1963) and form the basis of her breakthrough 1958 short story "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams." Works that Plath herself noted as artistic breakthroughs followed on the heels of her stints as a clerical worker, suggesting that the office jobs she held between 1958 and 1961 set a creative dynamic in motion.

John Nelson Morris (1931-1997) won Poetry magazine's Frederick Bock Prize, published four books of poems with Atheneum, and a volume of Selected Poems was published after his death, but Morris deliberately eschewed publicity and "the poetic life" as lived in the 20th century. Morris taught for 30 years at Washington University in St. Louis. This 1996 in-depth interview is the only one he ever granted.

Daughter of a Serbian immigrant refugee who was a prisoner during World War II and a Displaced Person who arrived in the United States in 1950 discusses growing up Serbian-American as part of the close-knit Serbian refugee community in the United States.

History, origin, context, promotion, and reception of singer Elvis Presley's second number-one hit record "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You," released by RCA in June 1956, which includes discussion of its lyrics and Presley's performance, Life Magazine's coverage of the recording session, and Presley's related television appearance.