1955: Plath's 'Ennui'

A recently discovered sonnet, penned by then-undergrad Sylvia Plath, has been published on-line by Virginia Commonwealth University.

A voice like hers blazed early, bright, and strong ... these many years later, we are rapt for more. More Plath, we strain at the possibilities, voracious for morsels from the stilled voice, the spirit fixed under glass, too soon an apparation.

'Ennui' is fertile, numinous with the points of her nimble writer's mind. Still, it haunts even as it satisfies. From early on, Plath saw ends from afar, eddying and looming into the everyday, her deathless perception an inescapable double bind.


L.A.E.