Thanks all for a great meeting on Monday night. I always learn such a lot from these read and feedback sessions, not just from feedback given to me but from everyone else’s feedback too. These days I am so focused on arriving late and leaving early that I’m in danger of meeting myself on the doorstep!
Anyway, I was recently introduced to the book ‘Sylvia Plath – Drawings’ by her daughter Freda Hughes. Apart from some lovely pen and ink sketches, the book contains a few letters to Ted Hughes and a journal entry too. Val, following your declaration of love for cows, I thought you might enjoy this paragraph from a letter to Ted written in 1956…
‘Yesterday, right after lunch, I took my sketch-paper and strode out to the Grantchester Meadows where I sat in the long green grass amid cow dung and drew two cows; my first cows. They sat obligingly while I drew the first, couchant, its head very cowish, but its body, more like a horsehair sofa, very flat and unmodeled, then, suddenly, they all got hungry and got up in a drove; I think they were bulls; they seemed to have no udders. So I forged ahead, sat down on the river brink, and did a quick sketch of one grazing, or, rather, of several put into one, as they all moved continually, so the side muscles are all wrong, but most decorative; I got a kind of peace from the cows; what curious broody looks they gave me; what marvellous colossal shits and pissings. I shall go back soon; I shall do a volume of cow-drawings.’
Sounds like a lovely book, Sarah, well worth hunting down. Thank you for posting this snippet, I especially like the end sentences which seem to sum up what Val felt about the cow she wrote about.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone – hope we have all survived intact – any chance we can see Val’s cow poem – sounds interesting??? (If it has been posted and I haven’t found it – I apologise) – from the other Sarah x
No, it hasn’t been posted, Sarah, Val brought it to the Anonymous R&F… but I can send it to you.