Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: undertook their own journey across the United States.Though their camping trip was more conventional than the aimless adventures of Kerouac's narrator Sal Paradise, both Plath and Hughes would go on to write a handful of poems (and in Plath's case two short stories) about their travels that capture the dark side of nature-and of human nature.In some respects, Plath and Hughes's route mirrors Paradise's first foray across the continent: East to West Coast, San Francisco to Los Angeles, then back toward the east.Similarities end there.As poets, Plath and Hughes may have had bohemian ideals.But at heart they were two serious, hardworking literary writers looking to rest and relax, to camp and fish, to get to know America and take in the sights.In early July 1959, Plath and Hughes borrowed Plath's mother's car, a gray 1953 Chevy sedan, and set out on their eight-week cross-country vacation.They planned, when they reached Pasadena, California, to visit Frieda Plath Heinrichs (Plath's father's sister, whom Plath had never met) and her husband Walter J. Heinrichs, a retired surgeon.After living in Boston for nearly a year, Plath and Hughes had decided to return to England.First they would travel the U.S. in July and August, then enjoy a September-November residency at Yaddo, the artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, New York.Unbeknownst to Plath, her first child had been conceived before she and Hughes departed on the road trip.Their daughter Frieda, named after Plath's aunt, would be born in London the following
Author: David Trinidad
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2145648384