Finally Still Life with Pots and Fruit the pen and ink drawing by Sylvia Plath from 1957, is here. It is here, it is framed, and is on my wall (near my Plath book collection) where I can see it every day, and I do look at it each and every day. On the back is handwritten in that familiar Hughes' scrawl 'By Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes', so there is a little bit of Hughes here too.
I love all my Sylvia Plath items; there is not one favourite piece – though several are particular teacher’s pets. However, there is something special, something intangible about the very tangibility of this drawing. The fact that Sylvia Plath created it, she touched it, and now so have I adds a distinctive quality to it. There is a different sort of connection here, perhaps like owning a draft or a letter, which I do not, that makes it seem less distant than a final published product.
It is here, it is lovely and it has its place in my collection, a collection that hopefully will continue to draw together pieces of Sylvia Plath for me.
