Finding the Words

Anwen Crawford reflects on newly published letters from Sylvia Plath; “The belief among many of Plath’s devotees seems to be that if we can get clear of other people’s fingerprints on her texts, allowing Plath to ‘fully narrate her own autobiography,’ as the editors here describe it, we will at last solve the riddle of her. The extremities of her poetry will balance against the circumstances of her life; the latter will equal the former. But her griefs were ordinary; it is what she did with them that wasn’t. Plath turned her common sorrows—dead father, mental illness, cheating husband—into something like an origin story for pain itself, as if her own pain preceded the world.” In the New Yorker

A German airline has teamed up with a local press for a new campaign that allows each passenger to travel with an extra two pounds just for books. Pair with this Millions piece on the weight of moving books.

What makes an essay literary? Over at the Kenyon Review, the editors explore language as an end in itself. Also check out H.S. Cross’s Millions essay on writing what you don’t know.