View source for Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea

{{Short description|1955 poem by Sylvia Plath}}
{{Use American English|date=February 2023}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2023}}
{{Infobox poem
|name                = Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea
|image               =
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|caption             =
|author              = [[Sylvia Plath]]
|written             =
|first               =
|country             = United States
|language            = [[English language|English]]
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|meter               =
|rhyme               = ABAB ([[slant rhyme]])
|publisher           =
|publication_date    = {{start date|1955}}
|lines               = 24
|wikisource          =
}}
"'''Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea'''" is a poem written by [[Sylvia Plath]] that was first published in 1955, the year she graduated from [[Smith College]] ''[[Latin honors|summa cum laude]].''<ref name="u-s-history.com Sylvia Plath">{{cite web|url=https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3855.html|title=Sylvia Plath|website=www.u-s-history.com}}</ref> An abstract poem about an absent lover, it uses clear, vivid language to describe seaside scenery, with "a grim insistence" on reality rather than romance and imagination.<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel"/><ref name="Rosenblatt Sylvia Plath The Poetry of Initiation"/><ref name="Roudeau Crossing the Voice">{{cite journal |last1=Roudeau |first1=Cecile |title=Crossing the Voice, Crisscrossing the Text: Writing at the Intersection of Prose and Poetry in Sylvia Plath's "Sunday at the Mintons'" |journal=RSA |date=2004–2005 |volume=15-16 |url=https://www.aisna.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1516roudeau.pdf |access-date=30 December 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Sylvia Plath's Days of Hope |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/122832916/ |access-date=30 December 2022 |work=Newspapers.com |publisher=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]] |date=28 May 1988 |language=en}}</ref>
The poem was awarded a 1955 [[Glascock Prize]]<ref name="u-s-history.com Sylvia Plath"/> and appeared in ''[[Mademoiselle (magazine)|Mademoiselle]]'' in August 1955, accompanying an article about the prize.<ref name="Rough Magic Paul Alexander">{{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Paul |title=Rough Magic: A Biography Of Sylvia Path |date=17 March 2009 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=978-0-7867-3025-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MdejEKYlDN8C&q=Two%20Lovers&pg=PA163 |access-date=30 December 2022 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|page=163}}
Plath used "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea" as the title poem of a collection she submitted unsuccessfully to the ''[[Yale Series of Younger Poets]]'',<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel"/><ref name="Rough Magic Paul Alexander"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pollak |first1=Vivian R. |title=Moore, Plath, Hughes, and "The Literary Life" |journal=American Literary History |date=2005 |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=95–117 |doi=10.1093/alh/aji004 |jstor=3567994 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3567994 |access-date=30 December 2022 |issn=0896-7148}}</ref> and as a working title for the collection that was eventually published as ''[[The Colossus and Other Poems|The Colossus]]''.<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel"/> But Plath later came to be critical of the poem; in 1958 she mentioned it as an example of the "old crystal-brittle and sugar-faceted voice" that she wanted to move past.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hammer |first1=Langdon |title=Plath's Lives |journal=Representations |date=2001 |volume=75 |issue=1 |pages=61–88 |doi=10.1525/rep.2001.75.1.61 |jstor=10.1525/rep.2001.75.1.61 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rep.2001.75.1.61 |access-date=30 December 2022 |issn=0734-6018}}</ref><ref name="Sagar The Laughter of Foxes 55"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Plath |first1=Sylvia |title=The Journals of Sylvia Plath |date=16 January 2013 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-307-83039-5 |page=194 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4V7HOuom_I4C |access-date=30 December 2022 |language=en}}</ref>
==Text and analysis==
The poem has six [[stanza]]s of four lines each, featuring [[slant rhyme]].<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel"/> The regularity of the four-line stanzas, according to Linda Wagner-Martin, serves to suggest "a grim insistence".<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel"/> The poem's literary allusions include references to [[Herman Melville]]'s ''[[Moby Dick]]'', [[William Shakespeare]]'s ''[[The Tempest]]'', and [[T. S. Eliot]]'s ''[[The Waste Land]]''.<ref name="Rosenblatt Sylvia Plath The Poetry of Initiation">{{cite book |last1=Rosenblatt |first1=Jon |title=Sylvia Plath: The Poetry of Initiation |date=15 June 2018 |publisher=UNC Press Books |isbn=978-1-4696-4814-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-V1gDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Two+Lovers+and+a+Beachcomber+by+the+Real+Sea%22&pg=PT73 |access-date=30 December 2022 |language=en}}</ref> Jon Rosenblatt draws a connection to the modernist poet [[Wallace Stevens]]'s work about imagination, as reflected in Plath's lines "The imagination / shuts down its fabled summer house",<ref name="Rosenblatt Sylvia Plath The Poetry of Initiation"/> while Philip Gardner says that the poem's title is also reminiscent of Stevens.<ref name="Philip Gardner The Bland Grana">{{cite journal |last1=Gardner |first1=Philip |title='The Bland Granta': Sylvia Plath at Cambridge |date=1980 |url=https://dalspace.library.dal.ca//handle/10222/60283 |journal=The Dalhousie Review |language=en}}</ref>
Plath's professor [[Alfred Young Fisher]] drew a parallel between the poem and [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''. In a manuscript held in the Sylvia Plath Collection at [[Smith College]], his margin notes appear to compare the poem's last line "And that is that, is that, is that" with Joyce's repetition in the line "showed me her next year in drawers return next in her next her next".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Golden |first1=Amanda |title=Annotating Modernism: Marginalia and Pedagogy from Virginia Woolf to the Confessional Poets |date=4 May 2020 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-18063-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XCnhDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Two%20Lovers%20and%20a%20Beachcomber%20by%20the%20Real%20Sea%22&pg=PT28 |access-date=30 December 2022 |language=en}}</ref>
As "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber" was written during Plath's college years, it can be considered part of her [[juvenilia]], but it is not characteristic of this period of her work.<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel"/> Plath's husband [[Ted Hughes]] wrote that the poem was an example of Plath "anticipat[ing] herself" and "seems to belong quite a bit later".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Plath |first1=Sylvia |title=Collected Poems |date=12 March 2015 |publisher=Faber & Faber |isbn=978-0-571-26417-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SaebBwAAQBAJ |access-date=30 December 2022 |language=en |chapter=Introduction}}</ref> The Plath scholar Linda Wagner-Martin mentions this poem as an example of why more attention should be given to Plath's "juvenilia", saying that "Plath was a serious writer throughout her college years, beginning in 1950" and "her poetry should be considered 'mature' long before 1956".<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel"/>
The scholar Keith M. Sagar called it one of Plath's finest poems.<ref name="Sagar The Laughter of Foxes 55">{{cite book |last1=Sagar |first1=Keith M. |title=The Laughter of Foxes: A Study of Ted Hughes |date=1 January 2006 |publisher=Liverpool University Press |isbn=978-1-84631-011-9 |page=55 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2Tx6kVwsGcgC |access-date=30 December 2022 |language=en}}</ref>
Wagner-Martin writes that the poem is typical of Plath's pre-Cambridge period and is "more about the poetic imagination than the two lovers of the title".<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel">{{cite book |last1=Wagner-Martin |first1=Linda |title=Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life |date=2003 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |isbn=978-0-230-50592-6 |pages=83–94, 152–154 |url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230505926_8 |access-date=30 December 2022 |language=en |chapter=The Journey Toward Ariel|doi=10.1057/9780230505926_8 }}</ref> Wagner-Martin praises the work's formal qualities but says that it is "wordy and convoluted",<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel"/> has an "aura of starched neatness",<ref name="Wagner-Martin Plath's Triumphant Women Poems">{{cite book |last1=Wagner-Martin |first1=Linda |title=Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life |date=1999 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |isbn=978-1-349-27527-4 |pages=106–118 |url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-27527-4_10 |access-date=30 December 2022 |language=en |chapter=Plath’s Triumphant Women Poems|doi=10.1007/978-1-349-27527-4_10 }}</ref> does not display any distinctive voice, and is typical of 1950s poems like those of [[Richard Eberhart]], [[Louis Simpson]], and [[Richard Wilbur]]. According to Wagner-Martin, "nothing about the poem{{nbsp}}... reflects that its author is young, female, or American."<ref name="Wagner-Martin The Journey Toward Ariel"/> She contrasts these characteristics with Plath's later poems such as "[[Lady Lazarus]]".<ref name="Wagner-Martin Plath's Triumphant Women Poems"/>
According to Jon Rosenblatt, the poem's reference to "fractured Venus" and its tension between "the desire to reclaim a lost, dead love and the simultaneous recognition that the dead cannot be recovered" hint at themes that are explored more fully in Plath's later poetry collection ''[[The Colossus and Other Poems|The Colossus]]''.<ref name="Rosenblatt Sylvia Plath The Poetry of Initiation"/>
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
* [https://allpoetry.com/Two-Lovers-And-A-Beachcomber-By-The-Real-Sea Full text of the poem]
{{Sylvia Plath}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:1955 poems]]
[[Category:American poems]]
[[Category:Poetry by Sylvia Plath]]