This week on From the Vault we focus on influential poet and writer Sylvia Plath, deemed by the Poetry Foundation to be “one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the twentieth century.” First, we’ll speak with journalist and author Andrew Wilson, whose biography Mad Girl’s Love Song was released on the 50th anniversary of Plath’s 1963 death by suicide at the age of 30. Then we’re off to the vault… serving up an 1972 biographical audio sketch produced at Pacifica station WBAI by Mimi Weisbord Anderson and Nanette Rainone titled Blood Jet is Poetry: The Life and Work of Sylvia Plath. This incredible program affords the listener an inside look into the life of this icon, drawing in part from a rare 1962 recording of Plath musing on life and reading her own poetry.
From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio Listeners.
PRA metadata view