…you know. Sylvia Plath. Our fearless leader. Or, as we call her, that b*tch who tells us what to read and where to meet, but never shows up.

Let’s just say it’s been a while since we’ve had a meaningful conversation with her. We’ve seen plenty of posts about her latest collection of letters on the Bookstagram, receiving high praise (and rightfully so). But imagine our surprise when I opened my LitHub newsletter this afternoon to find this: “LIVING AT SYLVIA PLATH AND TED HUGHES’
‘POETICAL’ BOSTON ADDRESS,” an essay penned by a MFA student at my alma mater about unknowingly renting an apartment in the same building Sylvie and that other guy inhabited during their stint in Boston.

The building looks divine on Google Street View. It’s on a quiet, narrow street blocks from the Common, lined with charming bay windows that politely jut out over the sidewalk. You know you would be paying with your firstborn to live in a full-sized apartment in that building, as opposed to the shoebox the author of the piece lives in. While I read this article, I kept thinking: why didn’t Sylvie give us the heads-up first? If there is prime real estate for the taking, should she not have told the Club before letting someone with an astounding mastery of metaphors take up residence? It makes me sick (that she can write better than me, not that she scored a studio in Beacon Hill. You do what you have to do).

So not only did Sylvie auction off that adorable side table (it will always come back to the table), she denied us the perfect space where we could have put it. We’re going to need to talk to her. AM is planning the trip now.

–E