Papers by Julia Gordon-Bramer
Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, Jun 21, 2012
Literary scholars have long-identified references to alchemy, gnosticism, and forms of the occult... more Literary scholars have long-identified references to alchemy, gnosticism, and forms of the occult woven into the fiber of literature as old as Dante and Shakespeare. In fact, the word occult means hidden, and what better way to hide a spell than within the incantation of a prayer, hymn, or poem? In pre-common era South Asia, the word for poet, kavi, meant seer (Longman, 15). Jumping ahead centuries, one can see mysticism illuminating the work of the great Persian poet Rumi, the transcendentalism of Blake and Emerson, and the hermeticism of Yeats and Eliot, to name only a handful. Sylvia Plath, as well as her husband Ted Hughes, were probably known best for their tragic marriage and Plath's suicide. However, the couple was also widely acknowledged to have played with the occult, and scholars such as Keith Sagar, Dr. Ann Skea, and Ekbert Faas have found definite, intentional poetic structure and references to alchemy and hermeticism in Hughes' work, as well as Hughes' own personal books and documents on the subject, a Hughes favorite being Franz Bardon's Initiation into Hermetics, a Course of Instruction of Magic Theory & Practice (Skea). The bounty of poetry and prose from Sylvia Plath's short life also incorporates an ordered system of symbols and formulae, best demonstrated in her posthumous collection Ariel, as well as throughout the work of Hughes. 1 Scholars have tended to dismiss Sylvia Plath's fascination with the occult as simply playing games with her husband. But in his 1992 book, Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, Hughes introduced revelation after revelation about the Bard's own occult system, the "Tragic Equation" that utilized myth, hermeticism, alchemy, astrology, and other occult methods. It seems that as he grew older and more successful, Hughes took more public risks revealing his inspirations and methods to friends and colleagues. In a 1979 letter to a theater
Mystic Flu is a collection of poetry and short stories by Julia Gordon-Bramer. The poetry and pro... more Mystic Flu is a collection of poetry and short stories by Julia Gordon-Bramer. The poetry and prose of Mystic Flu turns its world inside-out: exploring themes of family, friends, and lovers turned to enemies, and predators; alcoholism and addiction; the subconscious ruling the conscious; the physical wrestling with the spiritual; and the road toward self-actualization in all its strangeness. The poetry in this work is predominantly free verse, confessional, yet embedded with spiritual imagery and double-meanings. The short stories of Mystic Flu are realistic, with thematic views from the skewed wisdom and fleeting innocence of the child’s experience, moving toward the definite unknowing and inevitable corruption of adulthood
Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, 2015
Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, Jun 21, 2010
Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, May 24, 2019
TAMSEN Poetry Blog of Bio-Poetics, 2016
Every serious poet eventually faces the daunting task of assembling a collection of work. Some gr... more Every serious poet eventually faces the daunting task of assembling a collection of work. Some group their work by theme, some by feeling. What does it take to assemble the perfect book of poetry? To create a flow and cohesive feeling for the reader? How does one tell a story that lifts the reader from one place to the other on a seamless, breathless ride through 40 poems? Sylvia Plath knew.
In my book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, vol. one (2014, Stephen F. Austin State University Press), I introduce Plath’s organizational system of aligning her poems in Ariel: The Restored Edition (2004, HarperCollins) with the tarot and Qabalah. In the introduction of my forthcoming FSGL volume two, I’ll discuss another poetic technique in Plath’s arsenal: Connecting one poem to the next through shared words and images.
Want to see for yourself? Grab your copy of Ariel and come along for the ride.
TAMSEN Poetry Blog of Bio-Poetics, 2016
Every serious poet eventually faces the daunting task of assembling a collection of work. Some gr... more Every serious poet eventually faces the daunting task of assembling a collection of work. Some group their work by theme, some by feeling. What does it take to assemble the perfect book of poetry? To create a flow and cohesive feeling for the reader? How does one tell a story that lifts the reader from one place to the other on a seamless, breathless ride through 40 poems? Sylvia Plath knew.
In my book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, vol. one (2014, Stephen F. Austin State University Press), I introduce Plath’s organizational system of aligning her poems in Ariel: The Restored Edition (2004, HarperCollins) with the tarot and Qabalah. In the introduction of my forthcoming FSGL volume two, I’ll discuss another poetic technique in Plath’s arsenal: Connecting one poem to the next through shared words and images.
Want to see for yourself? Grab your copy of Ariel and come along for the ride.
Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, 2015
Excerpt from forthcoming book reinterpreting Sylvia Plath's early poems. This article loo... more Excerpt from forthcoming book reinterpreting Sylvia Plath's early poems. This article looks at ten poems from Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems, organized in the year 1957 (although the dates are different, in some cases): "Mayflower", "The Everlasting Monday", "Hardcastle Crags", "The Thin People", "The Other Two", "Two Views of Withens", "The Great Carbuncle", "Words for a Nursery", "The Disquieting Muses", and "Night Shift".
Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, 2003
When the Magician tarot card is read in reverse (its upside-down meaning), as Plath intended for ... more When the Magician tarot card is read in reverse (its upside-down meaning), as Plath intended for "The Couriers," it denotes a trickster or a con-artist. He is a man with all the tools (the elements on his table) for trouble. He is sometimes considered to be a gypsy, like the Hungarian Czigany-a nomad, a tinker, and a thief of the first order (Borrow). Today, gypsies in Hungary are known as the Roma people. According to Plath's own tarot book, The Painted Caravan (1954), by Basil Ivan Rákóczi, the Hungarian gypsies are the couriers of ancient mystical knowledge throughout Europe. 2 The Golden Dawn attributes the Hebrew letter for the Magician card, Bet, as: "the letter with which the creative act can take place" (Regardie 588). Alchemists believe that we all begin as the Magician in the tarot, representing sometimes cocky and overconfident youth, as we learn to manipulate the elements physically and energetically. The Magician is often viewed as a shaman, and each element: fire, earth, water and air, has a specific movement and properties, which are represented by the tarot's suits of Wands, Pentacles, Cups 1 All citations of Plath's poem "The Couriers" are from Ariel: The Restored Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 6. 2 Many tarot scholars today will dispute this.
Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, 2014
Plath Profiles: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Sylvia Plath Studies, 2010
Book of Poems Through Mysticism and the Tarot," which gives an overview of Plath's collection of ... more Book of Poems Through Mysticism and the Tarot," which gives an overview of Plath's collection of poetry, Ariel, as the works were structured and laid out within a mystical framework based upon the Qabalah and tarot. Also published was a closer look at Plath's poem, "Death & Co.," from my forthcoming work, Fixed Stars Govern a Life. The classic Rider-Waite Tarot deck and other modern decks mirror the Qabalah, and have often incorporated images of alchemy, astrology, and myth-the Hermetic sciences. To view any single one of these arts, it is impossible not to also see aspects of the others, as they balance and depend upon each other in the same way, for instance, that astrological constellations are drawn from Greek myth. Greek myth illustrates psychological stages and behaviors; and alchemy looks at the process of creating perfection as a threefold , simultaneous work of physical matter, emotional (Jungian) individuation, and spiritual resurrection. Numerology and its correlative art, gematria, which assigns meanings and values to key numbers, also play a part. Since the time my original article was authored, I have discovered an even greater scope to Plath's work: each work in Ariel not only follows the Qabalah and tarot order, as previously explained, but each poem echoes the six facets of the hexagonal Qabalah Tree of Life. Just as the
Literary scholars have long-identified references to alchemy, gnosticism, and forms of the occult... more Literary scholars have long-identified references to alchemy, gnosticism, and forms of the occult woven into the fiber of literature as old as Dante and Shakespeare. In fact, the word occult means hidden, and what better way to hide a spell than within the incantation of a prayer, hymn, or poem? In pre-common era South Asia, the word for poet, kavi, meant seer (Longman, 15). Jumping ahead centuries, one can see mysticism illuminating the work of the great Persian poet Rumi, the transcendentalism of Blake and Emerson, and the hermeticism of Yeats and Eliot, to name only a handful. Sylvia Plath, as well as her husband Ted Hughes, were probably known best for their tragic marriage and Plath's suicide. However, the couple was also widely acknowledged to have played with the occult, and scholars such as Keith Sagar, Dr. Ann Skea, and Ekbert Faas have found definite, intentional poetic structure and references to alchemy and hermeticism in Hughes' work, as well as Hughes' own ...
A review of Edmund Wilson's 1931 book, Axel's Castle: A Study of the Imaginative Literature of 18... more A review of Edmund Wilson's 1931 book, Axel's Castle: A Study of the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930, as a gift to Sylvia Plath and how it affected Plath's understanding of Yeats,' Joyce's and Eliot's use of spirituality in literary technique.
This article explores a book Sylvia Plath learned tarot and Qabalah from, The Painted Caravan: a ... more This article explores a book Sylvia Plath learned tarot and Qabalah from, The Painted Caravan: a penetration into the secrets of the tarot cards, by Basil Ivan Rákóczi. This is part of a series first posted on www.juliagordonbramer.com
This article explores James Joyce's literary masterpiece, Finnegans Wake, and how it specifically... more This article explores James Joyce's literary masterpiece, Finnegans Wake, and how it specifically influenced the poet and writer Sylvia Plath. This is part of a series of posts summarizing and quoting from books that were important to, and I believe, shaped Sylvia Plath’s work, since the majority of Plath fans today have not read them. This was first posted on www.juliagordonbramer.com.
A look at Joseph Campbell's A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, a book owned and read by Sylvia Pla... more A look at Joseph Campbell's A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, a book owned and read by Sylvia Plath in her formative years. This is part of a series summarizing and quoting from books that were important to, and I believe, shaped Sylvia Plath’s work, since the majority of Plath fans today have not read them. This was first posted on www.juliagordonbramer.com.
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Papers by Julia Gordon-Bramer
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/plath/article/view/20628/26676
In my book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, vol. one (2014, Stephen F. Austin State University Press), I introduce Plath’s organizational system of aligning her poems in Ariel: The Restored Edition (2004, HarperCollins) with the tarot and Qabalah. In the introduction of my forthcoming FSGL volume two, I’ll discuss another poetic technique in Plath’s arsenal: Connecting one poem to the next through shared words and images.
Want to see for yourself? Grab your copy of Ariel and come along for the ride.
In my book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, vol. one (2014, Stephen F. Austin State University Press), I introduce Plath’s organizational system of aligning her poems in Ariel: The Restored Edition (2004, HarperCollins) with the tarot and Qabalah. In the introduction of my forthcoming FSGL volume two, I’ll discuss another poetic technique in Plath’s arsenal: Connecting one poem to the next through shared words and images.
Want to see for yourself? Grab your copy of Ariel and come along for the ride.
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/plath/article/view/20628/26676
In my book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, vol. one (2014, Stephen F. Austin State University Press), I introduce Plath’s organizational system of aligning her poems in Ariel: The Restored Edition (2004, HarperCollins) with the tarot and Qabalah. In the introduction of my forthcoming FSGL volume two, I’ll discuss another poetic technique in Plath’s arsenal: Connecting one poem to the next through shared words and images.
Want to see for yourself? Grab your copy of Ariel and come along for the ride.
In my book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, vol. one (2014, Stephen F. Austin State University Press), I introduce Plath’s organizational system of aligning her poems in Ariel: The Restored Edition (2004, HarperCollins) with the tarot and Qabalah. In the introduction of my forthcoming FSGL volume two, I’ll discuss another poetic technique in Plath’s arsenal: Connecting one poem to the next through shared words and images.
Want to see for yourself? Grab your copy of Ariel and come along for the ride.