“…Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.” – S. Plath

Last night he found himself in an impromptu Plath-a-thon, reciting “Daddy” at a pub that served the worst version of a margarita pizza he had ever seen. He considers himself the winner since he was able to complete each phrase when the other two contestants hesitated. His memory, however, sketchy at best when it comes to a poem he memorized in high school already more than twenty-five years ago.

When he was an undergraduate, he wrote and directed a performance piece based on the poetry of Sylvia Plath as part of the Arts Festival in spring 1989. The man who would become his best friend and partner attended that performance, but it would be another year before they would know each other, and another year before they would become friends, lovers.

While he was working toward the MA, Plath became taboo. His area of study and his major professor and thesis chair frowned on anyone who “appropriated” the Holocaust. But it would take a book and a miracle from G-d for him to explain to them their inappropriate understanding of both Plath and that Event. The “language obscene” when one tries to pronounce either.