A Closer Look at the Author of A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath

         I just finished rereading A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath after many years of maturing as a writer myself, and I have to say that this time around, Nancy Hunter Steiner came across to me as an astonishingly good writer -- as skilled in her own non-fiction writing as Plath — a poet of surpassing brilliance — was. 

I'd like to know if Steiner wrote other books that I could track down and read. It seems to me a shame — a truly unjust literary loss — that she's not remembered more as a writer of consummate ability. 

     As I see it, A Closer Look at Ariel was breathtakingly well written, not just for its writerly sophistication but for its powerful insights into Plath, with whom she lived at Smith College for two years before Plath committed suicide at the age of 29. Steiner, whose work we hear very little about today, was also a terrible loss to the world of fiction and poetry, merely by virtue of our many decades of inattention to her. 

Plath’s highly praised novel, The Bell Jar, helps us understand just how great were her gifts as a writer. And along with A Closer Look at Ariel, it provides us with a brutally honest look at how her ways of thinking, her emotional fragility, and her self-destructive behaviors finally led her to such a tragic, untimely death. 

                       — Ross Alan Bachelder  3/22/21

THE LIVES WE LIVE: March 12, 2021

Dear Fellow Residents of Wildly Spinning, Climate Impaired, Atrocity Teeming Planet Absurdity,

    If as we stand on the precipice of -- thank the God of Your Choice, a TRUMP-LESS spring -- and if you're still mourning the passing of that previous, sorry excuse for a President -- or if you actually believe Biden's just a cardboard cutout and Mr. Pitiful is still the Leader of the Free World -- and Democrats eat babies at the Church Supper -- then TRUST ME, my "friends": this is not the blog for you. 

    Class is over. You're dismissed! Darth the in-Vader is gone! Mr. Essence-of-Competence ROGERS is in charge now, and he is NOT the weakling those gutless, self-serving ultra-conservatives think he is!

    In just 50 joyous, astonishingly productive days, the Biden/Harris team, with the invaluable assistance of the caring, FULLY QUALIFIED appointees inhabiting every nook and cranny of the administration, have accomplished more than spoiled-rotten, silver-spooned Bully-BoyTrump and his grotesque enablers have accomplish-ed in their entire wasted, poisonous, narcissistic, money-grubbing lives. 

    I'd begun to worry -- quite constantly, really -- that I was destined to kick the proverbial bucket while Trump was still "in charge" of things, spoiling a perfectly good Departure and leaving a VERY BAD TASTE in my frowning, disillusioned, posthumous pie hole. 

    But NO! It didn't HAPPEN, and I'm beyond elated to announce, this morning, that justice has been done and I expect to check out of this struggling Spherical Nut House with a warm, satisfied smile on my face. Why? Because the Scranton Lone Ranger and his Courageous, magnificently well-qualified California Tontella, have come to the rescue!

    Now: I sincerely hope that every one of you -- even those with a very different political mindset from the one I so obviously have -- will seize the moment and take advantage of this wondrous, soul-healing turn of events by bearing down hard on the best and most honorable parts of you and then  then showing everyone around you, by the way you conduct yourselves, that you actually CARE for and want the BEST for your fellow humans. Joe and Kamala did it, and SO CAN YOU!

                                                              -- Ross Alan Bachelder

    

    

    

    

    

The Lives We Live, January 9, 2021

 

Saturday, January 9, 2021

Good Morning, my fellow Americans.

    As I begin writing this commentary, Donald J. Trump, whose Twitter account has been mercifully, permanently terminated, lies in the White House bedroom -- probably, God Help Us, in Lincoln's very own bed -- trembling, like a bad bowl of Jell-O, with anger and indignity, fear and foreboding.

    Where, he wonders, will he be come January 21st? Will he be languishing in jail? Will he be puking out his beloved diatribes on a brand-new platform, funded by QAnon and his corporate Fat Cats and ardently read by his ragtag army of gun-toting, flag-shaming, bully-brained sycophants?

    Perhaps he'll simply be in Solitary Confinement, holed up for All Eternity in Mar-a-Lago, his tastelessly conceived, obscenely opulent bunker down in West Palm Beach, making his daily deposits -- his foul-smelling, trademark articulations -- into his gold-plated porcelain halo. All of this while staring reverently at his beloved, ridiculously pretentious, narcissistic self portrait.

    I've faith that we as a country will finally be cleansed of this amoral, culturally illiterate blight on the once-loved, once-admired United States of America. And with any luck, the worst of his cowardly, ass-kissing enablers -- the Millers, the O'Connell's, the Cruz's, the Giuliani's, the Donald Trump, Jr's of the world -- will be flushed down the drain with him, never to be seen or heard from again.

    But until we've rid ourselves of Trump and his hideous posse of heartless tyrants, we must remember that we as individuals have work to do -- work that's no less important than the work of purging our Democracy of its poisons, then working tirelessly to hold it together and keep it pure.

    We have families to love and care for; aspirations to achieve; dreams to come true; and perhaps most importantly, our own unique, invaluable intellects to nurture. We cannot allow the scourge of the Trump family ethic -- its astonishing greed, self-indulgence, and rank materialism -- to deprive us of our inalienable rights and hard-earned pleasures.

    Is there a work of art you've always wanted to paint? Is there a disease you hope to conquer? A class full of students you want to teach? An environment you want desperately to clean up and make livable again? 

    Don't let the Trumps and Giuliani's of the world stop you! Your intellect and your idealism are as much in need of maintenance as your physical self! You're ultimately responsible for whoever you choose to become -- whatever you wish to accomplish -- so make it a Thing of Beauty!

    And while you're at it, my fellow Americans of every kind, color and political conviction, be kind to your friends, your relatives and all of the many people you pass on the street on a given day. And find a way, on every one of those days, to bring dignity and decency to yourself and everyone around you. ◼︎

 -- Ross Alan Bachelder, Berwick, Maine

PS: We love you, Mary Trump, for having the extraordinary courage to Tell it Like it Really Is.