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Notes
In all parenthetical documentation, The Journals of Sylvia Plath will be designated by J, Letters Home by LH, The Collected Poems by CP, and The Bell Jar by BJ.
In an unpublished journal passage for May 25, 1959, Plath makes a curious reference to "Maudlin" as a prophetic work and notes her pleasure in saying a line of it to herself (Plath Collection, Smith College).
Plath was also considering works of art by Gauguin, but did not finally compose any poems on them; see LH 385-386. For an interesting discussion of Plath's poems on art, see Leonard M. Scigaj, "The Painterly Plath That Nobody Knows," Centennial Review 32 (Summer 1988): 220-249.
Esther Baskin's children's book Creatures of the Night (1962) contains a prose section on the goatsucker with an illustration by Leonard Baskin. Plath's poem, however, is not included, although a poem by Hughes entitled "Esther's Tomcat" appears in another section. Plath's numerous notes on the characteristics of and superstitions about the bird can be found in the Plath Collection, Smith College.
Plath's article "Sketchbook of a Spanish Summer," which was published in the Christian Science Monitor on November 6, 1956, contains a passage on Benidorm's netmenders that is echoed in the poem: "Later, in the cool of the day, the tanned, elderly women sit outside their doorways in wooden chairs, backs to the street, weaving nets of thick rope or fine mesh."
After The New Yorker rejected them for publication on September 28, Plath sent "Magnolia Shoals" to Harpers on September 30. When it was returned on October 8, she sent the two to the Christian Science Monitor on October 9; both were accepted on October 13 for $20. See Plath's list of submissions for the fall of 1959. Plath Collection, Smith College.
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