The Poet and the Bees: A Story of the Seasons Sylvia Plath Kept Bees

In the first of this collection of poems, Novesky compares the brief life and enduring work of bees with those of beekeeper and poet Sylvia Plath (1932–1963): “Love, bees don’t live long..../ But honey lives forever. Words, too.” Four delicate, understated poems follow, one for each season. Romantic, flower-sprigged watercolors depict Plath’s face close-up as she studies the hive in “Spring.” In “Summer,” Plath writes “in the blue hour” before her children awake, navigates domestic matters, then checks the bees; Love paints her defeated, head bowed in arms, covered with red welts. But in “Fall,” she is publishing poems and standing amid the bees’ swarm. In “Winter,” she lines up jars of honey and dreams of the future, writing “one last bee poem.... The last word—spring.” Plath’s death by suicide isn’t mentioned; instead, the work leaves behind a sense of her solitude, competing demands on her time, and the way both hive and poet navigate seasonal change. More about the subject concludes. Ages 4–8. (Feb.)