Issue #0

Monster

Poems by Robin Morgan

Plot

Robin Morgan’s first book of poems made its own history. Thirty thousand hardcover copies selling in the first six months alone is unheard of for any book of poems, much less for a first book by a young poet. What no one, including Morgan and her publishers, anticipated was the size and hunger of the new female readership. Poets are accustomed to audiences of twenty loyal souls, but readings drew hundreds of people; on three occasions Morgan gave readings for packed auditoriums that seated a thousand or more. The title poem, “Monster,” was quickly termed “the anthem of the Women’s Movement,” and lines from it showed up on buttons, bumper stickers, t-shirts, posters, and graffiti.

However, the book was attacked by the literary establishment because of Morgan’s poem “Arraignment,” which implied that Sylvia Plath’s suicide had been provoked by her husband Ted Hughes’ battery and womanizing. Random House, without telling Morgan, made its separate peace with Hughes, who had threatened to sue even on the basis of the revised, irony-suffused version of the poem that finally appeared in the book. The publisher agreed to withdraw all copies from any markets in the entire Commonwealth, and Hughes then agreed not to lodge suit. There was nothing Morgan could do.

But women thought otherwise. Canadian women decided to publish a “pirated” edition—”pirated” with Morgan’s permission. Within a month, women in Australia and in New Zealand published their own separate “pirated” editions. This happened all over the Commonwealth—spontaneously, furiously, astonishingly. Each edition was different, some with graphics by women, some with photos of Plath, some with both versions of “Arraignment.” Then an English women’s group published and distributed their edition—an act of special courage, since UK slander laws carry heavy sentences for printers and distributors as well as publishers.

Women all over the Commonwealth carried it further. They made it impossible for Hughes to give public poetry readings in his own country: English feminists picketed the venue with signs quoting lines from “Arraignment.” His reading tours in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States were canceled because of threatened mass protests by what came to be called “Arraignment Women,” who also repeatedly chiseled Hughes’ name off Plath’s grave marker.