Editor’s Note: Sylvia Plath was just 23 and two months removed from her graduation from Smith College when The Atlantic published “Circus in Three Rings,” the first of several Plath pieces featured in the magazine before she took her own life eight years later. The chaotic hurricane she imagines rending a circus in the poem mirrors the emotional upheaval of her own life—her “extravagant heart blows up again,” “a rose of jeopardy flames in [her] hair,” “the gnawings of love begin.”
Plath’s relationship with The Atlantic was not without its own stormy moments. In a letter accompanying two short stories from 1959, she reminded an editor that she had “waited over half a year for a No” after her last submission, and wondered “if I could get a faster verdict this time.” None of her fiction was accepted by the magazine during her lifetime, but one story was printed posthumously—joining this and five more of her poems in our archives. — Annika Neklason
Plath’s relationship with The Atlantic was not without its own stormy moments. In a letter accompanying two short stories from 1959, she reminded an editor that she had “waited over half a year for a No” after her last submission, and wondered “if I could get a faster verdict this time.” None of her fiction was accepted by the magazine during her lifetime, but one story was printed posthumously—joining this and five more of her poems in our archives. — Annika Neklason
IN THE circus tent of a hurricane
designed by a drunken god
my extravagant heart blows up again
in a rampage of champagne-colored rain
and the fragments whir like a weather vane
while the angels all applaud.
Daring as death and debonair
I invade my lion’s den;
a rose of jeopardy flames in my hair
yet I flourish my whip with a fatal flair
defending my perilous wounds with a chair
while the gnawings of love begin.
Mocking as Mephistopheles,
eclipsed by magician’s disguise,
my demon of doom tilts on a trapeze,
winged rabbits revolving about his knees, only to vanish with devilish ease
in a smoke that sears my eyes.
About the Author
Sylvia Plath was a poet, novelist, and short-story writer. She is best known for her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, and for poetry collections such as The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel.