Sylvia was still aiming at publication in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, and she enthused over Kazin’s interest in her—which included a kind of command performance at his home, reading and discussing her story, “Paula Brown’s Snowsuit.” At the same time, she continued her impersonation of a “regular girl”—to quote from New York Jew, the “first to clear the dishes after coffee.” Sylvia did not seem to mind building up her hopes because, she told Aurelia on 7 December, she loved living “in suspense.” Kazin had invited her to an informal lunch and was writing a recommendation for her Woodrow Wilson fellowship application. Just how extravagant she could become is clear in her final comment on Kazin, “I worship him.” Yet to Kazin, she appeared “guarded to an extreme. I knew nothing about her and never expected to know anything.” She simply presented an image of perfection, the pet of what he called, in New York Jew, “the nervous English department.”

Sylvia spent part of her Christmas break in New York City, with Sassoon playing Prince Charming to her Cinderella, as she described it in a letter to a friend. Gordon Lameyer, still very much in the picture, was in the navy’s gunnery school in Virginia. In a typical description of her itinerary, she mentioned breakfasting on oysters in a scene that would not be out of place in a Hollywood romance, and ending her day in film noir fashion, “talking to detectives in the 16th squad police station.”

Sylvia continued to write poetry for a creative writing class, and she submitted a story to the Ladies Home Journal, which rejected her work but wanted to see a rewrite—an encouraging sign, since rejections usually included an invitation to submit her next story. More rejections followed from The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines, but always having something on the way to a publisher seemed to drive her on. She fretted over what seemed to her the slim chances of studying at Oxford or Cambridge, and kept calculating which graduate school would serve her best, considering that, as she told Aurelia on 29 January, “writing is the first love of my life.”

Sylvia Plath’s strongest inclination pointed toward study and perhaps teaching abroad. Her pacifism and sense of international solidarity put her at odds with Cold War America and McCarthyism, which she wanted to counteract, as she put it in a letter to Aurelia on 11 February, by acting on her realization that “new races are going to influence the world … much as America did in her day.” She considered teaching in Tangier. Then on 15 February, Sylvia wrote that Cambridge had accepted her, and that the Smith College English department was behind her in their rejection of “machine-made American grad degrees … P.S. English men are great!” Writing several poems a week, Sylvia was also thinking of submitting a book to the Yale Younger Poets series.

More exciting trips to New York and an encouraging letter from The Atlantic Monthly made the spring of 1955 seem a reprise of the fateful 1953 season when the heady round of success and frenetic activity had only served to panic Sylvia. This time, though, she was nearing graduation and pleased with her senior thesis and her advisor, her Russian literature professor, George Gibian. He had been deeply impressed with her, describing Sylvia as the ideal student to Edward Butscher. Even a “lame” suggestion from Gibian turned into a wonderful chapter of the thesis, Gibian remembered. She also babysat for him and enthusiastically wrote to Gordon Lameyer, “I was holding the deliciously warm twins and feeding them bottled milk (after five glasses of sherry I felt an overwhelming impulse to strip and nurse them myself!)”.

Sylvia remained under the steadying influence of Dr. Beuscher, whom she saw periodically, as well the sobering encouragement of Alfred Kazin and the kind attention of Professor Mary Ellen Chase, who made sure Sylvia knew, step-by-step, how her Cambridge application fared and what to expect next. Sylvia formed new friendships, purposely not isolating herself as she had done before her suicide attempt. Sue Weller had become a close friend as copasetic as Marcia Brown. Sylvia invited Sue to accompany her home for spring break.

Sylvia continued to see Gordon Lameyer and briefly considered an engagement to him. She decided against it because she did not want to cut off opportunities or be saddled with a commitment to supporting his career. She thus avoided another awkward involvement of the kind she had backed away from with Dick Norton. Richard Sassoon was another case altogether. He might write passionately, but he came nowhere near the subject of marriage: “I bear the name of love tonight and bear myself alone and alone to boredom’s bed and bear my love like a cross—so cross you are not with me—a cross forever until you are with me—that’s true, I swear—and swear madly because it is true—o god of the godly keep off the pidgins! Ah to conquer death—not to avoid it—but to have it now and then—in between the now and then—until then, all my love, Richard.” These letters evidently amused Sylvia, who proposed taking Sassoon along on one of her visits to Olive Higgins Prouty.

Sylvia was beginning to meet major contemporary poets like Marianne Moore and John Ciardi. She did a public reading of her work for an intercollegiate poetry contest (she tied for first place) and enjoyed making the audience laugh. Later, the college radio station recorded her reading her work. Moore made a deep impression, appearing as a sort of fairy godmother and expressing a wish to meet Aurelia, Sylvia wrote in a 16 April letter to her mother. A letter from The Atlantic Monthly requested revision of a poem that Sylvia thought might ruin the work’s spontaneity. She regretfully admitted, “I battle between desperate Machiavellian opportunism and uncompromising artistic ethics.” The former won out.

Plath was thrilled to get a letter from Ciardi calling her a real poet. She was also hoping that May would bring further publication in Vogue, The Atlantic Monthly, and Mademoiselle, as well as several more prizes from Smith. Reading her letters is rather like making the rounds of perpetual desire. This time there were fewer disappointments. At pains to show how fulfilled Sylvia felt in the late spring of 1955, Aurelia noted her daughter’s happy birthday call in Letters Home: “Thank you, Mother, for giving me life.” In early May, Sylvia was invited to judge a contest at a writer’s festival in the Catskills. She enjoyed the work and the attention—mistakenly thinking, however, that her well-received public performance meant that she would enjoy a teaching career.

The official award of a Fulbright to study at Cambridge was announced in late May at the same time as Edward Weeks, editor of The Atlantic Monthly, wrote Sylvia to say that her original version of “Circus in Three Rings” was better than the revision the magazine had requested. He would publish her work in the August issue. After his call for more new work, Plath practically chortled to her mother, “That fortress of Bostonian conservative respectability has been ‘charmed’ by your tight-rope-walking daughter!” In the same 21 May letter, Plath listed the eleven awards she had received that year, totaling $470. At graduation, Sylvia listened to Adlai Stevenson give the commencement address, watched Marianne Moore receive an honorary degree, acknowledged Alfred Kazin’s wave to her as she accepted her degree, and whispered in her mother’s ear, “My cup runneth over!”

The apotheosis of Sylvia Plath seemed perfected in June, when letters from Gordon Lameyer and Richard Sassoon arrived with breathtaking tributes—and, in Sassoon’s case, a new, almost pleading eroticism that complemented Lameyer’s earnest adoration: “From you … I have found a language, a way of looking at life, a beauty in the terrible paradoxes. You have given me courage to work in the dark, energy to concentrate on my work, vision to clear the shelf of the masters who sit starting down on me with their chilling jeer, confidence to act in the Hamlet play of life. I have taken all you had to give—and you gave more than anyone.” Sassoon wrote his letter on 4 June, a day later, abasing himself even as he exalted her: “O my darling sweet clever Sylvia! You will make the heavens answer someday … if ever I am there … and I shall be.”