A new, previously unpublished sonnet by Sylvia Plath (apparently written “during 1955, Plath’s senior year at Smith College”) has just been published online. To save you the trouble, we’re posting it again here: [Ed: see below for an update and explanation]

Ennui

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
tum ti tum-ti’s tum tum tum-ti ti [Ed: see below]
tum tum ti-tum tum tum-tum tum ti tum-tum.
Tum-tum-ti ti ti-tum tum: ti-ti tum
tum tum-tum tum-ti-tum tum tum-tum tum-tum
tum, tum tum-ti tum-tum-tums ti-tum
tums tum tum-tum tum tum-tum tum-tum.

Tum tum ti Tum-ti-tum tum tum tum-tum tum,
tum-tum-ti tum-tum’s tum tum-ti ti tum-tum;
tum tum tum-tum-ti-tum tum-tums tum Tum’s tum,
tum tummed tum-tum-tum tums tum tum tum tum-ti,
tum-ti tum-tum tum-tum, ti-tum tis tum tum-tums
tum tum tum tum’s tum tum tum-ti tum ti-tum.

More about the sonnet and its recent discovery here and here.

• • •

Update: (November 5)
We’ve taken most of “Ennui” offline at the request of the senior editor of Blackbird; see our later posting for more details. Guided by “fair use” doctrine we’ve left Plath’s first two lines intact and replaced her remaining lines with filler to suggest the scansion of the original. “Ennui” in all its (legal) glory can be read online at Blackbird, here.