Sylvia Plath

[Raven]

Plath is one of my favourite authors, and I was wondering your views on her.

Also, I am trying to find a poem by her, but I can't remember what it is called - she finds a dead snake and describes it in great detail. Can anyone help?

[Helga]

I love her work, I only have her book 'Ariel' but I have looked at a lot on the internet.

I am sorry I don't know the poem you talked about, do you remember any lines of it?...

[mono]

I cannot recall which poem you search for, Raven, but I will continue looking.
Meanwhile, a few of my favorites by Sylvia Plath:

The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy spiritious mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky -
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.

---

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been sacred of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

---

Love Letter

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just toe me an inch, no--
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter--
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chiseled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheek of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I saw was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in a dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, an arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

---

By the way, I found a site featuring much of Plath's poetry: http://www.stanford.edu/class/engl187/docs/plathpoem.html

[Major Plath Fan]

No, sorry I don't remember it.

[Major Plath Fan]

Actually, I think I may have just found it...could it possibly be Snakecharmer?

[Jay]

Hello there, welcome :wave:
Maybe it'll help if you posted the poem :)

[Major Plath Fan]

I'm not quite sure if this is the poem Raven is talking about, but:

Snakecharmer
As the gods began one world, and man another,
So the snakecharmer begins a snaky sphere
With moon-eye, mouth-pipe. He pipes. Pipes green. Pipes water.

Pipes water green until green waters waver
With reedy lengths and necks and undulatings.
And as his notes twine green, the green river

Shapes its images around his songs.
He pipes a place to stand on, but no rocks,
No floor: a wave of flickering grass tongues

Supports his foot. He pipes a world of snakes,
Of sways and coilings, from the snake-rooted bottom
Of his mind. And now nothing but snakes

Is visible. The snake-scales have become
Leaf, become eyelid; snake-bodies, bough, breast
Of tree and human. And he within this snakedom

Rules the writhings which make manifest
His snakehood and his might with pliant tunes
From his thin pipe. Out of this green nest

As out of Eden's navel twist the lines
Of snaky generations: let there be snakes!
And snakes there were, are, will be--till yawns

Consume this piper and he tires of music
And pipes the world back to the simple fabric
Of snake-warp, snake-weft. Pipes the cloth of snakes

To a melting of green waters, till no snake
Shows its head, and those green waters back to
Water, to green, to nothing like a snake.
Puts up his pipe, and lids his moony eye.

[Jay]

If it is what Raven wanted s/he's resognise it or not, and people might enjoy reading it even if it's not what Raven was looking for :)

[The Unnamable]

I’m surprised to see Plath discussed so little on this forum. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen describes her as an:

"Interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality."

Perhaps that’s the problem. Plath’s poetry is as misrepresented by those who idolise her as it is by those who dismiss her. To many teenage, predominantly female admirers, Plath is the literary equivalent of Kurt Cobain. To many others, she is merely a death-obsessed neurotic. The most difficult task for anyone coming to her poetry for the first time is to try to ignore both camps and focus on the poems themselves. Yes, Plath writes about pain, suffering, her obsession with her father and death, but she does so with clarity and precision.

‘Ariel’ is a remarkable work full of pain, tenderness and darkness. Harsh and dark though her poems are, they precisely and unflinchingly record those moments when no one and nothing can reach us. She is a forensic witness to the inevitability of our own demise. In The Night Dances a mother watches her child asleep and moving around in its cot. These moments seem to be the beautiful gifts of innocence. They create in her a sense of fullness of being which, momentarily, lightens “the black amnesias of heaven.” But it is only momentarily. The contrast between the cold blankness of space and the baby’s movements (“their pink light/ Bleeding and peeling”) makes us aware of the fragility and vulnerability of such “blessings”. And that is why the ending is just right in its ambiguity. The ‘light’ of the night dances can never be destroyed and will nowhere be forgotten. But “Nowhere” can also imply that they touch and melt in the nothingness that is all there is. In other words, perhaps the blessings are nothing, that they are too insubstantial too wipe away the “black amnesias” for long.

The Night Dances

A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!

And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?

Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel

The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift

Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.

Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,

And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.

The comets
Have such a space to cross,

Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off ----

Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling

Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given

These lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes

Six sided, white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair

Touching and melting.
Nowhere.


Great poem.

[devils_angel]

I love Plath we discussed her in class on time and now i love her. I don't know if i can help you but a friend of mine is doing a report on her and i can ask her for help on it i'll ask her and get back sometime soon.

[Astrid]

She's extraordinary, and one of my biggest inspirations in a literary sense. Her life and her works were both beautiful things... sad and stunning. I like a lot of her poems, but "Daddy", "Mad Girl's Love Song", "Suicide Off Egg Rock", and "Edge" are my current favourites. It's wonderful to see others who appreciate her.

Does anyone here like Anne Sexton? Her style is quite different, but she's often sided with Plath when it comes to pain-stricken, descriptive poets. I think they actually took a writing class together once.

[The Unnamable]

"Daddy", "Mad Girl's Love Song", "Suicide Off Egg Rock", and "Edge" are my current favourites. It's wonderful to see others who appreciate her.

What do you make of the last four lines of ‘Edge’?

"The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag."

[Xamonas Chegwe]

This thread, and others , has convinced me to buy a book of Plath's poetry tomorrow to add to my collection. Something with Nightdancers, Balloons and kindness, if I can find one. I hope you're all happy at driving me to such spendthriftiness!

btw can anyone shed any light on whether the Bell Jar is worth reading? I've heard mixed things, but of course those things are from people, who are a mixed bunch.

[The Unnamable]

Buy Ariel – it’s not very long and if you read nothing else by Plath, that slim volume will leave you with a very good idea of what she’s about. My own view of The Bell Jar is that it was written when she was very young and that this shows.

PS I love your placement of the second comma in that last sentence. ;)

[Xamonas Chegwe]

PS I love your placement of the second comma in that last sentence. ;)

Now. Is that irony?

The comma, as all commas, implies a pause. With the pause present all people are included in the clause, "who are a mixed bunch." Without the pause the implication is that only the people that I have heard these things from constitute the "mixed bunch". I certainly intended the former.

If this is wrong, appo-polly-logies and please feel free to correct my grammar. My degree is in mathematics and teaching, not english.

And if you're not being ironic, for heaven's sake explain why you have broken the habit of a lunchtime and caused me such confusion?


I will see if I can get hold of Ariel. Thanks.

[The Unnamable]

Now. Is that irony?
No - I genuinely liked it.


The comma, as all commas, implies a pause. With the pause present all people are included in the clause, "who are a mixed bunch." Without the pause the implication is that only the people that I have heard these things from constitute the "mixed bunch". I certainly intended the former.
Of which I approve. I was in no way trying to correct your grammar – which seems to be of a high level of correctness to me (and no, I am not being ironic). You write very well and I nearly always enjoy reading your posts. I don’t say ‘always’ because sometimes you are really mean to me and I have to discuss it with my shrink (now I am being ironic - my shrink committed suicide after three sessions :D ).


And if you're not being ironic, for heaven's sake explain why you have broken the habit of a lunchtime and caused me such confusion?
I don't want people thinking I'm incapable of recognising something good, funny or interesting. It was precisely your 'former' meaning that I enjoyed. In other words, I was praising you, albeit in my own curmudgeonly way. My advice is to take it wherever you can get it. :nod:

[michela]

actually i've experienced Plath once, but i 've grown up with Kurt Cobain.
I'm not agree with the one who compared Silvia Plath with Kurt Cobain.
Kurt said during an interview "i must be one of those narcisist who only appreciate things when they're gone". This sentence in my opinion fits very well with his personality and also explains the difference between them.
Suicide is not enough to compare them. I love Kurt ,but being honnest, i don't think he killed himself because of his pain. Drugs destroied him and not his pain. Anyway i don't know very much about Plath, so it's possible i'm wrong about it.
Can you please tell me wht's the similarity between them i'm curious.

[The Unnamable]

Can you please tell me wht's the similarity between them i'm curious.
I don’t think there is any similarity. In the past, I’ve taught her poetry to 18 year olds. Some hated her, some loved her and some idolised her, often because they considered suicide romantic and rebellious (I don’t). I was making a comment that backed up what Woody Allen had said - "Interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality."

Here's what I said:

“To many teenage, predominantly female admirers, Plath is the literary equivalent of Kurt Cobain.”

The fact of her suicide seems to impress some readers more than her poetry.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Unnamable,

My turn to apologise. I accept your praise. It was curmudgeonly of me to doubt your sincerity (well, on this occasion at least). ;)

Michela,

Plath and Cobain had lot's of other things in common apart from suicide. Both were blond. And...erm...well that's about all I can think of at the moment (unless Cobain had a marriage to Ted Hughes that I missed hearing about).

[Astrid]

What do you make of the last four lines of ‘Edge’?

"The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag."

"Her blacks crackle and drag" is debateably Plath's worst line, but I think there's something in it. It all seems very final, accepting, which makes a relative amount of sense since this was written about a week or two before Plath committed suicide.

[The Unnamable]

"Her blacks crackle and drag" is debateably Plath's worst line, but I think there's something in it. It all seems very final, accepting, which makes a relative amount of sense since this was written about a week or two before Plath committed suicide.
I agree with you about the sense of finality but I like the lines even though I have always found them difficult to comprehend. Perhaps she is talking about some breakdown in communication – like the static from a radio. So communication is replaced by noise in the final line. There is no one to mourn the woman, except the moon, who simply accepts it all as a part of nature.
Another possibility is that the blacks are blacks in the sense of a theatrical backdrop – suggesting everything is a performance. No doubt there are many more possibilities.

The poem includes simple, blunt statements and the use of the third person – there is no longer any ‘I’ and the predominant mood seems to be one of indifference. There is some questioning of the unembellished factuality of the opening end-stopped line: the body ‘wears the smile of accomplishment’ (so it is something that is ‘put on’); there is only the ‘illusion of a Greek necessity’ and the “Feet seem to be saying”. However, it’s as if it doesn’t matter whether ‘wears’, ‘illusion’ and ‘seem’ introduce a note of uncertainty. Human questions are voiced in the presence of cold indifference.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

"Her blacks crackle and drag" has lovely assonance and a collection of hard consonants that draw the attention to it, thus hinting at some harsh significance. But I have been pouring over this for a few days and I really can't grasp the meaning of the last few lines. My only ideas are that Plath is drawing attention to the smallness of what has happened when viewed from the moon's (ie. cosmic) perspective. The last line completely foxed me though, I must say.

I am glad to hear that Unnamable's planet-sized mind struggles with these lines too, I guess that's why he asked for opinions. The rest of the poem is very straightforward (or is it? ;)) but the mood changes at the end to something hidden and obscure. I'm not sure if I'm describing it quite right but the last lines definitely have a different mood about them.

I really wonder what I would have made of this poem if I didn't know of the circumstances in which it was written. I guess that, like the meaning of the last lines, I'll never know for sure.

[rachel]

I’m surprised to see Plath discussed so little on this forum. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen describes her as an:

"Interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality."

Perhaps that’s the problem. Plath’s poetry is as misrepresented by those who idolise her as it is by those who dismiss her. To many teenage, predominantly female admirers, Plath is the literary equivalent of Kurt Cobain. To many others, she is merely a death-obsessed neurotic. The most difficult task for anyone coming to her poetry for the first time is to try to ignore both camps and focus on the poems themselves. Yes, Plath writes about pain, suffering, her obsession with her father and death, but she does so with clarity and precision.

‘Ariel’ is a remarkable work full of pain, tenderness and darkness. Harsh and dark though her poems are, they precisely and unflinchingly record those moments when no one and nothing can reach us. She is a forensic witness to the inevitability of our own demise. In The Night Dances a mother watches her child asleep and moving around in its cot. These moments seem to be the beautiful gifts of innocence. They create in her a sense of fullness of being which, momentarily, lightens “the black amnesias of heaven.” But it is only momentarily. The contrast between the cold blankness of space and the baby’s movements (“their pink light/ Bleeding and peeling”) makes us aware of the fragility and vulnerability of such “blessings”. And that is why the ending is just right in its ambiguity. The ‘light’ of the night dances can never be destroyed and will nowhere be forgotten. But “Nowhere” can also imply that they touch and melt in the nothingness that is all there is. In other words, perhaps the blessings are nothing, that they are too insubstantial too wipe away the “black amnesias” for long.

The Night Dances

A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!

And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?

Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel

The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift

Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.

Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,

And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.

The comets
Have such a space to cross,

Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off ----

Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling

Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given

These lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes

Six sided, white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair

Touching and melting.
Nowhere.


Great poem.

The more I am reading her work the more it takes me back to a terrible part of my life and I really identify with a lot of her anguish which in turn is a gift in a way as far as I am concerned. I don't think that happiness per se = quality of life at all. I feel if you have to walk a certain walk and noone else in the world comprehends or gives a care that in no way diminishes the satisfaction you get from walking that walk.
A lot of people I know of don't like the Silmarillion or the Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkien because of the awfulness, the harshness and brutality of the lives of the heros and heroines. I don't agree. The stood for something, they pursued something that mattered to them and win or lose or draw was not the point. The point is they just went and did it. I feel like that when I read Plath. She observes things in a harsh painful way but it is truer and more beautiful than I can describe.

[Timberly.Gray]

Greetings all. I'm new at this, so forgive me if I appear all too ignorant. I've only recently been introduced to Plath's poetry, and a cursory glance of ''Letter in November'' led me to consider the possibility of a sexual reading. I was wondering if I am alone in my peversity, or if others can see the connections? Or if not, could someone give me pointers for this particular poem?

It is not as simple as some, and being unaware of the nuances of Plath's poetry, I have so far been unsuccessful in analysing it.

[OrphanPip]

Greetings all. I'm new at this, so forgive me if I appear all too ignorant. I've only recently been introduced to Plath's poetry, and a cursory glance of ''Letter in November'' led me to consider the possibility of a sexual reading. I was wondering if I am alone in my peversity, or if others can see the connections? Or if not, could someone give me pointers for this particular poem?

It is not as simple as some, and being unaware of the nuances of Plath's poetry, I have so far been unsuccessful in analysing it.

From a cursory glance at the poem, reading sexual imagery into the poem seems very much intended by Plath. The language is sensual, evocative of autumn, mud, rolling in grass, but those same sensual descriptions do function on a sexual level as well. Mud and spring also happens to be kind of a symbolic trope for sexuality in a lot of poetry.

[Ecurb]

Plath's autobiographical novel, "The Bell Jar", is probably almost as responsible for her fame as her poetry is. It's excellent (and it lauds electro-shock therapy as being very effective, if I remember correctly).

[OrphanPip]

Plath's autobiographical novel, "The Bell Jar", is probably almost as responsible for her fame as her poetry is. It's excellent (and it lauds electro-shock therapy as being very effective, if I remember correctly).

Clearly it treated Plath's depression effectively...

[Ecurb]

Clearly it treated Plath's depression effectively...

I haven't read the novel for a couple of decades, but in the book (which is fictional) she claims it snapped her out of her depressions. The autobiographical heroine of the novel is a college-age girl. I believe Plath did undergo electorshock therapy at that age, but I have no idea whether she received any in the last 10 years of her life (maybe it would have saved her).

Plath's friend A. Alverez wrote a good book on suicide ("the Savage God") in which he discusses Plath's suicide at length.

In ther poem "Edge" Plath wrore:

We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty.


Before she killed herself, Plath put out two mugs of milk for her children, as if poetry was adumbrating her demise.

Dorothy Parker attemped suicide at least twice, and wrote a poem about it:

Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

[Timberly.Gray]

From a cursory glance at the poem, reading sexual imagery into the poem seems very much intended by Plath. The language is sensual, evocative of autumn, mud, rolling in grass, but those same sensual descriptions do function on a sexual level as well. Mud and spring also happens to be kind of a symbolic trope for sexuality in a lot of poetry.

I'm glad I'm not far off then -- thank you. As I said, I'm new to Plath, but this poem left me with an overpowering feeling of almost-orgasmic warmth. In comparison to other poems I've read of hers, there is a sense of brightness and clarity, but several of the metaphors contain something a little darker.

All just cursory observations. But thank you.

[Buh4Bee]

Sorry to break the flow, but I wanted to add that I am now inspired to read some of her poetry. It is so good to read some of her stuff here. She write poetry like a woman, not a man. Her subject matter is written from a woman's perspective.

I read the Bell Jar and if you are interested in understanding her as a person, read this book. An if you can identify with her, the read is a page turner.

[Dark Muse]

I myself am a huge fan of the work of Plath and I heard someone make mention as to why she is not discussed more often around her, and from my experiences with comments I have heard others make in the past, there seems to be a certain stigma towards Plath, and an attitude held that the reason why Plath is so popular is primarily because of the nature of her death which has created around her a cult like following. There is a belief that it is the sort of fascination about her suicide which causes people to read her work.

There seems to be this general feeling among some that Plath as a whole was a mediocre writer, and if she had not been so infamous, people would not think so much of her work.

The couple of times I had tried to bring up Plath I was surprised by the overwhelming negative responses which I received from others. I was quite surprised and happy to see how much more positive response this thread has attracted.

[quasimodo1]

SLEEP IN THE MOJOVE DESERT


Out here there are no hearthstones,
Hot grains, simply. It is dry, dry.
And the air dangerous. Noonday acts queerly
On the mind’s eye, erecting a line
Of poplars in the middle distance, the only
Object beside the mad, straight road
One can remember men and houses by.
A cool wind should inhabit those leaves
And a dew collect on them, dearer than money,
In the blue hour before sunup.
Yet they recede, untouchable as tomorrow,
Or those glittery fictions of spilt water
That glide ahead of the very thirsty.


I think of the lizards airing their tongues
In the crevice of an extremely small shadow
And the toad guarding his heart’s droplet.
The desert is white as a blind man’s eye,
Comfortless as salt. ...{excerpt}

[dyne7]

plath is a great writer. i don't see how someone could argue against that. her imagery is immaculate, intense, almost demonic in some senses, but as she neared the end of her life, the fervor with which she wrote increased. she knew her time was coming. you have to bear that in mind when you read works like Ariel. The Bell Jar is a book of immense quality. she had one of the most fully realized voices in history, and i think that is her legacy. however, my personal opinion is that in some ways, she ruined modern poetry by creating cults of writers obsessed with the confessional poetry genre. confessional poetry not done 'right' is absolutely horrid. these teenage angst poems with cliche's and dark themes stem from an absolute elementary level of what she went out to accomplish. it's kind of like the people that say that michael jordan destroyed basketball by his image which pressured young players into abandoning fundamentals, great as he was.

[Buh4Bee]

Well, stated. Thank you for articulating her literary validity so well. I agree that she wrote with a unique tormented voice. This quality defines her and humanity's fascination with troubled people. I thought the Bell Jar was beautifully written and deeply observant of the human conditions as well as our need for caring human relationships. I am not a well versed person to her poetry, but what I have read is worthy of acknowledgment.

[JBI]

plath is a great writer. i don't see how someone could argue against that. her imagery is immaculate, intense, almost demonic in some senses, but as she neared the end of her life, the fervor with which she wrote increased. she knew her time was coming. you have to bear that in mind when you read works like Ariel. The Bell Jar is a book of immense quality. she had one of the most fully realized voices in history, and i think that is her legacy. however, my personal opinion is that in some ways, she ruined modern poetry by creating cults of writers obsessed with the confessional poetry genre. confessional poetry not done 'right' is absolutely horrid. these teenage angst poems with cliche's and dark themes stem from an absolute elementary level of what she went out to accomplish. it's kind of like the people that say that michael jordan destroyed basketball by his image which pressured young players into abandoning fundamentals, great as he was.

I'll go against as, as her literary hysterics are merely gimmicky pretensions - explain how her upper-middle class educated upbringing warrants a comparison with a Jew in Auschwitz and I'll listen, but we read her for the perceived nearly pornographic violence of images in her poem, which are merely constructed out of our obsession with the way she died. Something like daddy shows a bratty girl. As for creating a cult of "confessional poets," that would be Lowell and Roethke, the latter of which I particularly admire, who Plath followed too - in truth, Ariel wasn't even published in her lifetime.

I guess in terms of influence, I will quote Woody Allen in Annie Hall, when his character Andie says, "Oh Sylvia Plath, whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the schoolgirl mentality." Truth be told, the Bell Jar is a meh book, and her poems are simply an annoying girl ranting against a world that offered her opportunity and privilege. The bit about being depressed over her husband is a biographical misinterpretation, to quote woody again "misinterpreting as romantic" a rather egocentric, conceited suicidal hack.

[Alexander III]

I guess in terms of influence, I will quote Woody Allen in Annie Hall, when his character Andie says, "Oh Sylvia Plath, whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the schoolgirl mentality." Truth be told, the Bell Jar is a meh book, and her poems are simply an annoying girl ranting against a world that offered her opportunity and privilege. The bit about being depressed over her husband is a biographical misinterpretation, to quote woody again "misinterpreting as romantic" a rather egocentric, conceited suicidal hack.

By that logic should we discredit Childe Harold and The Sorrows of Young Werther, they were both two individuals which needn't have worked a day in their entire lives and yet both were irrevocably depressed with their condition. Suffering can be both physical and mental, a person from the upper-classes can suffer just as much as one from the lower classes even though the former has far less problems in terms of practical reality.

Or is your complaint rather than in regards to the subject of her book rather the style which you find lackluster ?

I have not read the bell jar so I could not comment in that regard.

[JCamilo]

Well, exagerated, but Plath is just ok. Bell Jar is not a great book by any length. Interesting, she is good with words, some poems are fine. But that is all. As much her myth helps to increase the power of her poems (much as Byron, Poe, Keats, etc) she did not enough to be as great, just a good poetress.

[dyne7]

i must respectfully disagree with some of our users here. her IMAGERY is solid stuff. pain is both mental and physical, and i myself write of experiences i've never undergone. everyone has their limit. two people in a gym. one can bench 150 pounds. the other, 250. both are lifting their absolute max, but which is stronger? they're both experiencing as much as they can handle. that's why i cant stand it when people say 'well don't whine because this person, or these people have it so much worse.' the mind can be a prison. the voice of plath is one of the most defined of any writer anywhere. no one can deny that her suicide brought her to the forefront of authors that were read. but her STUFF is incredible. NO QUESTION one of the better female poets of the last 50 years. so many poets have stated her influence on their writing. and about her husband, there is no misinterpretation how she felt over him. married, but...very, very strained relationship. i think he was jealous of her actually. a great poet himself, no doubt. but he couldn't do it like she did. you have to really read some of her old journals and writings. and The Bell Jar was a near biographical account of what really happened to her. of course it isn't one of the most 'well-written' books, whatever that means. it's the power in them. she saw connections in objects that were mind-boggling. in that regard, she was the modern day Dickinson (although, not quite the prodigy admittedly) which reminds me. 2013, the Plath estate is releasing unpublished journals and papers from plath that ted hughes kept under wraps. it'll be 40 years after her death.

as a final note, listen to intensity of her later works. it's madness. but it's not weepy, silly girl madness. she makes the sickest connections, and she's not even trying. internally, she harbored everything she wrote about. i have to admit, i grew up disliking her poetry very much until the last few years, when i purchased her books. and i saw the process. i saw how everything warped. when you fill in all of the autobiographical pieces about her along the way, and knowing when each poem was published, it's startling stuff. Ted Hughes, for the most part has received more praise from literary circles than Plath did, but everyone knows who the better writer was. it's hard to explain why. you just have to go through the process. i'm sure theres academic papers written somewhere detailing all of that. seek them out.

sorry for the ramble. hopefully it was cohesive.

[JBI]

But one begs the question, why do I care about her pain? Why is her hysteria somehow relevant to me, and why does the I in poetry need to even reflect the poet, much less why do we care about it.

As for this everybody knows, who is everybody? in terms of academics, I think the verdict now is that Hughes as an ok poet, and plath a meh poet - the actual acceptance of this confessional poetry as something beyond a few good poets is relatively constrained to certain academic circles of the US (which birthed the movement) with, as I said, Roethke and Lowell and the excellent Bishop who is sometimes thrown in there.

[OrphanPip]

I think JBI is a bit overly harsh on Plath, but he's also mostly right that she isn't really all that great. I think Plath is an alright poet, she knew how to write a poem at least, she wasn't simply a no-talent hack. Is there anything particularly great or interesting about Plath's poetry? I'm not really sure there is much there.

One thing Plath has is that a few of her better poems are highly accessible, and thus are often effective introductions to poetry for young readers. Lady Lazarus, Daddy, and Ariel are fine poems, most of her other stuff doesn't impress me too much. I have to agree with JBI about the holocaust imagery being a bit too much. I'd agree that Roethke is far more interesting as well, one of my favourites.

[dyne7]

i can definitely see how one may not care about her mental turmoil. but then again, i must ask your opinion of the poet alan ginsberg. is he of the same mold, in your opinion? of course, we must consider that as plath won a pulitzer (after her death, true) and hughes was a former poet laureate, just calling one 'ok' and the other 'meh' may be a bit of a stretch. i guess it just depends on what you look for in poetry. i look for strong images, and something resembling a narrative. plath has this in droves. hughes, academically i would say he is a stronger writer in regards to form and process, but not necessarily to the EXPERIENCE which is what i value most in a poem. it's why im rather fond of sharon olds as a writer. but, one of the strongest hughes poems i ever read, was this one, 'last letter', found after his death, written for sylvia, and was left out of his award winning book 'birthday letters.'

Last Letter

What happened that night? Your final night.
Double, treble exposure
Over everything. Late afternoon, Friday,
My last sight of you alive.
Burning your letter to me, in the ashtray,
With that strange smile. Had I bungled your plan?
Had it surprised me sooner than you purposed?
Had I rushed it back to you too promptly?
One hour later—-you would have been gone
Where I could not have traced you.
I would have turned from your locked red door
That nobody would open
Still holding your letter,
A thunderbolt that could not earth itself.
That would have been electric shock treatment
For me.
Repeated over and over, all weekend,
As often as I read it, or thought of it.
That would have remade my brains, and my life.
The treatment that you planned needed some time.
I cannot imagine
How I would have got through that weekend.
I cannot imagine. Had you plotted it all?

Your note reached me too soon—-that same day,
Friday afternoon, posted in the morning.
The prevalent devils expedited it.
That was one more straw of ill-luck
Drawn against you by the Post-Office
And added to your load. I moved fast,
Through the snow-blue, February, London twilight.
Wept with relief when you opened the door.
A huddle of riddles in solution. Precocious tears
That failed to interpret to me, failed to divulge
Their real import. But what did you say
Over the smoking shards of that letter
So carefully annihilated, so calmly,
That let me release you, and leave you
To blow its ashes off your plan—-off the ashtray
Against which you would lean for me to read
The Doctor’s phone-number.
My escape
Had become such a hunted thing
Sleepless, hopeless, all its dreams exhausted,
Only wanting to be recaptured, only
Wanting to drop, out of its vacuum.
Two days of dangling nothing. Two days gratis.
Two days in no calendar, but stolen
From no world,
Beyond actuality, feeling, or name.

My love-life grabbed it. My numbed love-life
With its two mad needles,
Embroidering their rose, piercing and tugging
At their tapestry, their bloody tattoo
Somewhere behind my navel,
Treading that morass of emblazon,
Two mad needles, criss-crossing their stitches,
Selecting among my nerves
For their colours, refashioning me
Inside my own skin, each refashioning the other
With their self-caricatures,

Their obsessed in and out. Two women
Each with her needle.

That night
My dellarobbia Susan. I moved
With the circumspection
Of a flame in a fuse. My whole fury
Was an abandoned effort to blow up
The old globe where shadows bent over
My telltale track of ashes. I raced
From and from, face backwards, a film reversed,
Towards what? We went to Rugby St
Where you and I began.
Why did we go there? Of all places
Why did we go there? Perversity
In the artistry of our fate
Adjusted its refinements for you, for me
And for Susan. Solitaire
Played by the Minotaur of that maze
Even included Helen, in the ground-floor flat.
You had noted her—-a girl for a story.
You never met her. Few ever met her,
Except across the ears and raving mask
Of her Alsatian. You had not even glimpsed her.
You had only recoiled
When her demented animal crashed its weight
Against her door, as we slipped through the hallway;
And heard it choking on infinite German hatred.

That Sunday night she eased her door open
Its few permitted inches.
Susan greeted the black eyes, the unhappy
Overweight, lovely face, that peeped out
Across the little chain. The door closed.
We heard her consoling her jailor
Inside her cell, its kennel, where, days later,
She gassed her ferocious kupo, and herself.

Susan and I spent that night
In our wedding bed. I had not seen it
Since we lay there on our wedding day.
I did not take her back to my own bed.
It had occurred to me, your weekend over,
You might appear—-a surprise visitation.
Did you appear, to tap at my dark window?
So I stayed with Susan, hiding from you,
In our own wedding bed—-the same from which
Within three years she would be taken to die
In that same hospital where, within twelve hours,
I would find you dead.
Monday morning
I drove her to work, in the City,
Then parked my van North of Euston Road
And returned to where my telephone waited.

What happened that night, inside your hours,
Is as unknown as if it never happened.
What accumulation of your whole life,
Like effort unconscious, like birth
Pushing through the membrane of each slow second
Into the next, happened
Only as if it could not happen,
As if it was not happening. How often
Did the phone ring there in my empty room,
You hearing the ring in your receiver—-
At both ends the fading memory
Of a telephone ringing, in a brain
As if already dead. I count
How often you walked to the phone-booth
At the bottom of St George’s terrace.
You are there whenever I look, just turning
Out of Fitzroy Road, crossing over
Between the heaped up banks of dirty sugar.
In your long black coat,
With your plait coiled up at the back of your hair
You walk unable to move, or wake, and are
Already nobody walking
Walking by the railings under Primrose Hill
Towards the phone booth that can never be reached.
Before midnight. After midnight. Again.
Again. Again. And, near dawn, again.

At what position of the hands on my watch-face
Did your last attempt,
Already deeply past
My being able to hear it, shake the pillow
Of that empty bed? A last time
Lightly touch at my books, and my papers?
By the time I got there my phone was asleep.
The pillow innocent. My room slept,
Already filled with the snowlit morning light.
I lit my fire. I had got out my papers.
And I had started to write when the telephone
Jerked awake, in a jabbering alarm,
Remembering everything. It recovered in my hand.
Then a voice like a selected weapon
Or a measured injection,
Coolly delivered its four words
Deep into my ear: ‘Your wife is dead.’


Now, for a plath poem.

Fever 103

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ----

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise ----
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I

Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.

Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) ----
To Paradise.




i love the imagery there. such strong word choices, it reads rather well too. listening to her interviews, she had a gorgeous speaking voice. it just brims with intensity. your thoughts on the different styles of the two?

[JCamilo]

I think JBI is a bit overly harsh on Plath, but he's also mostly right that she isn't really all that great. I think Plath is an alright poet, she knew how to write a poem at least, she wasn't simply a no-talent hack. Is there anything particularly great or interesting about Plath's poetry? I'm not really sure there is much there.

One thing Plath has is that a few of her better poems are highly accessible, and thus are often effective introductions to poetry for young readers. Lady Lazarus, Daddy, and Ariel are fine poems, most of her other stuff doesn't impress me too much. I have to agree with JBI about the holocaust imagery being a bit too much. I'd agree that Roethke is far more interesting as well, one of my favourites.

JBI dislike cults. Haven't you noticed, his dreadful nightmare is the day Tolkien followers discovers Plath was an elf :D

Of course, some people may care about what she feels, so it is not relevant if JBI cares or not. But Plath a modern Dickinson? I cannot imagine how. Plath is guilty of trying to much, overboarding. She does have strong imagens, like Dyne suggests, yes she does. But a Pulitzer is almost an offense. It says she is ok and people read her. And to be a Poet laureate does not say much. Wordsworth was a poet laureate when he stopped writting. And since Tennyson, nobody was really such dominating voice of his genration. It shows Hughes was ok. But really, the emotional charge of Plath poem do not always find a proper form, it is something insecure. She obviously was not bad but needed a lot yet to come near the emotional power of Elizabeth Browning, for example.
But Bell Jar is not bad written, it is conventional. It is ok. Gave me the impression of a hollywood film with Angelina Jolie. A girl's diary polished for publishing. The writting does not excell (neither is really lacking). Her poems are better.

[LadyGodiva]

Ive met her poetry by means of a friend and i was quite affected by this very first poem of her ive read, Mirror. sometimes just spouting it aloud, all in me gets revealed.

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

[Fafnir]

I'm relatively new to poetry and I'm not too confident in my reading abilities but Plath strikes me as a good poet for 'beginners'.
The poem I liked best was Tulips:


The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year~old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

It explores what I imagine to be quite a taboo subject, especially for a mother: an almost selfish desire for escape, to the extent that she disdains her own family. Their smiles in her photograph are 'little smiling hooks' trying to draw her back to herself, an annoyance rather than a comfort. An unpleasant reminder of her identity and responsibility.
I do get the impression that her mental state is at least partly influenced by her medical treatments with the lines: 'They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.' and 'They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep', they explain the dreamlike, ethereal quality of the poem.
I like the imagery of the tulips. They seem almost threatening and frightening, their presence is 'loud' somehow. A crimson gouge in the otherwise pristine white oblivion of her mind.

However, I can understand some people's dislike for confessional poetry.
For instance, in Daddy she just seems to be wallowing in misery. I disliked the holocaust imagery, it came across as deliberately provocative and a bit immature. The poem would have been better without it.

[OrphanPip]

My favourite Plath poem is probably "Cut," because I think it has a bit of a morbid playfulness to it.

Cut

What a thrill --
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.

A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man --

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when

The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump --
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

[CellarDoor]

I love Plath's poetry. Relatively comprehensive collection here: http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/

For me it eloquently ties together a lot of desperate ideas I've had floating around in my own mind. I feel it can be construed as trying too hard and can see this is some of her work, but I don't think this attribute is unique to her. I find that every poet has verse I like, and verse I don't and Plath is no exception. I deeply enjoy the confessional mode (whatever it's literary validity), the hyperbolic nature of the subject matter, the religious symbolism, and the emotive and vivid imagery.

My favourites:

Words

Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the center like horses.

The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock

That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road---

Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, not seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent

Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then ---
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.

[Crass the head]

She's cool. Sometimes I feel she's just throwing words around. Sometimes.

[Lady Lazarus]

I'm relatively new to the forum (certainly to posting) and I'm currently contemplating writing my dissertation on Plath. I was pleased to find this thread and its insightful comments as I've been feeling a little deflated on the subject of Plath lately and feeling that perhaps I made a mistake in choosing her as a dissertation topic. She has certainly received her fair share of attention from critical writers and it's become disheartening to see just how much of that criticism is based on the biographical opinions of her mental state and the fact of her suicide. Most critics seem to rely heavily on one or the other in order to interpret her work. With the vast ammount thats been written about her already however, I'm finding it hard to find something original to say... which is why I ended up here.

Apologies for not quoting, but I'd like to add my opinion on the final lines of 'Edge' also,

I think that throughout her poetry the moon is often used to symbolise female fertility. In 'Edge' I think the 'moon in her hood of bone' is quite literally the womb in the hood of bone that is the pelvis. The moon is portrayed as indifferent perhaps because Plath viewed biology to be indifferent to individuality... there has been some discussion over whether or not Plath viewed her female biology as a prison of some sort, or at least something which prevented her from transcending the body. The last line remains a mystery to me though... although I see 'crackle' and 'drag' as having connotations of old age and disrepair... perhaps there is an element of being done with biology/life.

I realise it's cheeky to ask, but I'm looking for inspiration for an approach to my paper and was wondering whether any fans of her had any opinions about what maybe they feel has been long overlooked in her work?

[quasimodo1]

To Lady Lazarus: I have been captivated by Plath's poetry for many years and would only recommend that you try to avoid her mental health and poet husband (whom she completely eclipsed in my opinion) and find a theme for your thesis in her amazing imagery, metaphor selection and choice of title for both poem and collection. She may have been "compelled by calamity's magnet" but is a genious nontheless. q1

[_Shannon_]

Clearly it treated Plath's depression effectively...

Bwahahaha:nod:

Meh..When I was a younger woman, with far less life and reading experience than I have now, I really connected with Plath's poetry. I don't love it any more. I spend most of my time reading her poetry wanting to shake her, take her out to jump on the trampoline and telling to just buck up!

Plus, I find myself angry at her and John Berryman and Robert Lowell and the rest of the Confessional Poet lot for opening the door to just reams upon reams of awful poetry and memoirs.

[Lady Lazarus]

Thank you Quasimodo, I am feeling less deflated and more motivated now. Have decided to explore the concept of the self and of nature (not Plath's self personally) in the poetry and short stories with reference to existentialism, postmodernism and ontological scepticism. Quite a broad topic I know but I'm narrowing it down slowly...

[prendrelemick]

This may be of interest here. An interview with Olwyn Hughes talking about Ted and Sylvia.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/18/olwyn-hughes-sylvia-plath-literary-executor?CMP=twt_gu

[annet22r]

What do you think about this poem?

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

[Ser Nevarc]

I think it's a poem with a good grip on the imaginative digestion of reality...but is ultimately devoid of any discovery or new understanding. A typical Plath effort: fun but nothing that might bring me to joy, tears, or deep appreciation. I've come to a point where I pass her up if I'm in search for a sublime fix. :)

[seaofmilktea]

Quite like Mad Girl's Love Song. One of the few villanelles that don't end up repetitive, as the repetition only adds to the theme of obsession. I was surprised that ol' Hong Kong put Plath on their lit syllabus. We did Poppies In July, Pheasant, You're, Mushrooms, and Crossing the water. Funny how people kept interpreting every poem as about her marriage and/or feminism. You're is so pleasantly cheerful for once. I've got a collection of her poetry but have yet to read all of the poems properly haha :)

[papillondemai]

I remember The Bell Jar as being one of the most beautifully written books I had ever read. I thought it would be a "chick" book but it is much more than that. She tells a story with a clarity and facility that lets it naturally falls into place. I found it so compelling I couldn't put it down. She is a fine writer and, well, I just naturally love anyone that's suicidal.

So any of you suicidal folks out there, hold on, hold on! Don't do it! I love you. Come on. Let's compare notes.

[seaofmilktea]

Bwahahaha:nod:



Plus, I find myself angry at her and John Berryman and Robert Lowell and the rest of the Confessional Poet lot for opening the door to just reams upon reams of awful poetry and memoirs.

Agree.

[WICKES]

I love Plath, but I do wish her fans wouldn't demonize Ted Hughes so much. Everything I've read about him suggests that he was a lovely guy- very kind and loyal. His poetry is great as well.

[Melanie]

I love Plath, but I do wish her fans wouldn't demonize Ted Hughes so much. Everything I've read about him suggests that he was a lovely guy- very kind and loyal....
"Loyal"??? He cheated on her with another woman. Plath intercepted a phone call from Hughes' mistress in their home. This humiliated her and sent her over the edge. He left and told her he never wanted the 2 children they had, leaving her to take care of them by herself through a hellish winter. Within a year of discovering his infidelity, Plath committed suicide.