Sylvia Plath was a highly influential American poet and novelist who is best known for her confessional poetry and her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. Born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath was a bright and talented writer from a young age. She published her first poem at the age of eight and went on to attend Smith College, where she excelled academically and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society.
Despite her early successes, Plath struggled with mental health issues throughout her life. She was hospitalized for depression in 1953 and attempted suicide for the first time in the same year. In 1956, she married fellow poet Ted Hughes and the two moved to England, where Plath continued to write and publish her work.
Plath's poetry is known for its raw, emotional honesty and its exploration of themes such as depression, mental illness, and the struggles of being a woman in a male-dominated society. Her most famous work, the collection Ariel, was published posthumously in 1965 and includes some of her most famous poems, such as "Lady Lazarus," "Daddy," and "The Bell Jar."
Plath's novel, The Bell Jar, was also published posthumously in 1963 and is considered a classic of modern literature. The novel is a semi-autobiographical account of Plath's own experiences with depression and mental illness and is often seen as a powerful portrayal of the struggles faced by young women in the 1950s and 60s.
Plath's work has had a lasting impact on literature and continues to be widely studied and admired by readers and critics alike. She is often cited as a key figure in the confessional poetry movement and is remembered as a talented and influential writer whose work continues to speak to readers today.
Daddy (poem)
After the Beginning in 1922, Plath taught at Throughout his years of both education and teaching, Plath published his research on a range of biological subjects. . I went to this little celebration and that's actually where we met. Kukil 2000, I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. Time said: "Within a week of her death, intellectual London was hunched over copies of a strange and terrible poem she had written during her last sick slide toward suicide. We kept writing poems to each other. I can never train myself in all the skills I want.
Plath's daughter, Sylvia, was eight years old at the time of his death even though the poem "Daddy" says "I was ten when they buried you. In January 1955, she submitted her thesis, The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of She obtained a Career and marriage Plath's stay at Plath met poet I'd read some of Ted's poems in this magazine and I was very impressed and I wanted to meet him. Their daughter Frieda spoke for the first time about her mother and father. The New York Times. Retrieved August 31, 2017. Its most striking impression is of a front-rank artist in the process of discovering her true power. What is more, 'Daddy' was merely the first jet of flame from a literary dragon who in the last months of her life breathed a burning river of bile across the literary landscape.
As Hughes and Plath were legally married at the time of her death, Hughes inherited the Plath estate, including all her written work. PDF from the original on June 22, 2017. Retrieved July 9, 2010. Retrieved June 1, 2007. Crossing the Water is full of perfectly realised works.
Kukil finished her editing in December 1999, and in 2000 The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. Retrieved January 28, 2021. No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel On the blank stones of the landing. International Journal of the Book. It is argued Plath turned on the gas at a time when Thomas would have been able to see the note although the escaping gas had seeped downstairs and also rendered Thomas unconscious while he slept. Having Our Way: Women Rewriting Tradition in Twentieth-Century America. Sylvia Plath: An Analytical Bibliography.
The Colossus and Other Poems, Faber and Faber, 1977. . Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words. Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking: Motherhood in Sylvia Plath's Work.
The Collected Poems, published in 1981, edited and introduced by Ted Hughes, contained poetry written from 1956 until her death. Such is Plath's control that the book possesses a singularity and certainty which should make it as celebrated as The Colossus or Ariel. University of Toronto Press. Her dramatic death became her most famous aspect, and remains so. They were mostly imitation exercises of poets she admired such as Lost Son sequence, though its theme is her own traumatic breakdown and suicide attempt at 20. During the last years of his life, Hughes began working on a fuller publication of Plath's journals. If male he takes his starting point from And fearlessly parades his suffering soul Through therapy, shock-treatments, and divorce Until he whips the skin from a dead horse.
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: And Other Prose Writings. In 1998, shortly before his death, he unsealed the two journals, and passed the project onto his children by Plath, Frieda and Nicholas, who passed it on to Karen V. . In January 1963, Plath spoke with pounds 9 kg. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
Retrieved April 14, 2017. Mysticism: Holiness East and West. Radical feminist poet Monster 1972 "included a piece in which a gang of Plath aficionados are imagined castrating Hughes, stuffing his penis into his mouth and then blowing out his brains". In her most ferocious poems, 'Daddy' and 'Lady Lazarus', fear, hate, love, death and the poet's own identity become fused at black heat with the figure of her father, and through him, with the guilt of the German exterminators and the suffering of their Jewish victims. She is credited with advancing the genre of The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. Ariel in the wake of her death. They found Plath dead with her head in the oven, having sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with tape, towels and cloths.
Canadian Review of American Studies. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. After Hughes left, Plath produced, in less than two months, the 40 poems of rage, despair, love, and vengeance on which her reputation mostly rests. The couple married on June 16, 1956, at In June 1957, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States, and from September, Plath taught at Smith College, her alma mater. The In 2018, Portrayals in media Plath's voice is heard in a BBC documentary about her life, recorded in London in late 1962. . In Jo Gill ed.
Jones take the same approach of psychoanalyzing Plath via "Daddy. Retrieved April 29, 2012. Plath in 1930 Born Otto Emil Plath 1885-04-13 April 13, 1885 Died November 5, 1940 1940-11-05 aged55 Resting place Winthrop Cemetery, Winthrop, Massachusetts Occupation Author, entomologist Nationality Citizenship Almamater Spouse Children Warren Plath Otto Emil Plath April 13, 1885— November 5, 1940 was a Bumblebees and Their Ways. The Bell Jar, was published in January 1963, under the pen name Victoria Lucas, and was met with critical indifference. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. It was not anything like I could have imagined. Retrieved February 17, 2018.
