Do you look at Plath's life when analysing her poetry or wider themes?

Question

It is confusing because I have one team telling me that you need to focus on the intense personal imagery, and a whole other team telling me that you should not focus on biographical details. The latter are very vague and do not offer the alternative but just keep saying that anyone who looks at her poetry is wrong and gives a fierce argument for this yet they don't seem to know what else to look at.

Answer 1

Poetry is so intensely personal. Especially in the case of Plath. She writes so vividly about her own experience (her feelings toward her father "You do not do anymore black shoe...", her husband etc) that I don't think you could discuss her work without making reference to her tragic life. Of course each poem does stand on its own as a work of art. Her imagery is brilliant. But her poems are her life story, we can't ignore that.

Answer 2

In most cases I would say no, let the art speak for it self. When I learned the biographical details of Jack london and Heming way I was disapointed in them. Their lives were not really like their writings. Later, Kerouac was added to that group. In Plath's case, however, her life was her writings. She wrote what she lived, or percieved to live.

Answer 3

Yes, of course, it would be foolish NOT to look at Sylvia Plath's life when analyzing her poetry.

The old argument about biographical criticism becomes particularly acute when it is applied to the so-called "confessional" poets of the 1950s and 1960s, of whom Sylvia Plath has become the most dramatic example. M. L Rosenthal coined the phrase with particular reference to the work of Robert Lowell. Speaking of Lowell, Rosenthal said his poetry "has been a long struggle to remove the mask, to make the speaker unequivocally himself." Clearly, the same was even more intensely true of Plath. She has made the "I" in her poems unequivocally herself.

On the other hand, another critic, Jacqueline Rose (as reported in Wikipedia) insists that "Plath is a fantasy"; that "her life and poetry have been constructed in such a way as to perpetuate a particular fiction about her marriage, mental illness, and 'autobiographic' writing. Rose argues against [that] tendency among Plath's critics by showing how Plath fictionalizes herself in her writing." [The Wikipedia article is a clear, succinct introduction to the confessional poets.]

I think such either-or thinking is too simplistic. Obviously, anything that one writes will be influenced by the writer's life experiences. Even what a word means to one person will differ from what it means to someone else depending, to a certain extent, on how it was learned and what personal connotations and dimensions it may have accrued through experience.

On the other hand, when any one of us tries to tell our own life story (call it autobiography or memoir or "confession"), we will inevitably fictionalize. Our memory is faulty; our biases may be conscious or unconscious; we select details and improvise details to render our "story" dramatic or sensible or signficant. We say that we discover who we are by writing about ourselves, but we could just as accurately say that we invent who we are when we tell our stories.

So, especailly with confessional poets, but really with all poets, biographical details may enhance our understanding of the poem. But biographical details will never be the only dimensions we will need to explore or attempt to explain to ourselves. If the poem is so personal that it speaks only to, for, and about the poet him/herself, it will not be a very effective poem for any other reader than the poet. For the poem is effective only if it speaks to the reader, to humankind, if you will.

Confessional poets in the 1950s and 1960s, for whatever reason, did speak to, for, and about their readers, about their generation, about mid-20th century Americans. Otherwise they would not have developed such an intense following nor inspired so many imitators. Knowing about their lives may help us understand their poems, and knowing their poems my help us understand their lives, their personalities, their character. Similarly, knowing the history of their milieu may help us understand their poems, but--perhaps even more so--understanding their poems my help us understand the milieu.

So I think it's always a mistake to think that one must read the poem as a linguistic artifact, separate and apart from its context, in the life and thinking of the poet, in the events and ideas of the time. I think it's also a mistake to think that a poem reflects only the experience, ideas, insights, passions of the poet. "I" may be a fairly credible reflection of the poet, but if the poem is effective, the "I" will also be illuminating because it reflects the experiences of others--readers perhaps, recognizable characters the reader has known or heard about, perhaps humankind more generally.

For the critic/reader to be biographical or not to be biographical is NOT the question. It's how to strike a meaningful balance. Sylvia Plath's life may help us analyze her poetry (and vice versa), but her poetry will also help us understand "wider themes" (and vice versa), perhaps our own lives.