Sylvia Plath?

Question

i've just finished reading The Bell Jar and i am ... wow. wow!
so, i'm interested in ANYTHING you can tell me, what you know bout her, how you felt when reading her poems, your favourite S. Plath quote, what you think happened to Esther after her interview.... anything!
cheers

Answer 1

Oh, if you liked her autobiographical novel so well, you must explore her poetry. Be prepared, though, to grieve that we lost such a great poet at so young an age. Even so, I think she ranks right at the top of late 20th century poets. If she had lived a full life span, she might be right up there with Emily Dickinson in the number and quality of her works.

Many of her poems, of course, deal with her recurring sense of loss and depression. My favorite is one that deals, rather, with a sense of the miraculous in everyday life: "Black Rook in Rainy Weather." For the poem itself and a thoughtful comment upon it, see the site listed in sources. Here are a few key lines (a rook, remember, is like a crow or raven):

. . . 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. . . .

. . . Miracles occur.
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance
Miracles. . . .

As the commentator says, Plath herself "possesses the capacity to endow [the world] with grace or terror, even oblivion, with the blink of her eyelid. But simultaneously, there's always the compulsion to be overwhelmed, to abandon herself to fantasy."

What this reader does not comment upon is the intricate form of the poem. It is constructed in five-line stanzas (except for an interesting variation at the end). But what one hardly notices upon a first reading is her use of half-rhymes of slant rhymes. The first line of every stanza rhymes with the first line of all the other stanzas; the second line, with second lines, etc., for a rhyme scheme of ABCDE ABCDE ABCDE . . . . But most of the rhymes are half- or slant- , and so hardly noticeable. For example, there, fire, desire, chair, honor, flare, fear, occur. So carefully and meticulously constructed, and yet on the surface so spontaneous, even casual.

Then to work one's way toward Plath's more distressing poems about loss, grief, suffering, and death, my next favorite is "Tulips" (see the second citation below). It deals with a surgery patient in a white, antiseptic, serene hospital room, called back to life by a gift of red tulips. Here are some key, climactic lines:

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.

Obviously, the patient greets this rush of life with an unsettling ambivalence.

Oh, you must explore the variety and plenitude of her poetry. See, especially, these three collections: Colossus, Ariel, and Crossing the Water.

Answer 2

It is hazardous to apply psychiatric diagnoses to people long after they are dead. Sometimes the psychotic mania of bipolar can look a lot like a psychotic episode of schizophrenia, for example. In Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Kay Redfield Jamison includes Plath among those artists who clearly had a mood disorder, but she doesn't go as far as to diagnose it more specifically than that. She knows better. She's a psychiatrist. There are many other artists for whom the evidence of a particular diagnosis are much more clear. Schizophrenia often co-exists with depression. But Plath could have been bipolar. Or, if she were still around to quiz in more detail about how her experiences matched the current diagnostic criteria, she might turn out to have some other affective disorder, or combination of disorders. But in the absence of more evidence, we have to conclude that we aren't sure.

Answer 3

Sylvia Plath
Born: 27-Oct-1932
Birthplace: Boston, MA
Died: 11-Feb-1963
Location of death: London, England
Cause of death: Suicide
Remains: Buried, Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, England


Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Poet

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Ariel and Collected Poems

Father: Otto Plath (entomologist, Professor of Biology at Boston University, d. 1940 diabetes)
Mother: Aurelia Schoeber
Brother: Warren (younger)
Husband: Ted Hughes (poet, m. 16-Jun-1956, two children)
Son: Nicholas Hughes (zoologist)
Daughter: Frieda Hughes (m. artist Laszlo Lukacs)


High School: Wellesley High School, Wellesley, MA
University: BA, Smith College (1955)
University: MA English, Newnham College, Cambridge University (1956-)


Mademoiselle
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1982 for Collected Poems (posthumous)
Fulbright
Suicide Attempt 24-Aug-1953
Nervous Breakdown
Raped 1954 (while attending Harvard Summer School)
Appendectomy Feb-1960
German Ancestry
Risk Factors: Depression, Insomnia


Author of books:
The Bell Jar (1963, autobiographical novel, pseudonym Victoria Lucas)
The Colossus (1960, poetry)
Ariel (1965, poetry)
Crossing the Water (1971, poetry)
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (1977, short stories, prose)
Collected Poems (1981, edited by ex-husband Ted Hughes)

I love her poems, I cant choose just one.

Answer 4

The Bell Jar was based on Plath's own experiences in college. As it turns out, "the bell jar" did eventually return - she killed herself after writing the book. Her husband evidently was cheating on her. She got depressed and stuck her head in an oven.

Answer 5

Both of these biographies are fascinating reads: "Rough Magic" by Paul Alexander and "Sylvia Plath" by Linda Wagner-Martin. She was both brilliant and mad. I loved her stuff!

Answer 6

She's depressing as hell, and not only took her own life, but inspires others to follow suit.
Read Dorothy Parker, much more fun, and far more cutting.