Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
	Cover of Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life by Linda Wagner-Martin Cover of Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life by Linda Wagner-Martin
Born	October 27,1932; Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Died	February 11, 1963; London, England
Occupation	poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist
Nationality	American
Literary movement	confessional poetry

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist.

Most famous as a poet, Plath is also known for The Bell Jar, her semi-autobiographical novel detailing her struggle with bipolar disorder. Plath and Anne Sexton are credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry that Robert Lowell and W.D. Snodgrass initiated.

Since her suicide, Sylvia Plath has risen to iconic status.

Works

Influence of Hughes

Plath married Ted Hughes on June 16, 1956, after just 4 months of knowing one another. After a short time in London, they moved to Devon in 1961 (Court Green, North Tawton). They had two children, but separated in the autumn of 1962. Ted continued to live at Court Green on and off, with his lover Assia Wevill, after Plath's death. As Plath's widower, Hughes became the executor of Plath’s personal and literary estates. This is controversial, as it is uncertain whether or not Plath had begun divorce proceedings before her death: if she had, Hughes' inheritance of the Plath estate would have been disputed. In letters to Aurelia Plath and Richard Murphy, Plath writes that she was applying for a divorce. However, Hughes said in a letter to "The Guardian" that Plath did not seriously consider divorce, and claims they were talking about a future together right up until her death. However, he oversaw the publication of her manuscripts, including Ariel (1966). He allegedly destroyed the final volume of Plath’s journal, detailing their last few months together, although no actual proof of this fact was ever found.

Many critics accused Hughes of attempting to control the publications for his own ends, though he denied this. Examples usually cited are his censoring of parts of her journals, and his editing of "Ariel." This editing involved removing several poems, and rearranging the order in which the works appeared. Some critics argue this prevented what was intended to be a more uplifting beginning and ending of "Ariel," and that the poems removed were the ones most readily identified as being about Hughes. He also cut a deal with Plath's mother Aurelia when she tried to block publication of her daughter's more controversial works in the United States. In his last collection, "Birthday Letters," Hughes broke his silence about Plath. The cover artwork was done by the couple's daughter, Frieda.

Despite criticism and biographies published after her death, the debate about Plath's work resembles a struggle between readers who side with her and readers who side with Hughes. An indication of the level of bitterness that some people have directed at Hughes can be seen in the history of people chiseling the word "Hughes" off her gravestone. Her headstone has subsequently been rendered more "tamper proof."

Journals

Plath began keeping a diary at age 11, and kept journals until her suicide. Hughes faced criticism for his role in handling the journals: he supposedly destroyed Plath's last journal, which contained entries from the winter of 1962 up to her death. Her adult diaries, starting from her freshman year at Smith College in 1950, were first published in 1980 as "The Journals of Sylvia Plath," edited by Frances McCullough. In 1982, when Smith College acquired all of Plath's remaining journals, Hughes sealed two of them until February 11, 2003 (40 years after Plath's death). During his last years of life, Hughes began working on a fuller publication of Plath's journals. In 1998, shortly before his death, he unsealed the two journals, and passed the project onto Freida and Nicholas, who passed it on to Karen V. Kukil. Kukil finished her edits in December 1999, and in 2000 Anchor Books published "The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath." According to the back cover, roughly two-thirds of the "Unabridged Journals" is newly unreleased material. The publication was hailed as a "genuine literary event" by Joyce Carol Oates.

Sonnet

In 2006, Anna Journey, a graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University, discovered a previously unpublished sonnet titled "Ennui." The poem, composed during Plath's early years at Smith College, is published in Blackbird, the online journal.

Pulitzer Prize

In 1982, Plath became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously (for "The Collected Poems").

Poems

The extent of Hughes' influence has been a topic of great debate. Plath's poems are written as if in her own voice, and the similarities between the two poets' works are slight.

Plath has also been heavily criticized for her controversial allusions to The Holocaust, and is known for her shocking use of metaphor.

Plath's work has been associated with Anne Sexton, W.D. Snodgrass, and other confessional poets.

The Colossus

While critics initially responded favorably to Plath's first book, "The Colossus," it has also been described as conventional and lacking the drama of her later works.

Ariel

The poems in Ariel mark a departure from her earlier work into a more confessional area of poetry. It is possible Lowell's poetry--which was often labeled "confessional"--played a part in this shift. The impact of "Ariel" was dramatic, with its frank descriptions of mental illness in pseudo-autobiographical poems such as "Daddy."

Death

Plath took her own life on the morning of 11 February 1963. After completely sealing the rooms between herself and her children, she placed her head in a gas oven. She left a note for the man who lived downstairs, Mr Trevor Thomas, to call her doctor. The gas seeped through the floor and knocked Mr Thomas out cold for several hours. An au pair girl was to arrive at nine o'clock that morning to help Plath with the care of her children. Arriving promptly at 9, the au pair could not get into the flat. It has been suggested that Plath's timing & planning of this suicide attempt was too precise, too coincidental. She had previously asked Mr Thomas what time he would be leaving. Plath must have turned the gas on at a time when Mr Thomas should have been waking & beginning his day. A note was placed that read "Call Dr Horder" and left his phone number. These measures were too time-sensitive and could have saved Plath's life if events followed her logic. Living apart from her husband, and enduring one of the worst English winters on record, this was Sylvia Plath's last cry for help.

Bibliography

Poetry

The Colossus (1960)
Cut (1962)
Ariel (1965)
Crossing the Water (1971)
Winter Trees (1972)
The Collected Poems (1981)
Daddy

Poppies in July
Morning Song
Lady Lazarus
Mirror
Mushrooms
Ennui

Prose

The Bell Jar (1963) under the pseudonym 'Victoria Lucas'
Letters Home (1975) to and edited by her mother
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (1977) (the UK edition contains two stories the US edition does not)
The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)
The Magic Mirror (1989), Plath's Smith College senior thesis
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, edited by Karen V. Kukil (2000)

Children's

The Bed Book (1976)
The It-Doesn't-Matter-Suit (1996)
Collected Children's Stories (UK, 2001)
Mrs. Cherry's Kitchen (2001)
A number of "limited edition" works were published by specialist publishers, often with very small print runs.

Biography

Sylvia Plath (2004, Chelsea House, Great Writers Series) by Peter K. Steinberg | ISBN 0-7910-7843-4
Her Husband: Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, a Marriage by Diane Middlebrook, Viking Adult 2003 ISBN 0-670-03187-9
Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath (1991, Da Capo Press) by Paul Alexander | ISBN 0-3068-1299-1
Sylvia Plath: Method & Madness (A Biography) (2004, Schaffner Press, 2Rev Ed edition) by Edward Butscher | ISBN 0-9710-5982-9

For more info

The 2003 film, Sylvia, tells the story of the troubled relationship of the couple.
Hayman, Ronald [1991] The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath London, Melbourne, Auckland Heinemann.
Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters, by Erica Wagner.
Linda Wagner-Martin wrote Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.
Psychobiographical chapter on the loss of Plath's father, and the effect of that loss on her personality and her art, contained in Schultz's Handbook of Psychobiography (Oxford University Press).[1]
Jillian Becker: Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. The friend with whom Plath spent the last weekend of her life recalls their friendship. Ferrington, London 2002.

Trivia

Books

When asked about her writing habits, Beatrice Lao quoted from her poem: "Luscious lips of a Prada bag pout, Out springs a Plath poem, Recreating the sixties." The Asian poetess carries drafts of her own poems in her bag.

In Kiss the Girls by James Patterson, chapter 46 contains this reference, as narrated by central character, Alex Cross. "I remembered a sad, powerful Sylvia Plath poem called "Tulips". It was about Plath's decidedly unsentimental reaction to flowers sent to her hospital room after a suicide attempt." (A more correct interpretation might be that "Tulips" describes her reaction to a miscarriage during her marriage to Hughes.)

Films

In the film Annie Hall, Woody Allen's character Alvy Singer observes a copy of "Ariel" and remarks, "Sylvia Plath - interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality." (The word "poetess" has become uncommon in recent years: it is surprising that Allen used it, because he knew many people who would have deprecated it; perhaps, Allen is satirizing himself or his character. In the nineteenth century, women who wrote poetry were called "poetesses;" women who did sculpture were called "sculptresses." In 2006, women who write poetry are called "poets," just as women who write novels are called "novelists.")

In the movie Fight Club, Plath is mentioned by the character performed by Edward Norton - which is referenced simply as the narrator - when he says, "In the Tibetan philosophy, Sylvia Plath sense of the word, we're all dying. But you're not dying the way Chloe is dying."

In the film Not Another Teen Movie, protagonist Janey says "I read Sylvia Plath, I listen to Bikini Kill and I eat tofu. I am a unique rebel."

Music

The song "The Girl Who Wanted to Be God" by the Manic Street Preachers from their 1996 album Everything Must Go is about Plath.

The song "Bloody Ice Cream" by Bikini Kill from their album, Reject All American is about Plath. The lyrics are: "The Sylvia Plath story is told to girls who write/They want us to think that to be a girl poet/Means you have to die/Who is it/That told me/All girls who write must suicide?/I've another good one for you/We are turning/Cursive letters into knives."

The singer/songwriter Ryan Adams has a song named "Sylvia Plath", on his second album, Gold, in which the singer imagines what he would do with Sylvia if they were to have met: "I gotta get me a Sylvia Plath/And maybe she'd take me to France/Or maybe to Spain and she'd ask me to dance/In a mansion on the top of a hill/She'd ash on the carpets/And slip me a pill".

In the song "You Are the Moon", from the album Like Vines, by The Hush Sound there is a lyric "I will bring a mirror, so silver, so exact" referring to the poem "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath. Greta Salpeter, the singer/songwriter, is a known Sylvia Plath fan.

Liz Moore's song "Sylvia" is an ode to the life and plight of the troubled literary icon.

Tragic Cleveland alt rock pioneer Peter Laughner wrote a song called "Sylvia Plath". "She said 'If I'm gonna be classless and crass, I'm gonna break up some glass' Nobody broke anything sharper than Sylvia Plath"

The British indie band Nine Black Alps is named after a line in one of Plath's poems.

Paul Westerberg's song "Crackle and Drag" is about Plath and the title was taken from her poem, "Edge", which was written the day before her suicide.

The Ames, Iowa band The Envy Corps have a song titled "Sylvia (The Beekeeper)" which discusses Plath in some detail.

Joshua Radin's song "These Photographs" makes reference to Plath: 'You're Sylvia Plath/As you drift from the bath./I hand you a robe/And so it goes/The moment'll pass.'

Others

Suicide Black Metal project, Lurker Of Chalice, uses a sample of Gwyneth Paltrow playing Plath from the movie Sylvia:

Sometimes, I feel like I'm not solid. I'm hollow; there's nothing behind my eyes. I'm a negative of a person — as if I never thought anything, never wrote anything, never felt anything. All I want is blackness — blackness and silence.

Canadian Music Hall of Fame Musician/Songwriter Tom Cochrane wrote a song called 'Paper Tigers' dedicated to Sylvia's pain and suffering for his album called Ragged Ass Road, released in 1995.

A book by Sylvia Plath is visible in issue 3 of the comic Phonogram, and she is referred to in the footnotes as "favoured by the alienated and/or people who like to sleep with the alienated the world over."

External links