Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath: Born: October 27th 1932, Boston Died: 11th February 1963, London Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 and her Brother Warren was born in April,1935. When she was around 8 years old (1940) her father Otto died and she was devastated but never showed it. In 1941 Plath’s poem was printed in the children’s section of Boston Herald, it was a short poem about what Plath’s saw and heard on summer nights. After Plath had just graduated in 1950, her Poem “ Bitter Strawberries” appeared in The Christian Science Monitor which was her first national publication. Also in 1950 Plath entered Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. 1952 Plath won Mademoiselle’s college fiction contest with her story “ Sunday At The Mintons.” Through college she dated many boys and had a serious relationship with Dick Norton. However she developed depression and often thought about suicide. Plath spent most of June 1953 as a guest editor at Mademoiselle’s magazine, she was one of twenty people to be involved in this. In August 1953 Plath stole the sleeping pills that had been locked away and crawled in the crawl space under the porch through the cellar, She took forty of them. Her parents found her 2 days later after hearing moaning coming from the cellar, when they found her she was covered in her vomit and dazed but alive. April 1954 Plath started bleaching her hair platinum blonde and was awarded a $1,200 scholarship for her next year at Smith and also received one to Harvard Summer School. During the summer in Boston (1954) Plath began to date an older man who she said had raped her and had nearly bleed to death from hemorrhage. She continued to him even after this incident had occurred. 1955 Plath’s “Go Get The Gloodly Squab” was published in Harper’s and she also received an honourable mention in Mademoiselle’s Dylan Thomas poetry contest for her poem “parallax.” “Circus In Three Rings” was her first poem to finally be published in The Atlantic Monthly. Early 1956 Plath had learnt that her grandmother had developed stomach cancer. At this time Plath was also suffered with insomnia and sinus infections and her writing was getting rejected from publication. She then had attended a party where she met Ted Hughes an English poet who immediately caught her eye at first glance. By the time Plath and Hughes had been together for 2 months they were discussing marriage and decided to get married secretly so it wouldn’t jeopardize Plath’s fellowship grant.
Sylvia Plath showed interest in writing at a very early age. Plath published her first poem when she was eight years old. Sylvia Plath continued writing and published numerous stories and poems before the age of twenty. After graduation in 1950, Plath received the Olive Higgins Prouty Scholarship from Smith College (Smithipedia). At the private college, Plath managed to excel in school and write over four hundred poems while suffering from depression (allpoetry). It was at Smith College, where she attempted her first suicide. Plath graduated from the school in 1955 and moved to Cambridge, England to continue her studies (AAoP).
Symptoms of severe depression began to plague Plath in her early years of college (Poetry Foundation). One of Plath’s short stories, “Sunday at the Mintons,” was published in 1952 in the magazine Mademoiselle while ...
Poetry is the wind for a trapped and wounded soul. A great example of a wounded soul is, Sylvia Plath. She was an immaculate poet, who expressed her personal troubles through writing. As Plath’s life smouldered into a heap of dust at the age of 30, her poetry grew and bloomed. In the years before her death, her most troubled period, Plath penned three of her most well-known poems, “Daddy”, “Lady Lazarus” and “Tulips”—all three illustrating the horrors of despair with strong, expressive literary devices. Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30, has been hailed ubiquitously as one of the most acclaimed and preeminent poets of the 21st century. Plath’s poetry was influenced by tragic events in her life and her prolonged battle against her deep depression and obsession with death. Plath’s personal issues made her the definition of a confessional poet. In the poems, “Daddy”, “Tulips”, and “Lady Lazarus”, Plath confesses her emotional and nervous breakdowns during her endless depression.
Plath is a very personal poet. She also uses symbolism throughout the majority of her poetry and prose. Plath writes based on everyday occurrences during her lifetime. Most of her work is actually diary entries without punctuation. Plath gets most of her inspiration from her everyday life. She enjoyed writing about the things that happened day to day.
Plath, Sylvia. The unabridged journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Print.
While at Smith, Plath received many awards in regard to the poetry that she had written. After winning the Mademoiselle fiction contest, the popular magazine offered Plath a place on their editorial board. While working with Mademoiselle, Pla...
Sylvia Plath was American short-story writer, poet and novelist that was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts and died on February 11, 1963. Sylvia Plath is best known for, her books of poems, “The Colossus and Other Poems Collection” and the “Ariel Collection” of Poems.Plath’s poetry was known for its rhyme, alliteration and disturbing and violent imagery. Plath’s poetry is considered part of the Confessional movement, which became very popular in the United States during the 1950s through the 1960s. It is considered a type of poetry about “of the personal”. Confessional poems are more associated with the subject matter of sexuality, mental illness and suicide.
In Plath's "Daddy," written just before her death and published posthumously, the most readily accessible emotion is anger, and much of the poem is couched in autobiographical allusions. Plath's own father died of a gangrenous infection, caused by diabetes he refused to treat, when Plath was eight years old, and his death was "the crucial event of her childhood" (Baym 2743). Plath makes personal references to her father as a...
Sylvia Plath’s life was full of disappointment, gloominess and resentment. Her relationship status with her parents was hostile and spiteful, especially with her father. Growing up during World War II did not help the mood of the nation either, which was dark and dreary. At age 8 Plath’s father of German ancestry died of diabetes and even though their relationship was never established nor secure, his death took a toll on her. “For Sylvia, who had been his favorite, it was an emotional holocaust and an experience from which she never fully recovered” (Kehoe 90). Since she was so young she never got to work out her unsettled feelings with him. Even at age eight, she hid when he was around because she was fearful of him. When she was in his presence his strict and authoritarian figure had left an overpowering barrier between their relationship. Sadly enough by age eight Plath instead of making memories with her dad playing in the yard she resented him and wanted nothing to do with him (Kehoe). These deep-seated feelings played a major role in Plath’s poetry writings. Along with his “hilterian figure,” her father’s attitude towards women was egotistical and dismissive, uncondemning. This behavior infuriated Plath; she was enraged about the double standard behavior towards women. Plath felt controlled in male-dominated world (Lant). “Because Plath associates power so exclusively with men, her conviction that femininity is suffocating and inhibiting comes as no surprise” (Lant 631). This idea of a male-dominated world also influenced Plath’s writing. Unfortunately, Plath married a man just like her father Ted Hughes. “Hughes abandonment apparently stirred in her the memories and feelings she had struggled with when her ...
Dickie, Margaret. 1979 Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Urbana: the University of Illinois Press. [http://www.usm.maine.edu/~jkuenz/391/lazarus.htm, accessed 6 May 2007]
Known for her distinctive voice and exploration of dark, violent emotions, Sylvia Plath was one of the most acclaimed poets of the twentieth century. In her poems she discusses many common themes such as family relations, marriage, self-image and death in unique ways. Among these topics, she expresses a particularly original perspective on motherhood and its effect on the individual that often deviates completely from the traditional view of child rearing. In her poems “Moonrise,” “Heavy Woman” and “Morning Song,” Plath conveys the idea that motherhood, although necessary, is a personal as well as physical sacrifice that involves much pain and suffering.
Through her dark and intense poetry, Sylvia Plath left an eternal mark on the literary community. Her personal struggles with depression, insecurities, and suicidal thoughts influenced her poetry and literary works. As a respected twentieth century writer, Sylvia Plath incorporated various literary techniques to intensify her writing. Her use of personification, metaphors, and allusions in her poems “Ariel,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Edge”, exemplifies her talent as a poet and the influence her own troubled life had on her poetry.
After reading the poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” and doing some research on Plath, I came to find out that the poem was very similar to Plath’s personal life. The poem is basically about a young girl who fell in love and gave her all to a boy who never came back to love her. The young girl fell in a depression and made herself believe that she was making it all up. She still had hope that she and the boy could be happy someday, but it never happened and it drove her insane. Perhaps the boy could have been Plath’s husband, Hughes. Everything about the poem is so similar to her marriage with Hughes; the story makes the reader believe the poem could possibly be about Plath herself.
Sylvia Plath, an innocent scarred by her memories, shares her story through her considerably dark poems. On October 27, 1932 in
Plath’s father died early in her life leaving her with unresolved feelings, and this brought a lot of troubles later on in life. Sylvia was a great student but when she was overwhelmed with disappointments after a month in New York, she attempted suicide (“Sylvia Plath”). After receiving treatment and recovering, she returned to school and later moved to England where she met her future husband, Ted Hughes (“Sylvia Plath”). Their marriage with two children didn’t last when Ted had an affair. They separated and Ted moved in with the new woman, leaving Sylvia and their two children. Battling depression during this time, Sylvia soon ended her life. She left behind numerous writings that many might see as signs of her depression and suicide attempts.