Name: Why should you read Sylvia Plath? - Iseult Gillespie
Uploaded: 2020-03-22T18:51:27.000Z
Duration: 4 min 46 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

a wonderful future beckoned and winked…

but choosing one meant  losing all the rest,

and, one by one, they plopped  to the ground at my feet.”

In this passage from Sylvia Plath’s  "The Bell Jar,"

a young woman imagines  an uncertain future–

by the prospect of making  the wrong choice.

Fiercely intelligent,  penetrating and witty,

Plath was also diagnosed  with clinical depression.

She used poetry to explore her own states  of mind

and her breathtaking perspectives  on emotion,

nature and art continue  to captivate and resonate.

"white: it is a complexion of the mind.”

from “a blue mist” “dragging the lake,”

to white flowers that “tower and topple,”

to blue mussels “clumped like bulbs.”

After "The Colossus" she  published "The Bell Jar,"

which fictionalizes the time she spent  working for Mademoiselle magazine

as she slides into a severe  depressive episode,

but also includes wickedly funny and  shrewd depictions

of snobby fashion parties  and dates with dull men.

Shortly after the publication  of "The Bell Jar,"

Two years later, the collection of poems she wrote in a burst of creative energy

Ariel exemplifies the honesty  and imagination

"Lady Lazarus," she explores her attempts  to take her own life through Lazarus,

the biblical figure who rose  from the dead.

She writes, “and I a smiling woman/ I am only thirty/

And like the cat I have nine times to die.”

But the poem is also a testament  to survival:

“I rise with my red hair/ And I eat men like air.”

This unflinching language has made Plath  an important touchstone

surrounding issues of trauma,  frustration, and sexuality.

"Ariel" is also filled with moving  meditations on heartbreak and creativity.

The title poem begins “Stasis in darkness/

Then the substanceless blue/ Pour of tor and distances.”

This sets the scene for a naked ride  on horseback in the early morning—

one of Plath’s most memorable expressions of the elation of creative freedom.

But it is also full of foreboding  imagery,

such as “a child's cry” that “melts  in the wall”

and a “red/eye, the cauldron  of morning.”

This darkness is echoed throughout  the collection,

which includes controversial references  to the holocaust and the Kamikazes.

Even the relics of seemingly happier times are described as crucifying the author:

“My husband and child smiling out  of the family photo;

Their smiles catch onto my skin,  little smiling hooks.”

Her domestic dissatisfaction and her  husband’s mistreatment of her

After her death, he inherited her estate,

and has been accused of excluding  some of her work from publication.

Despite these possible omissions  and her untimely death,

what survives is one of the most  extraordinary bodies of work

While her work can be shocking in  its rage and trauma,

not only to the truth of her  psychological life,

but to her astounding ability to express  what often remains inexpressible.

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Why should you read Sylvia Plath? - Iseult Gillespie

depression

controversial

trauma

intimate