Eds. A. Poulin, Jr and Michael Waters

A native Boston and a graduate of Smith College, in 1955 Sylvia Plath won a Fulbright Scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. While in England, she met and married the British poet Ted Hughes. After she taught for a year at Smith (1957-1958), the couple returned to England where in 1960 she published her first book of poems and subsequently completed her novel, The Bell Jar. On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath committed suicide.

A friend of Anne Sexton and a student of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath wrote poems that were intended to sound and to feel brutally personal, almost unbearably painful. Her poems are not merely about acute mental and emotional suffering; their very structure- the controlled flow of images, the insistent appositives- draws the reader fully into that suffering. Indeed, her later poems are so well crafted that some critics have argued, wrongheadedly, that she seemed engaged in “a murderous art”- that after writing such frighteningly honest and painfully personal poems, her suicide was virtually inevitable. As a critical premise, such an argument is utter nonsense, its absurdity manifestly clear when transferred to another artist and to his or her work. If Plath virtually had no choice but to commit suicide after writing the poems in Ariel, then what inevitable choice did Melville have after writing Moby Dick?

What makes Plath interesting as a poet is not primarily her ostensible subject matter and tone; rather, the success of the poems depends largely on her precision of observation, imagination, and language- as well as on the mastery of her craftsmanship. For example, the onion simile in “Cut” not only accurately describes the swirl of a thumbprint but also serves as the entire poem’s controlling metaphor. Moreover, in such poems as “Cut” and “Lady Lazarus,” or even in a celebrated poem such as “Daddy,” there is also a strong measure of wit and humor- albeit black- often conveyed through resuscitated clichés that manage to rescue the poems from the pathos.

On more than one occasion, Plath insisted that even the most personal poetry cannot be merely a cri de coeur; it must be informed by and participate in a greater historical drama. Her own poems participate fully in the vibrant Puritan tradition, not only through her preoccupation with evil (which is utterly distinct from personal suffering) but also through her metaphysical and emblematic technique. They also occur against a constant historical drama, especially the contemporary phenomenon of Nazi Germany out of which she fabricates a modern myth. In short, the pain, the suffering, the fine edge of madness- all are ultimately crafted and controlled by the poet’s reasoned and careful hand flashing a measure of genius.

Excerpted from Contemporary American Poetry, edited by A. Poulin Jr. and Michael Waters. Copyright 2001 by Houghton Mifflin Company.