By Lizzy Barthelemy
“I
Life

Born in 1932 to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

Published her first poem in the Boston Herald's children's section at 8 years old

She won a scholarship to Smith College in 1950

Deeply depressed and tried committing suicide in 1953 after receiving
electroconvulsive therapy

Spent about 6 months in a psychiatric hospital

Obtained a Fulbright scholarship to Newnham College in Cambridge, England

Committed suicide in 1963 by sticking her head in her oven
Family
 Her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, was a first-generation
American of Austrian descent and a teacher
 Plath's father was an entomologist and a professor of
biology and German at Boston University, but he passed
away from diabetes complications in 1940 when Sylvia was
only 8
 Married Ted Hughes in 1956 then divorced in 1962
 Gave birth to Frieda and Nicholas Hughes in 1960 and 1962
Interesting Facts
 In the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, Julia Stiles
is reading Sylvia Plath’s book “The Bell Jar”
Interesting Facts (cont.)
 Only Colossus was published while she was alive
 She was the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize after death
(Collected Poems)
 At twelve, her IQ was recorded at around 160
 She was encouraged by her mother to journal details of her
everyday life
 She left a note for her neighbor to call the doctor when he
would find her with her head in the oven
Poetic Style
 Considered to be "at once confessional, lyrical, and
symbolic”
 Unique uses of rhythm, meter, and characterization
 Often uses doubling (ex. "She comes and goes." to She
"comes." She "goes.”)
 Graphic person and nature-based imagery
Themes
 Prevailing themes of feminist criticism
 Often depressing and sad due to the death of her father
when she was 8
 Her poems were often called “madness” and she was
called “crazy”
 Often wrote about death, redemption and resurrection
“Mirror”
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think
it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
“Poppies in July”
Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?
You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns
And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.
A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!
There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?
If I could bleed, or sleep!
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!
Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.
But colorless. Colorless.
“Daddy”
“Daddy”