Sylvia Plath: dynamic concepts, a storm-tossed life. (BOOK
WORLD)
Publication: World and I
Publication Date: 01-OCT-06
Author: Stern, Fred
COPYRIGHT 2006 News World Communications, Inc.
Perhaps there is no poet who has created as much excitement in both literary and feminist circles as the
New England writer Sylvia Plath (1933-1963). Plath reached the height of her career shortly before her
death in the early 1960s, but her poems are as fresh today as they were then. In those poems, she
created an internal landscape of such meaning and scope that she remains the object of fan clubs, the
topic of bloggers across two continents; and her life is the subject of biographies produced at a rate of
four or five per year.
Sylvia Plath spent her brief life on both sides of the Atlantic: the United States and Great Britain. But
geography played only a minor part in her dramatic presentations. However, her poems sometimes
appear in British anthologies of poetry, and, of course, they are in almost every anthology of American
poetry where they are likely to remain for generations into the future.
The elements of Plath's life can be easily established through her journals, her letters, and in more artistic
and penetrating form, the 274 poems that frame the years of her all too brief life.
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston on October 27 (prophetically, sharing that birthday with the noted Welsh
poet, Dylan Thomas, who like Plath would also have a strong influence on the direction of twentiethcentury English language poetry). Her father, Otto Plath, was a college professor of entomology, the study
of insects. His specialty was the life of the bumblebee, and his daughter would later write a number of
poems that have bees as their primary theme. She lost her father at age eight, and as she confessed to a
friend, she alternately adored him and hated him for "abandoning her." Her mother, Aurelia, was also a
teacher, but unlike her father, was cool and domineering, causing a wall of resistance to spring up
between daughter and mother.
Her father's premature death haunted Plath and perhaps set her on the pathway to depression and
tragedy. It was not until many years after his death that Plath actually visited her father's grave for the
first time. In her poem, titled after the ancient Greek tragic story of a daughter Electra in love with her
father, Plath writes with stunning incisiveness and painful self-accusations:
Electra on Azalea Path
The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum,
Where bees striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard
It was good for twenty years that winteringO pardon the one who knocks for pardon at
Your gate father-your hound-bitch, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.
Early success of a precocious poet
Plath had her first poem published at the amazing age of eight. Other publications followed, notably in the
magazine Seventeen, reinforcing her early love for writing and no doubt whetting her appetite for the
satisfaction that goes with seeing one's work in print. A highlight of her teen years was a scholarship to
Smith College, awarded upon her high school graduation.
In 1953 she became a "guest editor" (the equivalent of what we now call an "intern") at Mademoiselle
magazine in New York City. Plath could not endure the stress and overwork in the high-tension publishing
world, and suffered a nervous breakdown. It would not be her last such episode. The Bell Jar a depiction
of the episode and its resolution was published under a pseudonym in 1963, then with her own name
posthumously in 1971.
Back at school and writing again, her ambition returned. She applied for and was awarded a prestigious
Fulbright Scholarship. Soon she was aboard the Queen Mary for a thrilling voyage to England, to study at
Cambridge University.
A transatlantic life
At Cambridge she met Ted Hughes, a British poet who celebrated the fauna and flora of England in his
poems, and who in later years was to become England's poet laureate. Plath and Hughes married secretly
in 1956 on "Bloomsday." (Bloomsday, June 16, is the day on which all events in James Joyce's novel
Ulysses take place). During that newlywed summer she seemed truly happy, which is reflected in a
number of her poems from that time. In this excerpt from "Wreath for a Bridal," she writes of weddings
and marriage--"let flesh be knit"--in a unique, yet very romantic way:
Wreath for a Bridal
From this holy day on, all pollen blown
Shall strew broadcast so rare a seed on wind
That every breath, thus teeming, set the land
Sprouting of fruit, flowers, children most fair in legion
Today spawn of dragon's teeth: speaking this promise,
Let flesh be knit, and each step hence go famous.
The poem has a distinctly Elizabethan tone, a voice that she had seldom before used and which she soon
abandoned, returning to her far more original mode of versifying.
Anxious to further her career, Plath accepted a teaching position in the English department of Smith
College, her alma mater. While there, however, she went through a prolonged period of "writer's block,"
unable to express her thoughts as she wished, and at a more primitive level, unable to compete with the
current luminaries of the poetic world, such as Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop. She was deeply
troubled by her inability to fulfill the high standards she set for herself. Although her new husband was
with her, the pressures of academic life proved too great for Plath, and she resigned after a year. Her
inability to tolerate stress was becoming a disturbing pattern, one predictive of disaster down the road.
Hughes and Plath returned once again to England, where prospects for the young couple would move to
the upswing. Ted Hughes had his first book accepted for publication. And, happily, Plath's writer's block
was finally broken. She landed a "right of first refusal" contract with the New Yorker magazine. This type
of contract meant that the magazine would have "first dibbs" on every poem she wanted published; other
publications could use it only if the New Yorker declined to publish it. To this very day, publication in the
prestigious and influential New Yorker is a lofty goal for a poet, and a "right of first refusal" contract is
highly desirable, because the magazine's reputation and scope catapults a poet from obscurity to national
recognition. The magazine published many Plath poems, and her reputation did indeed become
established.
Among her poems appearing that year, 1958, was "In Midas Country." It's a typical Plath poem:
straightforward, with nothing tentative about it.
In Midas Country
It might be heaven, this static
Plenitude: apples gold on the bough,
Goldfinch, goldfish, golden tiger cat stockStill in one gigantic tapestryAnd lovers affable, dovelike.
So we are hauled, though we would stop
On this amber bank where grasses bleach.
Already farmer's after his crop.
August gives over its Midas touch,
Wind bares a flintier landscape.
With "In Midas Country," Plath gained an even stronger foothold in the world of poetry. Projecting a
serious, yet sensual note, this work became and remained Plath's signature poem for quite awhile.
In October 1959, Plath returned once more to Boston. She enrolled in a poetry class with Robert Lowell,
who had fashioned the concept of the "confessional poet." Lowell would celebrate this by no means new
philosophy, with his next book Life Studies.
"Confessional poetry" frees the poet so that when writing about himself, he can relate every experience,
any thought or emotion without trepidation, and be assured of a sympathetic readership. Plath learned
much from Lowell, although in the strictest sense she cannot be considered a confessional poet. Her work
was only partly autobiographic with its details owing as much to her imagination as it did to actual
occurrences.
In Boston she met another young writer, Anne Sexton, who like Plath would become a major figure in
American poetry. Plath had a profound influence on Sexton's writings, and the two women remained
lifelong friends.
Again, Plath and Hughes returned to England. It would be her last transatlantic voyage. It's unclear
whether the ongoing instability in Plath's life--the disruptions of moving back and forth across the Atlantic
and changing domiciles- -was a source of excitement and stimulation, or a cause of insecurity and
unhappiness. Certainly London, where they initially settled after this latest journey, offered much in the
way of stimulation for a writer. London was the vortex of literary life, attracting successful writers as well
as would-be authors from all over the English-speaking world. Hughes signed a book contract and so did
Plath, a collection entitled The Colossus and Other Poems. And she was expecting her first child.
Coping with misfortune
Soon, Frieda was born and the Hughes family, seeking a more suitable environment for their young
daughter, moved once again, this time to a little market town in Devonshire, not too far from London.
Their new house was called "Green Court." Here Hughes grew vegetables while Plath tried her hand at
beekeeping. In this idyllic setting and pregnant again, she wrote her mother, "This is the happiest time of
my life," even though the reviews of Colossus had been tepid.
Then, misfortune struck. She suffered a miscarriage in 1961. We read about it in "Stillborn." Here are
excerpts from the poem.
Stillborn
These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grow their toes and fingers well enough
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.
Shortly thereafter they had another child, Nicholas, whose arrival
she celebrates in this poem.
Nick and the Candlestick
Love, love,
I have hung your cave with roses,
With soft rugs
You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious,
You are the baby in the barn.
During this period, Plath overheard a fateful telephone conversation between her husband and the wife of
a poet the Hughes' had befriended. She learned that Hughes was having an affair with the woman.
Devastated by the infidelity, Plath separated from her husband and returned to London with Nicholas and
Frieda.
One of the effects of her husband's deception was to spur Plath to even greater productivity. We could
speculate she was inspired in part by the location of her newly rented flat; it was in the same building
where the Irish poet W. B. Yeats had once lived. In any event, in the short span of a little over a month
she wrote an astonishing number of high quality poems. These were placed in a black loose-leaf notebook,
which would later be published under the title Ariel.
It was an unusually cold and dreary winter. Finances were tight. And Plath, with a history of emotional
fragility, was perhaps suffering more than most from the depression that sometimes accompanies
childbirth, now (but not then) a recognized phenomenon. On February 11, 1963, carefully shielding her
two children safely asleep in their bedroom, Plath turned on her gas stove. This time, her suicide attempt
was successful.
Integrity and honesty
In all of the poems in which she writes of herself, Plath is clinically, sometimes brutally honest. Her lack of
self-deception is documented in poem after poem. And all of her poems have an immediacy not equalled
in contemporary writing. She read her poetry frequently on English radio's BBC. Her voice had a solemn
but modest quality. Even after a single hearing of these poems, or after reading them only once, they
were likely to be unforgettably etched in one's memory.
Although Plath's early poems appearing in the New Yorker and in Colossus brought her considerable
acclaim and firmly established her reputation, it is her last book, Ariel, published posthumously, that is
truly and consistently unique, and likely to guarantee her a lasting coveted position in the world of poetry.
Had Plath not composed the poems in this final sequence, perhaps her name would have been consigned
to the purgatory of merely "good contemporary poets" read only by enthusiasts, or excavated by students
writing master theses or doctoral dissertations.
Like other great poets, Plath's work evolved steadily in her early creative years. Her self-knowledge
increased geometrically, and her hold on language became solid bedrock.
She had discussed the new direction her writing was taking with her estranged husband, and after her
death Hughes took charge of the black loose-leaf notebook containing her last group of poems. Acting as a
self-appointed editor, he added as well as deleted poems and rearranged the poems in the sequence he
thought best suited for publication. The result was Ariel, her signature book.
Although separated from his wife, they were still legally married at the time of her death, and Hughes felt
an obligation to have her work presented in the best possible way. Yet, there is a great deal of
controversy about his actions. Was he correct in taking liberties with Plath's poetry? Did he violate her
intent? Of course, being an editor put him in a position to remove poems that were critical of him, which
he did. Years later, Frieda Hughes, the daughter of the two poets and herself a fine poet, reinserted the
deleted poems, reordered the poems to their original sequence, and published the restored edition in
2004. Both versions of Ariel are bestsellers.
Much has been made of the opening and closing words of the original poem sequence, which begin and
end the poems with an upbeat, positive tone. These words are "love" and "spring," respectively. In
between these words and the poems that contain them, Plath covers every conceivable emotion--hate,
anger, frustration, pity, horror, rebellion, blind acceptance of fate and more.
Throughout Ariel, Plath uses metaphor, the two main ones being fauna and illness. For example, in "The
Rabbit Catcher" she reveals her feelings on the restrictions within her marriage, as demonstrated in these
excerpts:
The Rabbit Catcher
And we, too, had a relationshipTight wires between us,
Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring
Sliding shut on some quick thing.
The constriction killing me also.
There are some poems which so powerfully describe an object that one cannot think of or see the object
thereafter without recalling the poem in its entirety. The poem "Tulips" is a good example. In "Tulips," the
writer is in a hospital where "they have swabbed me clear of my loving associations" and "they bring me
numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep." The tulips escort the lines throughout the poem,
which ends with the tulips' diffusion throughout the room:
Tulips
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
And Plath actually expresses a fear of the flowers:
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals.
"Ariel," the title poem of its sequence, was the name of the horse Plath rode. But the poem "Ariel" is not
simply about the horse. As in almost everything that she wrote, she uses the poem's overt subject as a
vehicle to express other thoughts and feelings, in this case, her inner turmoil. The poem's language is
brisk, sharp and brittle.
Ariel
Something else
Hauls me through airThighs, hair,
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeelDead hands, dead stringencies.
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
Like many women in the 1950s she became aware of the unfair discrimination between the sexes, made
evident in a poem like the following:
Lesbos
Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
And my child-look at her face down on the floor,
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air.
As before, she writes about bees, and bees are also often called upon to serve as a metaphor. These
poems draw upon her personal experience with her own beehives in Devonshire, and of course, hark back
to her father, the entomologist.
In "The Bee Meeting" we learn of her insecurity, her discomfort at meeting other people. She writes, "In
my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection" and "I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love
me?" She continues,
The villagers open the chambers, they are hunting the queen. Is she hiding, is she eating honey? She is
very clever. She is old, old, old, she must live another year, and she knows it.
While in their fingerjoint cells the new virgins Dream of a duel they will win inevitably,
I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.
In "The Arrival of the Bee Box" the poet receives a new hive. "It is the noise that appalls me most of all,"
she writes imploringly. "I have simply ordered a box of maniacs" ... "I am no source of honey" ... "why
should they turn on me? Tomorrow I will be sweet God. I will set them free. The box is only temporary."
When she writes "set them free" she seems to be expressing her outlook on life, and she strikes a note
which lingers in our thoughts and which we can understand in our attempts to confront our own fears.
Fred Stern has explored the creative efforts of artists and writers worldwide. His work has appeared in
European and Asian publications as well as on Artnet.com. He writes a bimonthly column on the arts for
Commuter Week and is a frequent contributor to The World and I Online. He has given courses on
American writers and has taught poetry and creative writing at the Institute of New Dimensions. He has
lectured widely on these topics. A volume of his verses is scheduled for appearance in 2006 under the title
Corridors of Light.