Weekend Writing: Celebrating Sylvia Plath

I have much to credit to Sylvia Plath. Her writing is one of the many influences that inspired me to fall in love with poetry--not just read poetry (and understand it), but also write my own poetry. To this day, Plath remains one of my favorite poets, so it makes sense why I would want to celebrate her on my blog today--her birthday.

A young Sylvia Plath
(photo/Pinterest).

Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Otto Plath, was a professor of biology and authored a book about bumblebees. Sylvia's childhood was moderately pleasant, and she published her first poem in the Boston Herald's children's section when she was only eight years old. She continued to write poems and publish them in a variety of regional magazines and publications--putting all of us to shame with an IQ of 160 at her young age. Plath was destined for greatness, but her childhood was met with an unexpected sadness.

A week after Sylvia's eighth birthday, Otto Plath died of complications after the amputation of his foot due to diabetes. After his death, Sylvia lost her faith and she wrote that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle--beautiful inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth." Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of a life of pain for the young poet.

Sylvia Plath (photo/The New York Review
of Books)

In 1950, Plath attended the prestigious Smith College and she excelled. If you visit the school today, a plaque is found outside her dorm room in Lawrence House. She edited The Smith Review, and the summer after her junior year, she was awarded an internship to be a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine in New York City. If you have read Plath's novel, The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood had this same internship.

Much like Esther's experience, Plath did not enjoy her internship in New York. At one point, she slashed her legs to see if she had the courage to commit suicide. Then, later on August 24, 1953, Plath made her first medically documented suicide attempt by crawling into the basement of her house and taking her mother's sleeping pills. Luckily, her mother found her and saved her life. Can you imagine if Plath had died then before writing her most famous poems?

After the suicide attempt, Plath spent the next six months in psychiatric care, receiving electric shock therapy. Eventually, Plath seemed to have made a good recovery and returned to college. In June 1955, she graduated from Smith College with high honors and she went on to study at Newnham College in London. This would be the start of the next phase of her life.

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (photo/The Guardian).

On February 25, 1956, Plath met poet Ted Hughes at a party in Cambridge. She wanted to meet him after reading his poems. After meeting, they continued to meet up and after a few months, they married on June 16, 1956. They continued to write poems together. Plath was smitten with Hughes, describing him as "a singer, a story-teller, lion, and world-wanderer with a voice like the thunder of God."

In June 1957, the couple moved back to the United States and Plath began teaching at Smith College, her alma mater. She soon discovered she didn't enjoy teaching because it took too much time away from her poetry writing. In 1958, the couple moved to Boston and Plath worked as a receptionist in the psychiatric unit of Massachusetts General Hospital. When she wasn't working, she attended creative writing seminars led by fellow confessional poet Robert Lowell, and attended by Anne Sexton and George Starbuck.

Sylvia Plath (photo/The New Yorker)

It was Lowell and Sexton who encouraged Plath to be serious about her writing. Confess it all, they told her. So, she did. She wrote about her experiences unlike ever before. In December 1959, Plath and Hughes moved back to London, where Plath gave birth to the couple's first child--a daughter, Frieda--on April 1, 1960. In October of that year, Plath published her first poetry collection, The Colossus. 

In February 1961, Plath had a miscarriage and she wrote about these experiences--following Lowell's advice to write about everything in her life. She confessed her true feelings. It has been recently discovered in a letter Plath wrote to her therapist that Hughes beat Plath two days prior to the miscarriage. Plath continued to write her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. 

Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar"
(photo/Amazon).

In January 1962, Plath gave birth to the couple's second child--a son, Nicholas. But shortly after his birth, Plath discovered Hughes was having an affair and the couple separated in September.

Plath would do the majority of her writing during the final months of her life, starting in October 1962. She wrote at least 26 poems for her posthumous collection, Ariel. Plath kept writing...and writing, and writing, and writing. She knew she didn't have much time left, so she wrote. In January 1963, Plath's only novel, The Bell Jar, was published under the pen name Victoria Lucas. The book was met with differing critical opinions. But if you ask anyone today, The Bell Jar is a painful presentation of psychiatric care, but also a critique of the many double standards in society.

But only a few weeks after the publication, on February 11, 1963, Plath's body was discovered with her head in her kitchen oven. She sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with tape, towels, and cloths. She was only 30 years old.

Sylvia Plath's "Ariel"
(photo/HarperCollins Publishers).

After her death, her unpublished poems were collected and (wrongfully, if you ask me) edited by Ted Hughes. Then, the poems were published as Plath's most famous collection, Ariel, in 1965. The collection includes Plath's most famous works: "Daddy," "Morning Song," "Lady Lazarus," "Lesbos," "Wintering," and one of my favorite poems of hers, "Fever 103."

In 1981, Ted Hughes edited and published another collection of Plath's, Collected Poems, which contained more poems Plath wrote from 1956 until her death. Plath was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry posthumously.

As you can see, there's a lot to consider about Sylvia Plath. Her poems contain beautiful imagery, but also themes of death, self-reflection, rage, love, and despair. These themes are often associated with Plath, but there's so much more to her. Yes, she was pained and struggled with depression for the majority of her life. Yes, she committed suicide. Yes, she had mental breakdowns. But these shouldn't be the only things associated with the poet.

Sylvia Plath (photo/internopoesia)

She was beautiful. She had a love for writing and literature--a love that is inspiring for many. She wrote about her experiences, confessing it all. To me, Plath is inspirational because of how deeply she cared for her writing. And when you read her poems, you know more about her. You learn something new each time.

Plath had so much to offer. I can't help but wonder what else she could have offered if she had more time to write other poems. But, we'll never know the answer. Instead, we must celebrate and treasure the poems we do have. And what do we have? Beautiful poems that have withstood the test of time. Beautifully tragic poems that help us understand our lives a little bit more.

Happy birthday, Sylvia Plath. You're so beautiful. Thank you for inspiring me to write my own poetry.

-KJL-

Sylvia Plath (photo/twitter.com)