We’ve lost, in the past 12 months, and continue to lose, precious poetic voices. But some losses stay with us longer than others. Like that of Sylvia Plath.
Maybe you are familiar with Sylvia Plath’s poetry. If not, here are a few great places to start:
The Academy of American Poets’ bio of Sylvia Plath
The Poetry Foundations’ bio of Sylvia Plath
Just to ground you: Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 to academic parents. Her autocratic father died in 1940 when she was only 8. She published both poetry and fiction as a teen, and in 1956 met and married the English poet Ted Hughes. She was 24, he was 26–we think of him as this old guy married to a young girl because he outlived her, not because that was how it really happened. Plath committed suicide, with two young children, already divorced from Hughes, at the age of 30.
As much as I may think Hughes failed in the basic human decency required of a spouse and parent, if it weren’t for him, the world would not know of Sylvia Plath. The collection Ariel, critical to the confessional canon, was put together by Hughes, not Plath. He had the knack for creating the standalone unit that she did not.
So Sylvia Plath has become one of those ghosts that won’t leave popular poetic imagination.
It doesn’t matter if you are dismissive of her or supportive, everyone has an opinion on Plath, it seems. What’s really odd, considering that much of her work is only known posthumously, is the outcry that has happened when it was found that she had–horrors!–intended to edit some of her work. Or corrected some proofs. Or otherwise done the work needed to make a publication its best.
In 2015, (see article) proofs of The Bell Jar were found. They were from slightly before her suicide. What has been intesting to me is the idea that, because she eventually committed suicide, therefore she was unable to function normally, day to day.
The frightening thing about suicides, I think, is that we don’t know how they moved from feeling like us to feeling like them.
Plath
That your involvement in your corrections
surprises so many, surprised me.
Why shouldn’t you fix
what anyone would fix
who grasped the original intent?
These last precise incisions were made
upon the body of a world that saw only
your good girl, demure face and skirt and hair,
just so—who didn’t register the rain inside you,
a flood trying always to seep under the door.
Re-read? I can’t. And the journals?
Not again. Like you I would be tempted
to scratch off the pretty skin
until the tendons shone bare, the words did
only what I wanted them to do, and no more.
In retrospect, it’s clear. The simple world
humored, pretended along with you.
As the doting aunt takes tea with a toddler:
yes, sweetie, hold your hand just so,
and smile, always smile
when the garden club comes to call,
don’t give those old biddies the satisfaction.
Simple edits. Corrections on the face
of the almost but not quite right.
As you were: almost, but not quite right.
If you wouldn’t make the edits, who would?
They were just words.
And if nothing else would work your way,
why shouldn’t the words at least obey?
If you enjoyed Plath
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
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