Essays on Sylvia Plath

October 27, 1932, Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

February 11, 1963, Primrose Hill, London, United Kingdom

Poet, Novelist, Short Story Writer

Victoria Lucas

1960–63

Poetry, Fiction, Short Story

Confessional Poetry

• The Bell Jar
• Ariel

• "Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call."
• "Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you."
• "Kiss me and you will see how important I am."

October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the novel The Bell Jar.

“Ariel”, “Crossing the Water”, “Daddy”, “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams”, “Lady Lazarus”, “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom”, “The Bell Jar”, “The Collected Poems”, “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, “Three Women”, “Winter Trees”

The poems of Sylvia Plath tend to be in the writing style of confessional poetry. Confessional poetry is used to address personal experiences like depression, relationships or trauma, and have an autobiographical writing style.

Sylvia Plath deals with multi-dimensional themes in her poetry but she has worked mainly with the theme of death and suicides. She also writes about modern individualistic problems such as: lack of communication, loneliness, isolation, emotional pain.

Sylvia Plath's impacts are still felt today. She not only influenced social change by highlighting the injustices rooted in modern institutions, but she also greatly shifted American literature. She expanded on the “confessional” writing style, developing a new prose that interweaved personal and cultural issues together to reflect deeper problems.

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”
“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”