Thinking about Sylvia Plath as the winter darkness comes on

Like most women of my age who grew up aspiring to be writers, I felt the shadow of Sylvia Plath over me when I was young. When I’m struggling to fit poetry-making into the other demands of my daily life, I still think about her rising before dawn to write the Ariel poems in a cold, dark house while her children were sleeping. Much has been made of the severity of the winter of 1963 in London, when she killed herself... but then again, I know writers who appreciate the long dark of winter nights as a time set aside from distractions, a haven for writing. Plath was born on October 27th (Oxford and Indiana University have just now finished their big symposium commemorating her 75th birthday), and she committed suicide on February 11th — between those two dates lies the heart of winter, the season that brings her always to mind. ~Margy Snyder

Plath’s commitment to the art began very early — her first publication was a couplet in the local Boston newspaper when she was only 8. And she was a diligent, ambitious student of poetic form and technique — witness the previously unpublished Petrarchan sonnet that a student found in her papers from Smith College in the fall of 2006. The poem, “Ennui,” written in response to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, was published online in Blackbird, the journal of Virginia Commonwealth University, and while it seems as mannered and naive as most of her early work when compared with the later poems, it’s clear evidence of her craft, her talent and her appreciation of irony.

But it’s the later work that lingers. And in recent years, after the death of Ted Hughes, who edited and rearranged her poems in Ariel, abridged and expurgated her journals, we have seen the publication of the restored Ariel and the unabridged journals — a much fuller and more distinct record of Sylvia’s individual life and voice. That’s why we’ve provided links to buy all of them in the bibliography on our Sylvia Plath profile page.

More on Sylvia Plath:
Our reference page on Sylvia Plath, with links to buy her books and recordings
Seeking poems written “after” Plath or Hughes
Ted Hughes’ secret memorial: The poet’s name inscribed on a hidden slab
Sylvia Plath articles at classiclit.about.com
Review of the restored Ariel by Diana Manister at contemporarylit.about.com