Sylvia Plath, Hack or Genius?

[Milu]

Back in the day, in one of my lit classes we got into a pretty rowdy discussion over Sylvia Plath's poetry. Our first point we debated is if someone has to be a semi-decent human being to be a poet (Sylvia killed herself by putting her head in the oven, with her children in the other room). We also debated if using controversial imagery in poems adds to or detracts from the over all effect. I will post a couple of her most controversial poems, and people can duke it out.

Daddy: http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/Daddy

Lady Lazarus: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15292

(Just to clarify, a Nazi lampshade is a lampshade made of the skin of holocaust victims).

What are your thoughts on her?

[JohnLott]

I have thought long and hard about Sylvia Plath.

Many accolades from a young age.

The younger she was the more her poems were readable and understandable.

The older she became, the stranger her poems became.

Daddy was a turning point, coincidently with a question about her mental state and the relevance of Freudian concepts.
I wonder about her father..........?

The drift out of orbit was accentuated by her (marriage) inter-relationship with Hughes.

She was one of two suicides on his watch.... !!

One compassionate thought is... When you are at the top of the tree, how do you go higher?

Did Plath wear the Emperor's clothes?



J.

[Nash]

Well, I'd say that she sits comfortably somewhere between the two.

Our first point we debated is if someone has to be a semi-decent human being to be a poet

I'm not sure what you mean by that, it's puzzling me.

I'm not really a fan of her later work in Ariel, rather than shocking or controversial I find it a bit tiresome and juvenile. I do quite like her earlier works in Colossus though. Hardcastle Crags is particularly good, one of my all time favourites, but that's getting off the point.

[Milu]

I guess, I was wondering if someone is a person who leads an extremely questionable life, if that effects the impact of their poetry. The one way I could see this, is if the thing they did was so heinously bad it made them lose their "humanity."

There was quite a lot of controversy surrounding Ezra Pound for winning the Bollingen Prize, because he essentially was a traitor to the United States. Many people questioned if a poets life should be weighed along with their works.

Would you love Shakespeare as much if some irrefutable evidence was found that he was a murderer/cannibal? (I would, but that's beside the point)

From the perspective of Sylvia Plath being what may consider a deplorable human being, does that effect your critique of her poetry?

I think it all goes back to the whole conundrum of if a poem should be judged on it's merits alone, or interpreted through the facets of that artist's life.

[JohnLott]

First and foremost you look at what is in front of you, provided it is contemporary, when it comes to a judgement of a work.

Second, you look at the work and the person and the context when it comes to a biographic critique.

So critics attempt to explain the work in the context of the date, the 'where' in the life of the person, the genre and what was going down.

Whatever suits you.

Personally, I look at what I like, and when I don't like it and everyone else does, I have to contextualise it to try to understand why they like it. I try to make allowances although that doesn't change my basic conclusion.

What did she do that was so heinous? Not a lot as far as I am concerned.

Plath was likeable and then became unlikeable. Plath was single and then became married. Plath was alive and then became dead. Plath was stable (was she?) and then became unstable. Why?

And so the circle goes around - and we all go mad.



J.

[brianedwards]

I think it all goes back to the whole conundrum of if a poem should be judged on it's merits alone, or interpreted through the facets of that artist's life.

What conundrum?

[gavin]

How doses one bring Sylvia Plath into family language?
The very language she uses is the personification of Sylvia Plath
It is the halo that hangs above her head.
What is the over riding correlation between her suicide
And a---(questioned life)--And being a good person?

If one says--- have you ever been close to suicide?
It is there in a dark abyss, you expressing air
at such a rate from some internal misfiring of the brain.
Similar desires and rages as indicators also hit

normal people in their lives. Butterflies caught
up in the web of madness, only because the brain
is misfiring in its own judgments, that bring the brain
into catastrophe failure.

The question I would ask yourselves
When the children in the other room----
Is how brave she was in that moment of madness?
She killed herself and not her children.

[Nick Kerklaan]

I think it all goes back to the whole conundrum of if a poem should be judged on it's merits alone, or interpreted through the facets of that artist's life.

Its merits alone. The facets of an artist's life can be fun to read about and speculate on, but in the end it's the work that matters. Interpeting it through the facets of the artist's time period is another story, though in that case it's about providing the necessary context to understand the work as it would have been understood at the time it was written. But letting one's opinion be swayed by considerations of what Sylvia Plath's emotional state might've been at the time she wrote Poem X, or deciding that her body of work is somehow lessened (or heightened) because of the way she killed herself is just silly. It may seem natural to want to see work and personal life as synonymous when reading poetry, and especially when reading a poet like Plath, but it's just as much of a dead end as it is with anything else.

[Suzanne]

Interesting thread.

I lean towards the poem, sculpture, painting, etc... standing on it's own.

The pleasure of discussing the context and the life of the artist has more to do with our social make-up and communication needs than with the product itself.

I think the sharing of information and opinions is a valuable endeavor. Discussion of what we think and like or dislike is a very healthy activity but it is a thing
that happens as extra to the piece of work. Sometimes this banter can enhance the piece and sometimes it can spoil it for us.

"I guess, I was wondering if someone is a person who leads an extremely questionable life, if that effects the impact of their poetry. The one way I could see this, is if the thing they did was so heinously bad it made them lose their "humanity." "

We can't lose our humanity- until we are not longer breathing..
Some people do such hideous things that we would like to disassociate from their "kind" but we can't.

Morality and ethics don't play a part in it. A poet could beat the hell out of his wife and then write a sonnet that moves you more than anything you have ever read before. A poetic genius, like anyone, can be an asshole.

Does a poet have to experience emotional pain and torment to be a good poet? Is that she same question?

Suzanne

[JohnLott]

Does a poet have to experience emotional pain and torment to be a good poet? Is that she same question?

Suzanne

On balance, within probabilities, I think a globe-trotting Eclectic/Autodidact has more chance of depth and wisdom than a sheltered Academic. The Academic has more chance of technical precision.



J.

[delph_ambi]

She's a fabulous poet, without question.

No poet or any other kind of artist needs to conform to anybody's subjective view of 'humanity'; they simply need to create. Judging them by your own moral code rather than judging their work by its intrinsic value reflects badly on you, not the creator.

Ted Hughes was unfortunate in being attracted to unstable women. He shouldn't have been so bloody attractive. Nobody's fault.

[JohnLott]

Cause and effect - were they unstable before he moved in?

J.

[Milu]

Also, one thing to consider about the "suicide poets" (I'm thinking Anne Sexton and Syliva Plath specifically)is that whereas other artists may have been famous and then committed suicide, the suicide poets stated their intentions while they were famous. It is because of this, I kind of felt like through looking at their work, critics were kind of egging them on. It's kind of like if it was publicized that a model had an eating disorder, and the press kept giving her attention for it, and showing pictures of when she was fat and skinny.

[Bloggsworth]

The artist is not the art.

[OwenEdwards]

We need discussion of the Death of the Author in here, stat.

Plath's alright.

[lemonstar]

OK - I've just read the thread as I'm reading the Bell Jar and sifting through the collected poems. I like to approach new things with no prior knowledge - I feel I can form my own judgements as I go without being swayed by other opinions. I don't know a great deal about her as a person yet but I have a rough idea of what happened during her married life. I'm enjoying the colourful and very visual turns of phrase in her poetry - some of it seems so overloaded with images,ideas and emotions I wonder if it wouldn't have been more effective if she had tried to be more understandable - reading some of it is like standing at the foot of an attic ladder while someone in a raging fury throws everything down on top of you. I find the Bell Jar incredibly quotable - so many great lines in it. I borrowed the Sylvia film last night and enjoyed it although it felt like a very compressed account of what was going on.

The main thought I have about Plath so far is it seems like she may have been suffering from manic(now bipolar) disorder and she didn't have the support she needed and I don't know that it's fair to blame Hughes in the way he seems to have been. Was she seen as a bad mother because she was depressed? As I say - the more I read and learn the more my opinions will change no doubt.

Was she an overly jealous person? Jealous of Hughes success or his association with other women? Was she overly paranoid about his womanising or was she just incredibly frustrated with the feeling that the domesticity she feared so much, had deprived her of the time, energy, opportunity and/or inspiration to write? Did Hughes want a servile wife or to share his life with a kindred spirit driven to succeed as a poet? How much of an attention seeker was she? Was her death an immature attention seeking act, a cry for help or a real death wish? I hope I can get closer to understanding why she took her own life.

There are some points in the thread I plan to come back to but I have to go and do some cooking right now!

Neil

[lemonstar]

Why was there a suggestion she should be termed a hack? OK one swallow doesn't make a summer but...

The Hanging Man Jan/Feb' 1960
"By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me. I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet."

It's not hard to find electrifying (no pun intended) lines like these - it's not laboured, without merit or derivative is it?

Reading some parts of on-line biographies seems to well document his affairs.

I mailed the New Statesman and they said that I could order the 7th Oct edition that contains the first (and only) complete printing of the poem "Last Letter"

[lemonstar]

Chapter 5 of "The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality" "The Cult of the Victim" takes a rather acid swipe at the image of Sylvia Plath that seems to have materialised - it's a clear scoring punch imho.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoilt_Rot ... imentality

I've nearly finished the Bell Jar and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm picking through her Collected Poems and finding things I really like but some of it is hard work (not that I mind that - you have to dig for diamonds). I like this period of history (post WW2) wrt creativity (esp. 50's & 60's), changes in society due to technology/media/news/communications, politics, social consciousness, comments made through art, etc and I like to read about people, especially creative people BUT I don't feel that any of her backstory has much to do with the my liking for her writing; dead or alive, I don't think I'd think or feel any different.

As a side note for anyone that is interested, she's buried in Yorkshire near a former home of Ted Hughes:-
http://bit.ly/rHw8ZQ "Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted"
http://bit.ly/uZ2vHA

[brianedwards]

She's a fabulous poet, without question.

Yep. Next question.

[lemonstar]

I mailed the New Statesman and they said that I could order the 7th Oct edition that contains the first (and only) complete printing of the poem "Last Letter"

Well, seeing as I've just picked up a copy of Birthday Letters off ebay for £2.70 inc P&P I ordered the back issue of New Statesman to get a copy of the Ted Hughes poem that really ought to have been included in the book in the first place.

On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Hughes it says:-
"In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"."
Which you can't access unless you pay for access to The Times but it is reproduced elsewhere:, e.g.
http://www.listsofbests.com/list/93594- ... since-1945
Looking at the names I'm surprised that they are all actually(really?) British.

[lemonstar]

I've listened to the Ted Hughes letter 3 times in the past 2 days - I get distracted and miss bits if I'm listening and doing something else at the same time, which is what I was doing (cooking).

I have a 41M mp3/128kbps file of the BBC R4 Documentary - 'The Ted Hughes' Letters' (read by Richard Armitage, presented by Jane Feaver), first broadcast 29/10/07. It's a selection of previously unavailable letters he wrote between 1952 and 1972 to family, friends, academics, children and other writers. I found it interesting - let me know if you would like a copy, I'm sure I can post a download link to the file if I upload it into the ether.

It's really well read and covers everything you might expect.

[lemonstar]

Checking on ebay/amazon I can see inexpensive copies of The Ted Hughes Letters but are there any other Hughes/Plath books that anyone here would recommend (or otherwise)? The more I look the more I find.

I have 13 days away in France over Christmas to visit my sister. Generally I only get to see her once every 2 years around this time. Last time I was there I read The Butterfly and the Diving Bell in a day, wrote a 3 or 4 new songs and did a lot of running in unfamiliar woods and farmland - it's a very sparsely populated rural area. I'm looking forward to more of the same - reading, writing, running and cooking probably.

[lemonstar]

It's here if anyone is interested:
https://www.yousendit.com/download/T2dk ... WUxtcXNUQw

The file will only be available until November 26, 2011 08:57 PST(!?)

[lemonstar]

Signed up for a trial membership on the promise of a free book from http://www.audible.co.uk and downloaded this:-
Author: Diane Middlebrook
Date: 01-JAN-2004
Narrator: Bernadette Dunne // Not the greatest voice tbh.
Provider: Blackstone Audiobooks
Running Time: 10 h 59 min (in 2 parts)

"Ted Hughes married Sylvia Plath in 1956, at the outset of their brilliant careers. Plath's suicide six-and-a-half years later, for which many held Hughes accountable, changed his life, his closest relationships, his standing in the literary world, and brought new significance to his poetry. Middlebrook presents a portrait of Hughes as a man, as a poet, and as a husband haunted, and nourished, his entire life by the aftermath of his first marriage. How marriages fail and how men fail in marriages is one of the book's central themes."

If you're interested in these writers, on the basis of the first 45 mins I've heard, I would recommend it. The discription of Plath as a rather loud (even by AMerican standards), intense, driven and, at times, abrasive and irritating character, I found quite amusing. I didn't realise that Ted Hughes had kept 11 of the best poems back from the Birthday Letters collection and printed them in a special very limited edition book called "Howls and Whispers" - I think there were only 110 copies of the book produced.

[lemonstar]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... via_Plath/

Clare Balding did a Radio 4 program "Literary Walks" around the Calder Valley where Ted Hughes lived.