Sylvia Plath used a thesaurus. I say this not only because it’s blatantly obvious the word “ablution” doesn’t come off the top of your head when writing a poem, but also because it has been written about by others, including Plath herself.
In regards to the former article I wrote discussing Basho — a wandering poet, traveling the land in order to cast away his earthly attachments, paying reverence and respect to all beings in his path — Plath comes across as an opposite kind of creature. She’s a modern writer (born 1932, died 1963), grounded in notions of self and fascinated with her relationships with men, and often, society’s norms.
Yet, this almost sounds like an insult. So what is the appeal here? A common response I hear to this question is that it’s her ability to be bitter, relentless and absolutely unforgiving in her poetry. And in this confrontation with subject, the reader doesn’t want to turn away. At the heart of all of this is a search for self-definition. It’s like everything put on the page is wavering between being defined and undefined. Consider the opening lines of her poem “Mirror” in which Plath proclaims: “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions / Whatever I see I swallow immediately / Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful — “.
But of course, the mistake might lie in trying to say Plath is any one thing. Suicide is clearly an idea that Plath gained a mastery over; with words she painted poems such as “Lady Lazarus” and her novel, “The Bell Jar.” Yet, describing Plath by her suicide often overshadows what else she wrote about. Which was a heck of a lot. But because suicide was her ultimate end and is such a sensational subject, it unduly receives more than its fair share of attention.
“Sylvia,” the Plath biopic that ran briefly in December, made the same mistake, only in a different way. The filmmakers oddly chose to begin with and then focus the entirety of the film on her relationship and marriage to the late Ted Hughes, England’s Poet Laureate. The film tried to sell this
story: She was overshadowed by Hughes, and this led to jealousy, betrayal and death. Unfortunately, the film fell into its own trap: The filmmakers gave Hughes an unjustly prevalent role (this doesn’t necessarily mean screen time), which again, overshadowed Plath, the writer.
I mean, come on. This is a poet who kept journals from when she was 11 nearly to the day she died (note that this journal was subsequently destroyed by Hughes). There was a breadth of material for the filmmakers to draw from. I mean, “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath” alone spans 674 pages. The first 200-plus pages of these journals were written before she even met Hughes, and provide much insight into the psyche of the poet before she became attached. Furthermore, these journals raise the question, “How well can you know someone based on what they put on the page?”
However, there was at least one scene from the film that provided insight into Plath’s writing. Plath (admittedly played hauntingly well by Gwyneth Paltrow) and Hughes (Daniel Craig) are rowing on a boat in the ocean, when Hughes, addressing her writer’s block, announces that her writing needs to find a subject. He follows this by saying the subject is herself.
Despite whatever demons she fought in her own life, on the page, she was fearless. There are numerous examples; the best would be “In Plaster,” written from a hospital bed, or “Soliloquy of the Solipsist,” with its chilling final stanza. “Paralytic,” written within days of her death, even allows for the selflessness that she was unable to find in life: “I smile, a buddah, all / Wants, desire / Falling from me like rings / Hugging their lights.”
Other times, however, Plath is able to just tell stories. Early poems such as “Spider” reveal her burgeoning interest in African folklore, while “Goatsucker” draws the reader in with the title alone. My aforementioned thesaurus comment is probably unfair, because the woman clearly had a vocabulary, and as her poetry progressed, such thick words obviously came more naturally.
Of course, there are a variety of Plath books to choose from. However, I would recommend “The Collected Poems,” which organizes all of her published work chronologically and also includes a section, inappropriately named “Juvenilia,” which is a selection of 50 of her earlier poems. More than anything, these pieces show what a driven and detailed writer she was before she became more well-known. Earlier in Plath’s life, she experimented with poetic forms frequently, resulting in some stellar efforts, such as the villanelle “To Eva Descending the Stair” or “Sonnet to Satan.”
If you wish to hear the poetess read, there are numerous recordings of her poems available on CD. For those who don’t wish to spend the money, four pieces, numerous articles and an excerpt of her novel, “The Bell Jar,” are available on the Web site http://dir.salon.com/topics/sylvia_plath/.