Plath, Sylvia (Vol. 2) - Plath, Sylvia 1932–1963
Plath, Sylvia 1932–1963
An American poet who moved to England, Miss Plath is as well known for her suicide as for her poems. She is the author of The Colossus and Ariel, and the novel The Bell Jar. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 19-20.)
Poetry … is not made by efficiency—least of all Sylvia Plath's poetry. Instead, her extraordinary general competence was, I think, made necessary by what made her write; an underlying sense of violent unease. It took a great deal of efficiency to cope with that, to keep it in check. And when the efficiency finally failed, her world collapsed.
But she was disciplined in art, as in everything else. For a first volume, by someone still in her twenties, The Collossus is exceptionally accomplished. A poem like "The Ghost's Leavetaking" is fairly typical. It exhibits her range of language, in which the unexpected right word comes so easily….
In a way, most of...
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