Sylvia Plath is one of my favorite poets. For a long time, I had a section of my website devoted to her life and poetry.
She’s pretty well-known. Mostly for her tragic suicide at age 30, leaving her two children without a mother. One of those children ended up taking his own life as well. From what I understand, Sylvia Plath suffered from depression. She had ECT (electroshock therapy) and apparently, it didn’t help. She had everything to live for, but apparently the darkness was too much to bear.
Her husband, Ted Hughes, who she was separated from at the time of her death, sealed away several journals of hers until 2013 – the fifty-year anniversary of her death. It is also alleged that he destroyed one of them that contains her writings right before her death. I myself have one book of her journals.
I also have several of her poetry collections, as well as her only published novel, The Bell Jar, which is a semi-autobiographical account of her time as guest editor with Mademoiselle magazine and her subsequent breakdown. I reread it every few years. I can’t get enough of her writing.
She was brilliant, in my opinion. Her poems juxtaposed wildly different elements together. And she was dark and open in her work, moreso than other poets. She wrote what is called “confessional poetry.”
A few snippets:
One of my favorites, Mad Girl’s Love Song, which graced my writing corkboard for years:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
and then, toward the end:
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
This particular poem actually inspired one of my own.
Here’s another snippet, from Lady Lazarus:
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it —–
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify? ——-
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
I’ve always wondered about creative people and mental illness. Do we feel deeper than most people, so when something happens, it affects us differently? Deeper? Bigger? Is it the best day of our lives, or is the world coming to an end? We feel, and we pour that into our work.
I see myself in her, having suffered from depression for more years than I can count. I’ve been on meds now for twelve years, and I know, without a doubt, that I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t taken that first step and acknowledged it: I wanted to die. I wanted to go away and disappear. And I had a choice: get help or get six feet under.
I chose help. I chose life.
What would have become of Sylvia if she hadn’t killed herself? I don’t doubt that she would have continued to write. More poetry, maybe another novel or two. Would she become even more famous, more beloved? Would her son have taken his own life?
Questions, but no real answers.
It’s a tragedy that I can’t quite get over. Especially after how close I came to ending it all myself.
She was a brilliant, bright star that died too soon. And we’ll never really know what would have happened.
But we’ll remember her, always.