Patrick Amy
Writing about Literature
Dr. Lavelle
Midterm
March 6, 2015
Sylvia Plath: the Writer, the Pioneer, the Idol. In her brief and productive life, Sylvia Plath produced some of the more notable and controversial work than that of any of her contemporaries. Plath’s distinctive themes ubiquitous in her work enables her to broach a body of material that many other writers are incapable of: her dedication to exploring certain themes that others did not left an ineradicable mark on American literature. Plath is considered a confessional poet as she is often the center of investigation and writes what seems to be a personal confession. Many of the themes present in Plath’s work reflect her fleeting and prolific life because she uses her poetry …show more content…
The theme of death is characteristic of Plath’s work. “With the poems as evidence, we may explore and analyze as much as we please. Sylvia Plath’s interest in death may indeed be personal and private, but it is also the paramount thematic concern in her poetry. Her preoccupation with death is not only isolated and solitary; it is imaginative and metaphorical. And an examination of Plath’s attitudes toward death, in her poems, reveals the nature of her vision: it is apocalyptic” (Barnard 115). In Plath’s poem “Full Fathom Five,” the death of her father and resulting burial are addressed. Plath likens her father to Poseidon, a god, and it can be interpreted that she wishes …show more content…
Throughout Plath’s work it is evident that she is divulging evidence which reveals the sorts of misrepresentations of life that may not be obvious to others. “What remains constant throughout her life and the various modes in which she wrote, however, is the rooting of the poem in her own experience. If Plath is to be faulted, this quality is perhaps her greatest weakness: She was not able to project her personae a great distance from herself” (Sylvia Plath Poetry
Writing about Literature
Dr. Lavelle
Midterm
March 6, 2015
Sylvia Plath: the Writer, the Pioneer, the Idol. In her brief and productive life, Sylvia Plath produced some of the more notable and controversial work than that of any of her contemporaries. Plath’s distinctive themes ubiquitous in her work enables her to broach a body of material that many other writers are incapable of: her dedication to exploring certain themes that others did not left an ineradicable mark on American literature. Plath is considered a confessional poet as she is often the center of investigation and writes what seems to be a personal confession. Many of the themes present in Plath’s work reflect her fleeting and prolific life because she uses her poetry …show more content…
The theme of death is characteristic of Plath’s work. “With the poems as evidence, we may explore and analyze as much as we please. Sylvia Plath’s interest in death may indeed be personal and private, but it is also the paramount thematic concern in her poetry. Her preoccupation with death is not only isolated and solitary; it is imaginative and metaphorical. And an examination of Plath’s attitudes toward death, in her poems, reveals the nature of her vision: it is apocalyptic” (Barnard 115). In Plath’s poem “Full Fathom Five,” the death of her father and resulting burial are addressed. Plath likens her father to Poseidon, a god, and it can be interpreted that she wishes …show more content…
Throughout Plath’s work it is evident that she is divulging evidence which reveals the sorts of misrepresentations of life that may not be obvious to others. “What remains constant throughout her life and the various modes in which she wrote, however, is the rooting of the poem in her own experience. If Plath is to be faulted, this quality is perhaps her greatest weakness: She was not able to project her personae a great distance from herself” (Sylvia Plath Poetry