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Sylvia Plath

Born 1932 - Died 1963

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer, known for her vivid, confessional style and intense exploration of personal experiences. Born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, she displayed a remarkable talent for writing from an early age.

Plath excelled academically and won numerous awards for her poetry. She attended Smith College on a scholarship and, in 1955, received a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge University in England. It was during this time that she met fellow poet Ted Hughes, whom she married in 1956.

Her poetic career took off with the publication of her first collection, “The Colossus,” in 1960. Plath’s writing delved into themes of identity, death, depression, and the role of women in society. Her most famous work, “Ariel,” published posthumously in 1965, showcased her raw emotional depth and linguistic brilliance.

Despite her literary success, Plath struggled with depression and the breakdown of her marriage to Hughes. Tragically, on February 11, 1963, at the age of 30, she died by suicide. Her untimely death added to the mystique surrounding her work, and she became an iconic figure in literature posthumously.

Crossing the Water

When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons. Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin. O I was sick.

The Bell Jar

“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.”

The Colossus

Snakecharmer
As the gods began one world, and man another, So the snakecharmer begins a snaky sphere With moon-eye, mouth-pipe, He pipes. Pipes green. Pipes water. Pipes water green until green waters waver With reedy lengths and necks and undulatings. And as his notes twine green, the green river

Ariel

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 face a featureless, fine Jew linen.

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'Ariel' (1966) "The strength of feeling and the intensity that play about these posthumously published poems, the relentless honesty that permeates them are so great that at first meeting the reader shrinks from their impact, and then wonders where the poet summoned up the resources to be so unsparing and so open-eyed about herself."
Reviews
ReviewsFrom the Archives of The New York Times
'The Bell Jar' (1971) "'The Bell Jar' is a novel about the events of Sylvia Plath's 20th year: about how she tried to die, and how they stuck her together with glue. It is a fine novel, as bitter and remorseless as her last poems . . ."
Reviews
ReviewsFrom the Archives of The New York Times
'Winter Trees' Reviewed by Joyce Carol Oates (1972) "[A]ll of the poems -- those that are obviously not quite-finished as well as those that are technically perfect -- have that exquisite, heart-breaking quality about them that has made Sylvia Plath our acknowledged Queen of Sorrows, the spokeswoman for our most private, most helpless nightmares."
Reviews
ReviewsFrom the Archives of The New York Times
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Theodore Roethke

Born 1908 - Died 1963

Theodore Roethke was a renowned American poet known for his introspective and deeply emotional verse. Born in 1908, Roethke’s work often explored themes of nature, the human psyche, and the complexities of existence. His poems displayed a remarkable ability to capture both the beauty and darkness of the world, revealing a profound understanding of the human condition. With his evocative imagery and rhythmic style, Roethke left an indelible mark on American literature, earning him widespread acclaim and numerous prestigious awards. His poetry continues to resonate with readers, offering insights into the depths of the human experience.

The Far Field

The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone, Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut, Where the car stalls, Churning in a snowdrift Until the headlights darken.

The Waking

We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

The Glass House

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The Lost Son

A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.

Selected Poems

This edition contains the complete text of Roethke’s seven published volumes and sixteen uncollected poems.

Word for the Wind

I am no longer young But the winds and waters are; What falls away will fall; All things bring me to love.

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The poet of my generation who meant most to me, in his person and in his art, was Theodore Roethke. To say, in fact, “poet of my generation” is to name him, Immediately after Eliot and Pound and Hart Crane and Stevens and William Carlos Williams, to mention only a handful, it was difficult to be taken seriously as a new American poet; for the title to “the new poetry” was in the possession of a dynasty of extraordinary gifts and powers...
Stanley Kunitz
Stanley KunitzThe New York Review (October 17, 1963 issue)
In the decade or so before his death last year, Roethke's reputation kept growing by leaps and bounds. Though he was not the brightest in his generation's galaxy -- Lowell and Berryman outshone him--he was its supreme lyricist, its finest visionary. This posthumous collection (The Far Field), his first since Words for the Wind, has poems as remarkable as any he has written, and two of them, In a Dark Time, and The Marrow, (in which he apparently foresaw his end), are works which seem dictated rather than composed (indeed Roethke himself hinted as much in a critical commentary elsewhere), filled as they are with a music-fearful, moving, noble- rarely heard in our hard-ige age.
Kirkus
KirkusCEO
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John Doe
John DoeCEO
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For me, Roethke was more than just some poet I studied in college.  In fact, it was after college when I really started to appreciate him.  I don’t remember precisely, but I think I found a recording of him reading his work at the public library.  I made a copy to tape.  I think I might still have it.  What bonded him with me forever was the death of my son in utero during late pregnancy.  Of course, it was his poem, “The Lost Son.”  I used the section, “It Was Beginning Winter” in a makeshift sympathy card for my wife, who struggled for months after with depression and delusions.  

It was beginning winter,
An in-between time,
The landscape still partly brown:
The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,
Above the blue snow.

It was beginning winter,
The light moved slowly over the frozen field,
Over the dry seed-crowns,
The beautiful surviving bones
Swinging in the wind.

Light traveled over the wide field;
Stayed.
The weeds stopped swinging.
The mind moved, not alone,
Through the clear air, in the silence.

Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still?

A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.