Sylvia Plath

[Angel Fire 543]

Hey, guys.

I searched but didn't find a topic discussing this, so I decided to open one up. Do you guys know Sylvia Plath? She was an American poet and novelist from the 20th Century. Her work is really reflexive, melancholic and says so much of what Lana atests, I bet the reads her hahaha. She has way with words that is almost as touching as Lana songs to me. If you like poetry and are unaware of her writings, check it out.

 

Here is a poem that I'm very fond of. Hope you like it

She wrote it when she was 14 years old.

 

 

I thought that I could not be hurt

by Sylvia Plath

 

 

"I thought that I could not be hurt;

I thought that I must surely be
impervious to suffering-
immune to pain
or agony.

My world was warm with April sun
my thoughts were spangled green and gold;
my soul filled up with joy, yet
felt the sharp, sweet pain that only joy
can hold.

My spirit soared above the gulls
that, swooping breathlessly so high
o'erhead, now seem to to brush their whir-
ring wings against the blue roof of
the sky.

(How frail the human heart must be-
a throbbing pulse, a trembling thing-
a fragile, shining instrument
of crystal, which can either weep,
or sing.)

Then, suddenly my world turned gray,
and darkness wiped aside my joy.
A dull and aching void was left
where careless hands had reached out to
destroy

my silver web of happiness.
The hands then stopped in wonderment,
for, loving me, they wept to see
the tattered ruins of my firma-
ment

(How frail the human heart must be-
a mirrored pool of thought. So deep
and tremulous an instrument
of glass that it can either sing,
or weep)."

 

 

 

P.S.: If somehow I violated the site rules or posted it in the wrong place, forgive me (and tell me about it hahaha)!

I'm still having a little trouble getting used to the community

[knoxavel 938]

i didn't get into Plath until about 8th grade - during that time i hung out with a bunch of punk kids who were super pretentious but every now and then, they'd introduce some amazing people to me - in this case Sylvia.

 

I have to say i love "the munich mannequins" and "lady lazarus" the most but really i enjoyed her children's book "the bed book". 

 

i actually recently purchased "winter trees". I wil be reading this over the winter. 

[GodBlessMe 2,141]

I love Sylvia Plath! Her poetry is amazing. There's especially one poem that I really love, but I've forgotten what it's called. I'll try to remember it.

 

The Bell Jar is also an amazing novel!

[AKASAKA SAWAYAMA 7,888]

i've read the bell jar and johnny panic, i loved them both. there is some beautiful stories on johnny pannic. also i've read her child stories too--so cute. i have her journals too but i can't read it regularly, if i'm in the mood i try to read it. i'm obsessed with her. such a fragile soul </3

[Chris Cuomo 3,324]

I was so obsessed with her poetry when I was 14-15, she's great for angsty teens which is why I can't stand her work now tbh I've never read her novels though

[CrazySister 2,239]

I just know her. I met her through Su-Barbie-A from Marina and The Diamonds, I think. There was a line that said "If you don't like this dress, I'm gonna stick my head right in the oven" or something like that. I got curious about it and found that it was reference to Sylvia Plath, who died doing this (correct me if I'm wrong, please). I think I read something about her death, but I don't think I can remember that much. She puted cloths under the door of her kids's room, turn on the oven and sticked her head there? Anyway, I felt really sad because of that.   Even not knowing the things she wrote it, I was sure she was a great poet. Some time pass and I had the idea of read some poems for a project I was doing and found her stuff. I recognized her name when I saw and read some things that she wrote it, but I just can remember of a line of one of the poems that said "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead".  I related to that at the time and I think I can still relate. I'm a little distant of the person that I was before, but after all, it's still a part of who I am.   Would like to hear and read more tho, I can see that her writing was very deep and heartfelt. 

[Lauren Bacall 769]

I just know her. I met her through Su-Barbie-A from Marina and The Diamonds, I think. There was a line that said "If you don't like this dress, I'm gonna stick my head right in the oven" or something like that. I got curious about it and found that it was reference to Sylvia Plath, who died doing this (correct me if I'm wrong, please)

 

that is how she died, but that line is in fact an audio recording from the film version of the stepford wives

 

i love sylvia plath --- sheep in fog, crossing the water and tulips are my favourites

[longtimeman 9,011]

[SissyReed 579]

she's one of my favorite poets and women in general. i have read her poems, book and i am going to read her short stories + biography about her and her husband. i own all these books although i it was soooo hard to find them in Poland... :flutter:

[Sitar 22,218]

That's weird, I started The Bell Jar two days ago. It was a reading assignment in college that I was really excited for but it came at a terrible time assignment wise so I skipped it completely tbh. Now it's really good though, I'd recommend

[Angel Fire 543]

Oh my God, apparently she's always introduced to you guys during high-school or college there. Here in Brazil she's not famous, actually the schools/college is more focused on Brazilian literature (which is very rich too, I'm fascinated by it). It's so awesome to see that lots of people know her, including at some young ages. She's really incredible.

The only novel I've read was "The Bell Jar", it made me reflexive and in a melancholic mood for a long time so I decided to take a time before going to another one. If I connect my mindset to a depressive mood for a long time things can get out of hand and be hard to go back to a "productive" state. Even my parents noticed I was affected by the book. I'll look after the other novels, I'm eager to read them now

[daytonadeath 3,597]

Oh my God, apparently she's always introduced to you guys during high-school or college there. Here in Brazil she's not famous, actually the schools/college is more focused on Brazilian literature (which is very rich too, I'm fascinated by it). It's so awesome to see that lots of people know her, including at some young ages. She's really incredible.

The only novel I've read was "The Bell Jar", it made me reflexive and in a melancholic mood for a long time so I decided to take a time before going to another one. If I connect my mindset to a depressive mood for a long time things can get out of hand and be hard to go back to a "productive" state. Even my parents noticed I was affected by the book. I'll look after the other novels, I'm eager to read them now

amei ver outro brasileiro que curte sylvia e lana

[HEARTCORE 18,971]

Yeah I read the Bell Jar and I'm currently doing a piece of my dissertation on her

[SissyReed 579]

btw did you know that after plath killed herself, her husband's lover assia wevill killed herself the same way as sylvia but plath didn't kill her kids and assia killed her and ted's daughter when she killed herself...
i have a book about plath and her husband and i am so mad i have no time to finally read that! it seems to be fascinating story. that ted hughes (her husband) was destroying women i guess and funny thing is they were killing theirselves for/because of him while he lived like 68 years!

 

ugh why do i romanticize such things...?

[AKASAKA SAWAYAMA 7,888]

teddy hughes is a piece of shit

[SissyReed 579]

idk but i think this thread should be in Entertainment instead of Conversation Area :hdu:

[delreyfreak 5,342]

omg I love Sylvia Plath too - she's got some truly amazing works! had to read her at school this year, actually loved her so much 

[Jazzmin 302]

Oh, the (in)famous Sylvia Plath!
 
I know that for the general public, she's a poster child of unceasingly sad poets, a poete maudit, a depressive artist. It is, after all, the image that emerges from her oeuvre.
 
For some time, I strongly believed that Sylvia's moments of happiness were as powerful as those of depression: it seemed only logical to me that a girl who knew how it felt like to stifle under a bell jar, was able to experience joy unknown to non-depressive people once her mood had swung to the other end of the pendulum. The book "Bitter Fame" by Anne Stevenson made me falter a bit in this firm conviction, though; not abandon it completely, of course, but  certainly did make me think.
 
In a nutshell, the Sylvia that we find in this book seems to be doomed from the beginning ("a girl who wanted to be God" could never have been really satisfied with what real life offered to her, could she?). The girl-next-door, fun to be with, an A-student, is said to have been but a more or less intentionally created persona, a veneer, behind which a very somber world waited, teeming with her anguish, bile and obsessions. All doom and gloom, goddammit.
 
Be it as it may, I think this what-sylvia-plath-taught-me image shows Sylvia's brighter, less depressing side than most of her poems.
 
 

btw did you know that after plath killed herself, her husband's lover assia wevill killed herself the same way as sylvia but plath didn't kill her kids and assia killed her and ted's daughter when she killed herself...
i have a book about plath and her husband and i am so mad i have no time to finally read that! it seems to be fascinating story. that ted hughes (her husband) was destroying women i guess and funny thing is they were killing theirselves for/because of him while he lived like 68 years!

ugh why do i romanticize such things...?

As for Ted's infidelity, and please please please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to absolve him of his guilt... let's not forget that Sylvia wasn't an angel, either. OK, I'm not sure to which extend all those stories about Ted and Sylvia's marriage are true (her unhealthy jealousy, mood swings, unpredictable behavior)... but living under one roof with a cut-throat perfectionist can't have been easy. Besides, blaming him for Sylvia's death is a total oversimplification in my eyes. I think she might have been saved if she had been admitted to a hospital or, at worst, if her friends and her doctor had been more vigilant. You don't leave a suicidal woman alone, you just don't.
 
But should you lay the blame on them, then? We don't live in a perfect world and neither did she. I'm sure everybody did their best, it just wasn't feasible to keep an eye on her every bloody hour, minute, second.
 
And I wrote "might have", because I can play here "what if"'s all I want but sometimes even somebody that loves them can't keep a suicidal person alive. As Virginia Woolf's suicide note, addressed to her husband, reads:

If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.

But nobody could.
 
 
Well, it's taken me quite a while to get my head together and post in this thread. To tell you the truth, I'm still not sure if I've got an accurate image of her as a person. All I know for sure is that she had a way with words. And if one day I can write as well as she did (≠ the way she did), then I should know I've done a f...ing good job.
 
Oh, and hopefully, I'm making sense? I've tried to keep this post from being chaotic but you know, what I write on Sylvia's work and life always ends up ramifying into a million more or less personal thoughts, in spite of myself.

[SissyReed 579]

i feel like it's aimed @ me lol
but he's so right...

[Kurac na Biciklu 2,359]

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