The Poetry Of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was American short-story writer, poet and novelist that was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts and died on February 11, 1963. Sylvia Plath is best known for, her books of poems, “The Colossus and Other Poems Collection” and the “Ariel Collection” of Poems.Plath’s poetry was known for its rhyme, alliteration and disturbing and violent imagery. Plath’s poetry is considered part of the Confessional movement, which became very popular in the United States during the 1950s through the 1960s. It is considered a type of poetry about “of the personal”. Confessional poems are more associated with the subject matter of sexuality, mental illness and suicide.

Sylvia Plath was the daughter of Aurelia Schober and Otto Plath. Her mother was a teacher at Boston University and her father was a Bee Entomologist. She had one brother named Warren. Sylvia Plath began writing at a very young at the age of eight. She submitted her first poem into the children’s section of the Boston Herald in 1941. The poem was named “Point Shirley” this story was about the description of her grandparents’ house when she moved to Point Shirley, Massachusetts. A week after she turned eight, her father died on November 5, 1940 due to untreated diabetes after his foot was amputated. She then turned to her writing and sealed herself off from society. She became depressed and tired to commit suicide. She later wrote the poem “Daddy” in 1962, to describe what she thought of her dad.

While in High school, her story “And Summer Will Not Come Again” was published in the “Seventeen Again magazine”. In 1950, Sylvia Graduated from Bradford Senior High School first in her class. Right after high school, Plath was published nationally in “The Christian Sc...

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...did not want her children to perish with her so she opened there bedroom window, put some food in there and then seal the door off with some tape. She then she sealed herself off in the kitchen. She turned on the gas on the stove and died. She was buried on February 16, 1963 in Hughes family cemetery in Heptonstall.

After Sylvia died, she became better known than when she was alive. Ted Hughes when going through her belonging, he found poems that she had written and he had them published in 1965. Assia moved in with Ted in 1966 and they had a daughter in 1967. In 1969, Assia was unable to live in the shadow of Sylvia and took both her and her daughter’s life the same way Sylvia did. After her death, Hughes published a book of Sylvia poems, "Collected Poems" in 1981. She work won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982. She was the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize after death.