Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plathwas one of the most renowned and influential poets, novelists, and short story writers of the 20th century. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer. She was married to fellow poet Ted Hughes from 1956 until they separated in September of 1962. They lived together in the United States and then the United Kingdom and had two children, Frieda and Nicholas...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 October 1932
CountryUnited States of America
Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser.
Spiderlike, I spin mirrors, Loyal to my image.
The day I went into physics class it was death.
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead -- after all, I had been "analyzed." Instead, all I could see were question marks.
For the few little successes I may seem to have, there are acres of misgivings and self-doubt.
I felt very low. I had been unmasked only that morning by Jay Cee herself, and I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicions I had about myself were coming true. After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of race.
Everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.
I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence.
The lawn was white with doctors
I wondered what I thought I was burying.
I laid my face to the smooth face of the marble and howled my loss into the cold salt rain.
I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Antoine St. Exupery once mourned the loss of a man and the secret treasures that he held inside him. I loved Exupery; I will read him again, and he will talk to me, not being dead, or gone. Is that life after death — mind living on paper and flesh living in offspring? Maybe. I do not know.