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
I have this demon who wants me to run away screaming if I am going to be flawed, fallible. It wants me to think I'm so good I must be perfect. Or nothing. I am, on the contrary, something: a being who gets tired, has shyness to fight, has more trouble than most facing people easily.
The moon, too, abases her subjects, but in the daytime she is ridiculous. Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand, arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity, white and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide. No day is safe from news of you, walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.
My thoughts are crabbed and sallow, My tears like vinegar, Or the bitter blinking yellow Of an acetic star. Tonight the caustic wind, love, Gossips late and soon, And I wear the wry-faced pucker of The sour lemon moon. While like an early summer plum, Puny, green, and tart, Droops upon its wizened stem My lean, unripened heart.
I wish to cry. Yet, I laugh, and my lipstick leaves a red stain like a bloody crescent moon on top of the beer can
The man creates a pseudonym and hides behind it like a worm
I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralyzed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness.
I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath.
Cold glass, how you insert yourself Between myself and myself. I scratch like a cat. The blood that runs is dark fruit- An effect, a cosmetic. You smile. No, it is not fatal.
I feel self-repressed again. The old fall disease. Where is my willpower? The idea of a life gets in the way of my life...I dream too much, work too little.
Everything in life is writable...
We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine.
I want to force myself again and again to leave the warmth and security of static situations and move into the world of growth and suffering where the real books are people's minds and souls.
We know a thing by its opposite corollary; hot by having experienced cold; good by having decided what is bad; love by hate.
I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see, I swallow immediately. Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful.