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This is a transcription of the journals kept by Sylvia Plath over the last 12 years of her life. It gives insight into her final years and the evolution of her last poems. ... Read more

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By investigating Plath's maternal experience between 1959 and 1963, its transformation into unique poetic imagery has been elicited through a detailed exegesis of her verse and novel. This is an examination of how maternity helped Plath originate a new faith, style and direction in her writing. Full use is made of the dating of "The Collected Poems" to rectify previous confusion and omissions, and the vital interaction between her life and art is considered in the light of the available biographic materials, despite their limitations. This work does not, however, limit her work to a single perspective, but synthesizes the soundest elements of diverse critical reaction, at the same time exposing fashionable misconceptions that still distort her art. ... Read more

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A fresh and unique look at the work of one of America's most compelling and enigmatic poets

Sylvia Plath was one of the most gifted and innovative poets of the twentieth century, yet serious study of her work has often been hampered by a fierce preoccupation with her life and death.

In this new analysis, Tim Kendall seeks to redress the balance in his detailed and dispassionate examination of her poetry. Taking a roughly chronological structure, he traces the unique nature of Plath's poetic gift, finding-with reference to Letters Home, The Bell Jar, The Journals, and the stories and autobiographical reminiscences-an essential unity in her inspiration, tracing the evolution of recurring themes and at the same time exhibiting her accelerated development from the formal restraint of The Colossus through to the groundbreaking techniques of Ariel. In the process, Kendall shows that Plath was a poet constantly remaking herself, experimenting with different styles, forms, and subject matter, while at the same time firmly reinforcing her rightful place in the canon of world literature.
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Here is a compelling account of the romantic lives and times of five great writers of this century--D.H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Dyland Thomas and Sylvia Plath. Passionate Lives evokes how these writers lived on the cutting edge of passionate intensity, shows how their own love affairs influenced their writing, and brings a unique perspective to the work and lives of some of the best literary artists of the 20th century. ... Read more

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A biography of the American poet Sylvia Plath which presents a different view of her life and death by shifting any blame away from Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, and suggesting the problems lay in her personality difficulties. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

defintely interesting
This book was in very good condition and it was delivered promptly. The content is definitely interesting and what I was looking for in a biography. The writer's style is informative and accurate. It gives excellent insight into the world of Plath.

Madness and Genius
Plath is presented as an unstable but very talented woman.There is not doubting her instability which appeared long before she met Ted Hughes, but what Anne Stevenson has managed to do is present the enormous stresses placed upon her husband and her friends by Plath's behaviour. It is not easy living with a poet, at least one who writes seriously.Dido Merwin was on the receiving end of some pretty nasty vitriol, but if you have a face-lift to make yourslef look younger don't invite a perceptive poet along to visit you in hospital.This book is a fine biography and in my view is the standard work on a great 20th century poet.

A flawed must-read
I'm surprised no one has yet reviewed this landmark in the Plath biography lexicon.It was savagely attacked when it came out because Anne Stevenson was writing under the tight control of Ted and Olwyn Hughes and readers rightly saw it as slanted heavily in their favor.But anyone interested in Sylvia Plath should definitely read it.It's by far the best written of the biographies and presents a complex, believable portrait of Plath up to the point where her journals disappeared.After that, Stevenson has not a single good word to say for Sylvia and not a single bad word to say for Ted.It's a fascinating read that should be either preceded or followed by Janet Malcolm's The Silent Woman which explains the drama that went into its creation. ... Read more

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This study focuses on the post-Holocaust writers Sylvia Plath, Geoffrey Hill, Tony Harrison, and Ted Hughes, while also stressing the links between their work and the Holocaust poetry of Paul Celan, Miklos Radnoti, Primo Levi, and Janos Pilinszky.

Developing his theory of "awkwardness," Antony Rowland argues that post-Holocaust poetry can play an important part in our understanding of Holocaust writing. Rowland examines post-Holocaust poetry's self-conscious, imaginative engagement with the Holocaust, as well as the literature of survivors. He illuminates how "awkward" poetics enable post-Holocaust poets to provide ethical responses to history and avoid aesthetic prurience. This probing and sensitive reassessment of Holocaust-related poetry offers an important new perspective on postwar poetry.

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The first bibliography of Plath to contain analytical physical descriptions of her books; the first ot organize her poems and prose works under uniform titles with reference to the definitive texts; the first to point out textual variants in the poems; and the first to benefit from access to the important Plath collections at Indiana University and Smith College. ... Read more

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This book challenges the critical tendency to see Sylvia Plath's writing in `confessional' terms, and draws attention to its self-reflexivity. In her closely sustained study, Christina Britzolakis argues that Plath developed a theatrical conception of the speaking subject. The author relates Plath's texts both to their historical moment and to contemporary debates about language, gender, and subjectivity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

An ethical question
The poems Sylvia Plath is best known for are the poems of her greatest torment. They are powerful and violent. They speak out of desperation with deep emotion. At the same time they have the brilliance of language and innovativeness of much of the best poetry. I have difficulty with them for two reasons. The first is perhaps entirely my fault. I do not feel I understand them very well. But of course the way to understanding them more is greater investment in time and rereading. But I am reluctant to go too deep into this violent emotional world. The second has to do with an 'ethical question' regarding the placing of first value on works which excel in self- dramatization and anger against others.

"Her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment..."
Sylvia Plath - The Collected Poems has to be the best book of poetry in the world. I love Sylvia Plath, she was a genius. Her poetry moves me, everything she has ever written is gold. The first poem I ever read by Plath was Metaphors, "I've eaten a bag of green apples, boarded the train there's no getting off." Something about that line just struck a cord with me, from that moment on I was determined to read all her poems. Another poems I love include: Soliloquy of the Solipsist, I am Vertical, The Other, The Rival, You're, The Rabbit Catcher, Lady Lazaurus, Stillborn, For A Fatherless Son, Leaving Early, Morning Song, Cut, A Birthday Present, Fever 103, Gigolo, Daddy, and The Disquieting Muses. She writes about her father a lot, he died when she was nine and his death left her with depression for the rest of her life, from The Colossus, "Counting the red stars and those of plum-color. The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. My hours are married to shadow." The Jailer is a poem I just adore, "My sleeping capsule, my red and blue zeppelin drops me from a terrible altitude." The poem, Poem for a Birthday- Witch Burning is gorgeous and frightening real, "I inhabit the wax image of myself, a doll's body. Sickness begins here: I am a dartboard for witches. Only the devil can eat the devil out." Plath left a legacy of timeless poems, short stories, and a novel, The Bell Jar. I have enjoyed reading The Collected Poems and so will you, Enjoy!

Treasure Discovered!
I originally bought this book seeking one special poem. What I have got now is a the key to the richest of treasure chests!

Collection Tracks the Course of a Genius's Rise and Fall
Anyone who has not discovered Plath's poetry-- distinctly superior to her prose-- would be greatly served to seek out a slim volume called "Crossing the Water."This haunting collection features most of her greatest poems from what I think to be her most creative years: 1957-1959.If these don't grab you, then give up on her altogether.However, the Collected Poems are the inevitable place to continue since they include her early promising works, as well as those dark pithy gems that characterize her bitterly twisted slide into the furthest reaches of her capacity for cynicism and despair.

A superb collection.

Most poems fall short
I first came across Sylvia Plath in an anthology of modern poetry.Her poems "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" blew me away.The former may well be, in my opinion, the best poem ever written by a woman, and one of the five best written by anyone in the last two centuries.Buying this book, I expected more of the same.Unfortunately, I found most of her early work to be dissapointingly typical.The reason Plath is so controversial is that her greatness is linked inextricably to her darkness.Before the latter manifested during her divorce and subsequent depression, there just wasn't that much to her.In other words, much of her early poetry is that of a reasonably intelligent woman- entertaining, even a little intriguing, but lacking the fury of "Lady Lazarus", the darkness of "A Birthday Present", or the fatalistic beauty of "Ariel".And while there are some glimmers of the genius that is to come (The Colossus, I Am Vertical), they aren't many.My advice to any prospective reader is to save some time and money and pick up her collection "Ariel", which contains 90% of her essential work. ... Read more

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The Lost Papers of Sylvia Plath follows the questionable literary escapades of undergraduate Sandra Kohl and her adviser Diane Richmond at a sleepy Midwestern campus in winter 1997-98. As the student struggles over metaphysical disturbances with her research around Sylvia Plath, the advisor draws on her youthful experience as a hippie visionary to bring the increasingly bothersome spooks in line. Egged on by Plathomaniac professor Jim Handler, the two women diagram the writer's mentors, family intrigues and critical hullabaloo in a multidimensional board game to entice a local collector into revealing some of Sylvia's famously missing manuscripts he covets. But things get out of hand for Diane. On a Full Hunters Moon night, a drug-soaked meeting with the collector becomes a contest of wits and mind games of the magical sort. And with the help of home-baked mysticism, word rage and goddess power, a new spin on the Ariel poems and the whole Plath enchilada emerges. ... Read more

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Sylvia Plath´s second volume of poetry, Ariel, published posthumously in 1965, shocked and provoked reviewers with its unexpected intensity and power, and the publication of her Collected Poems in 1981 confirmed her as a poet of stature and maturity.Beginning with reviews of her initial collection, The Colossus, the reader is clearly guided through the profusion of critical material that has variously described Plath as feminine and feminist, personal and political, an American modernist and an English Romantic. The guide includes critical assessments from Robert Lowell, Sandra M. Gilbert, and Jacqueline Rose, among others. ... Read more

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The author shows how Plath's remarkable lyric dramas define a private ritual process. The book deals with the emotional material from which Plath's poetry arises and the specific ritual transformations she dramatizes. It covers all phases of Plath's poetry, closely following the development of image and idea from the apprentice work through the last lyrics of Ariel. The critical method stays close to the language of the poems and defines Plath's struggle toward maturity. ... Read more

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This is a "biography of the imagination, " an inner narrative of Sylvia Plath's life and work. Combining psychoanalytical, feminist, and intertextual methods, Steven Gould Axelrod traces what Roland Barthes has called "the body's journey through language." After an introductory look at the roles played by language and silence in Plath's verbal universe, Axelrod explores the ways in which the poet's father -- and father figures, including male literary precursors -- interfered with her imagination even as they helped shape it. He describes Plath's ambiguous relations with her mother and with the two literary forebears who took the mother's place -- Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson. And he examines Plath's doubling relationship to her husband, describing how she eventually transferred her doubling impulse to her texts. Axelrod concludes by suggesting a link between Plath's discontinuous narrative of the double and her personal fate.

Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words offers illuminating and often revolutionary readings of all of Plath's major texts, including such poems as "Daddy" and "Three Women, " her novel, The Bell Jar, and her letters and journals. At once sympathetic and incisive, it offers a compelling account of Plath's creative drive and personal history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Everything you need to know
This book is a terrific combination of Axelrod's interpretations and Plath's life.It does not rest only upon facts, but instead it does a beautiful job of twisting together her life, her writing and herpsychological condition.If you love Plath and her writing, this is thebook for you.It is intelligent and written for people who not only wantto know more about the life of a very troubled and talented woman, butthose who also love her poetry. ... Read more