Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

My Reflections on the poetry of Sylvia Plath

            We were also assigned to read the poetry of Sylvia Plath this week. Sylvia was a poet that lived between1932-1963. She was only thirty-one when she died. She was a very talented poet publishing her first poem by age seventeen. She had a troubled life and hospitalized and received psychiatric therapy. Sylvia Plath committed suicide at age thirty-one. Many of her poems were published after her death.

            Only two of her poems were published in this area of our book. Those poems were “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy.” “Daddy” talked of her father. His death seemed to really affect Sylvia so much so that she wanted to write a poem about him. I can understand feelings of missing a parent since my mother passed away 2 years ago. Although I am not a young girl that is the way you feel when a parent dies.

            Mentioning her father in the poem “Daddy,” Sylvia mentions being German. She mentions Jewish people. She mentions Nazi concentration camps. She mentions being scared of her father. She mentions her father has “Aryan” blue eyes. Swastikas are also mentioned. That seems to be some pretty serious subjects in a poem during that period of time.

            “Lady Lazarus” was the other poem in the book. Both of them were medium in length. She mentions Nazis in the poem as well. Her poetry has been known to sound like a suicide letter. This poem seems to have that theme in it. She mentions death in this poem as well. Many of the greatest artists always seem to feel tortured. It seems that quality seems to produce such interesting work. I found it to be sad that she committed suicide after treatment in a psychiatric facility failed to help her.