oii_image_credit
Sylvia Plath
-
Standard Name: Plath, Sylvia
Birth Name: Sylvia Plath
Married Name: Sylvia Hughes
SP
was primarily a poet, and most famously a confessional poet, although she also wrote a novel, a radio play, short stories and a book for children. She is best known for the poems she wrote in the last eighteen months that she lived. Her life story, complete with her suicide at the age of thirty, tends to overshadow her literary achievement, although critics of recent decades have made strides towards preserving her literary contribution and promoting its value.
Connections
| Connections | Author name Sort ascending | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Literary responses | Stevie Smith | Novel on Yellow Paper was an immediate critical success. Appreciation expressed in reviews by Naomi Mitchison
and Rosamond Lehmann
laid the foundations for SS
's friendships with these and other writers. Spalding, Frances. Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography. Faber and Faber. 125 Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford. |
| Literary responses | Stevie Smith | This brought her work to a large and enthusiastic audience. Sylvia Plath
wrote to SS
declaring herself a fan. Several poems were printed in US papers and periodicals to prepare for the American edition in... |
| Friends, Associates | Anne Sexton | AS
made many friends among her fellow poets: Kumin
, Soter
, William DeWitt Snodgrass
, Sylvia Plath
(whose death affected her deeply), George Starbuck
and James Wright
(who were also her lovers), and Anthony Hecht |
| Literary responses | Anne Sexton | Like To Bedlam and Part Way Back before it, this was nominated for the National Book Award but did not in the end win. It brought Sexton, however, the award of a travelling scholarship from... |
| Textual Features | Anne Sexton | AS
took the title for this volume from the novel Herzog, by Saul Bellow
, whose writing she deeply admired: Live or die, but don't poison everything. Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin. 162 |
| Literary responses | Anne Sexton | British reviews were mostly scathing. Despite some respectful notices, the tendency was to see Sexton as a weaker version of the confessional aspects of Sylvia Plath
. Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin. 364 |
| Theme or Topic Treated in Text | Carol Rumens | Its tributes to earlier women poets are grounded in Portrait of the Poet as a Little Girl (a belated, oblique answer to James Joyce
), which concludes on the patrilineal prize / which she, disarmed... |
| Textual Features | Michèle Roberts | The contents of this volume span a range of genres and moods. poems about places or natural objects observe with precision; love poems are often ambivalent: won't you make my blood / jump? won't you... |
| Literary responses | Laura Riding | This broadcast brought a notable poetic response. Sylvia Plath
wrote a poem, Little Fugue, which she annotated, on listening to Laura Riding. Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books. 400 |
| Textual Features | Alexander Pope | The play is remarkable among its other fun for a minor characater, Phoebe Clinket, an unhinged woman poet. She was wrongly identified in Edward Parker
's Key as Anne Finch
, a mistake which has... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Ruth Padel | Having loved and immersed herself in poetry all her life, RP
took a gamble and changed her self-definition from university lecturer in classics to professional writer and poet. Fifteen years later, writing of her own... |
| Textual Production | Tillie Olsen | TO
's dazzling performance as a Communist speaker was the first phase of a career that led towards her later years as a star literary lecturer. As a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute
she spoke... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Ann Oakley | The authors use as epigraph a passage from Sylvia Plath
's Three Women: a Poem for Three Voices. Oakley, Ann et al. Miscarriage. Fontana. 9 |
| Education | Betty Miller | At this point Betty entered St Paul's School for Girls
and then (having fallen ill) had a convalescent year at a Catholic
boarding school cum sanatorium at Berck-Plage near Boulogne. Miller, Sarah, and Betty Miller. “Introduction”. On the Side of the Angels, Virago, p. vii - xviii. viii Sylvia Plath
later... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Edna St Vincent Millay | Thomas Hardy
(as reported by Elinor Wylie
) is believed to have said her poems were one of the only two great things in the United States, the other being the skyscraper. Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House. xiii, 290 |
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
No bibliographical results available.