Presented by Dani Stoe
I. Basic Biography
II. Confessional Poetry
III. Friendship with Anne Sexton
IV. Freudian Influence
V. Example of Her Poetry
VI. Works Cited
Basic Biography
Though often viewed as either a feminist martyr or a tragic heroine, Sylvia Plath was in truth neither and, at the same time, a bit of both. While Plath's mental instability has often been attributed to her husband's mysogyny, it has also been suggested that she was not a great feminist [citation needed]. She was also not quite the doomed lunatic, as some would describe her. Plath was famous for the novel The Bell Jar, as well as poems such as "Ariel." Collections of her poetry were published after her death. They include Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, and The Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. One of the ways that some critics have categorized her work is by labeling it as Confessional Poetry. This "confessional style" is extremely evident in her poetry that reflects on the taking of her own life.
Confessional Poetry
This type of poetry is of the personal or the "I". It began in the late 1950s and continued on through the early 1960s. Sylvia Plath is among the poets associated with this kind of poetry. Other notable confessional poets include Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and W.D. Snodgrass. Sexton and Plath were both highly influenced by Lowell's work. Confessional poetry started to address topics that up until then had not been openly discussed. Personal feelings about things like death, trauma, suicide and relationships began to be dealt with. The resulting poetry was nearly auto-biographical and even therapuetic for the author. Plath's poem "Daddy" is among the most well-known in confessional poetry.
"Daddy"
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been sacred of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
Works Cited:
Trinidad, David. "Two Sweet Ladies: Sexton and Plath's Friendship and Mutual Influence." American Poetry Review. 35:6 (2006): 21-29. full text
Poems from http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/daddy.htm
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