The Controversial life of Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia Plath.

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the ongoing guts to do it...” (Sylvia Plath)

If you've ever been deep in your feelings that you had to write a sad poem, you probably never did it better than Sylvia.

When I first started reading Sylvia's works. I was in awe. You know when someone makes you feel instantly stupid: like that one kid in class asking a teacher a question.

Would I ever be as good as this? What is she thinking? How does she do this?

Sylvia had an IQ of 160. I don’t know what my IQ is and Sylvia makes me not want to know.

If you have never heard of Sylvia. She’s known for her style called “Confessional poetry.”

But as all heroes are never glorified till they come home injured and broken, much of the works we love of Sylvia today became known and popular when she died at the young age of thirty.

Sylvia is popular for “Ariel,” her book of poems mostly compiled by her husband, Ted Hughes. This is ironic because prior to her death, they were separated.

In her poems, things get progressively dark and darker. In Lady Lazarus, she talks about her suicide attempts as though they were glorified.

“... I a smiling woman

I am only thirty

And like the cat I have nine times to die” (Sylvia Plath in Lady Lazarus)

Her life was very sad with a long history of depression and mental illness. Her poems reveal her state of being. Sylvia had a fascination with death: depression is a terrible matchmaker.

If I wanted to be cynical, I’d call the way she eventually died “creative”. Sylvia died kneeling, bending, head in the oven. Killed by the fumes. Despite this, Sylvia was brilliant.

The issue with Sylvia I think is how we cannot separate Sylvia from the poems she wrote. We do not know sometimes whether we are studying her poems or her life.

“Bit my pretty 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” (Sylvia Plath in “Daddy”)

In her sorrow, we do not know whether to hold her accountable for the underlying racism in her works.

In the Bell Jar for example, the protagonist, Esther, stares at her reflection and describes it as

“a big, smudgy-eyed Chinese woman staring idiotically into my face,” (Sylvia Plath in Chapter 2. The bell jar)

Please note that Esther is white.

Are we no longer to ask her how she dealt with rage? If she thought of others before she made a decision. Any decision. Any writing?

Her writings were violent and rageful. It is like her mouth could spit bullets and kill. Her poem “Lesbos” for example, was targeted towards the neighbours she lived with. She calls her neighbour’s husband “Impotent” (So they are two lesbos in the marriage)

“Now I am silent, hate

Up to my neck,

Thick, thick

I do not speak”

(Sylvia Plath in “Lesbos”)

When do we become insensitive for calling her out? “You’re too rageful, Sylvia”

“You have no idea what I have been through!

“You’re a racist sylvia”

“I just went through shock therapy!”

Where is the boundary? Should writings sell because we know the writer? Are her works really good or am I amazed by the depth of sadness?

When we think of Sylvia, do I think of her poem or her life, more specifically, her death(s).

Curious, isn’t it? Let’s Bury the dead and leave them in peace. For you, dear reader, has your sadness ever been an excuse to not be accountable?