| Honestly, part of writing Your Own, Sylvia was a willful denial on my part of what I was undertaking. How could I possibly write a whole book of poems about Sylvia Plath? They would never hold up under the weight of her talent. But somehow I let that go. I thought about the first time I came to Plath in the classroom. I knew little about her life, not much beyond the fact that she killed herself. And although I admired her writing, I could not initially see its depth. Sylvia’s work seemed difficult, purposely obtuse, and so I dismissed pieces of hers as remote and even cold. But learning about her life helped me to unpack various themes and metaphors that would otherwise have remained closed to me. Instead of being cold, I saw that Sylvia’s writing borders on frenzy at times. She holds her work close to her and you feel its heat and impact. I don’t think it always follows that knowing a writer’s biography is essential to understanding their work, but the knowledge I gained about Sylvia’s life as I researched and wrote this book enhanced my experience of her writing. I had always loved her poems’ fabulous opening lines, such as: “Viciousness in the kitchen,”-Lesbos ;“Stasis in darkness,”-Ariel; and “Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts”-Poppies in October. When I found out what was going on in Sylvia’s life at the time she penned each of these lines, the words resonated with even greater impact. My book offers a window into Sylvia’s life in the hopes of helping readers appreciate her writing more fully.
Sylvia published her first poem at eight and wrote until her last days, creating astonishing work whether she was serene, joyful, or in crisis. Her writing captivates and inspires me. She is a friend that is always there on the bookshelf when I need her, with a great line, a brilliant sentence, to pull me through. I wish that her own words could have done the same for her. And I hope my book leads you to her. |
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