Editing Sylvia Plath (section)

==Themes and legacy==
{{Quote box |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
|quote =<poem>
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
</poem>
|source=from "Morning Song", ''[[Ariel (poetry collection)|Ariel]]'', 1965<ref>{{cite web |title=Morning Song, Plath, Sylvia |work=Jeanette Winterson |url=http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=475 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101227162034/http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=475 |archive-date=December 27, 2010}}</ref>
}}

Sylvia Plath's early poems exhibit what became her typical imagery, using personal and nature-based depictions featuring, for example, the moon, blood, hospitals, fetuses, and skulls. They were mostly imitation exercises of poets she admired such as [[Dylan Thomas]], [[W. B. Yeats]] and [[Marianne Moore]].<ref name="Stevenson-1994"/> Late in 1959, when she and Hughes were at the Yaddo writers' colony in New York State, she wrote the seven-part "[[Poem for a Birthday]]", echoing [[Theodore Roethke]]'s ''Lost Son'' sequence, though its theme is her own traumatic breakdown and suicide attempt at 21.<ref>{{cite book |editor-first1=Ian |editor-last1=Hamilton |editor-first2= Jeremy |editor-last2=Noel-To |title=The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English |publisher=OUP Oxford |year=2013 |page=482 |isbn=978-0-19-964025-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XZKcAQAAQBAJ&dq=%22Poem+for+a+Birthday%22+Theodore+Roethke+Lost+Son&pg=PA482}}</ref> After 1960 her work moved into a more surreal landscape darkened by a sense of imprisonment and looming death, overshadowed by her father. ''The Colossus'' is filled with themes of death, redemption and resurrection. After Hughes left, Plath produced, in less than two months, the 40 poems of rage, despair, love, and vengeance on which her reputation mostly rests.<ref name="Stevenson-1994"/>

Plath's landscape poetry, which she wrote throughout her life, has been described as "a rich and important area of her work that is often overlooked...some of the best of which was written about the [[North York Moors|Yorkshire moors]]". Her September 1961 poem "Wuthering Heights" takes its title from the [[Emily Brontë]] novel, but its content and style is Plath's own particular vision of the [[Pennines|Pennine]] landscape.<ref>{{cite web |title=A Poet's Guide to Britain: Sylvia Plath |date=May 11, 2009 |work=BBC |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kfc1f |access-date=July 31, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130901081412/http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kfc1f |archive-date=September 1, 2013 }}</ref>

It was the posthumous publication of ''Ariel'' in 1965 that precipitated Plath's rise to fame and helped establish her reputation as one of the 20th century's best poets. As soon as it was published, critics began to see the collection as the charting of Plath's increasing desperation or death wish. Her dramatic death became her most famous aspect and remains so.<ref name="ODNB"/> ''Time'' and ''Life'' both reviewed the slim volume of ''Ariel'' in the wake of her death.<ref name="Feinmann-1993"/> The critic at ''Time'' said: "Within a week of her death, intellectual London was hunched over copies of a strange and terrible poem she had written during her last sick slide toward suicide. 'Daddy' was its title; its subject was her morbid love-hatred of her father; its style was as brutal as a truncheon. What is more, 'Daddy' was merely the first jet of flame from a literary dragon who in the last months of her life breathed a burning river of bile across the literary landscape...In her most ferocious poems, 'Daddy' and 'Lady Lazarus', fear, hate, love, death and the poet's own identity become fused at black heat with the figure of her father, and through him, with the guilt of the German exterminators and the suffering of their Jewish victims. They are poems, as [[Robert Lowell]] says in his preface to ''Ariel'', that 'play Russian roulette with six cartridges in the cylinder'."<ref>{{cite magazine |title=The Blood Jet Is Poetry |date=June 10, 1966 |magazine=Time |url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942057-1,00.html |url-access=subscription |access-date=July 9, 2010 |archive-date=March 10, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150310051738/http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942057-1,00.html |url-status=live }} Book review, ''Ariel''.</ref>{{efn|1=Plath has been criticized for her numerous and controversial allusions to [[the Holocaust]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Strangeways |first1=Al |last2=Plath |first2=Sylvia |date=Autumn 1996 |title='The Boot in the Face': The Problem of the Holocaust in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath |journal=Contemporary Literature |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=370–390 |jstor=1208714 |jstor-access=free|doi=10.2307/1208714 |s2cid=164185549 |url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5e4c/b8e6e9190da634036d64dc79ec083d2ac7fb.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200212082724/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5e4c/b8e6e9190da634036d64dc79ec083d2ac7fb.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=February 12, 2020 }}</ref>}} On January 16, 2004, ''The Independent'' in London published an article which ranked ''Ariel'' as the third best book of modern poetry among its Ten Best Modern Poetry Books.

Some in the feminist movement saw Plath as speaking for their experience, as a "symbol of blighted female genius".<ref name="Feinmann-1993"/> Writer [[Honor Moore]] describes ''Ariel'' as marking the beginning of a movement, Plath suddenly visible as "a woman on paper", certain and audacious. Moore says: "When Sylvia Plath's ''Ariel'' was published in the United States in 1966, American women noticed. Not only women who ordinarily read poems, but housewives and mothers whose ambitions had awakened ... Here was a woman, superbly trained in her craft, whose final poems uncompromisingly charted female rage, ambivalence, and grief, in a voice with which many women identified."<ref>{{cite news |last=Moore |first=Honor |date=March<!--/April--> 2009 |title=After ''Ariel'': Celebrating the poetry of the women's movement |work=Boston Review |url=http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR34.2/moore.php |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170711213731/http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR34.2/moore.php |archive-date=July 11, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Smith College, Plath's alma mater, holds her literary papers in the Smith College Library.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.smith.edu/libraries/special-collections/research-collections/resources-lists/rare-book-collection|title=Rare Books & Literary Archives {{!}} Smith College Libraries|website=www.smith.edu|language=en|access-date=October 23, 2017|archive-date=October 23, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023231210/https://www.smith.edu/libraries/special-collections/research-collections/resources-lists/rare-book-collection|url-status=live}}</ref>

The United States Postal Service introduced a postage stamp featuring Plath in 2012.<ref>{{cite news |last=Thorpe |first=Vanessa |date=September 17, 2011 |title=Sylvia Plath given stamp of approval |location=London |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/18/sylviaplath-tedhughes |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170312080259/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/18/sylviaplath-tedhughes |archive-date=March 12, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamps-postal-history/u.s.-twentieth-century-poets-block-in-demand|title=U.S. Twentieth-Century Poets block in demand|access-date=February 14, 2021|archive-date=November 24, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201124042916/https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamps-postal-history/u.s.-twentieth-century-poets-block-in-demand|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2012/pb22332/html/info_008.htm|title=Stamp Announcement 12-25: Twentieth-Century Poets|access-date=February 14, 2021|archive-date=November 14, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171114134025/https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2012/pb22332/html/info_008.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> An [[blue plaque|English Heritage plaque]] records Plath's residence at 3 [[Chalcot Square]], in London.<ref name="London Remembers"/>

In 2013 a previously unseen draft of her poem "Sheep in Fog", written two weeks before her death, revealed her disturbed state of mind.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10028478/Sylvia-Plath-poem-written-two-weeks-before-she-died-reveals-disturbed-state-of-mind.html |title=Sylvia Plath poem written two weeks before she died reveals 'disturbed' state of mind |date=April 30, 2013 |website=The Telegraph |url-access=subscription}}</ref>

In 2018, ''[[The New York Times]]'' published an obituary for Plath<ref>{{cite news |author=Anemona Hartocollis |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-sylvia-plath.html |title=Sylvia Plath, a Postwar Poet Unafraid to Confront Her Own Despair |date=March 8, 2018 |access-date=March 9, 2018 |newspaper=The New York Times |archive-date=March 8, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180308215231/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-sylvia-plath.html |url-status=live }}</ref> as part of the [[Overlooked (obituary feature)|Overlooked history project]].<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/insider/overlooked-obituary.html|title=How an Obits Project on Overlooked Women Was Born|last=Padnani|first=Amisha|author-link=Amy Padnani|date=March 8, 2018|work=The New York Times|access-date=March 24, 2018|archive-date=March 23, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180323184751/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/insider/overlooked-obituary.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked.html|title=Remarkable Women We Overlooked in Our Obituaries|last=Padnani|first=Amisha|date=March 8, 2018|work=The New York Times|access-date=March 24, 2018}}</ref>

===Portrayals in media===
Plath's voice is heard in a BBC documentary about her life, recorded in London in late 1962.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.openculture.com/2013/05/hear_sylvia_plath_read_fifteen_poems_from_her_final_collection_ariel_in_1962_recording.html|title=Hear Sylvia Plath Read 18 Poems from Her Final Collection, Ariel, in 1962 Recording &#124; Open Culture|access-date=March 21, 2021|archive-date=March 17, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210317193224/https://www.openculture.com/2013/05/hear_sylvia_plath_read_fifteen_poems_from_her_final_collection_ariel_in_1962_recording.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Of the BBC recording [[Elizabeth Hardwick (writer)|Elizabeth Hardwick]] wrote:
{{blockquote|
I have never before learned anything from a poetic reading, unless the clothes, the beard, the girls, the poor or good condition of the poet can be considered a kind of knowledge. But I was taken aback by Sylvia Plath's reading. It was not anything like I could have imagined. Not a trace of the modest, retreating, humorous Worcester, Massachusetts, of [[Elizabeth Bishop]]; nothing of the swallowed plain Pennsylvania of [[Marianne Moore]]. Instead these bitter poems—"Daddy", "Lady Lazarus", "The Applicant", "Fever 103°"—were beautifully read, projected in full-throated, plump, diction-perfect, Englishy, mesmerizing cadences, all round and rapid, and paced and spaced. Poor recessive Massachusetts had been erased. "I have done it again!" Clearly, perfectly, staring you down. She seemed to be standing at a banquet like [[Timon of Athens|Timon]], crying, "Uncover, dogs, and lap!"<ref>{{Cite magazine|last=Malcolm|first=Janet|author-link=Janet Malcolm|title=The Mystery of Sylvia Plath|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/08/23/the-silent-woman-i-ii-iii|access-date=January 28, 2021|magazine=The New Yorker|date=August 15, 1993|archive-date=January 26, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210126133241/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/08/23/the-silent-woman-i-ii-iii|url-status=live}}</ref>
}}

[[Gwyneth Paltrow]] portrayed Plath in the biopic ''[[Sylvia (2003 film)|Sylvia]]'' (2003). Elizabeth Sigmund, who was friends with both Plath and Hughes, criticized the movie for depicting Sylvia as  "a permanent depressive and a possessive person", but she conceded that "the film has an atmosphere towards the end of her life which is heartbreaking in its accuracy".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Carrell |first1=Severin |title=Sylvia Plath film has lost the plot, says her closest friend |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/sylvia-plath-film-has-lost-the-plot-says-her-closest-friend-84184.html |website=The Independent|date=December 28, 2003 |access-date=January 18, 2019 |archive-date=January 19, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190119122340/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/sylvia-plath-film-has-lost-the-plot-says-her-closest-friend-84184.html |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Frieda Hughes]], who was only two years old when she lost her mother, was angered by the making of entertainment featuring her parents' troubled marriage and her mother's death. She accused the "peanut crunching" public of wanting to be titillated by her family's tragedies.<ref>{{cite news |title=Plath film angers daughter |date=February 3, 2003 |work=BBC |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2720021.stm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306115426/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2720021.stm |archive-date=March 6, 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> In 2003, Frieda reacted to the situation in the poem "My Mother", first published in ''[[Tatler]]'':<ref>{{cite news |author=Hughes, Frieda|author-link=Frieda Hughes|title=My Mother |work=The Book of Mirrors |date=2003 |url=http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/articles.asp?id=62 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120528162310/http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/articles.asp?id=62 |archive-date=May 28, 2012}}</ref>
{{blockquote|
<poem>
Now they want to make a film
For anyone lacking the ability
To imagine the body, head in oven,
Orphaning children

 ... they think
I should give them my mother's words
To fill the mouth of their monster,
Their Sylvia Suicide Doll
</poem>
}}

=== Musical settings ===
* In his ''[[Ariel (poetry collection)|Ariel]]: Five Poems of Sylvia Plath'' (1971), American composer [[Ned Rorem]] has set for soprano, clarinet and piano the poems "Words", "Poppies In July", "The Hanging Man", "Poppies In October", and "[[Lady Lazarus]]."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hubbard Claflin |first=Beverly |title=A Musical Analysis and Poetic Interpretation of Ned Rorem's Ariel |publisher=Arizona State University |year=1987}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lieson Miller |first=Philip |date=December 1978 |title=The Songs of Ned Rorem |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/945957 |journal=Tempo, Cambridge University Press |issue=127 |pages=25–31|jstor=945957 }}</ref>
* Also drawing from ''[[Ariel (poetry collection)|Ariel]]'', in his ''Six Poems by Sylvia Plath'' for solo soprano (1975), German composer [[Aribert Reimann]] has set the poems "Edge", "Sheep In Fog", "The Couriers", "The Night Dances", and "Words."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dobretsberger |first=Barbara |date=2002 |title=Aribert Reimann : Six Poems by Sylvia Plath |url=https://doi.org/10.3406/calib.2002.1443 |journal=Anglophonia/Caliban |volume=11 |issue=11 |pages=83–88|doi=10.3406/calib.2002.1443 }}</ref> He later set "[[Lady Lazarus]]" (1992), also for solo soprano.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Lady Lazarus |url=https://www.schott-music.com/en/lady-lazarus-noc38625.html |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=www.schott-music.com |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Werbeagentur |first=Deutscher Tele Markt GmbH-Internet- und |date=2023-04-21 |title=HINWEIS: Symposium Aribert Reimann |url=https://www.sadk.de/programm/hinweis-symposium-aribert-reimann |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=www.sadk.de |language=de-DE}}</ref>
* Finnish composer [[Kaija Saariaho]]'s five-part ''From the Grammar of Dreams'' for soprano and mezzo a cappella (1988)<ref>{{Cite web |title=From the Grammar of Dreams {{!}} Kaija Saariaho |url=https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/11110/From-the-Grammar-of-Dreams--Kaija-Saariaho/ |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=www.wisemusicclassical.com |language=en}}</ref> is constructed on a collage of fragments from ''[[The Bell Jar]]'' and the poem "Paralytic."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Saariaho: From the Grammar of Dreams; Farewell |url=https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/saariaho-1 |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=www.classical-music.com |language=en}}</ref> The piece was also arranged by the composer into a version for soprano and electronics (2002), in which the singer sings in interaction with a recorded double of her own voice.<ref>{{Cite web |title=From the Grammar of Dreams (version for soprano and electronics) {{!}} Kaija Saariaho |url=https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/14118/From-the-Grammar-of-Dreams-version-for-soprano-and-electronics--Kaija-Saariaho/ |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=www.wisemusicclassical.com |language=en}}</ref> Albeit composed as a concert piece, ''From the Grammar of Dreams'' has also been staged.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Vesa |first=Siren |date=2001-11-16 |title=Saariahon Unien kielioppi kiertueelle Britanniaan |url=https://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/art-2000004011474.html |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=Helsingin Sanomat |language=fi}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Seibert |first=Brian |date=2013-02-28 |title=No Escaping the Shadow of a Legend |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/arts/dance/martha-graham-dance-company-at-the-joyce.html |access-date=2023-12-19 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
* American composer [[Juliana Hall]]'s ''Lorelei'' (1989) for mezzo, horn, and piano is a setting of Plath's poem of the same name.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Lorelei |url=https://songofamerica.net/song/lorelei/ |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=Song of America |language=en-US}}</ref> Hall had previously set "The Night Dances" as a movement of her cycle for soprano and piano ''Night Dances'' (1987) featuring texts by five female poets,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Holder Brezna |first=Leena |url=https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2578&context=etd |title=The Night Dances: An Analysis of Juliana Hall's Night Dances (1987) |publisher=The University of Memphis |year=2016}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Shin |first=Il Hong |url=https://www.proquest.com/openview/4506e4dfa540a1376d742c073044fb29/ |title=Juliana Hall's World: Analysis of Night Dances (1987) and Christina's World (2016) |year=2023|id={{ProQuest| }} }}</ref> and went on to write a song cycle for soprano and piano entirely devoted to Plath, ''Crossing The Water'' (2011), which comprises the poems "Street Song", "Crossing The Water", "Rhyme", and "Alicante Lullaby."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Hall |url=https://songofamerica.net/composer/hall-juliana/ |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=Song of America |language=en-US}}</ref>
* In her cycle for soprano and piano ''The Blood Jet'' (2006), American composer [[Lori Laitman|Lori Leitman]] set the poems "Morning Song", "The Rival", "Kindness", and "Balloons."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lines |first=Carol |date=Sep 1, 2007 |title=The Songs of Lori Laitman |url=https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Songs+of+Lori+Laitman.-a0172012935 |journal=Journal of Singing}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Lori Laitman, Composer - Catalog - The Blood Jet |url=http://artsongs.com/catalog/the-blood-jet.html |access-date=2023-12-19 |website=artsongs.com |date=March 6, 2011 |language=en}}</ref>