Sylvia Plath was one of the most influential and celebrated poets of the 20th century. Her work has been tied heavily to the Confessional movement and she is widely regarded with being a large contributor to this post war type of poetry where poets started to use their own trauma and emotional anguish as a point of inspiration for their writing. Her work dealt with many personal and taboo subjects at the time like mental illness and breakdowns, suicide, depression, personal relationships, and the troubled relationship she had with herself. Plath used much of her own private pain to create work that has been celebrated even after her death at the age of 30 by suicide over 60 years ago.
“Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath is one of the greatest examples of Confessional poetry as it ties into her personal struggles with suicidal fantasies and personal hardship through a “Lady Lazarus” and how each of her suicide attempts had been unsuccessful and how she kept coming back or “resurrected” like the persona in the poem does each time. One of the most intriguing lines is when she writes, “Dying, is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally well,” (Plath, lines 43-45). This line signifies that like her art, she is very good at dying or attempting to die. Plath writes about her private trauma throughout the poem and uses disturbing images and terms like “Nazi lampshade” and “Jew linen” to further connect her feelings of deep unhappiness and despair by likening her skin and face to these unkind and harmful terms and to really connect with the reader about how she is feeling through objectifying her appearance. She writes about being unsuccessful in her attempted suicides like when she writes, “This is number three. What a trash, to annihilate each decade,” (Plath, lines 22-24). Her unsuccessful attempts at taking her own life have made her bitter in a way to the point where she is “annihilating” each decade of her life and living in a continuous state of unhappiness. Plath also writes how she does it to feel something like when she writes, “I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call,” (Plath, lines 46-48). These lines are deeply personal and show the private pain of what Plath has been feeling and how the attempts to take her own life have been the few times she has felt “real” in a way. The raw emotions and the way Plath speaks in such an authentic and open way makes this an exact example of what Confessional poetry was at the time and how it broke many barriers and drove societal change.
“The Colossus” by Sylvia Plath is another example of Confessional poetry and the fragmented relationship she writes about with her father throughout the poem. Plath equates a Colossal statue to the personal and broken relationship she had to a very overpowering and large and dominating figure in her life. She writes about loss and the confusing feelings that she has in losing someone that had an intense, dominating role in her life. When Plath writes, “I shall never get you put together entirely. Pierced, glued, and properly jointed,” (Plath, lines 1-2). This immediately starts off the poem as one of sadness and a feeling of brokenness that she is feeling about this death. She equates the destruction of a Colossal statue to the death of this dominating figure and how physically and emotionally she cannot “put back together” this person or her feelings. Plath invokes imagery of putting something back together that is broken but cannot be fixed and the sadness of that fact that this is something that cannot be the way it used to be. When Plath compares the statue to this figure in her life she writes, “You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum, I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress,” (Plath, line 18-19). This relates to the Roman Forum which has been destroyed just like the person she lost. The black cypress is associated with death and darkness so it continues the theme of intense despair and a dark world that Plath feels like she is living in. This poem is a deeply personal response to death and feelings of loss and conveys intense feelings about losing someone that was close to you but that was also a controversial figure in your life.
“Fever 103” by Sylvia Plath is another poem where Plath uses her thoughts of of sins and suffering to equate it to a real and common feeling like a very intense fever. There are connections towards transcending and breaking such a fever to become a new, pure individual while stripping yourself of sin and becoming a new individual like when she writes, “I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body, hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern,” (Plath, lines 34-36). Plath is comparing the body of the person who is hurting her and causing her impurity to the way the world hurts or disobeys God. The actions of this one person is causing Plath to seek purity and be free of her sins. Plath does this by writing about the heat of a fever to burn out or sweat out those impurities by writing, “Greasing the bodies of adulterers, like Hiroshima ash and eating in, the sin, the sin,” (Plath lines 25-27). The “greasing” and “Hiroshima ash” terms reference fire and being burned which is synonymous and related to Hell. This type of imagery is key to understanding her feelings and Plath conveys and writes about this type of confessional feelings to show a personal rebirth in the end of the poem that is associated with God and being reborn into a new and purified person.
Citations
openverse. https://openverse.org/image/6a838c62-c0cc-4278-aa41-4e99639ba085?q=sylvia+plath&p=105.