Sylvia Plath – Noah Marcotte
Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Boston. She would go on to write some of the most mentally anguished, troubling and depressing poems. However, her importance as a poet is unquestionable. Her poems closely deal with her depression, her negative view of herself her and her issues with her family, mainly her husband and father. Plath’s father, Otto, was a German man who died in 1940. He is the subject of one of Plath’s most controversial poems: “Daddy”. This poem is controversial because Plath openly compares her father to Nazi, highlighting his authoritarian parenting style, and the trouble relationship he had with his daughter. Despite her struggles with depression, which culminated in her attempted suicide at the age of 19, Plath remained an excellent student, graduating from Smith College in 1955. In the subsequent year, Plath met Ted Hughes, the man who would become her husband, and they were married that June. The couple had two children, Friedra in 1960, and Nicholas in 1962. During this time, Plath published two major works, The Bell Jar and The Colossus. Eventually Hughes left Plath for another women, sending her into another depression, but also prompting another collection of poems, Ariel. Eventually, the depression became too much for Plath, and she prematurely ended her own life in 1963 by inhaling gasoline from a kitchen oven.
Poetry: 1950's and 1960's 