February 09, 2013
lady lazarus
It is hard to believe that if Sylvia Plath had not taken her own life — in 1963, at the age of 30 — she would quite possibly still be alive today. Her rival Adrienne Rich, three years her elder, died just last year. But how could Plath live to comb gray hair? Her suicide does not seem like something that just happened to happen. In her poetry, she forces us to see her death as a destiny and a culmination: “The woman is perfected. / Her dead /Body wears the smile of accomplishment, / The illusion of a Greek necessity,” she wrote in her last poem, “Edge,” just six days before she died. Plath imbued her life with the kind of interpretability that usually belongs only to art. It’s no wonder, then, that on the 50th anniversary of her suicide Carl Rollyson and Andrew Wilson should want to add to the already full shelves of Plath biographies, even though neither of them radically changes our picture of her life and death. With Plath, biography is a kind of criticism, and vice versa.more from Adam Kirsch at the NY Times here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 08:58 AM | Permalink
Comments
Without suggesting Plath was less than a magnificent poet -- all that really matters to me -- I will say I am tired of her suicide, and of all the exhumations bunching around its 50th anniversary.
Might the sickening interest in whose fault it was now cease? Please? Her poetry is interesting enough without the assist. Is that not the thing to care about? To require that the legend supersede the poetry is to insist the poetry is weak without that gloss.
Yes, I know -- her poetry foretold her end. But a poet's own death is a time honored subject for poetry both by those who rush to it and those who keep on fighting and writing.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 9, 2013 1:52:07 PM
Thanks Morgan for linking to this NYT piece.
Yes, she still is the gold standard of post-WW2 American poetry. And yes, too many biographies have already been written, Elatia.
Sylvia Plath wrote her life, yet another construct on top of the "real" construct. But she did it with such mastery that her life became secondary.
Posted by: Orla Schantz | Feb 9, 2013 6:29:33 PM
Orla, Plath's life is secondary to her poetry, or it is not really good poetry, but good copy, that readers are seeking. What I object to is that it will be a while before her poetry can stand on its own, thanks to a cultural fascination with her life and its horrible end.
Can Plath be a feminist icon when so many husbands of so many female artists were -- and still are -- worse than Hughes? Was he a bad guy? Or just a poet in a transitional era, helpless before his wife's illness?
We won't know. It's too fucked up for now. Readers of the future will read Plath or not, read Hughes or not, and take sides if they choose to engage with the burning questions of yesteryear.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 9, 2013 7:49:10 PM
Post a comment