"...to live, love, and say it well..."
"Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences."
The short, sad life of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was a tortured, often clinically-depressed poet and writer. Her book, The Bell Jar, was a semi-autobiographical account of her life, but the places of events and the names of characters were changed.
Plath is best known for her bare-it-all poetry, a genre now known as "confessional." She published two volumes of poems, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel before her death by suicide at the age of 30, on February 11, 1963.
What I remembered most about her when I studied her in college was that she committed suicide by sticking her head inside a gas oven. I was "aghast" at her despair and determination to end her life.
Since I have never fought clinical depression or faced the issues she faced, I admit that I can't even begin to grasp her pain.
Body of work
In 1981, eighteen years after her death, Ted Hughes, her estranged husband, compiled and edited her works, publishing The Collected Poems. It won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, making Sylvia Plath the first-ever poet to be awarded the prize posthumously.
In 2000, thirty-seven years after her death, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath were published by Anchor Books, including more than fifty percent of material that had never before been published.
"Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences."
It's sad that she never recognized how well she'd said it or how many people connected with her work.
Buy The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath at Amazon.
Buy The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath at Bookshop.org.
Buy The Bell Jar from Amazon.
Buy The Bell Jar from Bookshop.org.
Buy The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath at Amazon.
Buy The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath at Bookshop.org
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