Sylvia Plath

For Friday, we'll read three poems by the dynamic poetic powerhouse Sylvia Plath, who during her too-brief life created a rich and riveting body of work. Please read each of the following poems with care (twice if possible):

The title poem from Plath's first collection, "The Colossus."

And two poems from her second collection, the posthumously published Ariel: "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus."

 Sylvia Plath the woman

Sylvia Plath the muse      

("What Sylvia Plath Taught Me" by Summer Pierre)

If you're interested in exploring the question of Sylvia Plath's choice to deploy elaborate, exaggerated Holocaust imagery in the extended metaphors of some of her best known poems from Ariel, quite a bit of critical work has been done on this question, including "'The Boot in the Face': The Problem of the Holocaust in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath," which is fairly critical of Plath's choices and "'Black Phones': Postmodern Poetics in the Holocaust Poetry of Sylvia Plath" by Matthew Boswell, which explores different critical perspectives on Plath's Holocaust imagery, and some poetic and artistic contexts of her choice to use these images, without necessarily taking a side.