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To read Sylvia Plath's poetry is to paint an image of her life as seen through her eyes. As a Confessional poet of America between 1960 and 1963 (publishing dates), her poems all share a sense of undercurrent - a deeply hidden meaning, which is usually focused on fear and terror - an undercurrent that can easily be found to have been mirrored in the woman herself. Born in Massachusetts in 1932, Sylvia's troubled life started at an early age, building the foundations for her depression later on. Her father suffered terribly through her childhood with what he thought to be cancer. Finally going to a doctor, it was diagnosed as diabetes, now advanced beyond treatment, and the cause of an amputated leg. Otto Plath appears to be a stubborn and proud man, who Sylvia saw suffer and eventually pass away, only a day following her eighth birthday. Boundlessly affected by his death , she hid her pain, having inherited her father's obsession with projecting the right image. This is a trait highlighted through the full extent of her short life, and in her poetry. Words describes the pain and hidden suffering which can come from speech between beings, and in Mirror, she approaches the topic of personal and public image. Her poetry lived on after her death, revealing the true extent of her inner torment. Words and Mirror are typical examples of some of Plath's more sombre work, and both display recognisable and characteristic properties. Neither poem uses any physical sense of rhyme, resisting the 'sing-song' qualities of some poems to produce a more sensitive and sad atmosphere. However, she still manages to secure the language used into the mind of the reader so that it feels right.
Approximate Word count = 1102
Approximate Pages = 4.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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